The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
Embedded Content
● UT-Sen, CO-05, SC-03: Donald Trump found himself in the rare and unhappy position on Tuesday of watching three candidates he'd backed in Republican primaries all lose on the same night.
The most high-profile of these defeats came in the race to succeed Mitt Romney as Utah's junior senator, which saw Rep. John Curtis decisively defeat Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs for the Republican nomination. Curtis holds a 51-30 advantage with the Associated Press estimating that 82% of the vote has been tabulated as of Wednesday morning, but while the margin may change as the remaining ballots are counted, Curtis’ victory is not in doubt.
Trump was also on the wrong side of a landslide in Colorado's 5th District after conservative radio host Jeff Crank crushed state party chair Dave Williams 65-35 for the nod to replace retiring Rep. Doug Lamborn, who supported Crank. (Speaker Mike Johnson was also in Crank's corner.)
Things were considerably tighter in the GOP runoff for South Carolina's 3rd District, but Trump's embrace of pastor Mark Burns still wasn't quite enough. Air National Guard Lt. Col. Sheri Biggs edged out Burns 51-49 to secure the nomination to succeed retiring Rep. Jeff Duncan, a prominent social conservative whose estranged wife accused him of infidelity in divorce proceedings last year.
The three defeated candidates were all decisively outspent thanks in part to the intervention of outside groups that have devoted themselves to thwarting hardline candidates who could cause headaches for GOP leadership. All of the losers also struggled to raise money, though Burns did manage to secure a $750,000 bank loan to boost his bid despite pledging no collateral except for "future contributions" to his campaign.
But even though it's easy to imagine that Trump spent the night berating the terrible people who gave him terrible advice, a more astute observer would understand that none of these outcomes constituted a rejection of Trumpism—far from it.
While Curtis is part of the shrinking coterie of prominent Republicans who wanted Trump punished for fomenting the Jan. 6 riot and has emphasized protecting the environment, he also spent his first years in Congress as a dependable ally of the last administration.
Crank and Biggs, meanwhile, were even more closely aligned with Trump. Crank benefited from a well-funded third-party ad campaign that argued that Williams, unlike Trump, "doesn't believe in Made in America." And Biggs ran commercials in which her top ally, Gov. Henry McMaster, pitched her as a "strong, conservative, pro-Trump" candidate.
But perhaps Trump won't be quite so upset in the end. Prior to the primaries, the GOP's supreme master took the time to slam only one of the three candidates who defeated his preferred picks. Trump wrote in his March endorsement message for Williams that his "opponent is Endorsed, and works closely with, Americans for Chinese Prosperity, a Charles Koch Disaster."
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that unsuccessfully tried to help Nikki Haley win the presidential nomination, went on to spend on behalf of Crank, who is its former state director. But it's a safe bet that Crank will strive to get on Trump's good side, and if there's one thing we know Trump loves, it's when a former enemy grovels before him.
● CO-03 (R): Attorney Jeff Hurd beat former state Rep. Ron Hanks 41-28 in the Republican primary for the western Colorado constituency that Rep. Lauren Boebert left behind. Democrats waged an expensive effort to boost Hanks, an underfunded election denier, but the Congressional Leadership Fund countered with its own ads attacking him.
Hurd, who had been running against Boebert before she jumped districts, will take on 2022 nominee Adam Frisch, who had no opposition on the Democratic side. Frisch, who lost to Boebert by a shockingly small 546-vote margin, has millions at his disposal for his second go-round. However, he'll still have a challenging task ahead of him in a seat that Trump carried 53-45 four years ago.
● CO-04 (special): Former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez won the special election for the final six months of fellow Republican Ken Buck's term by defeating former congressional staffer Trisha Calvarese 58-35. Lopez's tenure in Congress will be brief, though, as he isn't running for a full term.
