If you enjoy participating in The Downballot’s comment section, we’d be extremely grateful if you’d consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support our work. Thank you so much!

Upgrade to support the Downballot!

Leading Off

WI-Gov

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes announced Thursday he was dropping out of the turbulent Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s open governorship, a move that comes less than two weeks before the Aug. 11 contest.

Barnes, who fell just short of unseating Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022, said in a video that it has “become very clear who our nominee is gonna be.” While Barnes did not mention anyone by name, recent polls have shown state Rep. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, with a huge lead over the rest of the field.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, though, reported that the former lieutenant governor’s departure came as the paper was investigating previously unreported “allegations that Barnes was taking advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women.”

The paper said that the state Democratic Party hired a law firm last year to look into “similar claims,” but the investigation “found nothing actionable” because the allegations were “anonymous and unspecific.”

Barnes’ team told Politico Thursday “there are no allegations of misconduct or wrongdoing against Mandela.”

The development is a mirror image of how Barnes’ last campaign unfolded. Just before the Democratic primary for Senate in 2022, all of Barnes’ major rivals dropped out in the face of his daunting advantage in the polls, allowing him to win the nomination in a walk. He then lost to Johnson by a slender 50-49 margin.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who has the support of retiring Gov. Tony Evers, is now Hong’s main intraparty opponent. Crowley, however, has struggled to convince Democrats that he’s the best choice to take on Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely Republican nominee.

Recent polls from State Navigate and Marquette Law School showed Hong with more support than Crowley and Barnes combined. The two remaining contenders, former state Cabinet official Joel Brennan and state Sen. Kelda Roys, barely registered in either survey.

Crowley, who dropped out of the race early this month before reactivating his campaign 10 days later, is hoping that Barnes’ backers will take a new look at him. One subset of voters, however, can’t help him now even if they wanted to.

A judge on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit seeking to allow absentee voters to cast new ballots if their original choice dropped out of the race. In addition to Barnes, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former state Cabinet member Missy Hughes remain on the ballot despite ending their campaigns.

Election officials had already received 112,000 mail ballots by the time that ruling was handed down.

David Nir here, publisher of The Downballot! We love scouring the news to bring you the most important stories on the most important elections every day, but it takes a lot of work—and a lot of resources. If you’re able to help sustain our operations by becoming a paid subscriber today, we’d be incredibly grateful.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

The Downballot

El-Sayed vs. Stevens tops major primary night

Primary season is back with a vengeance on Tuesday, with no fewer than five states holding elections—chief among them Michigan. On this week’s episode of The Downballot, we break down the bitter fight between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed as they vie to become the Wolverine State’s Democratic nominee for Senate, but there’s a lot more on the docket…

Listen now

2 days ago · 5 likes · David Nir and David Beard

Governors

TN-Gov

A new poll shows Sen. Marsha Blackburn with only a small lead ahead of Thursday’s Republican primary for Tennessee governor, a contest she’s dominated from the start.

The GOP firm OnMessage shows Blackburn outpacing Rep. John Rose just 35-31. State Rep. Monty Fritts, who has raised little money against his well-funded rivals, takes an unexpectedly strong third place with 26%, while the remaining 9% of respondents are undecided.

Pollster Wes Anderson told the Nashville Banner’s Sarah Grace Taylor that, while one of his partners works for Rose, the new poll was not conducted for his campaign. Anderson instead said that the survey was done for what Taylor characterized as an unidentified “corporate client.”

Blackburn’s team told Taylor in response that their own polling showed her doing considerably better, but it refused to share its numbers. In the past, though, the frontrunner was anything but reluctant to blast out prior internal polls showing her far ahead.

Obituaries

Harry Mitchell

Former Rep. Harry Mitchell, an Arizona Democrat who flipped a Republican-held seat in Arizona during the 2006 Democratic wave but lost reelection during the 2010 GOP landslide, died this week at the age of 86, his son announced Wednesday.

Mitchell was a popular figure who had previously served in the state Senate and, before that, as mayor of Tempe, where a 35-foot-tall abstract statue was erected in his honor. In 2006, he took on Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth in what turned out to be one of the most competitive House races of the year.

He ultimately prevailed 50-46 in what was then numbered the 5th District, a win that helped his party retake the majority in the House after 12 years of Republican control.

Mitchell defended his new seat two years later by fending off Republican David Schweikert, a former Maricopa County treasurer, by a 53-44 margin, but that comfortable win didn’t deter the challenger from trying again in 2010.

Though it put his political career at great risk, Mitchell supported Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a decision Republicans were all too happy to attack him for. Schweikert, who predicted that “[t]he sheer fact that he voted for Obamacare will basically end his career,” unseated Mitchell 52-43—almost the inverse of their first bout—as the GOP was returning to the majority.

Mitchell never again sought elected office, while Schweikert would continue to serve in Congress despite several close calls at the ballot box. Schweikert, though, opted to wage a disastrous campaign for governor rather than seek a ninth term in what’s now numbered the 1st District, a swing seat Democrats are aiming to flip this fall.

Poll Pile

• MI-Sen (D): Emerson College for WLNS and WOODTV:

  • Abdul El-Sayed: 54, Haley Stevens: 39.

• SC-Sen (R): Emerson for Nexstar:

  • Ralph Norman: 22, Darline Graham (inc): 19, Russell Fry: 12, Mark Sanford: 11, Mark Lynch: 7, all others 2% or less, undecided: 25.

• TX-Sen: Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research for Fox News:

  • James Talarico (D): 51, Ken Paxton (R): 48.

• CT-Gov (D): Change Research for Impact CT:

  • Ned Lamont (inc): 48, Josh Elliott: 27.

  • May: 58-20 Lamont.

• MI-Gov (R): Emerson:

  • John James: 40, Perry Johnson: 32, Mike Cox: 9, Aric Nesbitt: 3.

  • Cox and Nesbitt each dropped out of the race but remain on the ballot.

• TX-Gov: Beacon and Shaw:

  • Greg Abbott (R-inc): 50, Gina Hinojosa (D): 49.

• WI-Gov: RMG Research for Napolitan News Service:

  • Francesca Hong (D): 44, Tom Tiffany (R): 43.

  • David Crowley (D): 46, Tiffany (R): 43.

• CO-03: Keating Research for Dwayne Romero:

  • Jeff Hurd (R-inc): 46, Romero (D): 45.

• FL-24 (D): National Victory Strategies:

  • Shevrin Jones: 35, Oliver Gilbert: 28, Kendrick Meek Jr.: 9, all others 2% or less.

• TN-05 (R): Tusk Strategies for Invest in Tomorrow Coalition (anti-Andy Ogles):

  • Ogles (inc): 37, Charlie Hatcher: 33.

In our last Digest, we misidentified the 2008 Democratic Senate nominee in Idaho. He is Larry LaRocco, not LoRocco.

Leading Off

ID-Sen

Democrat David Roth announced Tuesday evening that he was ending his campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Jim Risch in Idaho, a move that gives independent Todd Achilles the chance to consolidate support in what remains a challenging race.

Roth, a frequent candidate who won his party’s nomination in May, made his decision after both Achilles’ backers and Roth’s fellow Democrats argued that his departure would help Achilles unseat Risch in this heavily Republican state.

An early June poll from the Bullfinch Group showed Risch with a small 40-36 edge over Achilles in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup. The firm, which said its survey was “part of an ongoing regional landscape assessment alongside independent electoral coalitions,” further argued Achilles could win after voters learned more about him.

By contrast, the senator, who is seeking his fourth term at the age of 83, outpaced Roth 50-33 when they were the only two names voters got to choose from. Risch was also secure in a three-way contest, leading Achilles 41-18 with Roth in third place at 15%.

The poll was released around the same time that one of Risch’s previous Democratic opponents argued that Roth could play a key role in defeating the senator if he were to leave the race.

“The path to victory for Army veteran Achilles would be enhanced dramatically with 250,000 unaffiliated Idaho voters during President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran and rising consumer prices,” Larry LaRocco, a former congressman who badly lost to Risch in 2008, wrote in an opinion piece for the Idaho Statesman.

LaRocco also pointed to other red states where Democratic leaders have urged their party’s candidates to step aside to give independents a better chance of forming a cross-party coalition.

He highlighted the Senate race in Nebraska, where Democratic nominee Cindy Burbank pledged to support Dan Osborn’s bid to unseat GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts—a pledge she made good on this month when she removed her name from the ballot.

Roth initially resisted LaRocco’s pitch, as well as a subsequent letter from the Ada County Democratic Party saying it would consider backing Achilles if the Democratic nominee didn’t improve his fundraising. However, after Roth ended the month of June with barely more than $1,000 on hand, he finally said he was bowing out on Tuesday night.

But Achilles, whom Roth did not mention in a statement announcing his departure, still isn’t the only candidate on the ballot against Risch. Natalie Fleming, a fellow independent who has generated little attention, and Libertarian nominee Matt Loesby are also running, and their presence could siphon votes that Achilles needs.

Risch, a longtime Gem State politician who briefly served as governor from 2006 to 2007, also retains a massive financial advantage over his main opponent. The senator finished last month with more than $3.5 million banked, while Achilles had just under $200,000 available to spend.

Achilles, however, is pitching himself as a candidate who can unite voters across the political spectrum who are fed up with the status quo.

“As Idahoans, we have seen Jim Risch spend a lifetime pursuing his own power at the expense of the people he is supposed to serve,” he said in a statement following Roth’s exit. “He has supported policies that have driven up the costs of food and gas and gutted the Forest Service to sell our public lands to the highest bidder.”

Achilles, who served in the Army as a tank commander before entering the business world, was a registered Republican until early 2024. That year, though, he changed his affiliation after a Democratic state representative from Boise resigned.

Because Democrats had last held the seat, Republican Gov. Brad Little was required to choose an appointee from a list of three names submitted by Democratic officials. The governor opted for Achilles, who became eligible for consideration after he switched his party registration.

Three months later, the new lawmaker won a competitive primary, then had no trouble winning the general election for one of the state’s few reliably blue legislative seats. However, he wouldn’t remain there long. Achilles announced last summer that he was resigning from office and leaving the Democratic Party to challenge Risch as an independent.

Just as important as what we include in the Morning Digest is what we leave out. Every day, we encounter all sorts of stuff—sketchy polls, trumped-up “scandals,” old endorsements masquerading as new ones, and lord knows what else—that’s noise at best and misleading at worst.

Because we’ve been covering elections for more than two decades, we have the finely honed judgment to know what actually matters. Those are the stories we summarize and analyze, because we want our readers to have access to the best information and nothing else.

If you appreciate our rigor in separating the wheat from the all-too-plentiful chaff, then we hope you’ll consider supporting our work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Support honest & accurate election news

The Downballot Podcast

Stevens vs. El-Sayed tops major primary night

Primary season is back with a vengeance on Tuesday, with no fewer than five states holding elections—chief among them Michigan. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, we break down the bitter fight between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed as they vie to become the Wolverine State’s Democratic nominee for Senate, but there’s a lot more on the docket.

The list includes a ballot measure to make future ballot measures impossible in Missouri; a GOP effort to turn the Kansas Supreme Court into a partisan rubber stamp; and a House primary in Washington where a Republican is helping the Democrat he beat two years ago.

And speaking of Michigan, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard talk all about its hotly competitive general elections with Curtis Hertel, the chair of the state Democratic Party. Hertel spotlights the GOP candidates for governor and Senate, whose fealty to Donald Trump has taken center stage. He also explains how Democrats can flip several seats in the House and take back control of the state legislature in November.

Senate

TX-Sen

Republicans have exactly $0 reserved for ads to aid Ken Paxton in Texas, according to data from AdImpact provided to the New York Times’ Theodore Schleifer.

Schleifer explains that the lack of financial support for the GOP’s Senate nominee is due chiefly to an impasse between Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican super PAC involved in Senate races, and MAGA Inc., the deep-pocketed outfit run by Donald Trump’s inner circle. Both organizations keep hoping the other will provide the millions needed to make a difference in the nation’s second-largest state.

Democrat James Talarico, though, would be just fine if the two groups, as well as any other conservative outfits, keep waiting for someone else to splurge in a state Republicans have long taken for granted.

Talarico finished June with $21.5 million in the bank, more than 12 times as much as the $1.8 million Paxton had available. And while prominent Democratic outside groups have yet to book ad time, megadonor Reid Hoffman has provided $10 million to a super PAC set up to aid Talarico.

Governors

TN-Gov

The once sleepy Republican primary for Tennessee’s open governorship has turned sharply negative, though at least one attack ad has now gotten yanked from the airwaves.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign says that two TV stations have pulled a spot from the American Exceptionalism Institute, a group backing Rep. John Rose in the Aug. 6 contest.

That ad opens with a jingle: “Our pain-killing pills wouldn’t sell, so we paid Sen. Marsha Blackburn to pass our bill.” The spot, which is made to look like a pharmaceutical ad, depicts AI-generated lobbyists with briefcases full of cash. An AI version of Blackburn is later shown smiling in front of the U.S. Capitol as the singer croons, “Marsha Blackburn’s the queen pharma mama who’s ready to sell.”

“Sen. Blackburn has never accepted a bribe to pass legislation, nor has she ever been accused or investigated for allegedly doing so,” Blackburn’s attorney told AEI in a letter demanding it take down the ad.

The letter also charged that the ad violates a new state law requiring a written disclaimer in political ads that feature AI-generated deepfake versions of candidates doing or saying things they didn’t actually do.

Blackburn’s allies are also continuing to attack Rose on the airwaves. Tennessee Freedom Fund, a group backed by the radical anti-tax Club for Growth, recently debuted a commercial calling the “wilting” Rose a “former Democrat.”

Rose, who voted in a trio of Democratic primaries in 2002 and 2004, responded with his own ad saying such attacks prove the primary “has gotten tight.” There’s been no independent polling, though, to indicate whether or not Blackburn is losing altitude after spending the entire race as the undisputed frontrunner.

Mayors & County Leaders

Chicago, IL Mayor

Democrat John Kelly, who has worked as a lobbyist for prominent clients like the Chicago White Sox and the United Center arena, announced Tuesday that he was joining Chicago’s busy race for mayor next year.

“Maybe City Hall needs a lobbyist,” Kelly, who began fundraising last year, told WGN of his decision to challenge Mayor Brandon Johnson. “I think that if the current administration were better at lobbying, we’d get more out of Springfield, because that’s a big part of the mayor’s job.”

Johnson, a Democrat who continues to post weak approval numbers in this loyally blue city, has yet to announce if he wants to keep that job. The mayor’s backers, though, began collecting signatures on Tuesday, the first day candidates were allowed to circulate petitions.

Johnson and his rivals have reason to move swiftly. While contenders have until Oct. 26 to submit 12,500 valid signatures for February’s election, serious campaigns collect far more as a cushion against any challenges.

Two of Johnson’s most prominent opponents, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Rep. Mike Quigley, began petitioning on the first day possible. So did Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, who sounded likely to run last year and told WBEZ’s Fran Spielman this week she’ll campaign no matter who else gets in.

The 78-year-old Pappas, who has served as county treasurer since 1998, also used that interview to slam someone who isn’t yet in the race, but her target wasn’t Johnson. She instead went after Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who has not yet begun collecting petitions for his long-anticipated campaign for mayor.

“If you want to be mayor of the city of Chicago, your IQ has to be higher than your body temperature,” Pappas said of Giannoulias, whom Spielman says she’s frequently clashed with. “I’m not picking on him. I’m just saying it’s got to be somebody who can handle it.”

Giannoulias, though, may be able to wait longer than his would-be rivals to start gathering signatures. The secretary of state has almost $22 million stockpiled ahead of his uncompetitive reelection contest this fall, money he can use to jumpstart a late effort.

Candidates who are not as well-established, however, don’t have that luxury. The roster of lesser-known contenders includes wealthy businessman Joe Holberg; cardiologist Lisa Nee; Matt Brewer, a member of the Chicago Housing Authority board; and George Cardenas, a former alderman who now serves on the Cook County Board of Review.

All candidates will run on one officially nonpartisan primary ballot on Feb. 23. A runoff would take place on April 6 unless one contender wins a majority of the vote, something that hasn’t happened since 2011.

Poll Pile

• MI-Sen (D): Tavern Research:

  • Abdul El-Sayed: 46, Haley Stevens: 36, Mallory McMorrow: 4. (Early July: 41-38 El-Sayed.)

  • El-Sayed: 48, Stevens: 37. (Early July: 42-41 Stevens.)

  • McMorrow dropped out on July 5 but will remain on the ballot. Each poll asked respondents which of the three candidates on the ballot they preferred before asking about a head-to-head race between Stevens and El-Sayed.

• NC-Sen: Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research for Fox News:

  • Roy Cooper (D): 53, Michael Whatley (R): 44.

• PA-Gov: Bravo Group for PennLive:

  • Josh Shapiro (D-inc): 53, Stacy Garrity (R): 28.

