The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
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Leading Off
● LA Ballot: The Louisiana House of Representatives voted Tuesday to advance Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's plan to replace the current state constitution with a new governing document even though the governor has yet to explain exactly how he wants to transform state government.
However, convincing two-thirds of the House to vote Landry's way may have been the easier part of the governor's ongoing goal to consolidate even more power within his office. A supermajority in the 39-member Senate also needs to agree to a constitutional convention, and while the GOP holds a 28-11 edge there, its assent isn't guaranteed.
Senate President Cameron Henry in particular has expressed skepticism about Landry's plan, though he hasn't shot down the idea.
"I don't think it's on track or off track," Henry told NOLA.com's Stephanie Grace last month. "I still think members have a lot of unanswered questions." (The Republican who authored the bill that passed Tuesday, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, is Henry's college roommate.)
But Landry's allies removed one big source of concern for reluctant Republicans on Tuesday when they delayed the starting date for a convention from May 20 to Aug. 1. The current legislative session is set to last through June 3, and several senators complained about the final weeks overlapping with a potential gathering to revise the constitution. Ultimately, all but one House Republican voted for the bill, while just four members of the Democratic minority voted in the affirmative.
However, it remains to be seen whether this adjustment will be enough to satisfy Henry, whom LAPolitics.com's Jeremy Alford recently identified as "[t]he only thing standing" in Landry's way.
If the Senate signs off on the House's bill, 171 delegates would convene for two weeks in the first half of August. Participants would include all 144 members of the legislature, while Landry would choose the other 27.
By contrast, most of the delegates to the 1973 convention that produced the current constitution were elected by voters. The Gambit, a local alt-weekly, also notes that delegates picked by the governor had to "reflect specific political and demographic interests," a mandate not included in this bill.
Approval of a new constitution following a convention would require the support of a simple majority of voters on Nov. 5. If "yes" were to prevail, Louisiana would be the first state to adopt a new state constitution since Rhode Island in 1986.
The governor and his backers have remained quiet about what they'd like this constitution to include or exclude even as they've played down the entire process.
"We are not rewriting the constitution," insisted Beaullieu, adding, "This is a refresh of the constitution."
That's not comforting to skeptics who have watched Landry, with the support of the GOP's supermajorities in the gerrymandered state legislature, push his ultra-conservative agenda and augment his powers during his first four months in office.
"The governor's influence is everywhere now," Alford told The Gambit. "It's like an octopus. His tentacles extend to the House, the Senate, the lobbying corps—everywhere."
The Downballot
● One key outcome of Tuesday's primaries in Indiana: House Republican leaders will have even more implacable crazies to contend with next year, and we're surveying the damage on this week's episode of "The Downballot." Marlin Stutzman, a tea party OG who helped push out John Boehner, narrowly won the Republican nod to reclaim his old seat while the erratic Victoria Spartz (who voted to oust Mike Johnson while we were recording) successfully managed to "un-retire" more than a year after saying she wouldn't seek another term. Expect even more "GOP in Disarray" headlines come 2025!
We also have an in-depth discussion with Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center, about his studies of Latinos in America. Whereas the fastest-growing Latino group was once Mexicans, now it's Venezuelans. And while two-thirds of Latinos identified as Catholic not long ago, now less than half do—while the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated are soaring. Lopez zeroes in on the drop in support for Joe Biden among young Latino voters in particular but observes that it's still early: Just 25% of Latino adults tell Pew they're paying attention to the election. The show notes cannot do this conversation justice!
Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by Thursday afternoon. New episodes come out every Thursday morning!
Senate
● MD-Sen: Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks's allies at EMILYs List have publicized a poll from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that argues there's "no electability gap" between either of the Democratic candidates despite Rep. David Trone's ads arguing otherwise.
PPP shows Alsobrooks beating former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan 46-37, while Trone is ahead by a similar 47-37 margin; respondents favor Joe Biden 60-32 against Donald Trump. However, the release notably did not include a May 14 Democratic primary matchup.
This is the first publicly released survey conducted this year by a reliable firm that finds either Democrat beating Hogan, who unexpectedly joined the race in February. Other polls, though, did show Trone performing better than Alsobrooks.
However, there were only a few polls released prior to this one, and the most recent of those was a month-old OpinionWorks survey that showed Hogan ahead by double digits. OpinionWorks owner Steve Raabe noted last month that Trone had significantly higher name recognition than Alsobrooks.
Trone has saturated the airwaves for most of the past year by self-funding a record-setting amount, which currently stands at $62 million according to analyst Rob Pyers. By contrast, Alsobrooks and her allies only ramped up their advertising over the last several weeks.
● PA-Sen: Keystone Renewal PAC is getting involved in Pennsylvania's Senate race by kicking off a reported $4 million ad buy to support Republican nominee Dave McCormick. The PAC's first ad features an Army veteran who went to West Point with McCormick praising the candidate's military service and leadership. The spot is set to run for four weeks on TV and digital platforms, according to Axios' Alex Thompson.
Keystone Renewal, which reported having raised $18 million as of January, is backed by several billionaire megadonors, including Ken Griffin, Steve Schwarzman, and Paul Singer. All of those figures are finance industry CEOs, just as McCormick was prior to running for office.
House
● Massachusetts: Candidate filing closed Tuesday in Massachusetts for major party congressional candidates (the deadline for state-level candidates passed a week earlier), but don't expect much action this cycle in either the Sept. 3 primary or Nov. 5 general election. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and each of the nine members of the Bay State's all-Democratic House delegation are seeking reelection, and none of them faces any serious opposition.
It will be a while, though, before the state releases a list of primary candidates. Massachusetts requires state and federal candidates to submit a second batch of paperwork to state election officials by May 28 and June 4, respectively. Anyone who fails to complete this additional step won't appear on the primary ballot.
● NJ-10: InsiderNJ reports that Linden Mayor Derek Armstead is interested in running in the upcoming special election to replace the late Rep. Donald Payne and his allies are already gathering signatures for the July 16 Democratic primary. Armstead does not appear to have publicly commented on his intentions yet, but the filing deadline is Friday.
● NY-16: The Daily Beast's William Bredderman reports that Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman has subscribed to numerous conspiracy theorists on his personal YouTube account, which was active as recently as last month.
Bredderman says these channels include, but are not limited to, accounts that spread disinformation on behalf of the governments of China and Russia; a user "who killed a German citizen and provoked attacks on American businesses in Egypt"; and a Donald Trump backer who insists the U.S. is behind coverups involving extraterrestrials.
Bowman's team did not deny that Bredderman had correctly identified his personal YouTube account but sought to disavow knowledge of his account's subscriptions.
"I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know these accounts, and I haven't watched any of these videos," Bowman said in a statement. "There is a war going on that has killed tens of thousands of innocents and people here can't afford rent and groceries, I think people care more about that than some convoluted story about videos that I haven't even watched."
Bredderman previously reported in January that Bowman had used his old blog to spread conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks, including through a "free verse" poem he published in 2011. The congressman, who faces a difficult primary against Westchester County Executive George Latimer on June 25, responded at the time that he does not believe such theories.
● OK-04: Punchbowl News reports that insurance agency owner Paul Bondar is spending $410,000 on TV ads over the next week to boost his longshot bid against veteran Rep. Tom Cole in the June 18 Republican primary for Oklahoma's 4th District. A runoff would take place on Aug. 27 in the event that none of the candidates earned a majority in a field that also includes three other challengers.
While Bondar has attracted almost no attention up until now, the incumbent and his allies appear to be taking him at least somewhat seriously. Cole this week debuted his own commercial attacking his opponent, though the GOP firm Medium Buying only tracked $86,000 in TV and radio ads from him through Tuesday.
Medium also said in that tweet that a super PAC called Americans 4 Security is deploying a larger $215,000 to boost the congressman, who became chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee last month. However, we don't yet have a copy of its spot.
Bondar is one of four Republicans opposing Cole in the 4th District, a safely red seat based in the southern part of the state, and until this week, he looked just as anonymous as the other three challengers. Bondar spent every single cent of the $31,000 he self-funded through March and, because he raised nothing from donors, he ended the first quarter with exactly nothing in the bank.
Bondar, however, had access to enough money this quarter to go on the air with an anti-Cole message. "Washington insider Tom Cole voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending," declares the narrator, continuing, "Paul Bondar opposes new federal spending and wants to cut it to stop inflation." The commercial, which was shared by Punchbowl, goes on to attack the 12-term incumbent for voting to fund Ukraine.
Cole's own commercial accuses Bondar of owning mansions in both Illinois, "where he didn't pay his taxes," and Texas, "where Bondar swore he lived when he voted just weeks ago." After displaying a picture showing that Bondar cast a vote in Texas' March 5 primary, the ad goes on to say the challenger "doesn't own anything in Oklahoma." The incumbent is also airing an ad depicting himself as a pro-Trump conservative.
Cole, who first won this seat in 2002, has never faced serious opposition for renomination. The congressman was in the national spotlight 16 years ago when he had the misfortune of leading the NRCC through an ugly 2008 cycle. Our predecessor site the Swing State Project had plenty of fun at his expense with the Tom Cole Deathwatch where, as The Hill wrote, we invited readers to guess how long it would take for him to lose his post.
Cole defied us naysayers by making it to the end of what was indeed a dire cycle for his party, but Minority Leader John Boehner dashed his hopes for redemption by backing Texas Rep. Pete Sessions' bid to lead the NRCC for 2010. Cole, though, continued to amass seniority in Congress, and last month he made the switch from chairing the House Rules Committee to leading the appropriations panel.
● PA-10: Democrat Janelle Stelson is out with a late April internal from Public Policy Polling that shows her trailing Rep. Scott Perry just 45-43. The release did not include presidential numbers for the 10th District, a central Pennsylvania seat that favored Donald Trump 51-47 in 2020.