Trump took this seat, which is based in the eastern part of the state and the Denver exurbs, by a 58-39 spread, so Calvarese slightly underperformed compared to Joe Biden. The GOP, however, simultaneously held a high-profile primary for a full term, which may have juiced turnout on their side—more on that one just below.
● CO-04 (R): Far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert completed the toughest part of her district swap by beating Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg 43-14 in the six-way primary. Boebert, who still represents the 3rd District on the other side of the state, had Trump's support and an ardent fanbase that helped her overcome a litany of personal embarrassments and her virtually non-existent ties to the area.
● CO-08 (R): State Rep. Gabe Evans easily outpaced former state Rep. Janak Joshi 78-22 in the primary to face freshman Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo in the Denver suburbs. Joshi, who badly lost his last two campaigns for public office while still living in a different part of the state, had the endorsement of Dave Williams' dysfunctional state party but not much else.
Evans, who had Trump's backing, will compete against Caraveo in what could be one of the most competitive House races in the nation. Caraveo became the first person to ever represent the newly created 8th District after winning by a tight 48.4-47.8 margin. (Biden would have prevailed here 51-46 in 2020 had the district existed then.) Outside groups on both sides have collectively reserved over $10 million in ad time in anticipation of the general election.
● NY-01 (D): Former CNN anchor and No Labels co-founder John Avlon convincingly defeated chemist Nancy Goroff 70-30 for the right to take on first-term Republican Rep. Nick LaLota in New York's 1st Congressional District. Avlon has shown himself to be a strong fundraiser but will have a tough race ahead. Democrats actually made this seat slightly redder in the most recent round of redistricting (it would have backed Trump 50-49), and Republicans have performed well across Long Island in recent years.
● NY-16 (D): Westchester County Executive George Latimer denied renomination to two-term Rep. Jamaal Bowman 58-42 following the most expensive House primary in American history. Latimer will have a far less eventful campaign ahead of him in a safely blue constituency that includes southern Westchester County and a small portion of the Bronx.
Bowman, who was a top target of the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC, is the first Democratic House member to lose renomination this cycle. As Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin recently highlighted, Bowman is also one of a handful of members of Congress to beat an incumbent in a primary only to later meet the same fate.
Bowman scored a huge win in 2020 against longtime Rep. Eliot Engel, who had struggled to combat the impression that he'd lost touch with his district. Four years later, however, it was Bowman who was on the receiving end of attacks arguing that he was out of step with his constituents. Bowman's detractors highlighted his votes against the Biden administration's agenda, as well as distractions like his guilty plea to a misdemeanor for falsely pulling a fire alarm in a House office building.
● NY-22 (D): State Sen. John Mannion decisively beat Air Force veteran Sarah Klee Hood 62-38 and will now face one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House, freshman Rep. Brandon Williams. The Syracuse-based 22nd was the only GOP-held district that Democrats made appreciably bluer in redistricting, shifting it from a 53-45 margin for Biden to a 55-43 Biden edge.
● NY-24 (R): Rep. Claudia Tenney dispatched a second consecutive challenge from attorney Michael Fratto, this time by a 61-39 margin. Two years ago, when almost all of the 24th District was new to her, Tenney beat Fratto by an underwhelming 54-40 spread. Her showing this time around wasn't exactly world-beating, but she'll have no problem securing another term representing this conservative seat in the Finger Lakes region.
● Westchester County, NY District Attorney (D): Susan Cacace, a former county judge who hails from a prominent legal family, defeated defense attorney William Wagstaff 59-31 in the primary to replace retiring District Attorney Mimi Rocah as the top prosecutor in Westchester County. (The AP estimates that 72% of the vote is reporting, so this may not be the final margin.) Cacace had the support of Rocah and much of the party establishment. She'll be the heavy favorite in November in this large and reliably blue suburban county just north of New York City.
