Morning Digest: The GOP was targeting this indicted Democrat. Then Trump pardoned him

Despite a touted opponent and a new gerrymander, Henry Cuellar just received a major boon

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas (credit: Henry Cuellar Facebook)

Leading Off

TX-28

Despite receiving a pardon from Donald Trump on Wednesday, Rep. Henry Cuellar filed to run for reelection as a Democrat a short time later.

“Nothing has changed,” Cuellar, who was scheduled to stand trial on federal corruption charges in April, told reporters. “I’m a conservative Democrat, I’m very bipartisan.”

The 11-term congressman, whose wife also received a pardon, added that he would attend a Christmas party at the White House next week to “thank the president personally.”

Trump issued his pardon to Cuellar, who was indicted last year for allegedly accepting bribes to aid the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, just one day after Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina launched his long-anticipated bid to flip Texas’ 28th District.

Tijerina, a former Democrat who switched parties last year, began his campaign by lamenting that voters have been represented by a congressman who “is facing serious federal corruption accusations that have shaken the trust of the people he is supposed to serve.”

Until Trump’s intervention, Republicans had gone all-out to defeat Cuellar. Not only was Tijerina a heavily hyped recruit, but the GOP-led state legislature also passed a new gerrymander this summer that extended Trump’s 2024 margin of victory in the 28th from 53-46 to 55-44. (Joe Biden would have carried both versions of this constituency in 2020.)

Cuellar’s indictment didn’t stop him from defeating an underfunded opponent last year, but the National Republican Congressional Committee hoped that the new lines, as well as a stronger candidate, would finally end his career. The committee predicted last month that voters would eject an incumbent who was “broke, indicted, and completely out of touch with South Texans’ values.”

The GOP’s supreme master, though, had a very different take on the situation involving Cuellar, who has long been one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress.

“Henry, I don’t know you, but you can sleep well tonight — Your nightmare is finally over!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

For House Republicans, though, a new nightmare has just begun.

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Axios when asked about Trump’s pardon. Richard Hudson, the chair of the NRCC, added that the development “certainly makes it tougher” for the GOP to unseat the congressman.

Johnson’s Democratic counterpart, meanwhile, remains in Cuellar’s corner.

“I don’t know why the president decided to do this,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN. “I think the outcome was exactly the right outcome.”

Cuellar didn’t face any serious primary opposition before Trump issued his pardon, but any prospective challengers have only until Monday’s candidate filing deadline to step forward.

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The Downballot Podcast

GOP in disarray after Tennessee special

Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee’s deeply conservative 7th District yielded two things for Republicans: a win, and widespread panic. On The Downballot podcast this week, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard explain why Democrat Aftyn Behn’s 13-point overperformance rightly has the GOP terrified. This was no sleepy, low-turnout affair. Voter participation was at midterm levels, which means that dozens of slightly bluer but still very red Republican seats could be in play next year. Look out!

The Davids also chat with Lou Jacobson, the new senior author of one of the most seminal resources in the world of election nerdery: the Almanac of American Politics. Jacobson tells us how this massive, 2,000-page tome gets updated every two years, and how he’s bringing the Almanac into the digital era by offering updates on a new Substack site—including profiles of every freshly gerrymandered district in the country.

Redistricting Roundup

NJ Redistricting

New Jersey Democrats have shown little interest in pursuing mid-decade redistricting, but that could change once Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill takes office next month.

“I think we have to be open to it, right?” said Alex Ball, who will serve as Sherrill’s chief of staff, at an event hosted by Politico on Tuesday.

“If you look at what the Trump administration is doing, I think we have to take any threat of overreach, of our election system, on their part, seriously,” she continued. “So, I think the governor-elect will look at all options available.”

Revisiting the map would require lawmakers to pass—and voters to approve—a constitutional amendment altering the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission. Democrats could easily place an amendment on the ballot in November (or possibly sooner), but at least one top legislative leader has all but expressed his opposition.

“I don’t see that happening,” state Senate President Nick Scutari told Politico last month. “Not in New Jersey. It requires a constitutional amendment, and we’re not in a position to do that,” he said this week.

