Morning Digest: An unexpected move shows Democrats are targeting an unexpected district

New ad reservations point to a contested House race in central Ohio

Rep. Mike Carey (center), Republican of Ohio. (Credit: Mike Carey campaign site)

Leading Off

OH-15

An unexpected ad booking from one of the most influential Democratic super PACs shows the party is serious about flipping a solidly Republican House district in central Ohio that, until now, had received little outside attention.

Late last week, the House Majority PAC announced its first wave of fall ad reservations, a massive outlay totaling more than $191 million in TV time and another $80 million for digital advertising.

Our new tracker explains which districts are the likely targets for each reservation, but one in particular stands out: a $1.8 million booking in Columbus, Ohio. That media market includes all or part of half a dozen different constituencies, but just one is plausibly in play this year: the 15th District, to the city’s southwest.

Two Democrats are competing in next week’s primary for the right to take on Republican Rep. Mike Carey, a Republican who first won his seat in a 2021 special election. The more familiar name belongs to former state Rep. Adam Miller, who was Carey’s opponent two years ago. The other candidate is Don Leonard, an Ohio State University professor who is seeking office for the first time.

Miller convincingly outraised Leonard through mid-April. Both Democrats, however, have considerably less money available than Carey, who does not have any primary opposition next Tuesday.

This district’s recent history underscores why HMP’s planned investment comes as a surprise, though in a statement to The Downballot, the PAC confirmed it has Carey in its sights.

“This year, HMP plans to go deeper into the map than ever before and compete everywhere,” communications director CJ Warnke said. “Mike Carey is beholden to special interests, voting to raise prices on his constituents and cutting their health care — and in November, Democrats are flipping OH-15 blue.”

While the 15th was one of the nation’s most competitive congressional districts during the first decade of the 21st century, that changed shortly after the 2010 GOP wave propelled Steve Stivers to a double-digit victory against Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, the Democrat who had narrowly defeated Stivers two years before.

Republicans had full control over the redistricting process that unfolded the following year, and they used their power to make Stivers’ new seat reliably red. Mapmakers even appended a bizarre “peninsula” into downtown Columbus, apparently so that the congressman could represent several influential banks in the city.

As a result, Stivers had no trouble winning reelection through the rest of the decade. While his decision to resign in 2021 to lead the state Chamber of Commerce came as a shock, there was little question that a fellow Republican would replace him. That Republican was Carey, a former coal company lobbyist who won the ensuing special election 58-42.

The GOP approved a new map in 2022 that made the 15th District somewhat less conservative to boost other constituencies, but it was still more than red enough for Carey to secure another two terms with ease. The congressman won his most recent term in 2024 by defeating Miller 56-44 as Donald Trump was carrying his district by a 54-45 spread.

The state was soon required to redraw its congressional boundaries again because of convoluted rules voters approved in 2018. Faced with even less appealing alternatives, the Democratic minority on Ohio’s bipartisan redistricting commission agreed to a new GOP gerrymander last fall that slightly widened Trump’s margin of victory to 55-45.

Carey initially seemed to be secure as ever following the remap, but a worsening political environment for Republicans has HMP taking a serious interest in a seat that well-funded Democratic groups haven’t seriously contested in 16 years.

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Redistricting Roundup

FL Redistricting

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis released a new congressional map on Monday morning that would target four Democratic-held seats, a day before lawmakers were set to convene for a special session on redistricting that DeSantis called earlier this year.

Legislative leaders said they would address the map in committee on Tuesday, with Speaker Daniel Perez adding that he expects a vote before the full House the following day.

The proposal features 24 districts that Donald Trump would have carried in 2024, versus just four that would have gone for Kamala Harris, a major shift from the 20-8 Trump advantage under the current, already-gerrymandered lines.

Four Democratic incumbents would see their districts become significantly redder: Darren Soto in the Orlando-area 9th; Kathy Castor in the 14th around Tampa; Jared Moskowitz in the Fort Lauderdale-based 23rd (which would be renumbered as the 22nd); and Debbie Wasserman in the suburban Miami 25th District.