● SC State Senate: State Sen. Katrina Shealy, who was one of three Republican women in the state Senate who blocked the GOP from passing a near-total abortion ban last year, lost an extremely nasty runoff to challenger Carlisle Kennedy by a 62-38 margin. Shealy's share was little different from the 40% she took in the first round of voting two weeks ago, but Kennedy swept up everything else.
Both of Shealy's compatriots paid a similar price in the primary: Sandy Senn lost narrowly while Penry Gustafson lost in a rout. Prior to her defeat, Shealy told the South Carolina Daily Gazette that she expects the legislature to once again push for a complete ban on abortions.
● UT-Gov (R): Republican Gov. Spencer Cox held off far-right state Rep. Phil Lyman two months after delegates backed the challenger at the state GOP's convention, with the governor ahead 57-43 with an estimated 82% of the vote in. "Maybe you hate that I don't hate enough," Cox told his angry detractors at the gathering, but he had an easier time with the larger primary electorate, though his final share of the vote was relatively unimpressive for an incumbent.
Still, Cox should have little trouble in the fall against Democratic state Rep. Brian King, who had no intra-party opposition of his own, in a state that last elected a Democratic governor back in 1980.
● UT-01 (R): Rep. Blake Moore had no trouble winning the Republican primary for Utah's conservative 1st District, fending off electrician Paul Miller 72-28 with an estimated 80% reporting. In April, the nearly penniless Miller beat Moore 55-45 at the state GOP's convention, but as is often the case in Utah, the vote among delegates was not predictive of how the larger primary electorate would go.
● UT-02 (R): Rep. Celeste Maloy holds a 52-48 lead over Army Reserve Col. Colby Jenkins with the AP estimating that 84% of the vote has been tabulated, but it has not yet called the race. If Maloy prevails, this would make this the second time in less than two months that she nearly saw her very brief congressional tenure come to an early end.
At the Republican convention in late April, Jenkins defeated Maloy 57-43 after winning Sen. Mike Lee's endorsement; had the incumbent fallen below the 40% mark, she would have failed to make the primary ballot. Maloy only got to Congress in November after winning a special election that month, but thanks to the GOP's careful gerrymander of the state's congressional map, she'd be a near-lock to win a full term if she secures renomination.
● UT-03 (R): Far-right state Sen. Mike Kennedy handily defeated his nearest opponent, former trampoline park CEO Case Lawrence, by a 37-22 margin with an estimated 84% reporting, putting him on a glide path to Congress in Utah's deep-red 3rd District.
Kennedy, who overcame several better-funded opponents, demonstrated his right-wing bona fides by winning 62% at the state GOP convention, then went on to pick up Sen. Mike Lee's support in the final week of the contest. Kennedy is primed to succeed Rep. John Curtis, who claimed the GOP nod for a seat in the upper chamber, six years after he briefly attracted national attention by taking on Mitt Romney in the 2018 Senate primary.
● MI-08: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has endorsed state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet ahead of the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, where her main adversary is former Flint Mayor Matt Collier. McDonald Rivet already won the backing of the DCCC, EMILYs List, and state labor groups. VoteVets, meanwhile, is the most prominent group backing Collier, who is an Army veteran.
● PA-01: Politico has obtained an Upswing Research & Strategy internal poll for Democrat Ashley Ehasz that finds the retired Army pilot trailing just 47-45 against Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. This is the first poll we've seen this cycle in this 52-47 Biden district, though Politico's writeup did not mention any 2024 presidential numbers.
Ehasz challenged Fitzpatrick in 2022 but lost 55-45 after getting badly outspent in a race that national Democrats did not target. However, things may be different this cycle, and the DCCC added her to its Red to Blue list of top candidates last month. Ehasz had $820,000 in cash on hand when the previous reporting period ended on April 3 after raising $1.4 million for the entire cycle up to that point.
Although that haul was smaller than Fitzpatrick's $3.7 million war chest and $4.2 million in total fundraising for the cycle, Ehasz had already raised more than she did in the entire 2022 cycle, when she brought in just under $1 million. Second-quarter FEC reports are due by July 15, which will shed further light on the state of fundraising in this contest.
● MO-AG: Appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey this week secured the endorsement of the NRA, which the Missouri Scout characterizes as one of the "big three" groups in state GOP primaries, ahead of his Aug. 6 showdown against Trump attorney Will Scharf. The other two vital organizations are the Missouri Farm Bureau, which also backs Bailey, and Missouri Right to Life, which doesn't appear to have taken sides yet.
● WI State Assembly: Staffers for the Wisconsin Elections Commission concluded Tuesday that the far-right campaign to oust Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had turned in enough valid signatures to force a recall election—but only if the contest takes place using the lines that were utilized in 2022. The bipartisan body is set to discuss these findings on Thursday.
The staffers' report said that the Commission would likely either set the recall primary for Aug. 6 or time to coincide with the regular statewide primary on Aug. 13, with the general election to follow four weeks later. The Commission crucially would also need to decide if the recall would take place in the old 63rd Assembly District, which Vos was elected to represent in 2022, or in the new 33rd District, where he now lives and is seeking reelection this year. Both constituencies are reliably red turf, but Commission staff says that the recall campaign failed to gather enough signatures from the new 33rd.
If Vos were removed this summer, however, his exile from the legislature might only last for a few months. The speaker lost his only primary challenger earlier this month when conservative writer Andrew Cegielski dropped out, though Cegielski remains on the ballot in the new 33rd District. The speaker faces independent Kelly Clark, who aided this recall campaign, as well as Democrat Al Kupsik, who is a former mayor of Lake Geneva, in the general election.
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a moderate organization that has spent millions to beat local progressive candidates, announced Monday that it was endorsing both former Supervisor Mark Farrell and philanthropist Daniel Lurie in the Nov. 5 instant-runoff contest—but not Mayor London Breed. Neighbors, which The San Francisco Standard characterized as "the city’s most powerful political group," is funded in part by William Oberndorf, a billionaire who often contributes to Republicans.
Neighbors said it was snubbing the moderate incumbent because Breed has not "demonstrated an ability to govern with the degree of persistence and consistency necessary to solve San Francisco’s problems." It also argued that Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who is the only major contender who identifies as a progressive, represented "a very real threat to the future of San Francisco," and was "likely to attract a significant amount of the vote."
Despite that apocalyptic pronouncement, however, Neighbors also released a mid-May internal from FM3 that showed Peskin taking fourth place in November. The poll found Farrell, who served as interim mayor for six months in 2018, edging out Breed 20-19 when it came to first-choice preferences, with Lurie and Peskin respectively at 17% and 12%. Another 4% went to Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, another moderate who has failed to gain traction so far, with 28% undecided.
The poll ultimately found Farrell edging out Breed 55-45 after simulating the ranked-choice process, though the memo noted that "with a sizable number of undecided voters—especially for second and third choices—that simulation is subject to significant variation." Indeed, a previously released FM3 poll conducted two weeks earlier for a different moderate organization, GrowSF, showed Breed beating Farrell 51-49 in the final round of tabulations.
● Where Are They Now?: Former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski over the weekend won the contest to become chair of the Democratic Party in Hunterdon County, a conservative community where Joe Biden's 51-47 loss in 2020 was the best showing for a Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson carried it in 1964. Malinowski was elected in 2018 to represent the competitive 7th Congressional District, which includes Hunterdon County, and he lost reelection in 2022 to Republican Tom Kean Jr.
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Leading Off
● UT-Sen, CO-05, SC-03: Donald Trump found himself in the rare and unhappy position on Tuesday of watching three candidates he'd backed in Republican primaries all lose on the same night.
The most high-profile of these defeats came in the race to succeed Mitt Romney as Utah's junior senator, which saw Rep. John Curtis decisively defeat Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs for the Republican nomination. Curtis holds a 51-30 advantage with the Associated Press estimating that 82% of the vote has been tabulated as of Wednesday morning, but while the margin may change as the remaining ballots are counted, Curtis’ victory is not in doubt.
