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
● FL-15: Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Kemp announced Friday that she would challenge freshman Republican Rep. Laurel Lee, a move that gives Democrats a credible candidate in a Tampa-area constituency that Donald Trump took by a small 51-48 margin in 2020, according to calculations by Daily Kos Elections.
Kemp told the Tampa Bay Times that Trump’s recent call for “great MAGA Republicans” to challenge Lee, who was the only member of Florida’s congressional delegation to endorse Gov. Ron DeSantis’ doomed presidential bid, was one reason she decided to get in. “That does play into everyone’s interest in looking at this as a winnable seat,” the commissioner said of the 15th District, which, like the state as a whole, swung hard to the right in 2022.
Kemp has a long history in local politics. She previously worked as a top aide to Kathy Castor, who was herself a member of the Board of County Commissioners before she was elected to Congress in 2006, and Kemp later served a stint as chair of the county party. Kemp won an at-large seat on the seven-member Commission in 2016, and her 53-47 reelection victory against a Republican colleague four years later helped her party maintain control.
Two years later, however, the GOP took a 4-3 majority, a cycle when Kemp wasn’t on the ballot, but she’s remained an influential force. One observer told Florida Politics last year that Kemp was “arguably the most powerful Democrat in Hillsborough County outside the city limits of Tampa.”
Senate
● NJ-Sen: A federal judge has granted Rep. Andy Kim’s request to bar New Jersey election officials from printing primary ballots that give certain candidates favorable placement, a practice known as the “county line.” U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi instead ordered officials to prepare ballots “organized by office sought”—the system used in every other state—rather than one that places candidates endorsed by county parties in a special row or column.
In a 49-page opinion issued on Friday, Quraishi agreed with Kim and two House candidates who were co-plaintiffs that the county line likely violated their First Amendment rights by conferring an unfair advantage on anyone who receives special ballot placement. One expert who testified on Kim’s behalf, Rutgers professor Julia Sass Rubin, concluded that between 2002 and 2022, candidates on the county line enjoyed an average boost of 38 points.
The county clerks who are defendants in the case have already appealed, but should Quraishi’s ruling stand, its impact on the Senate race may be minimal. Kim’s top rival, former financier Tammy Murphy, recently dropped her bid just ahead of this year’s filing deadline, and most party leaders in counties that had previously awarded their line to Murphy said they would instead grant it to Kim.
Two other Democrats remain in the primary, labor activist Patricia Campos-Medina and community organizer Larry Hamm, but they’ve struggled to earn major endorsements or register in the polls.
However, the disappearance of the line could have a more dramatic effect on other races. For instance, as Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin suggests, it could spell trouble for Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez, the son of indicted Sen. Robert Menendez, who is seeking reelection in the safely blue 8th District. The younger Menendez had been counting on the county line, which he received in all three of the district’s counties, to help him defeat his well-funded primary challenger, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.
The race to succeed Kim in the House could also be affected. Assemblyman Herb Conaway has likewise gotten the line in the three counties that make up the solidly blue 3rd District, but now, a more level playing field could open up the Democratic primary. (One of Kim’s co-plaintiffs, businesswoman Sarah Schoengood, is running in the 3rd.)
For the moment, however, Quraishi’s ruling applies only to Democrats. In a further order on Saturday, the judge noted that Kim’s allegations of harm “only applied to the 2024 Democratic Primary Election” and therefore any relief granted could not also implicate the Republican primary.
However, Quraishi observed that “nothing … prevents the Republican Party and its leadership from appreciating this Court’s preliminary injunction and taking steps to amend the ballot system for its primary election similar to what this Court has ordered for the Democratic Primary.”
In the future, though, the end of the county line could have even greater consequences, especially in next year’s race for governor. Incumbents at all levels could also face more frequent and vigorous primary challenges.
Governors
● WV-Gov: Businessman Chris Miller has launched what may be the most transphobic attack ad we’ve ever seen in a Republican primary, focused on accusing the frontrunner of lobbying on behalf of a New York hospital that provided gender-affirming care for minors. “His name: Pat Morrisey,” says the narrator of the state’s attorney general. “His pronoun: money-grubbing liberal.”
The spot continues, “Then Pat transitioned from lobbyist to politician, masquerading as one of us. But the real Pat Morrisey is a pro-trans liberal.” That would come as a surprise to Patrick Morrisey, who has been hostile to trans rights while serving as West Virginia’s top lawyer. Morrisey and Miller are competing in a May 14 primary that also includes former Del. Moore Capito and Secretary of State Mac Warner.
House
● NH-02: State Sen. Donovan Fenton and state Rep. Rebecca McWilliams respectively tell The Keene Sentinel and Patch that they’re considering joining the Sept. 10 primary to replace their fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Annie Kuster. Patch also provides the names of many more Democrats who could run, though there’s no word yet from any of them:
- Former Concord Mayor Jim Bouley
- Concord Mayor Byron Champlin
- Keene Mayor Jay Kahn
- Restauranter Jonathan Kiper
- Former state Sen. Melanie Levesque
- Former Executive Councilor Debora Pignatelli
- 2018 NH-01 candidate Levi Sanders
- 2018 NH-01 candidate Maura Sullivan
- Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington
Warmington launched a campaign for governor last year, and she’s shown no obvious interest in switching races.