However, any pickups for the GOP would require Republicans to hold on to most of their gains from the 2024 elections. But multiple special elections in Florida since Trump returned to the White House, as well as last fall’s race for mayor in Miami, have shown the exact opposite happening.

As a consequence, should this map pass, several districts designed to favor Republicans could instead be winnable for Democrats if the trends we’ve seen throughout this cycle continue into the fall.

MS Redistricting

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has called a special session of the legislature to address the state’s Supreme Court map, setting the date for three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in Louisiana v. Callais—a case that could spell the end of the Voting Rights Act.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock ruled that the map used to elect Supreme Court justices in Mississippi violated the VRA by discriminating against Black voters and ordered the legislature to draw a new one. However, lawmakers wrapped up their session earlier this month without taking action, prompting plaintiffs to file remedial proposals with the court.

Republicans responded by asking the court to halt further proceedings pending the Callais decision. Aycock has yet to weigh in on the request.

TX Redistricting

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday overturned a ruling from a district court that had determined Texas’ new congressional map was an illegal racial gerrymander, dispensing of the case without a written opinion.

Monday’s decision won’t impact the 2026 elections, because the Supreme Court had previously blocked the lower court decision from taking effect in December.

In a 160-page opinion issued the previous month, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown—an appointee of Donald Trump—had concluded it was likely that Texas Republicans improperly sorted voters between districts based on their race in violation of the Constitution. He therefore issued an injunction barring the map from being used.

However, a majority of justices stayed that injunction in a terse order because, in their estimation, the three-judge panel on which Brown sat had “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.” On Monday, they wrote even less—just a single sentence referring back to that previous decision.

All three liberal justices dissented, as they did in December, when Elena Kagan excoriated her conservative colleagues for running roughshod over the extensive work of the district court, which included “a nine-day hearing, involving the testimony of nearly two dozen witnesses and the introduction of thousands of exhibits.”

As the Brennan Center’s Michael Li notes, though, Texas’ map is still the subject of a long-running legal challenge on other grounds.

Senate

ME-Sen

Allies of Republican Sen. Susan Collins are spending almost $2 million on new ads attacking oyster farmer Graham Platner, even though there’s still well over a month to go before the June 9 Democratic Senate primary.

The opening spot from Pine Tree Results PAC begins by reminding the audience about Platner’s old social media posts, including comments characterizing rural Americans as racist and suggesting that women who fear getting raped should “not get so fucked up” drinking alcohol. The narrator continues by saying that Platner “even bragged about a Nazi tattoo on his chest.”

The GOP’s offensive comes more than a month after Gov. Janet Mills, Platner’s main intraparty rival, launched a $1 million ad campaign focused on her rival’s misogynistic posts. Platner quickly responded with his own spot in which he called these “words and statements I abhor from a time in my life when I was struggling deeply after returning from war.”

Polls conducted since that exchange have continued to find Platner far ahead of Mills in the primary and performing better in a general election against Collins. Mills, for her part, stopped running TV ads in mid-April and has yet to return to the airwaves.

MN-Sen

A state judge has barred former NBA player Royce White from contacting his ex-wife and son, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

Judge Kristen Marttila determined in February that White’s ex-wife “credibly testified” that he had “committed domestic abuse against [her] on numerous, unspecified past occasions by slapping, grabbing or pulling the hair.” The judge made a similar determination about testimony alleging that White had physically abused his son.

White, who has maintained his innocence and is appealing the ruling, is seeking the Republican nomination for Minnesota’s open Senate seat two years after he badly lost his campaign for the state’s other seat. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is supporting former sportscaster Michele Tafoya in the August primary.

WY-Sen

Rancher Sam Mead, the nephew of former Gov. Matt Mead, announced late last week that he would seek the Republican nomination for Wyoming’s open Senate seat.

Mead will be the underdog against Rep. Harriet Hageman, who has the support of Donald Trump, retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis, and other conservative notables, in the August primary. Mead, though, argued that Hageman’s support for the sale of public lands makes her an unacceptable pick to replace Lummis.