Trump was also on the wrong side of a landslide in Colorado's 5th District after conservative radio host Jeff Crank crushed state party chair Dave Williams 65-35 for the nod to replace retiring Rep. Doug Lamborn, who supported Crank. (Speaker Mike Johnson was also in Crank's corner.)
Things were considerably tighter in the GOP runoff for South Carolina's 3rd District, but Trump's embrace of pastor Mark Burns still wasn't quite enough. Air National Guard Lt. Col. Sheri Biggs edged out Burns 51-49 to secure the nomination to succeed retiring Rep. Jeff Duncan, a prominent social conservative whose estranged wife accused him of infidelity in divorce proceedings last year.
The three defeated candidates were all decisively outspent thanks in part to the intervention of outside groups that have devoted themselves to thwarting hardline candidates who could cause headaches for GOP leadership. All of the losers also struggled to raise money, though Burns did manage to secure a $750,000 bank loan to boost his bid despite pledging no collateral except for "future contributions" to his campaign.
But even though it's easy to imagine that Trump spent the night berating the terrible people who gave him terrible advice, a more astute observer would understand that none of these outcomes constituted a rejection of Trumpism—far from it.
While Curtis is part of the shrinking coterie of prominent Republicans who wanted Trump punished for fomenting the Jan. 6 riot and has emphasized protecting the environment, he also spent his first years in Congress as a dependable ally of the last administration.
Crank and Biggs, meanwhile, were even more closely aligned with Trump. Crank benefited from a well-funded third-party ad campaign that argued that Williams, unlike Trump, "doesn't believe in Made in America." And Biggs ran commercials in which her top ally, Gov. Henry McMaster, pitched her as a "strong, conservative, pro-Trump" candidate.
But perhaps Trump won't be quite so upset in the end. Prior to the primaries, the GOP's supreme master took the time to slam only one of the three candidates who defeated his preferred picks. Trump wrote in his March endorsement message for Williams that his "opponent is Endorsed, and works closely with, Americans for Chinese Prosperity, a Charles Koch Disaster."
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that unsuccessfully tried to help Nikki Haley win the presidential nomination, went on to spend on behalf of Crank, who is its former state director. But it's a safe bet that Crank will strive to get on Trump's good side, and if there's one thing we know Trump loves, it's when a former enemy grovels before him.
Election Recaps
● CO-03 (R): Attorney Jeff Hurd beat former state Rep. Ron Hanks 41-28 in the Republican primary for the western Colorado constituency that Rep. Lauren Boebert left behind. Democrats waged an expensive effort to boost Hanks, an underfunded election denier, but the Congressional Leadership Fund countered with its own ads attacking him.
Hurd, who had been running against Boebert before she jumped districts, will take on 2022 nominee Adam Frisch, who had no opposition on the Democratic side. Frisch, who lost to Boebert by a shockingly small 546-vote margin, has millions at his disposal for his second go-round. However, he'll still have a challenging task ahead of him in a seat that Trump carried 53-45 four years ago.
● CO-04 (special): Former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez won the special election for the final six months of fellow Republican Ken Buck's term by defeating former congressional staffer Trisha Calvarese 58-35. Lopez's tenure in Congress will be brief, though, as he isn't running for a full term.
Trump took this seat, which is based in the eastern part of the state and the Denver exurbs, by a 58-39 spread, so Calvarese slightly underperformed compared to Joe Biden. The GOP, however, simultaneously held a high-profile primary for a full term, which may have juiced turnout on their side—more on that one just below.
● CO-04 (R): Far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert completed the toughest part of her district swap by beating Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg 43-14 in the six-way primary. Boebert, who still represents the 3rd District on the other side of the state, had Trump's support and an ardent fanbase that helped her overcome a litany of personal embarrassments and her virtually non-existent ties to the area.