Senate

KY-Sen

Former state Rep. Charles Booker announced Wednesday that he would enter the Democratic primary for Kentucky’s open U.S. Senate seat, a move that comes after two previous unsuccessful efforts in this dark-red state.

Booker, who would be the state’s first Black senator, narrowly lost a closely watched 2020 primary to Marine veteran Amy McGrath, who went on to lose the general election in a 58-38 landslide to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Booker easily won the nomination for Kentucky’s other Senate seat in 2022, but he lost to Republican incumbent Rand Paul 62-38.

Booker faces a rematch against McGrath, who announced in October that she’d campaign to succeed the retiring McConnell. A few other Democrats are running in the May 19 primary, though the race has largely been overshadowed by the expensive and nasty GOP contest taking place that same day.

Governors

CT-Gov

Newsmax TV host Betsy McCaughey, who served as lieutenant governor of New York in the 1990s, is considering seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Connecticut.

McCaughey, 77, tells CT Insider’s Dan Haar she “probably will file” an exploratory committee ahead of a possible campaign against Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont. State Sen. Ryan Fazio and former New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart are already competing in the Aug. 11 GOP primary.

MN-Gov

Conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell filed paperwork with Minnesota election officials on Wednesday to raise money for a possible bid against Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, but he told the Minnesota Star Tribune he hasn’t committed to running just yet.

“I am going to announce either way on Dec. 11,” said Lindell, who has flirted with running for office multiple times but has never gone through with it.

House

IL-04

Mayra Macias, a former executive director of the Latino Victory Fund, announced Wednesday that she’d run as an independent for Illinois’ 4th Congressional District. The seat became open last month after Rep. Chuy Garcia engineered his retirement to ensure that only his preferred candidate could run in next year’s Democratic primary.

“I am a Democrat, and I would have run as a Democrat had the process been open and fair,” Macias, who has pledged to caucus with the Democrats, told HuffPost. “[B]ut since it was not, I’m running as an independent to be on the ballot in November because Congressman Chuy Garcia anointed his chief of staff.”

Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez last month also expressed interest in waging his own independent campaign against Patty Garcia, who has no opposition in the Democratic primary, in what’s an otherwise safely blue seat. (The two Garcias are not related.) Sigcho-Lopez filed paperwork with the FEC last week for a possible bid, but he has not announced if he’ll run.

Anyone who wants to run without a party label has until May 26 to turn in 10,816 valid signatures, which is more than 15 times as many as Patty Garcia had to submit.

Texas

Rep. Marc Veasey “will almost certainly run” for Texas’ 30th District if the U.S. Supreme Court allows the GOP’s new gerrymander to go into effect for 2026, Punchbowl News’s Ally Mutnick reports. Fellow Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett represents the current incarnation of the 30th, but Mutnick says that Veasey isn’t going to run against his colleague.

Crockett instead has been flirting with running for the Senate, and while she says she’ll only reveal her plans at a Monday event set for the day of the state’s filing deadline, she recently told MS NOW she was “closer to yes than I am no.”

If Crockett decides to remain in the House, she could instead seek the Dallas-based 33rd District, which includes her home. (Veasey serves the existing district with that number, but Republicans moved his longtime base in Fort Worth’s Tarrant County to the 30th.)

A third Democrat from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Rep. Julie Johnson, said in September she would run in the 33rd after Republicans made her 32nd District all but unwinnable for Democrats.

Poll Pile

• ME-Sen (D): Z to A Research (D) for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (pro-Graham Platner): Graham Platner: 58, Janet Mills: 38.

• TX-Sen (R): Public Policy Polling (D) for Senate Majority PAC: Ken Paxton: 32, John Cornyn (i): 22, Wesley Hunt: 22. One-on-ones: Hunt: 45, Cornyn: 28; Paxton: 44, Cornyn: 34.

• MI-04: Public Policy Polling (D) for Sean McCann: Bill Huizenga (R-inc): 44, Sean McCann (D): 42. The release did not include numbers testing Jessica Swartz, who is also running as a Democrat.

• PA-10: Public Policy Polling (D) for Republicans Against Perry: Janelle Stelson (D): 48, Scott Perry (R-inc): 44. The release did not include numbers testing Justin Douglas, who is also running as a Democrat.