  • June: 54-29 Shapiro.

• WI-Gov (D): Marquette University Law School:

  • Francesca Hong: 46, Mandela Barnes: 21, David Crowley: 11, Joel Brennan: 4, Kelda Roys: 4.

• FL-08: Public Policy Polling for Jennifer Jenkins:

  • Mike Haridopolos (R-inc): 44, Jenkins (D): 35.

• MI-07 (D): Global Strategy Group for unidentified pro-Matt Maasdam group:

  • William Lawrence: 38, Maasdam: 27, Bridget Brink: 19.

• OH-10: GSG for Kristina Knickerbocker:

  • Mike Turner (R-inc): 45, Knickerbocker (D): 40, Tom McMasters (L): 4.

  • Turner (R-inc): 49, Knickerbocker (D): 42.

Correction: Our Idaho Senate item misidentified the 2008 Democratic Senate nominee. He is Larry LaRocco, not LoRocco.

The list includes a ballot measure to make future ballot measures impossible in Missouri; a GOP effort to turn the Kansas Supreme Court into a partisan rubber stamp; and a House primary in Washington where a Republican is helping the Democrat he beat two years ago.

And speaking of Michigan, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard talk all about its hotly competitive general elections with Curtis Hertel, the chair of the state Democratic Party. Hertel spotlights the GOP candidates for governor and Senate, whose fealty to Donald Trump has taken center stage. He also explains how Democrats can flip several seats in the House and take back control of the state legislature in November.

As spring turned to summer in 2022, keen political observers were quick to take note of a new development. After a desultory election cycle that saw Democrats consistently underperform in special elections, the party turned in five impressive showings in a row, all in congressional races.

They included a couple of near-misses in Republican districts, a successful defense on difficult turf in upstate New York, and, most impressive of all, a flip in deep-red Alaska.

What changed? It wasn’t hard to see. On June 24 of that year, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a seismic ruling that overturned the right to an abortion established almost half a century earlier in Roe v. Wade.

Virtually overnight, the political landscape had shifted, and the special elections were our first proof. What had looked like a grim midterm election for Democrats wound up a draw, if not better, and Dobbs was instrumental in that change in fortunes. If you’d been keeping an eye on the special elections, the November outcome suddenly made a lot more sense.

Over the last decade, thanks to The Downballot’s pioneering work, special elections have emerged as a critical tool for assessing which way the electoral winds are blowing.

And just like the weather, special elections vary a great deal while still having an underlying pattern. Just as with climate change, a single major storm means little, but a sustained shift can tell you something powerful.

We are looking for both shifts and their underlying causes. Occasionally, both are detectable by keen observers, as we saw in 2022. But more often, they can be much more difficult, if not impossible, to discern—at least, by the naked eye.

With a little help from some statistical tools, however, we can uncover the patterns that animate special elections. It turns out, these elections are much more than just an ongoing referendum on who’s in power. Rather, they reflect how voters respond to events more broadly.

Most important of all, with our statistical toolkit, we can determine when new events have begun impacting the electorate. Identifying these moments may allow us to figure out what’s driving voters—and when the competitive landscape has changed.

Thanks to The Downballot’s rich data tracking special elections over the last decade, we can identify seven distinct moments that marked pivot points in the political landscape. Armed with this information, we can now be on the lookout for similar inflections that are lurking just over the horizon.

This piece by independent analyst Marsha Kessler was possible because, for more than 20 years, The Downballot has made almost everything we’ve produced paywall-free. If you appreciate Marsha’s insights and our commitment to open-source data, we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support our work.

Upgrade to support The Downballot's work

How much overperformance is “a lot”?

Before we can uncover these pivot points, we have to address a preliminary question: When does a special election yield a result that’s sufficiently unusual for us to take notice? Fortunately, we have a rich set of data at our disposal that offers an illuminating answer.

Since 2017, The Downballot has compared the margin of victory or defeat in each special election for both the U.S. House and state legislatures with the result of the most recent presidential election in the same district. If a Democrat’s margin is better than the presidential margin, they’ve “overperformed.”

In March, Pennsylvania held a special election for the 79th District in its state House. Donald Trump had beaten Kamala Harris there 66-33—a 33-point margin—in 2024, but in the special election, Republican Andrea Verbosh defeated Democrat Caleb McCoy 56-44—a difference of only 12 points.

Though McCoy fell short of flipping the district, he outperformed the presidential baseline by 21 points, losing by only 12 instead of 33. Was that “a lot”? Individual special election overperformances like these are often cited as evidence that something remarkable is happening. But how do we know if this was an unusual event?

We can start by looking at the distribution of over- and underperformances by Democrats in 438 qualifying special elections tracked by The Downballot over the last decade. We’ve divided them into two buckets depending on which party held the White House, since we know that’s always a major factor, and graphed them below.

The figure shows the absolute extremes (”MIN” and “MAX”) along a vertical gray line, with the median marked by a yellow dot. Just above and below are black marks that indicate where the top and bottom quarter of all elections have fallen.

When Trump has been in office, that top quartile starts at a 20-point overperformance—very close to what we saw from McCoy in Pennsylvania earlier this year. It was an impressive showing, but the graph shows it was not an unusual one. In fact, we’ve seen overperformances of 20 points or more 77 times under Trump.

If we want to identify something unusual, we have to look further out.

To determine how extreme a single event is, one simple approach statisticians take is to count up how often events at least that extreme show up in the data. Analysts will typically look more closely at the top 5% of all occurrences—a 1-in-20 event—as such unusual occurrences may indicate something unexpected has happened that’s worth further investigation.

For an occurrence that rare, we’re talking about overperformances of 34 points or greater during Trump terms.

We saw just that happen in February, for instance, when Louisiana Democrat Chasity Martinez successfully defended a conservative seat in the state House. Martinez won a 56-43 landslide in a district Trump had carried 62-38, for an overperformance of 37 points—firmly in “unusual” territory.

So by just segmenting the data in a meaningful way and analyzing its distribution, we can tell a lot about whether an individual special election is unusual or not. Now let’s take this one step deeper.

The voice of special elections

In a coherent population—in our case, of special elections—unusual results happen at a predictable rate. The distribution analysis above gives us a quick glimpse into whether an individual election qualifies as unusual. Is this an everyday rain shower or a once-in-a-decade blizzard?

This is essential context every time we look at a single election. But an individual race can’t tell us whether the storm was a one-time fluke (something to ignore) or an indication of the whole population of elections shifting (something to pay attention to).

What we really want to know is whether and when things are changing. That is, are Democrats performing better or worse than they were before, as we saw after Dobbs? If so, why? To see if things are changing, we need to look at the data over time.

Special elections happen frequently—40 times a year on average, across much of the nation. That makes them a useful bellwether, but only if we know how to read them. We need to be able to distinguish signal (that is, true change) from noise (in other words, isolated events).

Support The Downballot

To do this, we’ve borrowed some statistical tools developed for process management, a field with roots in manufacturing, where it’s essential to know quickly if your process drifts out of spec so you can catch it and respond in real time.

We need to do the same here—find out when the political environment has changed as quickly as we can, not six months or a year later. (We explain our methodology in greater detail at the end of this piece.)

First, we’ve plotted qualifying special elections over time in a chart that displays data in event order, an essential first step in identifying statistically significant change. This type of graphic is known as a “run chart,” but all it does is show each special election, from January 2017 to the present, as a single dot, with overperformance (or underperformance) on the y-axis and date on the x-axis.1

We want to know if there are distinct time periods where we can find break points that demarcate moments of change. To do that, we continually test whether the next set of elections is different from the set before, always asking, “Is this the same, or is it something new?”

We do this in two stages, both of which leverage a basic statistical test that compares two sets of data and tells us, to a degree of confidence, whether they are from the same or different populations.

The first stage requires some judgment and familiarity with the data to determine, with a deliberately low threshold of suspicion, whether it’s possible that something is shifting.

Broadly speaking, we ask, is the relationship between the current population and the one before it changing? More specifically, we look to see whether the average over- or underperformance of recent elections is similar to that of prior elections. If there is nothing inconsistent in recent data with the current population, we keep going, watching as each new set of elections comes in.

Once alerted to the possibility of a shift, we move into the second stage, where we run a much more exhaustive set of tests around the potential boundary between one batch of elections and the next.

We cycle through, date by date, to look for potential inflection points between a known population and a potential new population to determine exactly when a shift has occurred, whether the shift is sustained, and if it is statistically significant enough to define a new period.

With this novel approach, we found that special elections can be broken down into seven distinct periods over the last 10 years. All of these have extremely high levels of confidence—99% or more—according to statistical analysis, with most exceeding 99.9% confidence, and early warning detection as soon as five elections after a shift begins.

These seven periods are highlighted below. Note that we’ve taken the run chart from just above and broken it into three segments to reflect the fact that every four years, our presidential baseline changes as a new election takes place.

Looking at Trump’s first term, we see it began with Democrats overperforming by nearly 12 points (A). However, just before the end of his first year in office, that overperformance skyrocketed to 25 points (B). That period lasted only four months and included 27 special elections, but we can nonetheless say with high statistical confidence that something had changed.

It so happens that the start of this second segment coincided with the beginning of the #MeToo movement. We can’t prove a direct connection, of course, but the timing is notable.2

Then, around the end of March 2018, we saw a major drop that lasted through the end of Trump’s first term (C). In this cohort, Democrats were overperforming by just 4 points on average, a period that included the 2018 midterms.

After Joe Biden took office, things predictably changed. Just a few months in, Democrats hit a skid that saw them underperform by an average of 9 points, the only such stretch our analysis has uncovered (D).

Upgrade your subscription today!

A year later, though, things changed much less predictably, thanks to the Dobbs surge. This era, which we break into two sub-parts, actually began when the opinion was leaked in early May (E*), nearly two months before it was finally released. Nine special elections occurred between the leak and the decision, enough to know that a shift was underway, but not enough to define a distinct period.

The June 24 Dobbs decision, however, stands on its own as the definitive event that led to the emergence of a new era that saw an average Democratic overperformance of 7 points (E).

Unfortunately for Biden and the Democrats, it didn’t last. At the end of 2023, Democratic overperformances virtually disappeared (F). With less than a year to go before the 2024 general election, the Dobbs high had faded. But not unlike the brief “sugar high” of late 2017 (B), this period (F) was short-lived.

The end of March through the election saw only nine special elections, but despite the small number, the shift back was strong enough that we would have seen it coming. (More on this early-warning system below.) G* represents the transition period between the end of March 2024 and Trump’s second term.

Unsurprisingly, however, Trump’s return to the White House has marked another stretch of Democratic overperformances that have averaged 14% throughout his second term (G).

A new early-warning system

The ability to identify transitions like these offers a powerful tool to political professionals because—and here’s the key takeaway—we can do more than just call them out retrospectively. We can actually flag them in real time, giving us extraordinary insight into whatever may be newly motivating voters.

For instance, with this system in place, we’d have quickly grasped the key shifts leading into the 2024 election. From Democrats’ post-Dobbs over-performance (E) to its fade in late 2023 (F) and rebound (G*) a full seven months before the election, these shifts were all detectable within weeks.

So, within 95% confidence—our criterion for an early-warning trigger—the fade that began in late November was detectable by Jan. 9, 2024. Similarly, the bounceback that began on March 26, 2024, which could have been detected by April 30, just five weeks—and five special elections—later.

Importantly, “party in power” alone can’t always predict what we’re seeing in special elections. Systemic shocks and issue salience can change electoral dynamics quickly, as we saw after #MeToo and Dobbs.

Careful analysis can help confirm when observations of change are indeed “real,” along with what might be triggering them. And with this information, campaigns and donors don’t need to wait for late-cycle polling for validation. Thanks to the data stream that special elections offer, these shifts are often visible months ahead of time.

Perhaps surprisingly, despite the extremely disruptive nature of Trump’s second term, we have yet to see such a shift—and with the midterms now just a few months away, things may hold steady until then or even beyond.

But now that we know what to look for—and how to look for it—we can identify any significant changes soon after they happen. That information will be of major value to anyone involved in politics, and we’ll share it with you just as soon as our new tools alert us.

Notes on methodology:

• Framework: Tools from process management were used to evaluate changes in Democratic overperformance in special elections. Process management tools can identify statistically significant changes in real-time observations to allow organizations to adapt to events as they occur. Techniques used here include Six Sigma and statistical process control, as well as a new boundary identification method we developed to quickly determine when shifts occur. This innovation—both using existing statistical methods and adding a new approach to boundary determination—offers a powerful tool going forward.

• Evaluating individual special elections: Basic population distribution statistics are used to demonstrate how large a shift in an individual special election needs to be to be considered an unusual event.

• Population analysis: Welch (Type 3) two-sample t-tests in Excel with extensive boundary testing are used to identify population shifts (see decision criteria below). The approach was validated using R statistical software. Other statistical tests, such as median, effect size, sample size, and trend testing, are used to confirm t-test findings and occasionally provide additional context. For particularly short periods and smaller shifts that don’t meet the full decision criteria, a transitional period may be defined. Applying statistical methods yields greater insight than previously reported, including distinct periods.

• Decision criteria:

  • Trigger detection: At least five elections must have taken place since a suspected shift, and they must achieve 95% confidence via t-test.

  • Confirmation: Sustained 99% confidence for at least five elections to confirm a shift has occurred, or sustained 95% confidence with an effect size of .5 or greater. This means the shift is so large that it is half a standard deviation of the whole population, or nearly 9 points.

• Inclusions and exclusions/minimizing noise: All 438 special elections reported by The Downballot between Jan. 20, 2017, and May 19, 2026 that met the site’s criteria (only one D candidate and one R candidate on the ballot in a partisan election; D and R candidates combined receive >90% of the vote) are included. Off-year November elections that occur on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in odd-numbered years were segmented out and evaluated separately for mean, median, and standard deviation. This was done to maximize signal and minimize noise.

Leading Off

SC-Sen

South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed to succeed her late brother just two weeks ago, will now face eight opponents in what will be a challenging campaign to keep her new job.

Tuesday was the deadline for Republicans to file for the special Aug. 11 primary to select a nominee to replace Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly earlier this month as he was pursuing a fifth term in the Senate.

While Graham had long supported her brother’s political career and even appeared in a campaign ad for him, she’d never held elected office until two weeks ago, when Gov. Henry McMaster chose her for what he reportedly believed would be a brief stint as a caretaker.

But Graham stunned the political world just a week later when she announced she’d seek a full term, with Donald Trump’s blessing. Some of her fellow Republicans, however, are openly questioning whether that will be enough to propel her to victory with so little time to establish a name for herself.

“She has a lot of work to do to win over the constituents that she hasn’t had the time [to meet] through a grassroots effort,” Chad Connelly, a former state party chair, told Axios last week.

And Graham will need to convince a majority, rather than just a simple plurality, of Republicans to keep her in office.

South Carolina, like many Southern states, requires candidates to win more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff, a difficult bar to clear in such a packed contest. A second round of voting would take place on Aug. 25.

It’s also likely that Lindsey Graham’s legacy will dominate the race, and that’s not necessarily an asset for his sister.

The late senator’s uneasy relationship with South Carolina’s far-right base was on display in the month before he died, when Graham, despite his support from Trump and a huge financial advantage, scored just 57% of the vote in what turned out to be his final primary.

Wealthy businessman Mark Lynch, who took second with 29%, is one of the many candidates challenging Darline Graham next month, though a trio of better-established Republicans is also determined to test the new senator.

This roster includes Rep. Russell Fry, who rose to prominence in 2022 when he waged a successful primary challenge against incumbent Tom Rice, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump, who supported Fry four years ago, had initially sounded inclined to back him if he ran for Senate. Two weeks ago, MAGA’s master told the far-right outlet Newsmax that Fry was “somebody you can watch out for.” Those comments came in the same interview in which Trump said of Darline Graham, “I believe the sister is there only on an interim basis.”

Just days later, though, Trump publicly encouraged Graham to run for a full term, though that didn’t deter Fry from launching a bid. The congressman began his effort by promising to be “President Trump’s favorite U.S. Senator” and “a MAGA fighter you can count on.”

Fellow Rep. Ralph Norman, likewise, is touting himself as “a fighter who will stand with President Trump,” though, somewhat surprisingly, he also pledged to “carry on Lindsey Graham’s legacy!”

Norman hasn’t always been such a fan of the deceased senator. After the 2024 election, he spent several months contemplating challenging Graham for renomination, though he ultimately decided to wage an ill-fated bid for governor.

And Norman, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a wealthy real estate developer, is once again standing on the opposite side of Trump in an intraparty battle.

In 2023, Norman was one of just two members of Congress to endorse the presidential campaign of former Gov. Nikki Haley, an old ally from their days in South Carolina state government. (The other was Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who is not seeking reelection.)