● CO-08 (R): State Rep. Gabe Evans easily outpaced former state Rep. Janak Joshi 78-22 in the primary to face freshman Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo in the Denver suburbs. Joshi, who badly lost his last two campaigns for public office while still living in a different part of the state, had the endorsement of Dave Williams' dysfunctional state party but not much else.
Evans, who had Trump's backing, will compete against Caraveo in what could be one of the most competitive House races in the nation. Caraveo became the first person to ever represent the newly created 8th District after winning by a tight 48.4-47.8 margin. (Biden would have prevailed here 51-46 in 2020 had the district existed then.) Outside groups on both sides have collectively reserved over $10 million in ad time in anticipation of the general election.
● NY-01 (D): Former CNN anchor and No Labels co-founder John Avlon convincingly defeated chemist Nancy Goroff 70-30 for the right to take on first-term Republican Rep. Nick LaLota in New York's 1st Congressional District. Avlon has shown himself to be a strong fundraiser but will have a tough race ahead. Democrats actually made this seat slightly redder in the most recent round of redistricting (it would have backed Trump 50-49), and Republicans have performed well across Long Island in recent years.
● NY-16 (D): Westchester County Executive George Latimer denied renomination to two-term Rep. Jamaal Bowman 58-42 following the most expensive House primary in American history. Latimer will have a far less eventful campaign ahead of him in a safely blue constituency that includes southern Westchester County and a small portion of the Bronx.
Bowman, who was a top target of the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC, is the first Democratic House member to lose renomination this cycle. As Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin recently highlighted, Bowman is also one of a handful of members of Congress to beat an incumbent in a primary only to later meet the same fate.
Bowman scored a huge win in 2020 against longtime Rep. Eliot Engel, who had struggled to combat the impression that he'd lost touch with his district. Four years later, however, it was Bowman who was on the receiving end of attacks arguing that he was out of step with his constituents. Bowman's detractors highlighted his votes against the Biden administration's agenda, as well as distractions like his guilty plea to a misdemeanor for falsely pulling a fire alarm in a House office building.
● NY-22 (D): State Sen. John Mannion decisively beat Air Force veteran Sarah Klee Hood 62-38 and will now face one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House, freshman Rep. Brandon Williams. The Syracuse-based 22nd was the only GOP-held district that Democrats made appreciably bluer in redistricting, shifting it from a 53-45 margin for Biden to a 55-43 Biden edge.
● NY-24 (R): Rep. Claudia Tenney dispatched a second consecutive challenge from attorney Michael Fratto, this time by a 61-39 margin. Two years ago, when almost all of the 24th District was new to her, Tenney beat Fratto by an underwhelming 54-40 spread. Her showing this time around wasn't exactly world-beating, but she'll have no problem securing another term representing this conservative seat in the Finger Lakes region.
● Westchester County, NY District Attorney (D): Susan Cacace, a former county judge who hails from a prominent legal family, defeated defense attorney William Wagstaff 59-31 in the primary to replace retiring District Attorney Mimi Rocah as the top prosecutor in Westchester County. (The AP estimates that 72% of the vote is reporting, so this may not be the final margin.) Cacace had the support of Rocah and much of the party establishment. She'll be the heavy favorite in November in this large and reliably blue suburban county just north of New York City.
● SC State Senate: State Sen. Katrina Shealy, who was one of three Republican women in the state Senate who blocked the GOP from passing a near-total abortion ban last year, lost an extremely nasty runoff to challenger Carlisle Kennedy by a 62-38 margin. Shealy's share was little different from the 40% she took in the first round of voting two weeks ago, but Kennedy swept up everything else.
Both of Shealy's compatriots paid a similar price in the primary: Sandy Senn lost narrowly while Penry Gustafson lost in a rout. Prior to her defeat, Shealy told the South Carolina Daily Gazette that she expects the legislature to once again push for a complete ban on abortions.