“I think that’s incompatible with a lot of the values that I believe are central to people in Wyoming,” he told WyoFile. Mead added of Hageman, “[W]hen confronted about it, there didn’t seem to be a lot of listening going on. It was kind of ‘dig your heels in and say that’s the way things are.’”

Governors

CA-Gov

Billionaire Tom Steyer is airing ads attacking former U.S. cabinet member ​​Xavier Becerra for the first time, a move that comes as polls show Becerra dramatically picking up support ahead of the June top-two primary for California governor.

“[O]n ​​Xavier Becerra’s watch, more than 85,000 migrant children went missing,” Steyer’s narrator says of Becerra, a fellow Democrat who served as Joe Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. “Some were trafficked, some were abused, some were forced into labor and lost limbs.”

The spot cites a 2023 New York Times report detailing how Becerra’s department, which sought to take unaccompanied migrant children out of overcrowded facilities by placing them with sponsors, had lost contact with about a third of these children. Caseworkers who spoke to the paper also said that they would “rush through vetting sponsors.”

Becerra has defended his tenure at HHS by saying that he and subordinates did their best with inadequate funding from Congress to contain a chaotic situation they’d inherited from Donald Trump’s first administration.

“They had closed facilities, they had fired the licensed caregivers,” Becerra recently told the Los Angeles Times. “How do you take care of thousands of kids in a center that could house maybe 50 kids?”

Until this month, Becerra’s many rivals hadn’t seen much reason to focus on his record in Biden’s Cabinet. While Becerra had been one of the state’s most prominent politicians during his previous tenure as state attorney general, polls showed him with little support in the packed race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But things started to quickly change just over two weeks ago after Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been one of the Democratic frontrunners, dropped out after multiple women accused him of sexual assault. (Swalwell soon resigned from Congress.)

Recent polls show Becerra joining Steyer and former Rep. Katie Porter in polling ahead of the rest of the Democratic pack. A pair of Republicans are also still in the hunt for a spot in the general election: former Fox host Steve Hilton, who received Trump’s endorsement earlier this month, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

The three Democrats are closely bunched together, even though Steyer’s spending has utterly dwarfed everyone else’s.

AdImpact reported last week that Steyer has spent or reserved close to $130 million in ads, an amount that represents more than two-thirds of the total outlays in this contest. Becerra, by contrast, had booked just under $4 million, while Porter was even further back.

FL-Gov

State Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson finally announced Monday that he would seek reelection rather than run for Florida’s open governorship.

While Simpson had once appeared to be a likely candidate to replace termed-out incumbent Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican, everything changed last February when Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds. Simpson avoided ruling out a bid for the state’s top office over the ensuing year, but he never took any obvious steps to prepare a campaign.

MA-Gov

Former state cabinet official Mike Kennealy’s campaign for Massachusetts governor came to an end on Saturday after he failed to earn enough support at the state Republican convention to earn a spot on the September primary ballot.

Wealthy businessman Michael Minogue dominated the gathering, taking over 70% of the delegates’ vote and earning the GOP’s endorsement. Venture capitalist Brian Shortsleeve was a distant second with 15.5%, which was just over the 15% he needed to keep his campaign going. Kennealy, though, came up short with only 14.1%.

The eventual GOP nominee will be the underdog against Gov. Maura Healey in this Democratic-friendly state.

WI-Gov

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson says he still hasn’t ruled out trying to reclaim the job he gave up more than two decades ago.

“I know I could win, but I don’t know if I want to get involved,” Thompson, who led Wisconsin from 1987 to 2001 before resigning to become George W. Bush’s secretary of Health and Human Services, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Thompson, 84, also insisted that his age wouldn’t preclude him from running.

Thompson would face Rep. Tom Tiffany, who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, in the August Republican primary. The state’s filing deadline is June 1.

House

FL-20

Despite resigning from Congress last week and facing a February trial on federal corruption charges, former Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick says she’s still running to represent Florida’s now-vacant 20th District, NOTUS reports.

Apart from her serious legal travails—prosecutors have accused Cherfilus-McCormick of using stolen taxpayer funds to finance her victorious special election campaign in 2021—the ex-congresswoman also faces several opponents in the Aug. 18 primary.