Trump didn’t seek to punish Norman for siding against him—the Post & Courier wrote last year that the congressman had been wise enough to notify Trump in advance—but it still may have harmed his campaign for a promotion this year.

Norman was one of several Republicans who campaigned to replace McMaster, who could not seek another term as governor. Trump, though, announced in May he was endorsing Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, McMaster’s choice for the job.

Norman still hoped he could win a spot in the runoff, but he was out of luck. Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson instead advanced to the second round with 29% and 26%, respectively, while Norman took a distant third with 17%.

Norman opted to endorse Wilson for the runoff, and this time, he would be on the winning side. Multiple polls soon showed the attorney general with a huge lead, and Trump responded by announcing he was supporting both Wilson and Evette.

But while Trump’s decision to back away from Evette’s doomed campaign—she would lose to Wilson in a landslide—was another reminder that his endorsement is hardly the last word in GOP primaries, yet another Senate hopeful joined the race already knowing what happens when you cross Trump one time too many.

That candidate is Mark Sanford, a one-time governor, two-time congressman, and briefly the world’s most famous hiker. But while Sanford’s bizarre 2009 sex scandal somehow didn’t destroy his electoral career, his second stint in Congress came to an end nine years later after primary voters ejected the ardent Trump critic.

Sanford then waged a quixotic bid against Trump in the 2020 primary, followed by a month-long campaign for his old House seat this spring before bailing ahead of the primary. He began his latest comeback attempt last weekend with a video focused on the national debt, which he warned will “wipe out our savings, and it could even destroy our republic.”

Four other Republicans are also running, but none have attracted much attention. The one major name who’d been in the mix, Evette, opted not to join the race.

Whoever emerges with the GOP nomination next month will take on pediatrician Annie Andrews, who secured the Democratic nod in June. Andrews remains the underdog in this conservative state, but she has the resources to get her message out. The Democrat finished June with over $4 million on hand, and unlike her eventual rival, she’s been busy stockpiling her resources for the general election.

The Downballot doesn’t have any deep-pocketed backers—and we’re very happy that way. We’ve all seen the corrosive influence that capricious billionaires and faceless corporations have had on American media. We’d much rather rely on people who actually value our work to keep the lights on.

If you want to support our mission to shine a spotlight on critical but overlooked elections, then we’d be incredibly grateful if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

The Downballot

The Downballot's first-ever live podcast!

For the first time ever, we broadcast The Downballot’s weekly podcast as a video livestream this week and took questions from viewers…

Listen now

10 days ago · 69 likes · 9 comments · David Nir and David Beard

Election Recaps

SD-Gov

Gov. Larry Rhoden demolished wealthy businessman Toby Doeden 71-29 in South Dakota’s first-ever runoff on Tuesday night, even though Doeden had led 31-25 in the first round of voting in the Republican primary for governor last month. Rhoden will face Democrat Dan Ahlers in November.

GA-13

The special election to fill Georgia’s vacant 13th district will head to an Aug. 25 runoff between two Democrats after no candidate secured a majority on Tuesday night.

Activist Marcye Scott, the daughter of the late Rep. David Scott, took 46% of the vote while former Gwinnett County Board of Education chair Everton Blair earned 37%. The winner will serve out the final months of the congressman’s term for this safely blue seat in the Atlanta area.

However, neither will join the next Congress in January. Instead, that honor will almost certainly go to state Rep. Jasmine Clark, who easily won the Democratic primary for a full term in May but chose not to run in the special because she would have had to resign her seat in the legislature.

Senate

MN-Sen

The NRSC is boosting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan ahead of her Aug. 11 Democratic primary with a digital ad ostensibly attacking her for being too progressive.

The spot, which was flagged by the political tipsheet Morning Take, opens with a clip of Flanagan wearing a hijab at a Somali market and delivering the greeting, “As-salamu alaykum.”

The NRSC’s narrator then picks up, declaring that Flanagan is supported by “Minnesota’s far-left Sen. Tina Smith,” who is not seeking reelection, adding that she is “promising to work with Bernie Sanders to obstruct Donald Trump.” The commercial goes on to feature a clip of Sanders declaring, “I have absolutely no doubt that Peggy is going to follow in Tina’s footsteps.”

There is no word on how much the NRSC is spending on these ads.

Flanagan faces Rep. Angie Craig two weeks from now in the Democratic primary. The NRSC is backing Michele Tafoya, a former sportscaster, in the busy GOP contest.

Governors

AZ-Gov

The Democratic Governors Association plans to devote $10 million to helping Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs win a second term, the group tells The Washington Post.

The Republican Governors Association has yet to announce any plans to aid Andy Biggs, the far-right congressman who easily won last week’s GOP primary but has trailed Hobbs in all available polling.

The RGA responded to the paper’s inquiries by saying it “will continue to hold Katie Hobbs accountable for her dismal record,” but it did not commit to devoting resources to the race.

The general election, though, may be a bit less expensive than anticipated no matter what the RGA ends up doing. Healthcare businessman Hugh Lytle, who loaned his campaign $2 million, lost the primary for the new ​​No Labels Party to businesswoman Teri Ann Hourihan last week. Confusingly, though, Hourihan says on her website that she “rejected the No Labels Party endorsement.”

NV-Gov

Nevada Democrat Aaron Ford on Tuesday launched the first ad of his campaign for governor, a move that comes after Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo and his allies spent the better part of the year unchallenged on the airwaves.

“Before I sued big utility and drug companies to lower costs, before I locked up violent criminals to protect Nevadans, I taught middle school math,” Ford, who is serving his second term as attorney general, tells the audience. “So I know the Lombardo-Trump economy doesn’t add up.”

Ford’s team informed the Nevada Independent the campaign is spending seven figures but did not provide further specifics. Lombardo and his allies have spent or reserved $18 million on advertising, according to AdImpact data provided to the site.

There has been almost no polling, however, to indicate whether or not the GOP’s offensive has worked as intended. A mid-July Public Policy Polling survey for Ford’s allies at the Democratic Governors Association showed a 44-44 deadlock, and no other established firms have released numbers over the last two months.

Upgrade your subscription today!

OH-Gov

Democrat Amy Acton launched her first ad on Tuesday, after Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and his backers spent roughly $9 million on the airwaves. Acton did not say how much she was devoting to her opening message.

“I was 12 and we were living in a tent, but it made me tough and determined to find a way out,” Acton says in her introductory spot. “I don’t want anyone to have to struggle like I did.”

House

FL-02

The busy Aug. 18 Republican primary for Florida’s conservative 2nd District has become increasingly negative, with allies of former Senate aide Austin Rogers running digital ads reminding voters that rival Keith Gross is both gay and a former Democrat from another state.

Politico’s Kimberly Leonard reports that a super PAC called Panhandle Patriots is going after Gross for saying during his failed 2008 campaign for the Georgia state House that he wanted to be the chamber’s “first openly gay” member.

Gross, a wealthy businessman who waged a doomed primary campaign against Republican Sen. Rick Scott in 2024, responded by telling Leonard that Donald Trump’s campaign didn’t care about his background when he informed them.

“They literally laughed out loud and reminded me that President Trump was a Democrat that same year and has appointed more gay men to the Cabinet than any other president in history,” Gross wrote in an email. “The MAGA base cares about my ability to do the job, not who I’m married to.”

Gross and Rogers, who stepped down as Scott’s general counsel to run for the House, finished the month of June with the most cash available among the eight Republicans running to replace GOP Rep. Neal Dunn, who is not seeking reelection.

Gross, who is self-funding almost his entire effort, had over $4 million to spend, while Rogers was well behind with close to $600,000 banked. Panhandle Patriots, however, has spent about $1.6 million to aid Rogers, according to reports submitted to the FEC.

None of the other six Republicans have benefited from any significant outside support, and they all have less money in the bank than Rogers. Evan Power, who serves as state GOP chair, came closest with a little more than $370,000 banked.

Whoever secures the GOP nod will be well-situated in the general election for a North Florida constituency that Trump carried 59-41.

FL-19

An affiliate of the radical anti-tax Club for Growth has launched what Axios’s Marc Caputo reports is a $1.1 million ad buy imploring Republicans in Florida’s 19th District to reject Chris Collins, a former congressman from New York who is running to claim this open seat.

“Collins voted for amnesty, rewarding lawbreakers with American citizenship,” declares the narrator for Win It Back PAC. “He even called himself ‘a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform.’”

Collins represented the Buffalo area from 2013 until he resigned in 2019 after pleading guilty to insider trading, but the Club is anything but excited about the idea of him returning to Congress. An unnamed operative told Caputo, “He’s a 49% on our scorecard, the bottom of the barrel in terms of voting record.”

The group has not endorsed any of Collins’ nine opponents in next month’s primary for the 19th District, a reliably red constituency in southwestern Florida that Rep. Byron Donalds is giving up to run for governor. Caputo writes that the group has instead adopted an “Anybody but Chris” strategy.

And local Republicans have plenty of names to choose from, including several others who also began their political careers in other states. This roster includes former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina; former Illinois state Sen. Jim Oberweis; and Ola Hawatmeh and Catalina Lauf, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New York and Illinois, respectively.

Wealthy businessman Jim Schwartzel, who does not appear to have run for office outside of Florida, is also in the hunt.

Support The Downballot + indy media

DCCC

Even though the DCCC’s favored candidate lost last week’s Democratic primary in Arizona’s 1st District, the committee added the winner, former state Rep. Amish Shah, to its “Red to Blue” list highlighting top candidates on Tuesday.

Four others were also named to the program, including businesswoman Pia Dandiya in Florida’s 22nd District, state Rep. Lindsay James in Iowa’s 2nd, teacher Jake Johnson in Minnesota’s 1st, and firefighter Sam Forstag in Montana’s 1st. All have already won their primaries except for Dandiya and Johnson, who face minimal opposition.

One notable Democrat, however, remains out in the cold. State Auditor Matt Dunlap, who beat a DCCC-backed opponent in last month’s primary in Maine’s 2nd District, still has yet to be embraced, though a spokesperson recently expressed optimism that that would change.

“We’re talking to the DCCC, we have a good relationship, and I expect that they will eventually move him to ‘Red to Blue,’” Dunlap advisor Joe Caiazzo told NOTUS.

While the Red to Blue designation is a signal to donors and outside groups that the DCCC views a candidate positively, it doesn’t guarantee the committee will invest in the fall. In 2024, for instance, the DCCC wound up making independent expenditures on behalf of 17 of the 33 candidates it had endorsed (though its allies at the House Majority PAC helped 11 more).

Poll Pile

• MI-Sen: Glengariff Group for the Michigan Education Association and Business Leaders for Michigan:

  • Haley Stevens (D): 46, Mike Rogers (R): 45.

  • Rogers (R): 49, Abdul El Sayed (D): 39.

• MN-Sen (D): Public Policy Polling for the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association (pro-Peggy Flanagan):

  • Flanagan: 46, Angie Craig: 32.

  • June: 43-36 Flanagan.

• MT-Sen: GQR for Contours:

  • Kurt Alme (R): 41, Seth Bodnar (I): 27, Alani Bankhead (D): 22, Kyle Austin (L): 6.

  • Bodnar (I): 44, Alme (R): 40, Austin (L): 11.

  • Alme (R): 44, Bankhead (D): 40, Austin (L): 13.

  • Alme (R): 52, Bankhead (D): 44.

  • Bodnar (I): 50, Alme (R): 44.

• MT-Sen: The Bullfinch Group for The Independent Center:

  • Alme (R): 36, Bodnar (I): 24, Bankhead (D): 22.

• TX-Sen: Slingshot Strategies for Texas Public Opinion Research:

  • James Talarico (D): 45, Ken Paxton (R): 40, all others 1% or less.

  • May: 47-44 Talarico.

• AK-Gov (top-four primary): Change Research for Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins:

  • Tom Begich (D): 17, Kreiss-Tomkins (D): 15, Bernadette Wilson (R): 14, Bill Walker (I): 7, Dave Bronson (R): 6, Click Bishop (R): 4, Adam Crum (R): 4, undecided: 27.

• MI-Gov: Glengariff:

  • Jocelyn Benson (D): 44, John James (R): 39.

  • Benson (D): 48, Perry Johnson (R): 37.

  • Chris Swanson (D): 43, James (R): 40.

  • Swanson (D): 44, Johnson (R): 40.

• NY-Gov: Red Oak Strategic for Strong And Safe (pro-Bruce Blakeman):

  • Kathy Hochul (D-inc): 47, Blakeman (R): 43.

• TX-Gov: Slingshot:

  • Greg Abbott (R-inc): 45, Gina Hinojosa (D): 42, all others 1% or less.

  • May: 46-41 Abbott.

• WI-Gov (D): State Navigate for Main Street Action and UpNorthNews:

  • Francesca Hong: 44, David Crowley: 15, Mandela Barnes: 14, all others 4% or less.

• CA-06: Bullfinch:

  • Richard Pan (D): 39, Kevin Kiley (I-inc): 35.

• CO-05: Global Strategy Group for Jessica Killin:

  • Jeff Crank (R-inc): 45, Killin (D): 44.

• IA-01: Bullfinch:

  • Christina Bohannan (D): 40, Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-inc): 35, Michael Bridgford (I): 11.

• TX-AG: Slingshot:

  • Mayes Middleton (R): 39, Nathan Johnson (D): 38, Tom Oxford (L): 3.

  • May: 44-39 Middleton.

The Downballot is pleased to present the latest update to our “hexmap” of congressional districts that shows every district as the same size. This revised version reflects the new maps adopted by 10 states since the 2024 elections.

We first introduced this map, which was created by Daniel Donner, more than a decade ago to address a vexing problem. Even though every member of Congress gets just one vote, traditional maps of congressional districts over-emphasize sprawling rural districts while rendering small urban districts almost invisible.

This makes maps showing the distribution of political power in the House misleading, as seas of sparsely inhabited red obscure densely populated corridors of blue.

Even Donald Trump tried to take advantage of this in 2019 by sharing an overwhelmingly red map of counties (which share the same problem as congressional districts) painted according to their results in the previous presidential election with the caption, “Try to impeach this.”

We love creating maps like these and sharing them with our readers, but as you might imagine, it’s challenging, time-consuming work. If you appreciate the effort we put in and our commitment to making resources like this one paywall-free, we hope you’ll consider supporting The Downballot by upgrading to a paid subscription.

Upgrade to support our work

That map and others like it frequently prompt a response that “land doesn’t vote.” The Downballot’s hexmap—a cartogram whose basic units are hexagons—is our take on that response.

Under our approach, every state retains its familiar shape. The gaps between them, meanwhile, reflect the nation’s population density, or lack thereof. The large empty spaces out west, in particular, show how thinly the region is populated relative to much of the east.

Most importantly, because every district is made up of five hexagons (with some slight adjustments to account for state borders), all of them are distinct and clearly visible. Whether you’re using this to illustrate the outcome of congressional roll calls, the predominant type of land cover in every district, or the results of an election, no district dominates or disappears.

To be clear, this isn’t a redistricting proposal or an actual map. Rather, it’s an abstraction created to facilitate data visualization. You can think of “Maine’s 2nd District” in the top-right corner, for instance, as a representation of Maine’s actual 2nd District, which in real life takes up about 90% of the state in terms of land area—rather than 50%, as we’ve shown it—but of course has half of the state’s people.

Below is a favorite visualization of ours, showing how the 2024 presidential election played out in every congressional district that will be used in this year’s midterms. (We recently released updated calculations for this data set as well to account for the frenzied new round of redistricting that unfolded over the past year.)

There are, of course, tradeoffs. The biggest is that districts sometimes cannot be placed within states where you’d expect them to be geographically. For instance, the districts that make up New York City all appear to be in upstate New York in our map. There simply isn’t enough room for them downstate.

Colorado offers a helpful illustration. On the left is a traditional map, while on the right is our hexmap. No district winds up precisely where it can be found in real life, but many, such as the rural 3rd and 4th, remain at their respective ends of the state. Others, like the 6th, shift position more dramatically, in this case from the Denver suburbs southward to the San Luis Valley.

There’s simply no getting around this. It’s impossible to create a map that simultaneously preserves geographic fidelity, accurately reflects political power, and maintains states in a recognizable shape.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

Therefore, our preferred approach when we use our hexmap is simply to release a traditional map alongside it. Below you’ll find just such a map of the 2024 presidential election results by congressional district—the companion of the hexmap above.

Geography does still matter with our hexmap, though, which is why we update it whenever a state adopts a new map. Tennessee, where Republicans just passed an aggressive new gerrymander, presents a stark example. In the pair of images below, our rendering of the state’s old map is on top, while our new one is just beneath it.

The GOP’s chief target was the majority-Black 9th District, which had long been a compact constituency based in Memphis. To erase the voting strength of Black voters, Republicans instead drew a snake-like district from downtown Memphis all the way to the Nashville suburbs some 200 miles away, pulling in heavily white, rural turf along the state’s southern border.

