Morning Digest: Why Republicans think they can win the race to lead New Jersey
The lineup is now set for what might be the top election of 2025
Leading Off
NJ-Gov
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Republican Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli won their respective primaries on Tuesday and will face off in what may wind up as the most intently watched election of 2025.
Sherrill defeated Newark Mayor Ras Baraka 34-20 in the expensive six-way primary for governor of New Jersey, with Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop just behind in third place with 16%. Ciattarelli, who had Donald Trump's endorsement, beat conservative radio host Bill Spadea 68-22 to win the GOP nod.
The two nominees will now face off in this fall's general election to succeed termed-out Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat whom Ciattarelli came shockingly close to unseating in 2021.
But Ciattarelli, who previously lost the 2017 primary for governor, has reason to be optimistic about winning on his third attempt. While Trump failed to carry the Garden State during any of his three campaigns, his 52-46 loss last year represented a big shift to the right from his 57-41 defeat four years earlier.
Ciattarelli responded to last year's results by running as a Trump acolyte after previously distancing himself from his party's master. While the former legislator celebrated his 2021 primary victory by calling himself an "Abraham Lincoln Republican" who "believes in tolerance, mutual respect and the power and beauty of diversity," he's joined almost every other Republican in abandoning those beliefs.
Ciattarelli instead aired ads during the primary saying that Democrats "care more about pronouns than property taxes." He also pledged to "work with President Trump and end Murphy's sanctuary state on day one."
The one-time "Abraham Lincoln Republican" used his victory speech on Tuesday night to once again pay tribute to the man who now represents the Republican Party. Ciattarelli told his audience, "To our most well known part-time New Jersey resident who honored me with his endorsement and strong support, thank you President Donald J. Trump."
But Sherrill, a retired Navy helicopter pilot who flipped a longtime GOP bastion in 2018, is counting on a backlash against Trump in what's still a Democratic-leaning state.
"If we do our job and win in November in the way we know we can, and bring people out to vote, that is really, I think, a crack in the facade of MAGA," she told voters just ahead of the primary.
Neither party has won more than two consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since 1965, when Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes' reelection gave his party its fourth straight victory. If Sherrill defies this pattern, she'll also be only the second woman to be elected governor. The first was Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who won the first of her two terms in 1993.
The race to be the next inhabitant of Drumthwacket, the governor's delightfully named official residence, may also attract far more interest outside the state than usual.
While New Jersey and Virginia are the only two states that elect their chief executives in the year following presidential elections, the Old Dominion has usually drawn more attention because both parties have generally been more evenly matched. Virginia is also the only state that prohibits its governors from seeking a second consecutive term, so every four years features a new open-seat contest.
However, while neither party is acting like the race to succeed Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is over, the GOP has grown pessimistic about Winsome Earle-Sears' prospects against Democrat Abigail Spanberger. GOP donors, as we detail below in our VA-Gov item, have been reluctant to chip in to keep the Executive Mansion red. (Sadly, not every chief executive's residence can have a name like Drumthwacket.)
Earle-Sears' struggles, though, could incentivize Republicans to direct more money to help Ciattarelli score a victory up north. Democratic donors are likewise sure to want to aid Sherrill in what will be a hotly contested race.
Election Recaps
Special Elections
Democrats turned in another set of strong showings on Tuesday in the largest one-night batch of special elections so far this year, while Republicans appeared to fall just short of flipping a seat in New England.
The most dominant victory came in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Democrat Amanda Clinton, a public relations consultant and a member of the Cherokee Nation, cruised to a 69-point landslide over Republican Beverly Atteberry to defend the 71st House District. Since Kamala Harris carried this constituency by a 19-point margin, Clinton's win represented a remarkable 50-point overperformance—the second-largest this year.
We sent out a special breaking news alert on Tuesday night recapping all six special elections so that readers of The Downballot would be the first to learn about these eye-popping results. Click here to catch up in case you missed it.
Senate
AL-Sen
For a guy who says he doesn't want to run for the Senate again, former Rep. Mo Brooks sure talks a lot about running for the Senate again.
