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
● Cobb County, GA Board of Commissioners: A Georgia court ruled on Thursday that the Democratic-run Cobb County Board of Commissioners violated the state constitution by adopting its own district map for the 2022 elections to replace a gerrymander that Republican state lawmakers enacted for this diverse county with nearly 800,000 residents in Atlanta’s suburbs. Elections will be postponed for the two districts that were up this year, necessitating special elections with new primaries, likely in 2025.
The county Board of Elections chair indicated that the board likely won’t appeal, meaning the GOP’s gerrymander will take effect. Democrats ended 36 years of GOP rule in 2020 by winning a 3-2 majority consisting of three Black women, while both Republicans are white. However, the ruling could temporarily cost Democrats that majority in a county that Joe Biden won 56-42 and has rapidly been moving leftward over the past decade.
The Democratic-held 2nd and 4th districts were up this year, and according to VEST data on Dave’s Redistricting App, both districts will become dark blue under the GOP’s map. That gerrymander ensured Donald Trump won the 1st and 3rd districts, where Republican incumbents who were reelected last cycle won’t be up again until 2026. Meanwhile, the countywide seat of Commission Chair Lisa Cupid, a Democrat, will remain on the ballot this fall.
County election officials noted that state law would appear to allow Democratic incumbents Jerica Richardson and Monique Sheffield to remain in office until special elections take place in the 2nd and 4th districts, respectively. However, Republican lawmakers moved Richardson’s home out of her 2nd District, and some legal experts have argued this could force her out of office even before her term is up due to the state’s residency requirements
However, if state officials instead determine that she and Sheffield must step down when their terms were originally set to end, or if Richardson is compelled to step down earlier over the residency issue, then Democrats would lose their majority.
Nonetheless, Democrats can still win a majority after the special elections if they hold the countywide seat this fall. However, Cobb has been rapidly diversifying and trending Democratic, and the GOP’s map could limit Democratic gains in future elections.
Governors
● DE-Gov: State election officials have concluded that Democratic Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long violated state campaign finance law by failing to disclose nearly $300,000 that her campaign paid to her husband, campaign treasurer Dana Long, over the past several years to repay what they claimed were personal loans to the campaign.
The investigation found that these repayments totaled $33,000 more than the sum of Long’s loans. Long also claimed to investigators that he had “never read” the campaign finance laws regarding loan reimbursement despite serving as treasurer for two of his wife’s previous campaigns. One of those was her 2016 bid for lieutenant governor as part of a ticket with Gov. John Carney, who is now term-limited and backing Hall-Long.
Officials released their report following a records request by WHYY News, which noted that such violations could constitute a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to a year in prison. However, state Elections Commissioner Anthony Albence indicated that he wouldn’t press charges, and Democratic state Attorney General Kathy Jennings issued a statement agreeing that state law defined the violations too narrowly for her to successfully prosecute.
Campaign finance issues have dogged Hall-Long’s candidacy almost from the moment she joined the race in September. Following the resignations of top staffers, she paused her fundraising for most of October as her campaign claimed it was conducting an internal audit. However, the state’s investigator strongly disputed the audit’s methodology and findings, which purported to clear Hall-Long.
WHYY previously found that the campaign received $25,000 from donors who gave more than the legal limit, including from PACs that failed to register with the state. (Hall-Long said in response that she would refund the excess donations). However, that reporting didn’t deter the state Democratic Party and EMILYs List from endorsing the Hall-Long earlier this month. The Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association also recently began spending heavily on her behalf.
Hall-Long faces New Castle County Castle Executive Matt Meyer and National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O’Mara in the Sept. 10 primary. It remains to be seen how damaging these latest revelations will be. The only recent poll was an early July survey from Slingshot Strategies for Citizens for a New Delaware Way, which opposes Hall-Long. That survey found her and Meyer tied 27-27 with O’Mara at 7{37471d21a8c4ca072ce05e5c1dfbdaec01ff2ef8391827b0199be0aecce32fae}.
House
● MN-05: Rep. Ilhan Omar has publicized a Lake Research Partners internal poll that finds her cruising to a 60-33 blowout in the Aug. 13 Democratic primary against former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels, who lost by a surprisingly close 50-48 in 2022. However, Omar has spent far more heavily this time after not running any TV ads last cycle, and Samuels hasn’t shared any contradictory numbers since a February poll from Victoria Research & Consulting found him trailing 49-30.
Ballot Measures
● AZ Ballot: An Arizona state court ruled Friday that a Republican-led legislative panel can’t use the phrase “unborn human being” to describe an abortion rights ballot initiative in the pamphlet that will be sent to all registered voters ahead of November’s elections, deeming it prohibited “partisan” language for a constitutional amendment that is likely to qualify. Republican legislative leaders quickly vowed to appeal the ruling.
● MI Redistricting: A federal court panel has approved the new state Senate districts that Michigan’s independent redistricting commission recently adopted to replace the map used in 2022, which the same court struck down in December over how mapmakers relied on race to an impermissible degree. Plaintiffs had already indicated they would not oppose the commission’s new map.
We previously detailed how the new Senate map makes significant changes to the demographics of many districts in the Detroit area, but its partisan effects are more modest and largely limited to just a few districts. Unlike the new state House map that commissioners previously adopted for this year’s elections as part of this same litigation, the new Senate map won’t be used until 2026 since the upper chamber is only up for election in midterm years.
Poll Pile
Note: All of these polls were fielded after Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race and feature matchups between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