This is the first poll we've seen of the general election between Stelson, a former local TV news anchor who decisively won her primary last month, and Perry, an ex-chair of the Freedom Caucus. National Democrats were already treating this contest as competitive, though, as House Majority PAC booked a hefty $2.4 million in fall TV time last month to aid Stelson.
Major GOP groups have yet to announce their first wave of ad reservations for House races, but when they do, we'll be paying close attention to see whether Perry's seat is on the list. We'll also be watching to see if the incumbent will release any polls to contradict the idea that he's vulnerable in this GOP-leaning constituency or if he'll let Stelson's numbers go unanswered.
Perry, though, is continuing to display no interest in appealing to voters who don't inhabit the far-right fever swamp. CNN reported Wednesday that the congressman had told his colleagues the previous day, "The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party."
He went on to advance an infamous racist conspiracy theory by proclaiming, "Replacement theory is real." Perry continued, "What is happening now is we’re importing people into the country that want to be in America … but have no interest in being Americans."
The congressman responded to CNN's inquiries with a statement claiming, "My point is proven yet again: when the Left loses an argument, it debases and smears instead of engaging in debate on merits."
● SC-01: The far-right Club for Growth has launched a TV ad that attacks former state cabinet official Catherine Templeton as a "woke bureaucrat" who allegedly fired a veteran who spoke out against mandatory "diversity training." Templeton is challenging Rep. Nancy Mace in the June 11 Republican primary, and the Club has spent at least $477,000 to aid the incumbent.
● VA-05: State Sen. John McGuire has publicized an internal from Battleground Connect that shows him beating Rep. Bob Good 45-31 in the June 18 Republican primary, a dramatic change from Good's 46-24 advantage in a survey that McGuire made public in December.
No one has released any other polls of the GOP contest for Virginia's 5th District, and based on the Good campaign's response to McGuire's new internal, it doesn't sound like the incumbent is seeing more optimistic numbers.
"The only poll that matters is the final count on Election Day," a spokesperson told Cardinal News, which is the phrase that generations of losing campaigns have turned to when they're seeing nothing but ugly poll results themselves.
Judges
● GA Supreme Court: Former Democratic Rep. John Barrow outraised Republican-appointed Justice Andrew Pinson by $806,000 to $628,000 for the period covering Feb. 1 to April 30. However, Pinson ended April with a $731,000 to $275,000 lead in cash on hand heading into the May 21 nonpartisan election.
Pinson enjoys that cash advantage because he had begun raising money before Barrow unexpectedly joined the race in early March. Barrow, though, was able to transfer money he had raised for a planned Supreme Court bid in 2020 that got canceled after the incumbent resigned early.
Mayors & County Leaders
● New York City, NY Mayor: State Sen. Zellnor Myrie announced Wednesday that he was forming an exploratory committee for a potential bid against Mayor Eric Adams in the June 2025 instant-runoff Democratic primary. Myrie told the New York Times that the incumbent had displayed a "failure of competence," and that Adams and his team did not have a "full grasp of the nuts and bolts of how city government should work."
Myrie, whose parents are from Costa Rica and has Jamaican ancestry, would be the first Latino mayor of America's most populous city. However, the paper notes that the Brooklyn legislator begins the contest with little citywide name recognition. He got an unwelcome reminder of this in March when the minister of the famed Abyssinian Baptist Church introduced the senator as "Zenor Marhee."
Myrie rose to prominence in 2018 when he waged a primary bid against state Sen. Jesse Hamilton, who was a member of the infamous Independent Democratic Conference that spent years allied with Republicans. Hamilton drew the wrong kind of attention when he sent out fliers insisting that the IDC really stood for "Immigrant Defense Coalition," and that tactic didn't save him from a 54-46 loss.
Myrie went on to easily win the general election, and he emerged as a progressive force in an upper chamber that, for the first time since World War II, had a stable Democratic majority. City & State writes that his major achievement was passing the Clean Slate Act, which seals most misdemeanor records after set periods of time. Myrie also played a leading role in passing numerous laws to make it much easier to vote in a state that was notoriously bad about voting access.
Myrie is the second notable Democrat to announce the formation of an exploratory committee. Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, whose 2021 bid for mayor collapsed after two women accused him of sexual misconduct, previously took this step in January. Several other Democrats have also been talked about as possible opponents for Adams.
The mayor's many detractors are also watching the multiple scandals surrounding him. The FBI seized the mayor's phone in November as part of a corruption investigation, while a woman filed a lawsuit in March accusing him of sexually assaulting her in 1993. Adams has denied wrongdoing.
Poll Pile
- PA-Sen: Muhlenberg College: Bob Casey (D-inc): 45, Dave McCormick (R): 41 (44-41 Trump in two-way, 35-35 tie with third-party candidates)
- WI-Sen: Quinnipiac University: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 54, Eric Hovde (R): 42 (50-44 Biden in two-way, 40-39 Biden with third-party candidates)
Ad Roundup
Campaign Action