Brooks, who badly lost the 2022 Republican primary for Alabama's other Senate seat, last week told 256 Today he was "considering" running next year to replace GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is campaigning for governor. The former congressman, though, insisted, "If I were to put it in terms of probabilities, it's possible but unlikely."
That's very similar to comments Brooks made back in April, when he told a conservative news site, "It is possible I will run for the Senate, but unlikely." In his more recent remarks, Brooks explained that he wants someone else to run who shares his conservative values— but he did not identify who his ideal candidate might be and added that he would need "months" to decide on his plans.
Navy SEAL veteran Jared Hudson and Attorney General Steve Marshall are currently the only notable Republicans running to replace Tuberville in this dark red state, though several others are considering.
GA-Sen
Republican Rep. Rich McCormick says he remains interested in challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff next year, but the congressman also told the Washington Post in a new interview that he might take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2028 instead.
McCormick said that Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp are trying to decide on a "consensus pick" to face Ossoff, and he indicated it might not be him. This unifying dream candidate "could very well be somebody that you haven't even heard of yet," McCormick added.
Governors
VA-Gov
Democrat Abigail Spanberger holds a massive $14 million to $3 million cash on hand lead against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, according to new campaign finance reports released this week.
Spanberger, a former congresswoman, outraised her rival, who serves as lieutenant governor, $6.5 million to $3.5 million from April 1 to June 5.
Earle-Sears even had less money available than she did two months ago because she spent considerably more than she raised: Earle-Sears spent $4.6 million during this two-month period, compared to $3.2 million for Spanberger. Like Spanberger, she faces no opposition in next week's primary.
Spanberger has enjoyed a wide financial advantage throughout the race—one that Virginia Republicans have kept hoping would prove only temporary.
In January, Earle-Sears' team argued that Spanberger, who launched her campaign for governor almost a year before her opponent, owed her advantage to her long head start.
When the Democrat expanded her lead during the first quarter of the year, the lieutenant governor's campaign emphasized that Earle-Sears was forbidden from raising money during that time period because the legislature was in session—a prohibition that did not extend to Spanberger.
The excuses ran out this spring, though, with the legislature's work long concluded. Yet even though both candidates had the same opportunity to raise cash during the last two months, Spanberger took in almost twice as much money.
It's possible the financial picture could change: Virginia, unlike most states, doesn't place limits on campaign contributions in state races, so major donors and third-party groups are free to contribute as much as they want to their preferred contenders.
Wealthy conservatives, though, may remain reluctant to open their wallets for Earle-Sears as fellow Republicans publicly bash her campaign. Others have also fretted that Donald Trump's massive cuts to the federal workforce have damaged the GOP's hopes of holding the governor's mansion and other posts further down the ballot.
House
AZ-07
Progressive organizer Deja Foxx launched her first ad this week ahead of the July 15 special Democratic primary in Arizona's reliably blue 7th District, where she faces an uphill fight against two better-known foes.
"At 16, I was homeless," she tells the audience, "working nights, relying on Planned Parenthood." After touting her work fighting for healthcare, Foxx continues, "Now, Trump is back, and our party is letting us down."
While Foxx does not mention either former Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, who is the daughter of the late Rep. Raul Grijalva, or former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, she still draws a contrast with her opponents when she says, "I don't have a legacy last name or big donors."
Foxx is headed on the air about three weeks after Hernandez debuted his first commercial, while Grijalva does not appear to have gone on TV yet.
CO-03
Hope Scheppelman, a former official with the Colorado GOP, announced Tuesday that she would oppose freshman Rep. Jeff Hurd in next year's Republican primary for the 3rd District, and she wasted no time positioning herself as a far-right alternative to the incumbent.
Scheppelman launched her campaign by tying Hurd to the Koch network's Americans for Prosperity, which became toxic in MAGAworld last cycle when it backed Nikki Haley's unsuccessful campaign against Donald Trump.
"Jeff Hurd and his fake conservative puppet masters at 'Americans for Chinese Prosperity', the so-called AFP, tricked and lied to CD3 voters last year," she charged in a statement, "but they can't deceive us any longer now that he's exposed himself as just another liberal elitist who is dead set against President Trump and the millions of MAGA citizens like me who demand that Congress does the will of voters."