The end result is the light blue rod you see just above. It’s the first time we’ve ever represented a district as five hexagons all in a row like this, but it reflects the extreme nature of the Tennessee GOP’s efforts to subjugate Black voters.

We’ve made extensive use of our hexmap over the years, and the good news is, you can, too. We make our map freely available under a Creative Commons license, meaning you can use and adapt it for any purpose you like as long as you attribute the map to The Downballot.

Some folks who’ve used our map include the Washington Post, FairVote, and a team of political scientists led by Yale Prof. Shiro Kuriwaki.

At this link, you’ll find a variety of versions, including static images, vector graphics, and shapefiles. You can also find files for the traditional map on the “Overview” tab. If you do use either map, please let us know. We love to see people putting them to good use!

Leading Off

GA-Gov

Wealthy Republican Rick Jackson announced on Monday that he was reserving $87 million in ad reservations in his quest to become Georgia’s next governor, a move that could reverberate far beyond his own race—just as similar spending did during the primary.

Jackson and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is also rich, together spent over $90 million ahead of the first round of the GOP nomination contest on May 19, according to data from AdImpact. Their joint spending spree not only made it tough for any of their Republican rivals to break through on the airwaves, but it also drastically limited the ad inventory available for anyone else to purchase.

The battle between Jackson and Jones, which drove up prices for the scraps that remained, had a notable impact on the seven-person Democratic primary in the same contest, forcing it to be fought largely off the airwaves.

This worked to the advantage of former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who began the race with high name recognition and avoided any well-funded attacks as the primary progressed.

Bottoms didn’t air many ads herself, but she didn’t need to. She ended up securing 56% of the vote against a field of opponents who struggled to get their own message out, allowing her to avoid a runoff the following month. Jackson and Jones, by contrast, continued slugging it out until June 16, when the former won the second round in an upset.

But while Jackson’s massive spending ended up benefiting Bottoms in the spring, it may hurt her in the fall.

Bottoms and her allies don’t need to match Jackson dollar for dollar, but Democrats still need to purchase enough ad space to make their case against the GOP—and they need to act while there’s still space available to purchase.

The shortage will be even more acute in the general election than it was during the primary because of Georgia’s other marquee race, the Senate contest between Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff and Republican Rep. Mike Collins.

Ossoff finished June with an astounding $43 million to $2 million cash advantage over Collins, and he’s already running ads attacking the Republican even with Election Day more than three months away.

Collins, though, won’t be left to face this juggernaut alone. AdImpact reported two weeks ago that Republicans—most likely allies of Collins rather than the congressman’s own campaign—had reserved $26 million in ad time, compared to $17 million for Democrats. However, the senator’s massive war chest, as well as the GOP’s reported pessimism about Collins’ chances, mean that Ossoff is likely to dominate the airwaves.

Georgia’s recent ascension from Republican stronghold to swing-state status means that there are many other competitive elections further down the ballot.

Democrats are aiming to take control of several powerful offices Republicans have held for well over a decade, including attorney general and secretary of state. They’re also looking to secure a majority on the Public Service Commission, the powerful body that regulates public utilities, and to gain seats in the state House and Senate.

Candidates in all of these races, though, will be competing for precious ad time as Election Day draws closer and the airwaves get blanketed with wall to wall—to wall—political ads. This surging demand will drive prices up and force campaigns and allied outside groups to pay more as Nov. 3 nears.

Eventually, though, there may not be ads left to sell, even to those willing to pay top dollar.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell learned the hard way that ad time is a finite resource in 2014 when the Republican incumbent found himself locked in an unexpectedly tough race against Bill Walker, an independent who was running with support from state Democrats.

Parnell had spent most of the year looking secure as both parties spent huge amounts to advertise in the closely watched Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Begich and Republican challenger Dan Sullivan. But by the time Parnell realized in the fall that he also needed to buy ads to fend off Walker, it was too late to purchase many.

The National Journal reported at the time that while around 51,000 TV ads had aired in the Senate contest on state broadcast TV, only 1,300 had run in the gubernatorial race—and just 170 of those ads were from Parnell. Deprived of the most popular way to reach large numbers of voters at once, the governor went on to narrowly lose to Walker even as Sullivan ended up defeating Begich.

Other candidates across the country since then have struggled to buy ad time during the crucial final weeks of the campaign when there’s little left to buy. Bottoms, who has led in almost every publicly available poll, will now have an incentive to lock down airtime well before Election Day so that Georgians aren’t only hearing from her opponent.

If you appreciate the work we do to compile the Morning Digest day in and day out—240 times a year—then we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support The Downballot. Thank you so much!

Support The Downballot by upgrading

Election Night

GA-13, SD-Gov

Three Democrats and two Republicans are competing in Tuesday’s special election for Georgia’s 13th District, heavily Democratic turf in the Atlanta area that’s been vacant since Rep. David Scott died in April.

Scott’s former constituents, though, may go without representation for another month. All contenders will face off on a single ballot rather than in separate party primaries, but candidates need to win a majority of the vote to avert a runoff on Aug. 25.

The two main Democrats are Marcye Scott, the late congressman’s daughter, and Everton Blair, a former Gwinnett County Board of Education chair who took a distant third in the May primary for a full term. State Rep. Jasmine Clark, who defeated Blair and several others, opted against running in the special election, which would have required her to resign from the legislature.

The other major contest to watch on Tuesday anywhere in the nation is the Republican primary runoff for governor in South Dakota, where incumbent Larry Rhoden is trying to fend off wealthy businessman Toby Doeden. The only publicly available poll was a mid-July survey from Emerson College that showed Rhoden ahead by a wide 62-32 margin.

Senate

ME-Sen

Deep-pocketed Republican groups are already airing ads linking former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, the new Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, with the man he just replaced on the ballot.

“A ‘volatile personality,’ ‘anger issues’ with women, verbal abuse,’” the narrator declares in a commercial for Senate Leadership Fund as the audience sees text from several news reports. “It’s not Graham Platner, it’s Troy Jackson.”

“Jackson has a ‘history of conflicts with women,’ ‘bullying,’ even intimidation,” the spot continues. “Jackson’s conduct was so bad his fellow Democrats raised alarm bells about his temperament.”

One of the stories SLF cites is a Washington Post report from last week describing an argument Jackson got into in 2021 with then-state Sen. Heather Sanborn after she opposed one of his priorities in the legislature. The dispute, which the paper says “became legend” in the state capitol, culminated when Jackson threw a plastic water bottle.

Jackson’s team acknowledged that he’d thrown the bottle in frustration but denied he was aiming at Sanborn or anyone else. Sanborn declined to comment for the piece, but multiple legislators say she did not return to the Senate for days after the incident.

According to unnamed sources who spoke to CNN, though, Sanborn believed Jackson “was aiming to hit her with the bottle” and opted not to seek reelection the following year partly due to Jackson’s behavior.

Another Republican outfit is also airing ads tying Jackson to Platner more directly.

“Troy Jackson bragged about being one of Graham Platner’s earliest supporters,” declares the narrator in a commercial for Pine Tree Results, a super PAC dedicated to aiding Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The spot continues by saying that “Jackson stood by Platner” after the public learned about “Platner’s Nazi tattoo” and even after further allegations surfaced.

Maine voters will see many more ads like these over the next 14 weeks, as Republicans have reserved $61.5 million in airtime, according to AdImpact. Democrats, by contrast, have booked just $23.3 million on the airwaves.

One reason for this disparity is that Collins has had close to six years to rebuild her war chest after her tough 2020 reelection campaign. The senator ended June with over $11 million banked for what she anticipated would be an expensive contest against Platner.

Platner, though, ended his campaign on July 8 following rape allegations, while Jackson, who had lost the Democratic primary for governor just weeks earlier, launched a Senate bid later that evening.

Jackson, who secured the Democratic nomination at Saturday’s party convention, had to start fundraising again from scratch, but he says he’s already benefiting from a wave of enthusiasm. According to Jackson’s campaign, the newly minted nominee raised approximately $2 million in the 24 hours after Maine Democrats overwhelmingly chose him to replace Platner.

Governors

KY-Gov

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers said Monday that he would not seek the GOP nomination for governor next year. No major Republicans have announced campaigns to replace Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear, who is termed out, though several have expressed interest.

House

TX-05

The House Ethics Committee said Monday that it was investigating Republican Rep. Lance Gooden following a referral by the independent Office of Congressional Conduct.

The committee did not reveal what it was looking into, though Politico notes that the Campaign Legal Center submitted a complaint to the OCC in 2021 accusing Gooden of failing to disclose stock transactions.

Gooden, a four-term incumbent who is seeking reelection in Texas’ conservative 5th District, responded to the Ethics Committee’s announcement with a statement blasting “bogus spending allegations perpetrated by dishonest unelected OCC bureaucrats.”

Supreme Court

NC Supreme Court

Democratic Justice Anita Earls continues to enjoy a staggering financial advantage over Republican challenger Sarah Stevens in an important race for the North Carolina Supreme Court, newly released campaign fundraising reports show.

Earls, who is seeking a second eight-year term, hauled in about $1.9 million from Feb. 15 to June 30 and ended this four-and-a-half-month period with $3.5 million banked. Stevens, who resigned from the state House last month to focus on her campaign, took in just over $90,000 and had a little less than $260,000 on hand.

While this race won’t change the balance of power on the state’s highest court, which Republicans control five to two, it’s still a key part of the Democrats’ long-term goal to flip the body in 2028.

A victory for Earls would mean her party would next need to win races for two of the three GOP-held seats on the ballot during the next presidential election. If Stevens prevails, though, Democrats would have to sweep all three seats to regain the majority they lost in 2022.

Poll Pile

• CA-48: Lake Research Partners for Marni von Wilpert:

  • Von Wilpert (D): 48, Jim Desmond (R): 46.

Leading Off

MI-07

Republicans seem to be meddling in yet another Democratic primary, the 18th such time this year they’ve done so, according to a tracker maintained by The Downballot.

The latest apparent intervention, which was first flagged by Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick, is in Michigan’s competitive 7th District, where three Democrats are vying to take on first-term Republican Rep. Tom Barrett: former diplomat Bridget Brink, former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, and activist William Lawrence.

Lawrence, the co-founder of the climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, is the most vocally progressive of the trio, and Democratic operatives believe his left-wing views could cost them the race. In a raft of since-deleted tweets, for instance, he expressed support for abolishing the police and prisons—positions he’s since disavowed.

The more moderate Brink and Maasdam have spent a good deal of time attacking one another on the airwaves, potentially leaving an opening for Lawrence to win the nomination. It’s that opening that Republicans may now be looking to exploit.

A group called Michigan Sunrise PAC, which was formed just a week ago, has now begun helping Lawrence and has reported spending almost $600,000 on advertising, text messages, and mailers so far.

Its ads attack Maasdam for having once been registered to vote as a Republican in Florida while emphasizing Lawrence’s support from figures like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. They do not mention Brink.

The PAC’s origins are, as is so often the case, shrouded in darkness. However, the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is the top GOP super PAC involved in House races and has been involved in past efforts to meddle in Democratic primaries, notably did not comment when asked by Axios’ Andrew Solender about the new spending.

Mutnick also points out that Michigan Sunrise is using an obscure bank called Black Hills Community Bank that is based in South Dakota and is also used by South Dakota Republicans like Rep. Dusty Johnson and state Attorney General Marty Jackley. The bank has just two branches and ranks 1,809th in size among American banks based on total assets.

The name of the PAC, of course, is very similar to that of the organization Lawrence helped create, but the two appear unconnected. Rather, the Sunrise Movement has its own PAC, called Sunrise PAC. While the Sunrise Movement has endorsed Lawrence, its PAC has not reported spending any money on this race.

One angle, though, proved to be a false lead: An alert from AdImpact misidentified Michigan Sunrise’s media buyer as the same firm used by Republicans to interfere in last month’s Democratic primary in New York’s 17th District. That alert, however, was quickly corrected, and the firm’s name was replaced with another.

Lawrence had previously received close to $580,000 in help from actual allies, chief among them National Nurses United. However, he’s also been hit by more than $1.9 million in attack ads from outside groups, including a PAC connected to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Brink has likewise been targeted by heavy spending from a pro-Maasdam super PAC that has put $1.3 million toward defeating her. Maasdam hasn’t taken much incoming from third parties but has received nearly $1.7 million in help from VoteVets.

If you’re as grossed out by the traditional media’s coziness with the Trump administration as we are, then we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support The Downballot. Only a robust independent media is capable of telling the truth about what’s happening to America today, and you know our track record for unvarnished honesty.

Support independent media

Senate

ME-Sen

As expected, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson easily secured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Saturday, winning the votes of 566 of 571 delegates who participated.

Once the Maine Democratic Party submits the necessary paperwork to the secretary of state’s office, which it must do by Monday, Jackson will replace Graham Platner as the party’s nominee to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.

MI-Sen

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens on Friday ahead of Stevens’ showdown in next week’s Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat against former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed.

Whitmer is the second major statewide elected official to weigh in on the contest. Earlier this month, retiring Sen. Gary Peters also backed Stevens in the race to replace him.

MT-Sen

In an unusual public statement, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it would not support Democrat Alani Bankhead’s campaign for Senate in Montana after Bankhead slammed the committee in an op-ed.

Earlier this month, Bankhead decried “the absolute lack of support or even encouragement from my national Democratic colleagues” at the DSCC in a guest essay at the Flathead Beacon.

In response, the group’s executive director, Devan Barber, told Semafor that “the DSCC partners with viable campaigns who have a path to victory, which Ms. Bankhead does not.”

Some Montana Democrats, most notably former Sen. Jon Tester, have called for the party to rally around former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar, who is running as an independent. However, Barber did not mention Bodnar in his comments to Semafor.

Republicans, though, have already started running ads attacking Bodnar, even though Bankhead has vociferously rejected calls that she drop out in favor of her much better-funded independent rival. Limited polling has shown Republican nominee Kurt Alme with huge leads if both Bankhead and Bodnar remain in the race, while hypothetical one-on-one matchups suggest a much closer affair.

Candidates have until Aug. 9 to withdraw their names from the November general election ballot.

SC-Sen

A super PAC that supported Lindsey Graham’s bid for reelection has now switched over to helping his sister, Sen. Darline Graham, win a full term.

Security Is Strength spent almost $1.5 million ahead of last month’s Republican primary to help the late senator turn back a challenge from businessman Mark Lynch, part of a $15 million effort by Graham and his allies that resulted in a 57-29 win.

Now the PAC says it’ll devote $900,000 to boost Darline Graham, who was recently appointed to her brother’s seat, in next month’s special GOP primary. The group’s initial spot touts Donald Trump’s endorsement of the new incumbent.

Governors

SD-Gov

South Dakota’s first-ever runoff on Tuesday has exposed a gap in the state’s campaign finance laws: Candidates aren’t required to file new fundraising reports between the primary and the second round of voting.

Keloland’s Bob Mercer notes that both Gov. Larry Rhoden and businessman Toby Doeden, who are facing off for the Republican nomination for governor, don’t have to make any further financial disclosures until mid-October.

In response to a query from Mercer, Rhoden’s campaign would only say that it had raised about $1.9 million since the June 2 primary and expected to spend roughly $1.7 million, but it did not offer details about its donors or expenditures.

Doeden was even less forthcoming, saying, “I have financed 99% of this campaign with my own money, including the runoff.” Mercer added that neither campaign responded when asked if they’d support legislation to close this loophole.

The lone public poll of the runoff, conducted by Emerson College for Keloland, found Rhoden with a large 62-32 lead. The winner will take on former Democratic state Sen. Dan Ahlers in November. Democrats have not won a race for governor in South Dakota since 1974, the longest gubernatorial drought for either party in any state.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

House

IA-03

Republican Rep. Zach Nunn violated the cardinal rule of dealing with trackers when he struck the camera of a Democratic staffer who was asking him questions about rural hospital closures on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Nunn, who represents Iowa’s swingy 3rd District, also told the tracker he was speaking with a constituent, but the person shown walking alongside the congressman was in fact NOTUS reporter Reese Gorman. According to his LinkedIn page, Gorman lives in Washington, DC.

Nunn, who faces a serious challenge from Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, responded by saying the encounter was not his “finest moment” but suggested he had been harassed.

“This wasn’t my finest moment, I shouldn’t have responded this way, and I set a bad example,” he said. “Partisan political operatives are paid to roam Capitol Hill and harass members. These are the exact kind of dirty games that make people hate politics.”

TN-05

A PAC supported by wealthy clean energy investors is seeking to defeat Republican Rep. Andy Ogles in next month’s primary, even though Democrats’ slim hopes of flipping Tennessee’s deep-red 5th District rest on the scandal-plagued incumbent emerging as the nominee.

That doesn’t seem to trouble the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition, whose spokesperson, Tom Matzzie, told Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick that the group is going after Ogles because of his “extreme anti-clean energy” views. Its larger goal, he said, is “to communicate a message to the other members of Congress that if you take these extreme positions, the industry is watching.”