● UT-Gov (R): Republican Gov. Spencer Cox held off far-right state Rep. Phil Lyman two months after delegates backed the challenger at the state GOP's convention, with the governor ahead 57-43 with an estimated 82% of the vote in. "Maybe you hate that I don't hate enough," Cox told his angry detractors at the gathering, but he had an easier time with the larger primary electorate, though his final share of the vote was relatively unimpressive for an incumbent.
Still, Cox should have little trouble in the fall against Democratic state Rep. Brian King, who had no intra-party opposition of his own, in a state that last elected a Democratic governor back in 1980.
● UT-01 (R): Rep. Blake Moore had no trouble winning the Republican primary for Utah's conservative 1st District, fending off electrician Paul Miller 72-28 with an estimated 80% reporting. In April, the nearly penniless Miller beat Moore 55-45 at the state GOP's convention, but as is often the case in Utah, the vote among delegates was not predictive of how the larger primary electorate would go.
● UT-02 (R): Rep. Celeste Maloy holds a 52-48 lead over Army Reserve Col. Colby Jenkins with the AP estimating that 84% of the vote has been tabulated, but it has not yet called the race. If Maloy prevails, this would make this the second time in less than two months that she nearly saw her very brief congressional tenure come to an early end.
At the Republican convention in late April, Jenkins defeated Maloy 57-43 after winning Sen. Mike Lee's endorsement; had the incumbent fallen below the 40% mark, she would have failed to make the primary ballot. Maloy only got to Congress in November after winning a special election that month, but thanks to the GOP's careful gerrymander of the state's congressional map, she'd be a near-lock to win a full term if she secures renomination.
● UT-03 (R): Far-right state Sen. Mike Kennedy handily defeated his nearest opponent, former trampoline park CEO Case Lawrence, by a 37-22 margin with an estimated 84% reporting, putting him on a glide path to Congress in Utah's deep-red 3rd District.
Kennedy, who overcame several better-funded opponents, demonstrated his right-wing bona fides by winning 62% at the state GOP convention, then went on to pick up Sen. Mike Lee's support in the final week of the contest. Kennedy is primed to succeed Rep. John Curtis, who claimed the GOP nod for a seat in the upper chamber, six years after he briefly attracted national attention by taking on Mitt Romney in the 2018 Senate primary.
House
● MI-08: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has endorsed state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet ahead of the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, where her main adversary is former Flint Mayor Matt Collier. McDonald Rivet already won the backing of the DCCC, EMILYs List, and state labor groups. VoteVets, meanwhile, is the most prominent group backing Collier, who is an Army veteran.
● PA-01: Politico has obtained an Upswing Research & Strategy internal poll for Democrat Ashley Ehasz that finds the retired Army pilot trailing just 47-45 against Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. This is the first poll we've seen this cycle in this 52-47 Biden district, though Politico's writeup did not mention any 2024 presidential numbers.
Ehasz challenged Fitzpatrick in 2022 but lost 55-45 after getting badly outspent in a race that national Democrats did not target. However, things may be different this cycle, and the DCCC added her to its Red to Blue list of top candidates last month. Ehasz had $820,000 in cash on hand when the previous reporting period ended on April 3 after raising $1.4 million for the entire cycle up to that point.
Although that haul was smaller than Fitzpatrick's $3.7 million war chest and $4.2 million in total fundraising for the cycle, Ehasz had already raised more than she did in the entire 2022 cycle, when she brought in just under $1 million. Second-quarter FEC reports are due by July 15, which will shed further light on the state of fundraising in this contest.
Attorneys General
● MO-AG: Appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey this week secured the endorsement of the NRA, which the Missouri Scout characterizes as one of the "big three" groups in state GOP primaries, ahead of his Aug. 6 showdown against Trump attorney Will Scharf. The other two vital organizations are the Missouri Farm Bureau, which also backs Bailey, and Missouri Right to Life, which doesn't appear to have taken sides yet.