This conservative-tilting constituency in western Colorado is no stranger to momentous primary battles—including one just a few years ago, when Lauren Boebert rose to national prominence by knocking off Rep. Scott Tipton in a stunning upset.
Hurd sought to pull off the same maneuver in 2024 when he challenged Boebert, whose antics had made her politically toxic at home. That matchup never took place, though, as Boebert stunned everyone months later by launching a campaign for the considerably redder 4th District on the other side of the state.
Hurd immediately became the frontrunner, but Scheppelman, who was the party's vice chair at the time, remained determined to stop him. To thwart Hurd, the party's leadership, including then-chair Dave Williams, endorsed former state Rep. Ron Hanks, an election denier whom national Republicans feared would cost them their hold on the 3rd District.
Democrats agreed that Hanks was politically poisonous, so much so that they waged a well-funded effort to get Republicans to nominate him. Hurd, though, prevailed 41-28 on the same night that Williams badly lost his primary in the neighboring 5th District. (Boebert, though, won the GOP nod in the 4th, as well as the general election.)
Hurd went on to beat Democrat Adam Frisch 51-46 as Trump, according to calculations by The Downballot, carried the 3rd District by a considerably larger 54-44 spread. Scheppelman, who remained allied with Williams during an ugly intraparty feud for control of the state GOP, lost her post in March, while Williams opted not to run for a second two-year term following a tumultuous tenure.
The 3rd District has been in GOP hands since Tipton flipped it during the 2010 red wave, but Democrats are hoping that another nasty Republican primary could give them an opening. At least one notable Democrat is already trying to capitalize: Private equity investor Alex Kelloff, who also founded a local ski equipment company, launched a bid at the end of April.
MO-02
Former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, who retired two years ago after racking up 200 career wins, was tested as a prospective Democratic opponent against Republican Rep. Ann Wagner in a recent poll, Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin reports. Rubashkin, however, believes such a showdown remains unlikely.
The survey, from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, was part of an apparent attempt to recruit Wainwright, who spent all 18 of his major league seasons with the Cards, but Rubashkin writes that "Democratic sources don't believe he will ultimately run."
Wainwright, whose Instagram biography identifies him as an "outdoor lovin, Country Music singin, fantasy football dominatin, STL pitchin, Georgia boy," has not said anything publicly about running for Missouri's 2nd District. (Busch Stadium, where the Cardinals play, is located in the neighboring 1st District.)
Rubashkin adds that the same PPP poll also asked about billionaire construction businessman Bob Clark as a possible Democratic candidate. There's likewise no word, however, if Clark is interested in taking on Wagner. No one has released the results of Wagner's hypothetical matchups with either Wainwright or Clark, though PPP shared that she trails a generic Democrat 47-46.
In 2022, Republicans gerrymandered the 2nd District, a suburban St. Louis constituency that had been drifting to the left, by including more conservative rural voters that Wagner had reportedly denigrated as "wacko birds." The new boundaries have worked out fine for the seven-term congresswoman so far, but she has reason to remain vigilant in both the primary and general elections.
Wagner won renomination last year 65-35 against an underfunded opponent—a showing that was neither close but also not impressive for a longtime incumbent. Wagner, one of the best fundraisers in the GOP caucus, went on to score a 54-42 victory against Democrat Ray Hartmann, a longtime St. Louis-area journalist who also struggled to raise money.
Democrats, however, hope that a better-funded opponent could give Wagner trouble in a blue wave. Trump carried her constituency 53-45 four years after he prevailed here by an identical margin, even as Missouri shifted three points to the right overall.
Wagner was the subject of retirement rumors in both 2019 and last year, but she doesn't sound inclined to go anywhere voluntarily. Her team told St. Louis Public Radio in March that she was running again, and she's given no indication she's reconsidering her plans.
NY-17
Army veteran Neal Zuckerman said Tuesday that he will not enter the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in New York's 17th District. Seven notable candidates are currently competing to face Lawler, who continues to deliberate between running for governor or seeking reelection to his swing seat.