Democrats “are perturbed by the clean-energy spending,” Mutnick says, precisely because they know that Ogles’ primary opponent, former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, would be vastly harder to beat in November. The likely Democratic nominee is Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder, who has led all candidates in fundraising.

But Matzzie said that Invest in Tomorrow was unfamiliar with Hatcher’s views on renewable energy and did not want to get “sucked into those partisan games.”

It’s a familiar stance for the group, whose top donor is cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen. Earlier this year, the PAC spent more than $1 million to defeat Texas Rep. Chip Roy in the GOP primary for state attorney general. But as the New York Times noted in May, Roy’s victorious opponent, state Sen. Mayes Middleton, is a co-author of legislation that would place sharp limits on new wind and solar projects.

In Tennessee, Invest in Tomorrow recently began airing positive ads on Hatcher’s behalf, but as Mutnick reports, it’s now moved on to running negative spots attacking Ogles over his history of resume inflation—precisely one of the vulnerabilities that have given Democrats like Molder hope. The congressman is also under investigation by the FBI and House Ethics Committee over alleged campaign finance violations.

The PAC has reported spending almost $700,000 so far and says it plans to put in $1 million ahead of the Aug. 6 primary.

State Legislatures

FL State House

Florida state Rep. Paula Stark will not appear on the ballot after a state judge dismissed her lawsuit seeking to reinstate her name, a decision that will automatically result in Stark’s seat flipping to Democrats.

Judge Joshua Hawks previously rejected Stark’s claim that she had in fact properly submitted paperwork to seek a third term but gave her an additional week “to show cause” as to why her suit “should not be dismissed.” Stark failed to do so, prompting Hawks to issue a dismissal. She could still appeal, but Florida Politics reported late last week that neither Stark nor her attorney responded to a request for comment.

Next month, two Democrats will face off in the primary for Stark’s 47th District south of Orlando: businessman Jorge Figueroa and Anthony Nieves, a former financial crimes investigator for the state. According to data from the Voting and Election Science Team and Dave’s Redistricting App, this heavily Latino district voted for Donald Trump by a 51-48 margin in 2024 but had backed Joe Biden 56-43 four years earlier.

Support The Downballot today!

Poll Pile

• FL-22: GQR for Pia Dandiya:

  • Belinda Keiser (R): 46, Dandiya (D): 45

• VA-02: Tulchin Research for House Majority PAC:

  • Elaine Luria (D): 47, Jen Kiggans (R-inc): 47

Leading Off

WA-05

Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner is trying to prevent an independent candidate, firefighter and Marine veteran Nate Powell, from advancing to the general election in Washington’s conservative 5th District by elevating one of the Democrats on next month’s primary ballot. Powell, though, has some deep-pocketed allies who are spending heavily to ensure that he gets to face the congressman in the fall.

Baumgartner is airing ads, first flagged by Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin, that “attack” retired diplomat Carmela Conroy in terms designed to appeal to left-leaning voters. Conroy, the spot’s narrator says, “doesn’t fit our district” because she wants “higher taxes for the rich, and Obamacare for everyone.”

Conroy, who’s raised the most of any challenger in the race, ran against Baumgartner two years ago when the 5th District, based in the eastern part of the state, became open after Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said she’d retire. However, she got blown out by a 61-39 margin and ran well behind the top of the ticket. According to calculations by The Downballot, Donald Trump carried the district 54-43.

The very night she lost, she announced she’d run again, but she failed to deter a large crowd of other candidates from piling in. That included Powell, who kicked off an independent bid in January and started receiving some hefty outside support earlier this month, as CNN’s Patrick Svitek noted.

That help has come from two super PACs that were both stood up this cycle. One, Together for Working People, has spent a bit less than $200,000 on the race so far; it’s a project of a progressive advocacy group called Fuse Washington.

Fuse made a splash in 2022 when it helped Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez win the 3rd District at the other end of the state, and Together for Working People has spent $110,000 to aid her reelection campaign this year.

The other, Fire House PAC, was only launched in April and has already spent more than $600,000 on Powell’s behalf. Its origins are much more opaque, though. The group’s minimalist “about” page reveals no details, though it’s also endorsed three other firefighters, including two Democrats—Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania’s 7th and Sam Forstag in Montana’s 1st—and one independent, Mike Thurow in Wisconsin’s 6th.

However, Fire House’s main contributor is a dark-money nonprofit called Contours, Inc., which is also the top donor this cycle to the Working Class Heroes Fund, a super PAC started by Nebraska independent Dan Osborn after his unsuccessful Senate bid in 2024. (Osborn is running again this year.)

Fire House has been running TV and digital ads attacking Baumgartner and talking up Powell, but it’s also taken aim at Conroy by emphasizing her loss two years ago.

“Our country is hanging on by a thread,” begins the narrator in one spot. “If we want a check on Trump, we have to beat Michael Baumgartner and win the House. Carmella Conroy had her chance in 2024, and she lost—big time, by a whopping 20%. We can’t risk that again.”

The ad then praises Powell as “[t]he only candidate who will fight for Medicare for All, beat Baumgartner, and stop Trump.”

The congressman seems to agree with Powell’s take that he’d be the tougher opponent.

In addition to Baumgartner, Powell, and Conroy, another nine candidates—including five other Democrats and four more independents—are running in the Aug. 4 primary. All candidates will appear on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, moving on to the November general election.

The Downballot only exists because of our readers. We have no deep-pocketed corporate backers and no billionaire sugar daddies. That means we can always tell the truth without fear—something major media conglomerates increasingly refuse to do—because the only people we’re beholden to are you.

But it also means we need folks to sign up as paid subscribers so that we can become financially sustainable for the long term. If you’re able to support our work, we hope you’ll upgrade today.

Help The Downballot become sustainable

The Downballot

The Downballot's first-ever live podcast!

For the first time ever, we broadcast The Downballot’s weekly podcast as a video livestream this week and took questions from viewers…

Listen now

10 days ago · 66 likes · 9 comments · David Nir and David Beard

Senate

ME-Sen

Former government official David Costello has ended his campaign for Senate, leaving just pharmaceutical executive Saundra Pelletier to challenge former state Senate President Troy Jackson at Saturday’s Democratic convention to pick a new nominee.

Jackson, though, is all but certain to prevail, as nearly all of the 500 delegates elected at local party meetings last weekend have expressed their support for his candidacy.

MT-Sen

Even though Montana Democrats remain divided over whether to support Democrat Alani Bankhead or independent Seth Bodnar in November’s Senate race, Republicans are already going after Bodnar on television.

A group called More Jobs, Less Government is running a new ad, first flagged by CNN’s Patrick Svitek, that attacks Bodnar over his tenure as president of the University of Montana. While he served in that role, 18 female employees sued the school, alleging sex discrimination. The university denied the allegations but ultimately settled for $350,000 in 2024.

Bodnar was not named as a defendant, but the plaintiffs accused him of wrongful conduct, which the ad highlights.

“The U.S. Senate. America’s good ol’ boys club. Seth Bodner would fit right in,” begins the narrator. “Eighteen women sued U of M accusing President Bodnar of running a good ol’ boys club. They said Bodner called one woman moody. Told her to smile more. Women paid less. Jobs handed to men. U of M settled to sweep it under the rug.”

“The Senate has enough good ol’ boys,” the spot concludes. “Don’t send Seth Bodnar.”

More Jobs, Less Government recently disclosed that it had spent more than $200,000 to run digital ads hitting Bodnar, though it’s not clear how much it’s spending on TV.

Before last month’s primary, the group sought to elevate a different Democrat, former state Rep. Reilly Neill, apparently in the belief that she’d be less likely to drop out than Bankhead. That gambit failed, but Bankhead has repeatedly rejected the idea that she might leave the race and has instead called on Bodnar to end his campaign.

Bodnar doesn’t seem likely to, either. Last week, he reported raising $1.8 million in the second quarter of the year and has almost $1 million on hand. During that same timeframe, Bankhead brought in just $41,000 and had $21,000 in her bank account. Republican Kurt Alme, meanwhile, raised $1 million and had almost $1.5 million left over.

Candidates in Montana have until Aug. 9 to remove their names from the general election ballot.

SC-Sen

Mark Sanford is back again—again. America’s most famous wayward hiker announced on Thursday that he’d run in the Aug. 11 special primary to pick a Republican Senate nominee to replace the late Lindsey Graham.

In March, Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who served two separate stints in Congress, decided to run for his old seat in the House once more. However, he dropped out just a month later and indicated he was done with politics forever—a decision that evidently didn’t stick.

While Sanford might prefer an amble along a gentle trail, he’ll instead endure a brief sprint to the primary, where he’ll be the underdog against several rivals who have more money and less baggage. Those contenders include appointed Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister, and Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry. Would-be candidates have until Monday to file.

Senate Majority PAC

The Senate Majority PAC, which is the largest pro-Democratic super PAC involved in Senate races, announced an additional $54 million in fall TV reservations across four races where it had already booked ad time.

The new investments include:

• Alaska: $2 million, on top of a previous $10.6 million, for $12.6 million total

• Iowa: $17 million, on top of a previous $13.4 million, for $30.4 million total

• North Carolina: $11 million, on top of a previous $31.4 million, for $42.4 million total

• Ohio: $24 million, on top of a previous $40 million, for $64 million total

SMP has also previously announced reservations in Georgia ($20 million), New Hampshire ($10.2 million), Maine ($24 million), and Michigan ($20 million).

Governors

WI-Gov

Three Wisconsin Democrats are suing to allow absentee voters to request new ballots ahead of their volatile Aug. 11 primary for governor, which has seen multiple candidates drop out in recent weeks, and even one who quit and then returned to the race.

More than 90,000 mail ballots have already been returned, according to officials, meaning these voters may have cast votes for contenders who are no longer in the race. Under longstanding rules, they would have been allowed to “spoil” their ballots and receive a new one, but the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted earlier this month to issue new guidance to county clerks sharply limiting the practice.

Upgrade today to support The Downballot!

In their lawsuit, which was filed in a state court in Dane County, plaintiffs object to the commission changing its guidance in the middle of an election. They ask that the court affirm the right of voters to spoil their ballots and bar the commission from saying otherwise.

House

MI-07

Activist William Lawrence, a cofounder of the Sunrise Movement, is on the receiving end of new ads slamming him over comments he made that the role played by older Black leaders in the Democratic Party “really defangs the white left.”

The new spots, which were first flagged by Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick, come from the Rolling Sea Action Fund, a super PAC launched by the Congressional Black Caucus. The group recently disclosed that it was spending $125,000 on radio and digital ads in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 7th District.

The ad first brings up a truncated version of a tweet that Lawrence posted in 2021 saying, “If Joe Biden lets Joe Manchin write his climate plan, Biden’s climate legacy will be one of cowardice and betrayal - just like Obama.”

A narrator continues, “In a podcast, Lawrence called Black leaders ‘a big problem’ who ‘defanged the white left’ and ‘put us in an impossible position.’”

Lawrence made those remarks, which were unearthed by HuffPost earlier this month, on his own podcast in 2024. He did not apologize but instead said, “I regret how this specific point was expressed.”

Lawrence faces two other candidates in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary: former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former diplomat Bridget Brink. The three are vying to take on Republican Rep. Tom Barrett.

Poll Pile

• GA-Sen: Fabrizio Ward (R) and Impact Research (D) for AARP

  • Jon Ossoff (D-inc): 52, Mike Collins (R): 43

• GA-Gov: Fabrizio and Impact for AARP:

  • Keisha Lance Bottoms (D): 48, Rick Jackson (R): 46

• ID-01: SurveyUSA for Sarah Zabel:

  • Russ Fulcher (R-inc): 45, Kaylee Peterson (D): 35, Zabel (I): 6

• NY-17: co/efficient (R):

  • Mike Lawler (R-inc): 50, Cait Conley (D): 45

  • The pollster says its survey was “[n]ot sponsored by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

Leading Off

AZ-01

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just saw another of its preferred candidates lose a primary, marking the committee’s third unsuccessful intervention this cycle.

On Wednesday night, the Associated Press called the contest in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District for former state Rep. Amish Shah, who led former TV anchor Marlene Galan-Woods 40-34.

Shah, who is also an emergency room physician, ran for this same seat in 2024, narrowly winning the Democratic primary—in which Galan-Woods placed a close third—before losing to Republican Rep. Dave Schweikert by a tight 52-48 margin.

Following Shah’s near-miss, the DCCC’s decision to spend so heavily on Galan-Woods’ behalf perplexed and infuriated Democrats across the spectrum both before and after election night.

Telling Axios she was “frustrated” by the move earlier this month, progressive Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva said, “I get the argument that you want to back the person you think can beat the Republican, but unless the other candidate is a DINO, I think they need to stay out,” using a shorthand for “Democrat in name only.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Susie Lee, a moderate from neighboring Nevada, similarly questioned the wisdom of getting involved in primaries when Democrats are fighting to take back control of the House.

“I personally don’t think we should be investing against Democrats when we’ve got a big battleground,” she told Axios.

Unlike in some other contests where the DCCC has weighed in, though, there was little if any ideological gap between the two candidates. Rather, according to Axios, the committee found Shah “difficult to work with” during his last campaign, complaining that he preferred knocking doors to fundraising and did not want to air negative ads.

Shah, though, didn’t seem averse to raising money, as he brought in more than $6.3 million during the 2024 cycle, making him one of the strongest fundraisers among Democratic challengers.

He also ran almost neck-and-neck with the top of the ticket despite facing an incumbent: According to calculations by The Downballot, Donald Trump carried the 1st District 51-48, while Schweikert, who badly lost the GOP primary for governor on Tuesday, prevailed by just 4 points.

Thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling, official party organizations like the DCCC can now freely coordinate spending with candidates, meaning they no longer need to file disclosures of independent expenditures. As a result, there are no readily traceable public records showing how much the committee spent to aid Galan-Woods, but data from AdImpact reported by Axios puts the figure at more than $500,000.

That spending, though, only began at the start of July, barely three weeks ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Given Shah’s name recognition from his prior run, that left his detractors at the DCCC little time to put a dent in his standing.

Other efforts also unfolded late in the day. In California’s 22nd District, the committee waited until the week before the June 2 primary to try to boost moderate Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains past her more progressive rival, school board trustee Randy Villegas, with a reported $135,000 ad buy. But it was Villegas who prevailed and will now take on Republican Rep. David Valadao in the fall.

The DCCC took a similar approach in Maine’s open 2nd District, where it unsuccessfully spent a reported $157,000 to help state Sen. Joe Baldacci defeat state Auditor Matt Dunlap just one week before they squared off on June 9. Dunlap will go up against former Gov. Paul LePage in November.

Both attempts rubbed many local Democrats the wrong way, with one county chair in California grousing to the Guardian, “These are some out of touch people … and they are reading things wrong.”

In all three cases, the DCCC didn’t act until the primary was close at hand, and in at least the first two races, it spent relatively little.

The committee does have two successes under its belt this cycle, but even one of these wins generated some hard feelings.

Not long before Pennsylvania’s primary in mid-May, the DCCC spent a reported $100,000 to help firefighter union chief Bob Brooks in the 7th District.

Earlier that month, though, after the DCCC added Brooks to its “Red to Blue” program for top candidates, some local Democrats complained about the move, including one county chair who told Lehigh Valley Public Media, “Let the people chose first in the primary, then the national party and the others can get behind the Democrat that’s been elected.”

The committee only entered the fray, though, after a Republican group began meddling on behalf of another Democrat. Brooks won the race easily, though, and will face off with freshman GOP Rep. Ryan McKenzie in the general election.

The DCCC’s one universally praised maneuver came in a runoff in Texas’ 35th District, where an antisemitic sex therapist named Maureen Galindo threatened to destroy whatever hopes Democrats might have of hanging onto this heavily gerrymandered open seat.

Republicans tried to help Galindo defeat Bexar County Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia, but everyone from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to the centrist Blue Dog Coalition united to prevent that disaster. That included the DCCC, which spent a reported $35,000 to hammer Galindo, who lost the runoff in a 64-36 rout. Garcia will now do battle with Republican Carlos De La Cruz in November.

For all the sturm und drang, the DCCC has reconciled with at least one candidate it sought to thwart, placing Villegas on its Red to Blue list soon after he was declared the winner. It has yet to embrace Dunlap, but both sides have made positive comments about one another in recent weeks.

Shah, meanwhile, is certain to get lots of love from the committee, since the swingy 1st District is too tempting a target for the DCCC to possibly forgo. And even before the race was called, Punchbowl reported that “Democratic leadership is already coalescing” around the new nominee, who will face former NFL kicker Jay Feely for the right to succeed Schweikert.

The Downballot Podcast

Arizona primaries, Wisconsin drama, and Senate replacements

For the first time ever, we broadcast The Downballot’s weekly podcast as a video livestream this week and took questions from viewers!