Legislatures
● WI State Assembly: Staffers for the Wisconsin Elections Commission concluded Tuesday that the far-right campaign to oust Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had turned in enough valid signatures to force a recall election—but only if the contest takes place using the lines that were utilized in 2022. The bipartisan body is set to discuss these findings on Thursday.
The staffers' report said that the Commission would likely either set the recall primary for Aug. 6 or time to coincide with the regular statewide primary on Aug. 13, with the general election to follow four weeks later. The Commission crucially would also need to decide if the recall would take place in the old 63rd Assembly District, which Vos was elected to represent in 2022, or in the new 33rd District, where he now lives and is seeking reelection this year. Both constituencies are reliably red turf, but Commission staff says that the recall campaign failed to gather enough signatures from the new 33rd.
If Vos were removed this summer, however, his exile from the legislature might only last for a few months. The speaker lost his only primary challenger earlier this month when conservative writer Andrew Cegielski dropped out, though Cegielski remains on the ballot in the new 33rd District. The speaker faces independent Kelly Clark, who aided this recall campaign, as well as Democrat Al Kupsik, who is a former mayor of Lake Geneva, in the general election.
Mayors & County Leaders
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a moderate organization that has spent millions to beat local progressive candidates, announced Monday that it was endorsing both former Supervisor Mark Farrell and philanthropist Daniel Lurie in the Nov. 5 instant-runoff contest—but not Mayor London Breed. Neighbors, which The San Francisco Standard characterized as "the city’s most powerful political group," is funded in part by William Oberndorf, a billionaire who often contributes to Republicans.
Neighbors said it was snubbing the moderate incumbent because Breed has not "demonstrated an ability to govern with the degree of persistence and consistency necessary to solve San Francisco’s problems." It also argued that Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who is the only major contender who identifies as a progressive, represented "a very real threat to the future of San Francisco," and was "likely to attract a significant amount of the vote."
Despite that apocalyptic pronouncement, however, Neighbors also released a mid-May internal from FM3 that showed Peskin taking fourth place in November. The poll found Farrell, who served as interim mayor for six months in 2018, edging out Breed 20-19 when it came to first-choice preferences, with Lurie and Peskin respectively at 17% and 12%. Another 4% went to Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, another moderate who has failed to gain traction so far, with 28% undecided.
The poll ultimately found Farrell edging out Breed 55-45 after simulating the ranked-choice process, though the memo noted that "with a sizable number of undecided voters—especially for second and third choices—that simulation is subject to significant variation." Indeed, a previously released FM3 poll conducted two weeks earlier for a different moderate organization, GrowSF, showed Breed beating Farrell 51-49 in the final round of tabulations.
Grab Bag
● Where Are They Now?: Former New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski over the weekend won the contest to become chair of the Democratic Party in Hunterdon County, a conservative community where Joe Biden's 51-47 loss in 2020 was the best showing for a Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson carried it in 1964. Malinowski was elected in 2018 to represent the competitive 7th Congressional District, which includes Hunterdon County, and he lost reelection in 2022 to Republican Tom Kean Jr.
Poll Pile
- NV-Sen: Fabrizio Ward (R) and Impact Research (D) for the AARP: Jacky Rosen (D-inc): 47, Sam Brown (R): 42 (48-45 Trump in two-way, Trump 44-37 with third-party candidates)
Ad Roundup
- FL-Sen: Rick Scott (R-inc)
- PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc) - anti-Dave McCormick (R)
- WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc) - anti-Eric Hovde (R); Restoration of America - anti-Baldwin
- MO-Gov: Committee for Liberty - anti-Mike Kehoe (R) and pro-Jay Ashcroft (R)
- NC-Gov: Josh Stein (D) - anti-Mark Robinson (R)
- AZ-01: Marlene Galán-Woods (D)
- TN-05: Courtney Johnston (R) - anti-Andy Ogles (R-inc)