TN-05
Mike Cortese, a member of Nashville's governing body known as the Metropolitan Council, isn't dismissing talk he could challenge scandal-ridden Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, though he isn't saying what party label he'd run under.
"I would support a candidate that will reckon with the failures of their own party," he told the Nashville Banner after reporter Stephen Elliott inquired about his interest. Cortese campaigned as a self-described "independent" in 2023 when he won his current post in an officially nonpartisan election.
Democratic state Rep. Bob Freeman, meanwhile, told Elliott he wasn't ruling out taking on Ogles, though he said he was leaning against it. Freeman, however, argued that Ogles is beatable, saying, "He is wildly unpopular. He is not trusted."
But Ogles, who flipped Tennessee's 5th District in 2022 after Republican map-makers divided the Democratic bastion of Nashville, has the trust of perhaps the one person who matters.
While the congressman spent his first term at the center of a series of scandals, including revelations that he appeared to have fabricated much of his life story, Donald Trump endorsed him for renomination. Ogles went on to turn back a well-funded primary challenge from Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston by a 57-43 margin.
Days later, the public learned that Ogles was under FBI investigation over alleged campaign finance violations, but that didn't stop him from winning reelection 57-39 as Trump was carrying the 5th District by a similar 58-40 spread. The House Ethics Committee revealed in January that it was also investigating Ogles for alleged campaign finance violations.
However, the federal probe against him took a hit a few weeks later when the Nashville-based prosecutors withdrew from the case, which left the case in the hands of a prosecutor in the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Department of Justice. There was immediate speculation that Trump's subordinates would drop the probe against him, though there have been no public developments in the ensuing months.
TX Redistricting
Donald Trump is urging Texas Republicans to further gerrymander their congressional map in the hope of flipping Democratic-held seats next year, reports the New York Times, but at least some worry that revamping the lines could result in a proverbial dummymander that winds up helping Democrats by making GOP districts more vulnerable.
In addition to political will, there's also a question of timing. The Texas legislature only meets every other year, and its regular session for 2025 already concluded earlier this month. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would therefore have to call a special session, but he declined to respond to a request for comment.
Texas also has one of the earliest primaries in the nation, with its election scheduled for March 3 and the candidate filing deadline on Dec. 8. That gives Republicans just six months to act, and litigation would be likely. (In fact, a trial is underway right now in a case challenging the state's current map.)
VA-11
Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw is the first Democrat to start airing TV ads ahead of the June 28 "firehouse primary," where voters will select the party's nominee for the Sept. 9 special election for Virginia's 11th District.
"I was with my family when I found out: Trump's people were threatening me with prison for standing up to them," Walkinshaw tells the audience. "They're counting on us to back down, but I've beaten them before."
The episode the candidate refers to occurred in early January, when, as NBC4 reported at the time, a group run by Trump advisor Stephen Miller threatened more than 250 elected officials across the country with legal action if they stood in the way of the incoming administration's anti-immigration crackdown.
An immigration advocacy group told the station in response, "These are just threatening letters to confuse people, to make it seem a larger contingent of Americans want this, but the reality is that it's just a scare tactic."
Walkinshaw's spot goes on to highlight his time as chief of staff to the late Rep. Gerry Connolly, who died last month. The ad also reminds viewers that Connolly, who had planned to retire from office, endorsed Walkinshaw before he died.
Mayors & County Leaders
New York, NY Mayor
With just two weeks to go before New York's mayoral primary, dueling polls disagree on just how closely Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani trails the frontrunner, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for the Democratic nomination.
Cuomo, who picked up an endorsement from former Mayor Mike Bloomberg on Tuesday, would beat Mamdani by a 56-44 margin in a hypothetical eighth round of voting, according to an internal poll from his campaign conducted by Expedition Strategies.
But a survey from Data for Progress on behalf of pro-Mamdani groups finds Cuomo winning by a much narrower 51-49 spread, also in the eighth round. That poll was in the field from May 30 to June 4, while the Cuomo internal sampled voters between June 3 and June 7.
Q poll Trump at 38-54 and underwater on everything https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924
Barring something unforeseen, I expect Sherrill to win. If for no other reason than Trump.