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recapped Arizona’s primaries, including:

• Rep. Dave Schweikert’s mysterious decision to get predictably crushed by fellow Rep. Andy Biggs in the GOP race for governor

• Why the DCCC keeps losing when it intervenes in Democratic House primaries

• How Democrats can flip two seats on the state’s powerful body that regulates utilities—and potentially take control in 2028

And several more contests. The Davids also explain the unfolding drama in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor, where establishment forces are scrambling to halt the rise of a democratic socialist. Then they dive into the races to replace Senate nominees in Maine, where Democrats are in whatever the opposite of disarray is, and South Carolina, where Republicans are very much not deferring to Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Lindsey Graham.

If you prefer to listen to the show as a traditional podcast, have no fear: We’ll continue to make it available on all apps, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you’d like to join us for future livestreams, the easiest way is to download the free Substack app.

Poll Pile

• SC-Sen: Public Policy Polling for Annie Andrews:

  • Andrews (D): 41, Mark Lynch (R): 38

  • Andrews: 42, Russell Fry (R): 39

  • Andrews: 42, Ralph Norman (R): 43

  • Republican Sen. Darline Graham was not included.

• NV-Gov: Public Policy Polling for the DGA:

  • Aaron Ford (D): 44, Joe Lombardo (R-inc): 44

• RI-Gov (D): Tavern Research for Working Rhode Island Forward:

  • Helena Foulkes: 41, Dan McKee (inc): 36

  • The poll’s sponsor is supporting McKee.

• WI-Gov: Marquette Law School:

  • Mandela Barnes (D): 47, Tom Tiffany (R): 42

  • Francesca Hong (D): 44, Tiffany: 44

  • Tiffany: 44, Joel Brennan (D): 43

  • Tiffany: 44, Kelda Roys (D): 42

  • The poll did not test Democrat David Crowley, who re-entered the race after it was fielded.

• WI-Gov (D): Impact Research for Barnes:

  • Hong: 39, Barnes: 26, Crowley: 11, Roys: 7, Brennan: 6

• WI-Gov (D): Public Policy Polling for Crowley:

  • Hong: 35, Barnes: 15, Crowley: 14, Roys: 5, Brennan: 3

• WY-Gov (R): Pulse Decision Science for Eric Barlow:

  • Barlow: 42, Megan Degenfelder: 19, Brent Bien: 14

• OH-10: FM3 for House Majority PAC:

  • Mike Turner (R-inc): 48, Kristina Knickerbocker (D): 41

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recapped Arizona’s primaries, including:

• Rep. Dave Schweikert’s mysterious decision to get predictably crushed by fellow Rep. Andy Biggs in the GOP race for governor

• Why the DCCC keeps losing when it intervenes in Democratic House primaries

• How Democrats can flip two seats on the state’s powerful body that regulates utilities—and potentially take control in 2028

And several more contests. The Davids also explain the unfolding drama in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor, where establishment forces are scrambling to halt the rise of a democratic socialist. Then they dive into the races to replace Senate nominees in Maine, where Democrats are in whatever the opposite of disarray is, and South Carolina, where Republicans are very much not deferring to Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Lindsey Graham.

If you prefer to listen to our show as a traditional podcast, have no fear: We’ll continue to make it available on all apps, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you’d like to join us for future livestreams, the easiest way is to download the free Substack app.

If you’d like to participate in our Q&A sessions during these live shows, all you need to do is upgrade to a paid subscription! We’d be extremely grateful for your support.

Upgrade to join our Q&As

We’re trying something brand new this week: We’re broadcasting The Downballot’s weekly podcast as a video livestream, and we’ll take your questions in realtime! Join us at 5 PM ET on Substack Live by clicking this link or downloading the free Substack app. For regular listeners, you’ll still be able to find the show in your favorite podcast app afterwards. We hope to see you there live!

Leading Off

LA-06

Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields announced on Tuesday that he will run for the state Senate rather than seek reelection to Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District after Republicans passed a new gerrymander that eliminated its Black majority and made it deep red.

The previous iteration of the 6th District came into being thanks to litigation under the Voting Rights Act, which found that the state had unlawfully discriminated against Black voters by failing to draw an additional seat where they would have the ability to elect their preferred candidates. Field comfortably won it in 2024, defeating his Republican opponent 51-38.

But not only did the Supreme Court strike that district down as an illegal racial gerrymander in April, it also gutted the provisions of the VRA that had barred states from diluting the strength of minority voters by divvying them up between districts.

That freed Republicans to dismantle the 6th—which they had just drawn two years earlier—and replace it with a new version that shares little in common with its predecessor beyond its number. Under the old lines, Black residents comprised 55% of the district’s eligible voting-age population, but in the overhauled constituency, they now make up just 26%, according to Dave’s Redistricting App.

That shift brought with it a huge political transformation. According to new calculations by The Downballot, Donald Trump would have carried the revamped 6th by a 64-34 margin, making it all but impossible for any Democrat to win it. By contrast, the district that Fields won two years ago went for Kamala Harris 57-42.

It’s a painfully familiar experience for Fields, who won his first race for Congress in 1992 in a district that was also drawn to allow Black voters the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. But after prolonged court battles, that district was likewise invalidated as a racial gerrymander, prompting Fields to forgo a reelection bid in 1996. Instead, the following year he returned to the state Senate, where he’d served previously.

He remained there until 2008, when term limits prevented him from running again. In 2019, though, his successor was also term-limited, paving the way for a third comeback. This time, Fields was followed in office by fellow Democrat Larry Selders, who died earlier this month at the age of 44. A date for a special election has not yet been set.

Several Republicans are running for the 6th District, most notably state Sen. Rick Edmonds. However, it’s still possible that another state senator, Blake Miguez, could switch over from the 5th District, where he’s running with Trump’s endorsement. Candidates have until Aug. 7 to file.

The Downballot

How Democrats can make Mississippi competitive

“We have to fall in love with math,” Senate candidate Scott Colom tells us on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast. Colom, a Mississippi district attorney, is vying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked his nomination to the federal judiciary in 2023. Now, as the cost of living and political corruption have skyrocketed, Colom …

Listen now

16 days ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · David Nir and David Beard

Election Recaps

AZ-Gov (R) (52-47 Trump)

Rep. Andy Biggs cruised to victory over fellow Rep. Dave Schweikert as all the polling prophesied, but the far-right congressman will match up awkwardly against Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in swingy Arizona. Every poll taken this year has shown Hobbs ahead (though we haven’t seen fresh data in a while), and she’s dominated Biggs in fundraising, too.

AZ-01 (R & D) (51-48 Trump)

Former state Rep. Amish Shah has likely defeated former TV anchor Marlene Galan-Woods for the Democratic nomination in Arizona’s swingy 1st District. With an estimated three-quarters of the vote counted when we put the Digest to bed, Shah leads 42-32, per the Associated Press.

Two years ago, Shah lost to Schweikert 52-48, but the DCCC intervened to help Galan-Woods, reportedly because the committee had a fraught working relationship with Shah in 2024. For the third time this cycle, though, it appears that a candidate preferred by the DCCC has fallen short.

The November general election will still be hotly contested no matter what. Republicans nominated former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely, who beat a pair of opponents on the strength of an endorsement from Donald Trump. Major super PACs for both parties have already made massive ad reservations for the fall that could be used in this district.

AZ-04 (D) (53-46 Harris)

Moderate Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton comfortably turned back a challenge from his unheralded progressive opponent, activist Kai Newkirk, though his final margin could shrink as more ballots are tallied. With roughly three-quarters of the vote in, Stanton leads Newkirk 68-32.

AZ-05 (R) (59-39 Trump)

Former Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb weathered some weird sex scandals and allegations that he threatened two women to defeat construction contractor Daniel Keenan in the race to replace Biggs. Lamb, a failed 2024 Senate candidate with a history of affiliating with QAnon figures and white nationalists, benefited from Trump’s endorsement.

AZ-AG (R)

State Senate President Warren Petersen leads attorney Rodney Glassman 56-44 with approximately 65% of the vote counted for the right to take on Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who won four years ago by just 280 votes. There isn’t much contrast between the two GOP candidates, though, as both Petersen and Glassman have spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

AZ-SoS (R)

Republicans nominated state Rep. Alex Kolodin, an election denier who sued to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, in the race to take on Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. While Kolodin will be an easier opponent for Fontes in November than the more sober rival he defeated in the primary, former state GOP chair Gina Swoboda, he’d pose a serious threat to democracy in Arizona should he win.

AZ Corporation Commission (R)

The three-way Republican primary for Arizona’s Corporation Commission, a powerful body that regulates utilities, was uncalled when we put the Digest to bed, but one incumbent was in serious danger of failing to advance to the general election.

Two GOP members of the commission, Nick Myers and Kevin Thompson, are seeking reelection, but they were challenged by far-right state Rep. Ralph Heap, who had argued that the two had failed to support Trump’s pro-coal agenda with sufficient vigor.

With approximately three-quarters of the vote counted, Thompson was in first place with 36.2%, while Heap was in second with 32.3% and Myers in third with 31.5%. The top two vote-getters will appear on the ballot, so Heap could leave Myers in the cold if these results hold.

Regardless of which candidates the GOP nominates, Democrats Jonathon Hill and Clara Pratte are hoping to flip both seats in the fall (they faced no primary opposition). While all five commissioners are Republicans, Democrats are eager for a good showing this year that could set them up to take control of the board in 2028.

Senate

ME-Sen

In addition to former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, who all but locked up the Democratic nomination for Senate at local party meetings last weekend, two other candidates will compete at Saturday’s statewide convention in Bangor: former government official David Costello and pharmaceutical executive Saundra Pelletier.

According to the Maine Morning Star, 478 of the 500 convention delegates who were elected at gatherings in all 16 of the state’s counties on Saturday and Sunday appeared on lists of supporters put out by Jackson’s campaign. Another 101 delegates are members of the state Democratic Party’s governing board, virtually ensuring victory for Jackson.

Nonetheless, Costello and Pelletier submitted the necessary 500 voter signatures to also compete at the convention. Costello took 8% of the vote in last month’s Senate primary while Pelletier does not appear to have run for office before.

NE-Sen

Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen said on Tuesday that he would accept Democrat Cindy Burbank’s paperwork withdrawing from Nebraska’s Senate race, bringing the contest closer to a one-on-one matchup between independent Dan Osborn and Republican Pete Ricketts.

Burbank, who launched her bid with the express intention of dropping out to help Osborn, said she had submitted papers to remove her name from the general election ballot last week. However, Evnen, who previously sought to bar Burbank from running, had indicated he might not allow her to quit.

But in a new statement, he acknowledged that, under state law, “when a candidate has declined a nomination by the deadline, the Secretary of State has no discretion to refuse it.”

One other candidate remains on the ballot, though: former union official Mike Marvin, who won May’s primary for the Legal Marijuana Now Party. Marvin has not said whether he plans to drop out, but other party members have called him a “Dan Osborn plant,” an accusation he denies. If he chooses to leave the race, he has until Aug. 3 to do so.

SC-Sen

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who opted not to run for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat earlier this week, has endorsed fellow Rep. Ralph Norman.

Graham’s sister, appointed Sen. Darline Graham, previously earned the backing of another member of the state’s congressional delegation, Rep. William Timmons, who expressed his support for the new incumbent before she announced a bid for a full term.

The third major Republican running in the Aug. 11 special primary, Rep. Russell Fry, has yet to secure any endorsements from notable figures in South Carolina. Would-be contenders have until Tuesday to file, though the compressed timeline appears to violate a federal law requiring that ballots be mailed to overseas voters at least 45 days in advance of an election.

Governor

KY-Gov

Rocky Adkins, a longtime fixture in Kentucky politics who once served as majority leader in the state House, announced on Tuesday that he would run for governor next year.

Adkins’ decision makes him the second notable Democrat to enter the race to succeed Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is term-limited. He joins Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, who kicked off a bid in April.

The two have faced off before, albeit not directly: In 2019, Beshear and Coleman defeated Adkins and his running mate, former school board member Stephanie Horne, by a 38-32 margin in the Democratic primary. The Beshear-Coleman ticket went on to oust Republican Gov. Matt Bevin and his No. 2, state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, in a stunning 49.2 to 48.8 upset.

Adkins entered Kentucky politics in an era when Democratic victories were routine rather than remarkable. The party had dominated the governor’s mansion and the legislature for decades when Adkins first won a seat in the lower chamber representing eastern Kentucky in 1987.

There, he rose to the rank of majority leader by 2004, but in 2016, as Donald Trump was cruising to victory, Democrats finally lost their majority in the House. He continued on as minority leader before running for governor in 2019 and endorsed Beshear after losing the primary.

Following his former rival’s win that fall, Adkins became a senior advisor to the new governor, a position he occupied until last week. In launching his new campaign, Adkins cited his long experience in an interview with Spectrum News 1 Kentucky.

“I don’t need any special class. I don’t need any special training,” he said. “On day one, I’ll be ready to hit the ground running to be a great governor for the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and I hope they give me the opportunity to do just that.”

Republicans will be eager to win back the governorship next year, though none have launched campaigns yet. Possible contenders include Secretary of State Michael Adams, Rep. James Comer, and Rep. Thomas Massie, whose bid for an eighth term came to an end in May when he was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein.

OH-Gov

Billionaire businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP nominee for Ohio’s open race for governor, is locked in an extremely tight race with Democrat Amy Acton despite massively outspending her in recent weeks.

Acton, a former state health director, spent just $100,000 on advertising together with her supporters from mid-May through the end of June, according to data from AdImpact shared by News 5 Cleveland. During that same time period, by contrast, Ramaswamy and an allied super PAC poured $9 million onto the airwaves.

Yet even with that huge gap, a New York Times/Siena poll fielded in the second half of June found the two candidates tied at 47 apiece. Surveys taken earlier this year have shown a similarly close contest.

Acton appears to be conserving her resources for now. She raised $10.6 million in the first half of the year, according to new disclosures, while Ramaswamy brought in $10.2 million from donors. However, the wealthy Republican also self-funded $25 million, and with an estimated net worth of almost $3 billion, according to Forbes, he could put in much more.

House

FL-07

Republican Rep. Cory Mills is under investigation by the Department of Justice, according to unnamed sources who spoke with MS NOW, though the nature of the probe is not clear.

Since at least 2024, the House Ethics Committee has also been investigating Mills for a wide range of alleged wrongdoing, including allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations.

Mills faces three opponents in next month’s primary, chief among them former TV anchor Ryan Elijah. Three Democrats are also hoping to oust Mills, with former NASA chief of staff Bale Dalton receiving the most attention.

Dalton outraised Mills by a wide margin in the second quarter of the year, taking in more than $500,000 to just $60,000 for the congressman. The Democrat also ended the month of June with far more cash available, $763,000 versus $81,000 for Mills.

IL-04

Illinois’ Board of Elections voted unanimously on Tuesday to remove Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez and political organizer Mayra Macias from the general election ballot in the 4th Congressional District, following recommendations issued last week by investigators.

Those decisions set up a one-on-one race between Democrat Patty Garcia, the chief of staff to retiring Rep. Chuy Garcia, and Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, a Democrat who is running as an independent.

Sigcho-Lopez and Macias had also sought to qualify as unaffiliated candidates after the congressman engineered his retirement to ensure that only his aide (who is not related) would appear on the primary ballot. But officials who examined the signatures they submitted found that both had come up short. (Getty’s submissions went unchallenged.)

Under Illinois law, though, independents face a daunting obstacle compared to major-party candidates. Patty Garcia needed to submit just 697 signatures to run as a Democrat, while the independent hopefuls had to collect 10,816. Both Sigcho-Lopez and Macias came up about 1,000 short apiece, according to the state.

The matter may not be completely resolved, however, as both disqualified candidates have indicated that legal challenges might be forthcoming.

NJ-12

A mystifying effort to thwart a Democratic candidate in a safely blue district may have been led by New Jersey power broker George Norcross rather than Republicans, Politico reports.

In May, a group with ties to the GOP called the Florence Avenue Initiative spent $265,000 to attack labor organizer Sue Altman, who at the time was running for the open 12th Congressional District. But unlike the many other races that Republicans have meddled in this year, there was no apparent upside here, since the district is hopelessly out of reach for the GOP.

In any event, Altman wound up finishing in sixth place with just 8% of the vote. (The ultimate winner was surgeon Adam Hamawy, one of the most progressive candidates in the race.)

The mystery prompted reporter Matt Friedman to ask a spokesperson for Norcross, whose influential political machine appears to have a beef with Altman, whether he was involved in the campaign to sabotage her. That aide, Daniel Fee, would not answer the question directly.

“Sue Altman lost yet another race — she came in 6th! — because not enough members of the media, who are her only real constituency, reside in the 12th Congressional District, not because of anything George Norcross did or did not do,” Fee said.

Friedman dubbed this a “nonanswer” and concluded that “we’d all be better served to not have to read between the lines.”