In the “no” column, meanwhile, are attorney Jay Surdukowski and Lebanon City Councilor Karen Liot Hill.
On the GOP side, former Keene Mayor George Hansel tells the Sentinel he’s interested in another try, two years after national Democrats successfully blocked him from advancing past the primary. The Union Leader’s Kevin Landrigan also mentions 2014 nominee Marilinda Garcia, who lost to Kuster 55-45, as a possibility.
● SC-01: Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux reports that former congressional aide Dan Hanlon has quietly terminated his FEC account just ahead of Monday’s filing deadline to challenge his old boss, Rep. Nancy Mace, in the June 11 GOP primary.
Hanlon, who departed as chief of staff last year on bad terms with Mace, attracted national attention in January when he set up his fundraising committee. However, as Digest readers well know, filing with the FEC and actually running for office are two different things, and Hanlon demonstrated this by remaining silent over the following two months about his plans before deciding not to run after all.
But Mace is not home-free: Another Republican, former state cabinet official Catherine Templeton, actually did announce her own primary bid in February.
● TX-23: Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin flags that the American Action Network, which is an affiliate of the Congressional Leadership Fund, has booked at least $847,000 to help Rep. Tony Gonzales in the May 28 Republican primary runoff. Gonzales outpaced his far-right challenger, gun maker Brandon Herrera, 45-25 in the first round of voting on March 5, which was below the majority the congressman needed to win outright.
● WI-01: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Thursday that state cabinet official Peter Barca is considering a challenge to Republican Rep. Bryan Steil for the 1st District, a light red southeastern Wisconsin seat that’s descended from the one that Barca briefly represented three decades ago. The Democrat, who announced the same day that he was stepping down as secretary of the Department of Revenue, confirmed his interest Friday to the Wisconsin State Journal and said he would likely decide by the end of April.
Donald Trump carried this constituency just 50-48 in 2020, while progressive Janet Protasiewicz, according to analyst Drew Savicki, took it 53-47 in last year’s officially nonpartisan state Supreme Court race. Democrats have yet to land a serious candidate to take on Steil, who was elected in 2018 to succeed retiring Speaker Paul Ryan. However, the Badger State’s June 3 filing deadline, which is one of the latest in the nation, still gives the party time to recruit someone.
That someone was once Barca himself—in the May 1993 special election to replace 12-term Rep. Les Aspin, a fellow Democrat who resigned to become Bill Clinton’s first secretary of defense. The assemblyman was campaigning for a seat that, according to analyst Kiernan Park-Egan, had favored Clinton 41-36 against George H.W. Bush, while another 23% went to independent Ross Perot. The GOP, meanwhile, was once again fielding Mark Neumann, who had just lost to Aspin 58-42.
National Republicans recognized the race as an early opportunity to capitalize on the Clinton administration’s bumpy first months. Neumann himself seized on that narrative, while Barca distanced himself from some of Clinton’s policies. The Democrat prevailed 50-49, but the following year’s red wave helped propel Neumann to an even closer 49.2-48.8 victory in their rematch.
Barca, though, wasn’t done with electoral politics. He returned to the Assembly following the 2008 elections and became minority leader after Democrats lost the chamber two years later. However, he stepped down from his leadership post in 2017 after he was one of just three Democrats to vote for GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s infamous $3 billion tax incentive package to the electronics company Foxconn. Barca still sought and won another term in the legislature, but he left in early 2019 after Tony Evers, who had just unseated Walker, named him to his cabinet.
Prosecutors & Sheriffs
● Cook County, IL State’s Attorney: Attorney Clayton Harris conceded the Democratic primary on Friday evening to former Illinois Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke in the March 19 primary to replace retiring Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. With almost all of the votes counted in America’s second-largest county, O’Neill Burke led Harris by a narrow 50.1-49.9 margin, a difference of about 1,500 votes. O’Neill Burke will be the clear favorite in the general election against perennial Republican candidate Bob Fioretti in this dark blue jurisdiction.
O’Neill Burke campaigned as an alternative to Foxx, delivering a speech during the final days of the race arguing the incumbent had done a poor job of both managing her office and keeping her constituents safe. Still, Bolts’ Pascal Sabino notes that O’Neill Burke expressed support for some of the criminal justice reforms that Foxx put in place during her eight years in office, such as her programs concerning drugs and mental health.
O’Neill Burke decisively outraised Harris thanks in large part to the support of major Republican donors. She also attracted a far more vocal and not entirely welcome conservative backer late in the contest when John Catanzara, the head of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police and a Donald Trump ally who has also been one of Foxx’s fiercest critics, encouraged his members to vote for O’Neill Burke.
O’Neill Burke, however, criticized Catanzara for getting involved. “Given the working relationship between the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Police Department, it was inappropriate for the FOP to issue this political statement,” the campaign said in a statement.
Harris, by contrast, told Sabino that Foxx deserved an “A” grade, and he picked up her support in the final days of the primary. Harris also enjoyed endorsements from the Cook County Democratic Party, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and the Chicago Teachers Union, but they weren’t quite enough. Sabino notes that Harris carried the city of Chicago with 52% of the vote, but O’Neill Burke offset that edge by winning the rest of Cook County with 54%.
Ad Roundup
- PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc)
- WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc)