Morning Digest: A Utah Republican's anti-gerrymandering activism comes back to haunt him

Blake Moore once helped pass redistricting reform. Now the far right wants him gone.

Utah Rep. Blake Moore (R) (credit: Blake Moore Facebook)

Leading Off

UT-02

State Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, who recently said she was considering a challenge to Rep. Blake Moore, joined the Republican primary for Utah’s redrawn 2nd District on Tuesday.

In kicking off her campaign, Lisonbee slammed Moore, a top lieutenant of House Speaker Mike Johnson, for his role in helping to pass a 2018 ballot measure known as Proposition 4 that cracked down on partisan gerrymandering.

“By siding with the radical-left, Blake Moore not only put a Republican majority at risk but the entire Trump agenda,” she told the New York Post. “He worked with the Democrat establishment to take power away from the people’s elected representatives and put it in the hands of activist judges.”

Moore was an original co-chair of the group Better Boundaries, which spearheaded Proposition 4, then fought a years-long legal battle so that it would finally take effect after repeated GOP attempts to kill it. That resulted in a state court imposing a new map late last year that created a compact district around Salt Lake City, which Democrats are likely to win.

At the time Better Boundaries was promoting its measure, Moore was a management consultant with little involvement in politics—a background that made his 2020 victory in the Republican primary for the open 1st District a surprise.

But during that campaign, he characterized his work with Better Boundaries as a stepping stone.

“That was a great experience, and I’m continuing on from that,” Moore told the Salt Lake Tribune.

More recently, though, his views of the organization have shifted. Last year, in comments to the Deseret News, he claimed that Better Boundaries had gone beyond its original goals in trying to enforce new congressional districts, arguing that Proposition 4 was meant to be “advisory.”

The measure that appeared on the ballot eight years ago, however, specifically allowed any citizen to ask a court to block maps that violate the redistricting criteria established by Proposition 4, including its prohibition on partisan gerrymandering.

Despite his vulnerability on an issue that has sparked intense furor among Republicans, Moore has one major advantage over Lisonbee: his massive war chest, which stood at $2.2 million at the end of last year.

The congressman will meet his new opponent in the primary on June 23, though they’ll fight an initial bout at the state GOP convention on April 25. That gathering won’t determine the nomination, but it could offer Lisonbee a chance to give Moore a bloody nose. During both of his reelection campaigns, he lost at the convention stage, though he went on to win the primary both times.

---

David Nir here, publisher of The Downballot. I hope that you value our unflagging commitment to keeping you informed about elections that, all too often, go unrecognized and unappreciated. If you do, I also hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our unique work. Thank you.

---

Texas' blockbuster primary night

Election Recaps

New Hampshire Democrat Bobbi Boudman flipped a GOP-held district for the state House on Tuesday night, marking the 10th straight special election pickup for Democrats since the start of Donald Trump’s second term. The Downballot sent a breaking news alert to readers with a complete recap of the race right after it was called.

Democrats win GOP seat in New Hampshire, notching 10th straight special election flip

Meanwhile, the special election to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia’s conservative 14th District will head to a runoff between Democrat Shawn Harris and Republican Clayton Fuller after no candidate won an outright majority.

Harris, a retired Army brigadier general, led the pack with 37% of the vote, while Fuller, the district attorney for the Lookout Mountain circuit, took 35%. Fuller, who had Trump’s endorsement, will be the heavy favorite. However, Republicans combined for just 60% of the vote versus 40% for Democrats, a considerable dropoff from Trump’s 68-31 margin in 2024.

Finally, longtime Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson easily turned aside a primary challenge from a much younger rival in Mississippi’s 2nd District. Thompson defeated attorney Evan Turnage in an 86-13 landslide.

Senate

AL-Sen

Morgan Murphy, a former aide to Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville and a one-time food critic, dropped his bid to succeed his old boss this week and instead endorsed Rep. Barry Moore for the GOP nod.

Acknowledging Donald Trump’s endorsement of Moore in January, Murphy said in a video that Trump “deserves the Senator he wants in Washington, D.C.” Prior to Trump’s intervention, however, multiple polls had shown Moore trailing state Attorney General Steve Marshall, though a recent survey gave Moore a small lead.

If no one secures a majority in the May 19 primary, the top two candidates will advance to a June 16 runoff.

TX-Sen

Despite saying immediately after last week’s Senate primary in Texas that he’d endorse in the runoff “soon,” Donald Trump still hasn’t made a move—and Politico reports that he’s deliberately holding off to pressure Senate Republicans into passing the SAVE America Act.

That bill, which would make it much more difficult to vote in a variety of ways, passed the House last month but stands no chance in the upper chamber thanks to the filibuster. Trump, therefore, has demanded that the Senate do away with the filibuster, something that Majority Leader John Thune has steadfastly opposed.

Trump has been frustrated by the bill’s failure to advance, and according to Politico, he was also “irritated” when media outlets reported that he planned to endorse Sen. John Cornyn over state Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“Trump and others in his orbit hate when stories get out ahead of official announcements,” the publication wrote.

After the news of a possible Cornyn endorsement broke, Paxton posted on social media that he “would consider dropping out of this race if Senate Leadership agrees to lift the filibuster and passes the SAVE America Act.” Cornyn hasn’t gone quite so far in his support for the legislation, saying only that he’d support a “talking filibuster” to help pass it—an idea that Thune has also ruled out.

House

FL-27

Journalist Eliott Rodriguez announced on Tuesday that he would seek to challenge Republican Rep. Maria Salazar, setting up the possibility of a November matchup between two former TV reporters.

Rodriguez’s long television career, however, ended much more recently, with his retirement from CBS News Miami in December. It’s a background he emphasizes heavily in his launch video, which starts with the new candidate saying, “I’m Elliot Rodriguez here with breaking news … about my life.”

Explaining that he’s “now watching the news, not just as a journalist, but as a citizen,” Rodriguez expresses his deep concerns with Washington, D.C.

“The people we send there are focused on political theater and culture wars instead of solutions,” he says. “Concerned that we’re drifting away from the values that built this country. Decency, opportunity, and responsibility. Concerned our rights are being trampled on. Immigrants are being demonized. Cruelty has become policy.”

He emphasizes affordability throughout, and notes that he’s the child of immigrants from Cuba—something he also shares in common with Salazar.

Before the two can tangle, though, Rodriguez first faces a primary with several other Democrats, including businessman Richard Lamondin, attorney Robin Peguero, and Lev Parnas, a former fixer for Rudy Giuliani who reinvented himself as a critic of Donald Trump and joined the race last week.

NY-11

Two new Democratic candidates have joined the race to take on Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis in recent days: former New York Police Department Officer Michael DeCillis and electrician Allison Ziogas.

In her kickoff video, Ziogas describes herself as a “union electrician by choice, and a Staten Islander by love.” She then goes on to castigate politicians for ignoring her home borough.

“I’m running for Congress because the people we send to Washington, Republican and Democrat, simply don’t represent us,” she says. “People talk about Staten Island like we have nothing to offer, like we’re the problem. The politicians in D.C., they’re the problem. They think they’re the center of the universe, but we know that Staten Island is.”

Ziogas’ entry into the contest for the 11th District earned her a profile in the New York Times, which noted that her team includes consultant Morris Katz, who helped propel Zohran Mamdani to victory in the mayor’s race last year.

Ziogas declined to say whether she voted for Mamdani, though, telling the Times, “What I do in that booth is between me and God.” (According to an analysis by researcher Sam Hudis, Mamdani took just 27% of the vote in the 11th, his worst district in the city.)

DeCillis, meanwhile, has run here twice before but dropped out ahead of the primary in both 2018 and 2022. Donald Trump carried the district by an imposing 61-37 margin in 2024, though Democrat Max Rose managed to flip it in 2018 before losing to Malliotakis two years later.

Poll Pile

• IL-Sen (D): Public Policy Polling for the DLGA: Juliana Stratton: 32, Raja Krishnamoorthi: 30, Robin Kelly: 13, undecided: 25 (early March: Stratton: 33, Krishnamoorthi: 30, Kelly: 11).

  • The DLGA has endorsed Stratton.

• FL-23 (D): Center for Strategic Politics for Oliver Larkin: Jared Moskowitz (inc.): 45, Oliver Larkin: 11, undecided: 44.

• IL-09 (D): PPP for Evanston RoundTable: Daniel Biss: 24, Kat Abughazaleh: 20, Laura Fine:14, Mike Simmons: 10, Phil Andrew: 7, Bushra Amiwala: 6, undecided: 17 (late February: Biss 24, Abughazaleh 17, Fine 16, Simmons: 6, Andrew: 5, Amiwala: 4).

• NY-12 (D): Schoen Cooperman for Leading The Future: Jack Schlossberg: 23, George Conway: 13, Alex Bores: 11, Micah Lasher: 6, all others in low single digits, undecided: 36 (early February: Schlossberg 23, Conway: 16, Bores: 9, Lasher: 8).

  • Leading the Future, a network of super PACs funded by the AI industry, has been airing ads attacking Bores.

• NY-12 (D): PPP for Public First Action: Bores: 20, Lasher: 19, Conway: 13, Schlossberg: 18, undecided: 30.

  • Public First Action, which is funded by the AI company Anthropic, has been airing ads in support of Bores through its affiliated super PAC.