Apparently, though, we have no other choice. Given Fee’s non-denial, we’ve removed this race from our database tracking elections where one party has meddled in another party’s primary, since this appears to have been a case of one Democrat seeking to undermine another.

Poll Pile

• KS-Sen (D): GBAO for Adam Hamilton:

  • Hamilton: 30, Christy Davis: 13, Noah Taylor: 10, Patrick Schmidt: 5, all others 2% or less

• ME-Sen: University of New Hampshire:

  • Troy Jackson (D): 49, Susan Collins (R-inc): 46

• MN-Sen (D): SurveyUSA for KSTP:

  • Angie Craig: 40, Peggy Flanagan: 40

• MN-Sen (R): SurveyUSA for KSTP:

  • Michele Tafoya: 41, Royce White: 10, Tom Weiler: 7, Adam Schwarze: 5

• FL-Gov (R): Fabrizio Lee for Byron Donalds:

  • Donalds: 53, Jay Collins: 10, James Fishback: 9, Paul Renner: 4

• ME-Gov: UNH:

  • Hannah Pingree (D): 49, Bobby Charles (R): 35, Rick Bennett (I): 6

• MN-Gov (R): SurveyUSA for KSTP:

  • Mike Lindell: 35, Lisa Demuth: 26, Kendall Qualls: 11

• VT-Gov: UNH:

  • Phil Scott (R-inc): 44, Amanda Janoo (D): 33

  • Scott: 43, Aly Richards (D): 35

• VT-Gov (D): UNH:

  • Janoo: 26, Richards: 19

• CA-22: Tulchin Research for House Majority PAC:

  • Randy Villegas (D): 48, David Valadao (R-inc): 44

Leading Off

SC-Sen

Donald Trump’s surprise choice to succeed Lindsey Graham in the Senate—his sister, Darline Graham—announced on Monday that she’d seek a full term, but other South Carolina Republicans are undeterred by her candidacy.

On Saturday, Rep. Ralph Norman became the first elected official to say that he’d run in next month’s special primary to pick a replacement nominee following Lindsey Graham’s death a week earlier. Then, on Monday morning, Rep. Russell Fry followed suit.

It was only after those twin developments that Darline Graham revealed her own plans in an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity. Graham’s decision to run, though, was as unexpected as her brother’s death at the age of 71.

In originally urging Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to tap Graham a week ago, Trump himself said she should “serve as interim Senator.” That prompted media outlets to use similar language, with Politico describing her as an “interim caretaker” whose selection would spark “a wide-open race” to succeed the late senator.

On Friday, though, Trump urged Graham to run for a full six-year term, a move that blindsided many politicians, even McMaster. According to the Associated Press, the governor “never contemplated that [Graham] would run for the seat herself.”

Yet even if they were thrown for a loop, Norman and Fry wasted little time in getting ahead of Graham. The two, though, offer very different profiles.

Norman, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, is coming off a desultory third-place showing in last month’s primary for governor, in which he took just 17% of the vote despite self-funding almost $5.7 million. (The congressman, who made his fortune as a real estate developer, is worth an estimated $57 million, according to Quiver Quantitative.)

Fry, who entered Congress by unseating a Republican incumbent who’d voted to impeach Trump in 2022, doesn’t have the same baggage, but he faces a different issue.

While South Carolina law allows candidates to run for multiple offices simultaneously, if Fry were to win both the race for Senate and his bid for reelection, his House seat would immediately become vacant.

“I respect Russell Fry and I have enjoyed serving with him in the House, but the reality is, his candidacy could leave his seat vacant until May 18th,” Norman wrote on X. “This would leave his constituents unrepresented, jeopardize President Trump’s agenda, and put the House at risk of being led by a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.”

Under a new law passed earlier this year, a special election would actually take place on April 6, but top Republicans nonetheless appear to be concerned about a possible vacancy in the House.

On Friday, the leaders of both chambers of the legislature issued a joint statement saying that the Senate race “has highlighted issues in South Carolina law.”

“Voters deserve a consistent and predictable process that also ensures continuity of representation and the broadest possible choice of candidates in an unforeseen special election,” they wrote. “In the coming weeks, we intend to address these important issues so that we can provide the best process available for our citizens.”

Lawmakers are on hiatus, but the legislature technically remains in a special session that McMaster originally called in May for a failed effort to redraw the state’s congressional map. They could therefore amend state law, either to shorten the election calendar in the event of a vacancy, or to allow Fry to be replaced on the ballot in his House race.

One potential candidate pulled her name from contention, though: Rep. Nancy Mace, who finished fifth in the GOP primary for governor, said on Monday afternoon that she would not run.

Whoever wins the special primary next month will take on physician Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee, in November.

If you appreciate The Downballot’s one-of-a-kind coverage of overlooked elections, we’d be incredibly grateful if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber. It works out to just $5 a month if you subscribe on an annual basis—or just 25 cents for each edition of the newsletter you’re reading right now. Thank you so much!

Upgrade to support The Downballot

The Downballot

How Democrats can make Mississippi competitive

“We have to fall in love with math,” Senate candidate Scott Colom tells us on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast. Colom, a Mississippi district attorney, is vying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked his nomination to the federal judiciary in 2023. Now, as the cost of living and political corruption have skyrocketed, Colom …

Listen now

16 days ago · 2 likes · 5 comments · David Nir and David Beard

Senate

GA-Sen

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reports in a new piece that “a measure of despair is seeping in” among Georgia Republicans over Rep. Mike Collins’ chances of unseating Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the fall.

Collins, Bluestein explains, “trails in early polls, faces a massive fundraising disadvantage and carries the sort of political baggage that his rivals long warned could doom him in November against a rising Democratic star.”

Newly released fundraising reports collected by The Downballot show that Ossoff raised $19.6 million in the second quarter of the year and more than $88 million for his campaign to date. Collins, by contrast, brought in just $2.1 million from April through June—despite running in a contested primary and runoff—and overall has raised less than $6.5 million.

The gap between the two campaigns’ bank accounts is consequently immense: Ossoff has more than $42 million in his coffers while Collins has just $2 million on hand. The senator has also led in every public poll of the race this year.

House

IL-04

Election officials have recommended that a pair of Democrats running as unaffiliated candidates in Illinois’ 4th Congressional District not be allowed on the ballot, potentially setting up a one-on-one matchup between the hand-picked Democratic nominee and a third independent.

Last week, investigators concluded that Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez and political organizer Mayra Macias had failed to submit the requisite 10,816 valid voter signatures necessary to run in the general election as independents. The state’s Board of Elections is set to make a final decision on Tuesday.

Macias and Sigcho-Lopez are both longtime Democrats, but this was the only route left to them after Rep. Chuy Garcia engineered his retirement to ensure that only his chief of staff, Patty Garcia, could run in the Democratic primary for the chance to succeed him.

The maneuvering led to a major outcry among Chicago Democrats, since in the safely blue 4th District, winning the primary is normally tantamount to winning election. However, if Macias and Sigcho-Lopez are both barred from the ballot, that could actually make life much more difficult for Patty Garcia (who is not related to the congressman).

That’s because a third Democrat, Lyons Mayor Chris Getty, is also running, and his signatures were never challenged. In a head-to-head race against Garcia without any other left-leaning independents in the race, Getty would have a stronger chance of consolidating voters upset at the congressman’s attempt to hand off his seat to a top aide.

Getty also outraised the field in the second quarter of the year, taking in $188,000. Garcia, by contrast, brought in just $78,000, though she finished with more cash available, $186,000 to $132,000.

TN-05

A super PAC called the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition is spending almost $700,000 on positive ads to boost former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher as he seeks to oust Rep. Andy Ogles in next month’s GOP primary, reports Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick.

The incumbent, who is seeking a third term representing Tennessee’s conservative 5th District, has been plagued by scandals and poor fundraising, and, as a result, Mutnick says that Republicans “are growing increasingly convinced Ogles could lose.”

Still, he’s getting some help from the political arm of the Freedom Caucus, which has spent a little over $280,000 on his behalf. The congressman also got an assist from Republicans in the state legislature, who not only made his constituency redder when they passed a new gerrymander in May but also moved the homes of all of his top opponents—including Hatcher and Democrat Chaz Molder—into other districts.

Hatcher, though, was undeterred, as was Molder, the mayor of Columbia, as both said they’d continue running in the 5th. Molder continues to dominate the field in fundraising and had more than $1.5 million on hand as of June 30, while Hatcher had a little over $180,000 and Ogles just $67,000.

Obituaries

Tim Murphy

Former Rep. Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican whose resignation following a stunning sex scandal opened the door for an astonishing Democratic upset in a 2018 special election, died on Saturday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 73.

Murphy, who was first elected to the House in the Pittsburgh area in 2002, saw his career collapse in the fall of 2017 after he admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman named Shannon Edwards.

Just a month later, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on an explosive text message Edwards had sent to the married congressman, who had long advocated for harsh restrictions on abortion rights.

“And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options,” Edwards wrote.

Murphy, claiming he “winced” when he saw the statements posted on his official Facebook page, blamed his staff for the messages. The same day the Post-Gazette’s story came out, Murphy voted in favor of a 20-week ban on abortion.

The day after, though, he announced he would not seek reelection, and the day after that, he said he’d resign from office early. That triggered a special election in the 18th District, a carefully gerrymandered constituency in the Pittsburgh suburbs that had voted for Donald Trump by a daunting 58-39 margin.

But with Trump deeply unpopular and Democrats overperforming in special elections across the country, Democrat Conor Lamb engineered a stunning 49.9 to 49.5 victory over Republican Rick Saccone. The win heralded the 40-seat gain Democrats racked up that fall, allowing them to retake control of the House.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

Poll Pile

• FL-Sen: University of North Florida:

  • Ashley Moody (R-inc): 50, Alex Vindman (D): 40; Moody: 50, Angie Nixon (D): 42

• MI-Sen (D): Tulchin Research for Fighting for Michigan:

  • Abdul El-Sayed: 56, Haley Stevens: 40

  • Fighting for Michigan is a super PAC supporting El-Sayed.

• FL-Gov: UNF:

  • Byron Donalds (R): 46, David Jolly (D): 41

• FL-Gov (R): Cygnal:

  • Donalds: 43, James Fishback: 12, Jay Collins: 11, Paul Renner: 2

• FL-24 (D): St. Pete Polls:

  • Oliver Gilbert: 27, Shev Jones: 24, Kendrick Meek Jr.: 10, all others 1% or less

• ME-02: Tulchin Research for Matt Dunlap:

  • Dunlap (D): 49, Paul LePage (R): 48

• MI-10 (D): Hart Research for EMILYs List:

  • Christina Hines: 42, Eric Chung: 19, Tim Greimel: 16

  • EMILYs List has endorsed Hines.

Correction: Our Georgia Senate item misidentified the Republican candidate. He is Mike Collins, not Doug Collins.

After a three-week intermission, the 2026 primary season resumes Tuesday as voters in Arizona pick nominees for key races up and down the ballot.

One major storyline to watch is on the GOP side, as candidates affiliated with the state branch of the Freedom Caucus—the nihilistic bloc that began in Congress and has spread to statehouses across the country—fight for greater influence in the Grand Canyon State.

Democrats are also waiting to see whether the progressive base’s anger with longtime officeholders, which manifested in dramatic fashion last month in both New York and Colorado, endangers a prominent congressman who should otherwise be secure.

Below is our guide to all of the major races to watch. You can find an interactive map of all nine of the state’s congressional districts on Dave’s Redistricting App.

When it’s available, we’ll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each contest, but if we don’t mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.

Polls close at 10 PM ET / 7 PM local time in most of Arizona. But because the Navajo Nation, unlike the rest of the state, observes daylight saving time, voting will conclude one hour earlier there.

Election authorities will need to verify signatures from mail-in ballots—a very popular form of voting in Arizona—so a large portion of votes will likely still need to be counted after Tuesday night. The state has introduced new protocols for this year to speed up the process and allow for more votes to be tabulated on election night, but some close races may still be unresolved at the end of the evening.

Join The Downballot on our private Discord server to discuss the election returns with fellow community members as they come in on what will be an exciting night!

AZ-Gov (R) (52-47 Trump)

Republican Reps. Andy Biggs and David Schweikert are nominally competing for the right to take on Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, but Biggs appeared to have locked up the race long before Schweikert even entered.

Biggs, a prominent member of Congress’ Freedom Caucus and a one-time winner of $10 million in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, entered the contest early last year even though Donald Trump had already backed wealthy businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson.

But his ties to hardliners, as well as their hostility to Robson, led Trump to announce he was also giving the congressman his “complete and total endorsement.”

Schweikert, who has repeatedly won reelection against well-funded Democratic opponents in a competitive district, apparently hoped to take advantage of a MAGA split by launching his own campaign last fall. Biggs, though, always posted huge leads in the polls, and Robson wound up dropping out in February.

Schweikert continues to argue his electoral history shows he’s the strongest candidate to defeat Hobbs in this swing state, but Republican voters don’t seem to be listening. Polls continue to show Biggs far ahead, with an early July survey from the conservative Arizona-based firm NextGen Polling giving him a gigantic 66-10 edge.

AZ-01 (R & D) (51-48 Trump)

Both parties have contested primaries to replace Schweikert in Arizona’s 1st District, a swing seat located in northeastern Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Trump’s pick in the three-way GOP primary is Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who played for the Arizona Cardinals from 2010 to 2013 and is the only Republican who has benefited from significant outside spending. Nonetheless, Feely never managed to sew things up.

Read more

Leading Off

WI-Gov

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley re-entered Wisconsin’s volatile Democratic primary for governor with an endorsement from incumbent Tony Evers on Saturday, a day after Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez announced that she was dropping out after firing her campaign manager for alleged financial mismanagement.

Less than a month ago, Crowley and Rodriguez were two of seven Democrats running to replace Evers, who is not seeking a third term as leader of this perennial swing state. Former state Cabinet official Missy Hughes, however, quit in late June and endorsed Rodriguez, while Crowley did the same thing in early July.

Rodriguez’s own effort, though, had effectively collapsed a week earlier when she said that her now-former campaign manager had led her to believe she had far more money in her coffers than she actually did. The lieutenant governor initially said she would keep running, but her prospects were grim even before she disclosed Thursday she had just $35,000 in cash on hand at the end of June.

Just 10 days ago, though, Crowley had grown deeply pessimistic about his own prospects. In a statement announcing his departure from the contest, he said, “It has become clear that I will not be the Democratic nominee for governor, so today I am stepping out of this race, but I am not stepping away from the work.”

Crowley largely avoided specifics in explaining his return, though Rodriguez’s departure and Evers’ vote of confidence offer him an opening.

The governor’s decision to get involved also represents something of a reversal. Evers had long said he was unlikely to endorse a successor, something he acknowledged in a statement announcing his support for Crowley.

“I have indicated I did not plan to endorse anyone in the race for governor because I know each of the candidates and I wanted them to have the opportunity to make their case to Wisconsinites first, just like I did,” he said.

“I also believe that, in a race this close,” he continued, “Wisconsinites deserve to have the perspective of someone who's done the job, who understands what it takes, and who's had the benefit of spending years quietly watching how others in politics conduct themselves and treat people when they thought no one was paying attention.”

Evers went on to praise Crowley, saying he’s “created thousands of new jobs, cut the county's local carbon emissions in half, and passed a balanced budget, all while delivering the largest property tax cut in the county's history.”

Before he dropped out of the primary, Crowley had been mired in the single digits in limited public polling. Much of the attention and enthusiasm has instead centered on state Rep. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has offered a very different pitch by positioning herself as the most progressive candidate.

Republicans have also taken notice of Hong’s surge. Last week, the Republican Governors Association began spending more than $2 million to meddle in the primary to boost Hong on the theory she’d be the easiest opponent for Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee.

The Democratic field also features former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who came tantalizingly close to defeating Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022. Barnes, though, still faces skeptics within his own party who wonder if he can seal the deal this time—a group that evidently includes Evers, whom he served under for four years.

Two other Democrats round out the field: Joel Brennan, another former Evers Cabinet official, and state Sen. Kelda Roys, who lost the 2018 primary to Evers by a wide margin. Both have received considerably less attention than the rest of the field, but they’re hoping that the upheaval will give them the chance to win over voters who are looking for new options.

Oh man, The Downballot is literally one person away from hitting our next milestone of 3,500 paid subscribers! Yes, our database shows us at 3,499—so, so close. Can you get us over the top? We’d be extremely grateful if you’d consider doing so!

Help us hit 3,500!

The Downballot

How Democrats can make Mississippi competitive

“We have to fall in love with math,” Senate candidate Scott Colom tells us on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast. Colom, a Mississippi district attorney, is vying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked his nomination to the federal judiciary in 2023. Now, as the cost of living and political corruption have skyrocketed, Colom …

Listen now

15 days ago · 2 likes · 5 comments · David Nir and David Beard

Senate

ME-Sen

Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson all but locked up the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Sunday as his supporters won an overwhelming majority of the county-level elections to serve as delegates to the party’s statewide convention on Saturday.