The roster includes former Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness, rapper Luther Campbell, and physician Rudy Moise.

GA-13

Protect Progress, a super PAC backed by the cryptocurrency industry, has spent $2 million boosting state Rep. Jasmine Clark in next month’s Democratic primary for Georgia’s 13th District, which became vacant last week following the death of longtime Rep. David Scott.

The PAC’s latest outlay, which was just shy of $1 million, was flagged on Monday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but the group began spending more than two weeks ago—before Scott’s death. Scott, who had been the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, opposed a Republican bill in 2023 that would have loosened regulations on cryptocurrencies.

Clark faces several rivals in the May 19 primary for the safely blue 13th District in the Atlanta area, though none have benefited from any outside spending. A special election for the remainder of Scott’s term has not yet been called.

NJ-12

Physician Adam Hamawy, one of several candidates running in the busy June primary for New Jersey’s open 12th District, is the new beneficiary of a $600,000 ad buy from American Priorities, a super PAC formed earlier this year to counter AIPAC’s involvement in Democratic primaries.

The group’s opening ad praises Hamawy as someone who “treated first responders on 9/11, saved lives in Iraq, [and] healed children in Gaza and Haiti.” The ad does not otherwise directly mention Israel or related topics, though it shows footage of Hamawy in front of signs reading “Healthcare Not Bombs.”

American Priorities, which tells the New Jersey Globe it plans to spend “approximately $2 million” to aid Hamawy in the race to replace retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, is the first major third-party group to begin spending here.

UT-01, UT-02, UT-03

Two Republicans in Utah’s congressional delegation fared poorly at their party’s convention over the weekend, but both will face off against their far-right challengers once again in the June 23 primary.

Democrats, meanwhile, settled on their field of candidates for the new-look 1st District around Salt Lake City, which became solidly blue after a state court ruled that the previous map violated anti-gerrymandering laws and imposed a new plan instead.

That race will feature four contenders, including Liban Mohamed, a former government relations advisor for TikTok who finished first at the Democrats’ convention on Saturday with 51% of the vote. Just behind was former Rep. Ben McAdams, who took 49% in the fifth and final round of voting.

They’ll be joined by state Sen. Nate Blouin and attorney Michael Farrell, who were eliminated in earlier rounds. However, all four hopefuls had already gathered signatures to make the primary ballot, so their performance at the convention served only as a barometer of their support among the roughly 700 convention-goers.

For two low-performing candidates who did not submit signatures, though, it was the end of the line: software engineer Luis Villareal and Salt Lake City Councilmember Eva Lopez Chavez. Both fell far short of the 40% threshold needed to advance to the primary without signatures.

Republicans also met on Saturday and delivered a blow to Rep. Blake Moore, who’s seeking reelection in the conservative 2nd District. Moore’s chief rival, state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, prevailed among delegates by a wide 62-34 margin. Moore, however, had already collected signatures, though Lisonbee relied solely on winning at the convention.

In the deep-red 3rd District, meanwhile, Rep. Celeste Maloy edged out former state Rep. Phil Lyman just 51-49, ensuring Lyman a spot on the primary ballot as well. (Lyman said he would also gather signatures but acknowledged Saturday he had not obtained enough.)

For Moore, the poor showing was nothing new: He turned in weak performances at the last two GOP conventions but prevailed handily in the primary both times. Maloy, however, has struggled both at party gatherings and in primaries. In 2024, she defeated challenger Colby Jenkins by just 176 votes after a recount.

VA-06

Democratic Del. Sam Rasoul, who had been considering a bid for Virginia’s revamped 6th District, has announced that he won’t join the race.

Two other well-funded Democrats, journalist Beth Macy and former Rep. Tom Perriello, are still vying for the new 6th, which moved dramatically to the left under the new map voters greenlighted last week. Republican Rep. Ben Cline, meanwhile, has yet to say where—or whether—he plans to seek reelection.

And there’s still some question as to whether the map will take effect. On Monday, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit that contends lawmakers failed to follow proper procedures when they placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot allowing the state to redraw its congressional districts.

WI-01

Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis announced over the weekend that he would seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st District.

The Democrats who were already running to flip this southeastern Wisconsin constituency have struggled to raise money, but Burgelis may have reason to be hopeful that national donors will respond more favorably to him.

WisPolitics’ JR Ross, who first broke the news of Burgelis’ interest, said earlier this month that the alderman’s backers “believe he would bring real money into the race as a gay candidate who could appeal to LGBTQ+ donors nationally, as well as groups who want to take a run at Steil.”

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination could also get some much-needed outside help this fall. Last week, the House Majority PAC announced it was reserving a little more than $2 million in fall TV time in Milwaukee, a booking that’s likely intended for this district.

The state GOP responded to Burgelis’ entry by attacking him as “an out-of-district Milwaukee politician.” The entire city of Milwaukee is located in Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore’s 4th District, though Burgelis insists voters wouldn’t be bothered by his lack of ties to the 1st District. (Members of Congress do not need to live in the district they represent, but most do.)

Republicans also noted that Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s chief of staff reprimanded Burgelis in 2023 for allegedly being “verbally abusive” to female staff members. Burgelis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the following year that he’d addressed the issue with Crowley’s office.

Donald Trump carried the 1st District by a 52-47 margin in 2024, while Steil won a fourth term by a wider 54-44 spread.

Legislatures

UT State House

Former U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop will return to the Utah House after Republican delegates picked him to fill a vacant seat at Saturday’s party convention. Bishop, 74, is also unopposed in the primary for a full term in the fall.

Bishop served as the chamber’s speaker in the early 1990s, about a decade before he was elected to Congress in 2002. The congressman decided not to run again in 2020, though he signed on as former state GOP chair Thomas Wright’s running mate in that year’s race for governor. Their ticket ended up taking last place in the four-way primary with less than 8% of the vote.

Mayors & County Leaders

St. Petersburg, FL Mayor

Former Rep. Charlie Crist on Monday launched his long-awaited campaign to challenge St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, a fellow Democrat, in the August nonpartisan primary.

Crist, who served as governor of Florida as both a Republican and an independent before winning election to Congress as a Democrat in 2016, told the Tampa Bay Times that Welch has displayed “a lack of executive leadership.”

Crist specifically cited the mayor’s conflict with the Tampa Bay Rays, the Major League Baseball team whose leadership is trying to relocate to Tampa rather than remain in St. Petersburg. He further charged that Welch hasn’t done enough to make the city more affordable.

Crist, though, is just one of several candidates running against Welch. The busy field also includes Democrat Brandi Gabbard, a member of the City Council, and Republican Jim Large, a former city fire chief. But Crist, whose allies have spent months raising money in anticipation of supporting him, begins the race with name recognition and resources that none of his rivals can match.

Welch’s team, however, has argued that Crist, who moved to Minnesota after his landslide 2022 loss against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis before returning to St. Petersburg last year, is the wrong person to call for change.

“Charlie Crist jumping into another race is about as predictable as it gets, the same hamster wheel, just a different election cycle,” his campaign said in a statement. “Now he’s trying to come back to a city he’s left behind.”

All candidates will face off on a single ballot on Aug. 18, which is the same day that Florida holds its party primaries. If no one wins a majority, the top two vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 3 general election.

Poll Pile

• NM-Sen (D): Research & Polling for the Albuquerque Journal:

  • Ben Ray Lujan (inc): 69, Matt Dodson: 9.

• KY-Gov (R): Axis Research:

  • James Comer: 46, Michael Adams: 14.

  • Neither Comer nor Adams has announced if they’ll run next year.

• NM-Gov (D): Research & Polling:

  • Deb Haaland: 52, Sam Bregman: 30.

• SC-Gov (R): Starboard Communications:

  • Alan Wilson: 20, Ralph Norman: 14, Nancy Mace: 13, Pamela Evette: 12, Rom Reddy: 10, Josh Kimbrell: 3.

• AL-01 (R): PI Polling for the Alabama Daily News:

  • Rhett Marques: 22, Jerry Carl: 20, Joshua McKee: 6, other candidates 4% or less, undecided: 47.

  • Early April: Carl: 23, Marques: 19.