Jackson’s two most prominent rivals, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former state health director Nirav Shah, both ended their campaigns after winning just a handful of delegates apiece. Shah endorsed Jackson in a statement upon leaving the race, while Bellows did not mention him. Brewery owner Dan Kleban and former congressional aide Jordan Wood also dropped out and backed Jackson.

All 16 Maine counties held meetings over the weekend—some virtual and some in-person—to choose 500 of the 601 delegates who will gather in Bangor to officially choose a replacement candidate to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. (The remaining 101 are members of the party’s governing body, known as the Democratic State Committee.)

Jackson ran the table at those meetings and, according to multiple media tallies, emerged with a majority even before the final counties cast votes. He ended the weekend with more than 450 in his corner while his opponents mustered only single-digit support. Though delegates are not legally bound to support Jackson at the convention, there’s little reason to think they won’t.

NE-Sen

Cindy Burbank, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Nebraska, said Friday that she had filed paperwork with election officials to remove herself from the general election ballot.

Burbank had pledged before the primary that she would drop out once independent Dan Osborn qualified for the ballot, a task he fulfilled one day before the Democrat’s departure.

But Burbank could have some difficulty withdrawing from the race. In May, shortly before Nebraska’s primaries, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen suggested that he might not accept such paperwork from Burbank.

“If she submits a withdrawal, then I’m going to ask, ‘Well, what is my obligation with respect to this now? Do I have to accept it?’” Evnen said at a public event. “So I’ve submitted this question to the Attorney General to see what happens.”

The remarks were first reported by the Plains-Sentinel, a publication run by conservative operative John Gage.

According to the Nebraska Examiner, Evnen plans to send a letter to Attorney General Mike Hilgers, a fellow Republican, on Monday.

It’s a complete about-face for Evnen, though, who sought to keep Burbank off the ballot in March, arguing she was not a “good-faith candidate” because she’d declared her intention to quit the race in favor of Osborn. However, the Nebraska Supreme Court unanimously ordered that she be reinstated, finding that Evnen had sought to disqualify her after the appropriate deadline.

SC-Sen

Donald Trump on Friday urged appointed Sen. Darline Graham to run for a full term this fall in a post on Truth Social and pledged his “Complete and Total Endorsement” if she does, but Rep. Ralph Norman nonetheless launched his own bid a day later.

Trump’s call came just four days after South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, to serve what just about everyone assumed would be a short-term stint in the upper chamber. (The new senator has sometimes been referred to by her married name, Graham Nordone, but her official web page calls her just “Darline Graham.”)

Graham has not yet said if she’ll heed Trump’s request, but according to Semafor, she’s considering the idea. The development seems to have surprised even McMaster, who “never contemplated that [Graham] would run for the seat herself” when he selected her, the Associated Press reported.

Norman, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, badly lost his bid to succeed McMaster last month, taking third in the GOP primary with just 17% of the vote. Yet he’s not the only gubernatorial also-ran who might take a shot at the Senate: Rep. Nancy Mace, who finished fifth, is also considering a bid, according to unnamed sources who spoke with Axios.

Another member of the state’s congressional delegation who did not run for governor, Rep. Russell Fry, is also undeterred, saying in a Saturday post on X, “My family and I have a big decision to make soon.”

Republicans have until July 28 to file to run in the special Senate primary that will be held on Aug. 11. Candidates need to win a majority to avoid a runoff on Aug. 25.

Governors

MI-Gov

Former Attorney General Mike Cox announced Friday that he was dropping out of the Republican primary for Michigan’s open governorship after concluding he could not defeat Rep. John James now that the congressman has Donald Trump’s endorsement.

James, who secured Trump’s backing last month, still faces wealthy businessman Perry Johnson on Aug. 4. Cox, though, did not mention Johnson in a social media post pledging his support to James in the general election.

In November, the GOP nominee will likely face Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has posted massive polling leads over Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson ahead of the Democratic primary. The winner will succeed Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who cannot seek a third term.

House

AK-AL

Pastor Matt Schultz, the most prominent Democrat running against Republican Rep. Nick Begich, announced on Friday that he was dropping his bid and instead endorsed commercial fisherman Bill Hill, who is campaigning as an independent.

“I am disappointed by Republican outside groups meddling in this race and by the lack of meaningful support from Democratic institutions,” Schultz said in a statement. “But defeating Nick Begich and restoring a Democratic House majority must come before any one candidate.”

Just days earlier, CNN reporter Patrick Svitek flagged that the NRCC had at some point begun encouraging allies to help boost Schultz over Hill, presumably believing Hill to be the tougher opponent for Begich. It does not appear, however, that any actual spending ensued.

Hill has earned endorsements from a large number of labor unions, as well as several organizations that often aid Democrats, such as the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United. Schultz had received the backing of many prominent Democratic politicians, including former Gov. Tony Knowles, but never won the same kind of institutional support.

Hill also enjoyed an edge in fundraising, taking in almost $1.2 million through the end of June versus a little over $860,000 for Schultz. Hill has also benefited from more than $730,0000 in spending by a super PAC called Wheel Dog PAC. Begich, meanwhile, has brought in $5.3 million for his campaign to win a second term after unseating Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola 51-49 two years ago.

Schultz’s name will remain on the Aug. 18 primary ballot, in which all candidates from all parties will run together. The top four will advance to the November general election, which will be decided via ranked-choice voting if no one wins a majority. While a large number of candidates are running, none have reported raising any money apart from Begich and Hill.

Support our work as a paid subscriber

TN-06

Former Rep. Van Hilleary has debuted a commercial consisting entirely of AI-generated videos portraying state Rep. Johnny Garrett, his main opponent in the Aug. 6 Republican primary for Tennessee’s open and safely red 6th District.

“Crushing the woke left? Not Johnny Garrett!” intones the narrator as the audience sees the candidate being depicted throwing a MAGA cap into the crowd at a gay pride parade.

The AI version of Garrett is later shown smiling alongside Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, standing in front of a whiteboard with the text “Systematic racism is real” and snoring at his desk.

Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin, who flagged the ad on social media, notes that a state law that took effect this month requires that such ads featuring deepfake versions of candidates doing or saying things they didn’t actually do include a written disclaimer throughout the commercial. Van Hilleary’s spot, though, has no such warning anywhere.

The real Garrett might be especially surprised to be portrayed as an ardent supporter of LGBTQ rights. The state representative has aired transphobic ads depicting a male adult actor in drag outplaying a girls’ basketball team.

Hilleary and Garrett are competing in next month’s Republican primary for the constituency in Middle Tennessee that Rep. John Rose is giving up to run for governor. Rose has not taken sides in the contest to replace him even though Hilleary served as his chief of staff for most of his four terms in Congress.

Hilleary, though, is hoping to return to the House after a nearly quarter-century absence. Hilleary, who was first elected to Congress in 1994, left office shortly after losing a tight race for governor to Democrat Phil Bredesen in 2002.

Poll Pile

• GA-Gov: State Navigate:

  • Keisha Lance Bottoms (D): 51, Rick Jackson (R): 44.

• FL-04 (D): The Tyson Group:

  • L.J. Holloway: 41, Michael Kirwan: 11, Brit Robinson: 4, undecided: 43.

• MI-13 (D): Data for Progress for the Justice Democrats (pro-Donavan McKinney):

  • Shri Thanedar (inc): 46, McKinney: 42.

• GA-LG: State Navigate:

  • Josh McLaurin (D): 48, Greg Dolezal (R): 44.

If you enjoy participating in The Downballot’s comment section, we’d be extremely grateful if you’d consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support our work. Thank you so much!

Upgrade to support The Downballot

Quarterly fundraising reports for congressional candidates covering the period from April 1 to June 30 were due at the Federal Election Commission on July 15 by midnight ET.

Below are our charts of fundraising data for every incumbent in the Senate and House seeking reelection, as well as notable non-incumbents, as reported to the FEC. All numbers are in thousands.

To see each chart in full, click on the bottom where it reads “+ Show ___ more.” Note that you may need to scroll horizontally to see some columns. An explanation of each column can be found below the charts.

It takes a lot of work to put together these charts! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support The Downballot’s unique coverage.

Upgrade to support The Downballot

Note that some reporting periods do not perfectly overlap with the quarter due to different reporting deadlines for primaries, conventions, and special elections.

Below is an explanation of each column:

• Under “Party,” a designation including “-inc” refers to an incumbent.

• “2Q Raised“ is the amount the campaign received in donations from donors during the reporting period. This includes transfers from other committees but does not include any self-funding or loans.

• “Self-Fund“ is the amount in contributions and/or loans a candidate made to their own campaign using their personal resources during the reporting period. This number, if any, is not included in the “Raised” column.

• “Spent“ is the amount of money the campaign spent during the reporting period.

• “Cash“ is the total cash on hand the campaign had available at the end of the reporting period.

• “Raised CTD“ is the amount the campaign had received in donations from donors for the cycle to date as of the end of the reporting period. This includes transfers from other committees but does not include any self-funding or loans.

• “Self-Fund CTD“ is the amount in contributions and/or loans a candidate had made to their own campaign using their personal resources for the cycle to date during the reporting period. This number, if any, is not counted in the “Raised CTD” column.

• “Spent CTD“ is the amount of money the campaign had spent for the cycle to date as of the end of the reporting period.

• “Transfer“ is the amount in monetary transfers from other political committees during the reporting period. This number, if any, is included in the “Raised” column.

• “Transfer CTD“ is the amount in monetary transfers from other political committees for the cycle to date as of the end of the reporting period. This number, if any, is included in the “Raised CTD” column.

Ultimately, all money received from all sources is reflected in every candidate’s cash-on-hand totals, less spending.

You can also find our charts for earlier quarters this cycle:

• 2025: 1Q | 2Q | 3Q | 4Q

• 2026: 1Q

For fundraising charts from previous election cycles, please visit the-downballot.com/data.

Leading Off

WI-Gov

Republicans are once again meddling in a Democratic primary in the hopes of elevating a candidate they think will be easier to beat in November, but while they’ve made increasing use of the tactic this cycle, it’s seldom paid off.

The GOP’s newest target is the governor’s race in swingy Wisconsin, where five Democrats are vying for the chance to succeed Democratic incumbent Tony Evers, who opted not to seek a third term.

One candidate, though, has stood out for her left-wing views: state Rep. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who in 2020 won a divided primary for an open seat in Madison with 28% of the vote. She’s since earned reelection twice without opposition, earning attention as an outspoken progressive.

Republicans hope that Hong’s reputation will make it easier for the likely GOP nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, to prevail in the general election. To that end, Right Direction Wisconsin, an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association, is spending more than $2 million to air ads pretending to attack Hong while actually seeking to boost her with Democratic voters, according to AdImpact.

The group’s spot begins with a clip of Hong saying, “We are the campaign that will actually go back to our progressive roots” before a narrator derides her as “liberal Francesca Hong.”

The ad then says Hong “opposes President Trump’s deportation policies, and she wants to abolish ICE,” adding that she “even supports banning Wisconsin law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.”

While the narrator says that these policies “will weaken public safety and make us less safe,” they’re doubtless popular with Wisconsin Democrats: A March poll of the state from Marquette University found ICE with a remarkable 96% disapproval rating among Democrats, while just 1% said they approved of the agency.

Polling of the Democratic primary, however, has been scant, with no recent surveys from outfits with established track records. The success of candidates like Hong in primaries elsewhere, though, gives her a real shot at winning her party’s nomination on Aug. 11, especially given the split field.

That field, however, has shrunk lately, and could grow smaller still. In just the last few weeks, two contenders, former Evers Cabinet member Missy Hughes and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, both dropped out and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez.

But Rodriguez’s own bid is on life support. Over the weekend, she announced that she had fired her longtime campaign manager for alleged financial mismanagement after a $1 million ad buy failed to launch as planned, and even the candidate has struggled to say how much money she actually has.

On Monday, Rodriguez told reporters she had about $200,000 in the bank, but new fundraising disclosures covering the first six months of the year that were due Wednesday showed her with just $35,000.

The next day, though, her campaign filed an amended report saying she had $643,000 available, only to tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jessie Opoien on Thursday evening that the $35,000 figure was correct and that Rodriguez would amend her filings again.

Hong, meanwhile, reported bringing in more than $700,000—the second most of any contender—while having a little over $400,000 left for the stretch run after spending some $430,000. The leader was Rodriguez’s predecessor, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who spent more than $1.1 million after raising about $840,000 during the first half of the year. Barnes had around $200,000 in his coffers.

The two other candidates in the race are Joel Brennan, another former Evers Cabinet official, and state Sen. Kelda Roys. Brennan raised more than $666,000 and spent almost $860,000, and finished June with almost $360,000 on hand. Roys brought in the least with $527,000 and shelled out more than $454,000, but she ended the period with over $400,000 in available cash—far more than Rodriguez.

Despite the massive setback, Rodriguez has nonetheless enjoyed the most air support, according to AdImpact, which says she’s benefited from $1 million in advertising on her behalf.

That’s thanks chiefly to an $820,000 buy by an obscure group called Wisconsin Forward Fund. However, a planned $2 million investment by the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association announced last year never seems to have materialized.

Barnes has also received an infusion of outside help from a different mystery super PAC called Impossible Until It’s Done, which said it was spending $500,000 to boost him. (The name is a reference to a quote attributed to Nelson Mandela, after whom Barnes is named.)

Hong, by contrast, is the only candidate who has yet to purchase ad time, according to the Journal Sentinel. But the RGA’s intervention is set to make her the top presence on the airwaves.

The topic of those ads, though—Hong’s hostility toward ICE—puts her well within the mainstream. A national poll from YouGov released in March, for instance, showed that 50% of Americans support abolishing ICE while just 39% were opposed.

However, Hong has expressed other opinions that are less likely to play well in a perennial swing state—opinions that Republicans would likely elevate if she’s the Democratic nominee.

In May, for instance, she received criticism from fellow Democrats for saying at a campaign event that “my perfect world would be a world without prisons.” She’s also posted on social media in the past that she favors “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.”

When asked by CNN if she still supports police abolition, Hong said in a statement, “While I envision a world where public safety is not synonymous with law enforcement, I recognize that this paradigm shift is a very long term vision and my focus is building systems of care for now and for our future.”

So far, though, the GOP has not had much success in its many attempts to meddle in Democratic primaries this cycle. According to a tally by The Downballot, Republicans have sought to interfere in 14 races that could host competitive general elections, but their preferred Democrats have won their primaries just three times. (One other contest remains ongoing.)

And even then, Democrats have largely been unperturbed. Two Democratic House candidates who were promoted by Republicans, Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd District and Denise Powell in Nebraska’s 2nd, were quickly embraced by the DCCC after their victories. Only Matt Dunlap in Maine’s 2nd has remained frozen out by the committee, but even there, the two sides appear to be engaged in rapprochement.

That stands in contrast to the previous midterms in 2022, when Democrats meddled in 17 GOP primaries and succeeded in eight—and then won all eight contests that November.

That year, only Democrats pursued this strategy, while this cycle, it’s largely been the province of Republicans, but the GOP still has a long way to go before it can show whether the effort has been worth the cost.

The Downballot

How Democrats can make Mississippi competitive

“We have to fall in love with math,” Senate candidate Scott Colom tells us on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast. Colom, a Mississippi district attorney, is vying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked his nomination to the federal judiciary in 2023. Now, as the cost of living and political corruption have skyrocketed, Colom …

Listen now

16 days ago · 2 likes · 5 comments · David Nir and David Beard

David Nir here, publisher of The Downballot! I’m very pleased to let you know that we’re just nine people away from reaching our next milestone: 3,500 paid subscribers! If you value the work we do and are in a position to consider upgrading to a paid subscription, we’d be extremely grateful for your support.

Help us reach 3,500 paid subs!

House

WI-01

Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis, who launched a bid against Republican Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st District at the end of April, announced on Wednesday that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman.

Ballot Measures

WA Ballot

A measure to repeal Washington state’s new millionaire’s tax has qualified for the November ballot after opponents submitted more than 500,000 signatures from voters.

The law, which imposes a tax of 9.9% on household income in excess of $1 million starting in 2028, was passed by Democrats in the legislature and signed in March by Gov. Bob Ferguson, who has vowed to defeat the repeal initiative. Officials estimate the tax would raise $3 billion in revenues per year from 20,000 households, or less than 0.7% of households in the state.

Poll Pile

• MI-Sen (D): Data for Progress for American Priorities (pro-Abdul El-Sayed):

  • El-Sayed: 54, Haley Stevens: 41.

• AZ-05 (R): Remington Research Group for Daniel Keenan:

  • Keenan: 42, Mark Lamb: 40.

  • Unreleased June poll: Lamb 43-35.