Someone on here a while back (don't remember who) suggested potentially making a swingier WI-08 by basing the district around Green Bay to Appleton/Oshkosh or something like that -- which would allow Tom Nelson to have another shot. (I like him so I'd welcome that development.)
Appleton is in the 8th district, but if they added Oshkosh and took out rural areas in the eastern and western portions of the district, you could make the 8th stretch from Oshkosh-Appleton-Green Bay-Door County.
Ok what do they plan to do with the legislature maps? Under the current maps, control of either chamber likely isn’t surviving 2030 if a Dem is elected President and there is a decent chance of an R trifecta at that point that redraws the legislature to be unwinnable for us in the next decade and lock in another 6R-2D congressional map that will be hard to argue is a gerrymander because of geography (remember that even the current liberal state Supreme Court dismissed a case saying the current map is a Republican gerrymander).
This is a state where Dems need to be passing an independent commission as a safeguard against future Republican gerrymander. WI isnt CA, NY, or even VA. It’s a state that Trump carried 2 out of 3 times.
I'm skeptical that they didn't test Flint vs. Busse in MT-01. I'm guessing they did, but found Busse ahead, and didn't want to disrupt the narrative that Rains was the strongest candidate.
Jack Schlossberg’s campaign for NY-12 appears to be a chaotic mess, with him regularly blowing off strategy meetings and fundraising calls and having a ton of staff turnover.
His motives seem to have more to do with his ego, feeling important, being a Kennedy (when none currently hold office), etc. than improving his district, country, society, or anything other than his perception of himself in the world.
As a NY-12 resident, I've gotten a bunch of advertising from Lasher, Bores and Conway but not a single thing from Schlossberg's campaign. I fear that having so many conventional ("boring") candidates might cannibalize the establishment lane in the primary and allow Schlossberg to eke out a win.
1) Chris Kennedy's failed Illinois gubernatorial bid in 2018 was similarly messy (I seem to remember CGK's campaign being locked out of sending out press releases for an extended period of time due to a forgotten password or something of that sort). The Kennedy approach to politics is more suited for the golden era of television (roughly the last four decades of the 20th century) than the digital age.
2) Alex Bores has the backing of Eliza Orlins, one of the biggest voices in the Democratic social media influencer sphere (Orlins ran for Manhattan DA several years ago and lost the Democratic primary, and her social media presence deals mainly with legal and political matters, as she's a public defender by profession). Orlins, had she run in NY-12, probably would have been the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
She has over half a million followers on Instagram page that she uses for political and legal commentary, which is more than a lot of incumbent Members of Congress. The flip side of that is that, if she ran for Congress, she would have had to, at least to some extent, step away from her usual social media content and her Objection Everything newsletter on Substack to focus on her congressional bid.
Worth noting that this is Eliza Orlins from Survivor: Vanuatu, the 9th season of Survivor in the US. She got 4th place and then returned in a later season as a "fan favorite," so a big part of her social media following comes from Survivor fans, many of whom are not especially political.
(Although, if they're still following her on social media now, they probably are at least somewhat political. She now basically only posts about politics.)
This seems right about the EV margin needed for Democrats to outvote Republicans overall in the Georgia primaries, which means those crucial State Supreme Court seats are likely in play for us and we could even actually win them.
If they were partisan races instead on the ballot, I think they would be favored to win. Now GA Republicans are making metro Atlanta and Dem-leaning county races nonpartisan to try to slip in Republican candidates.
I think you made the key distinction here that’s very important. Nonpartisan races help Democrats in red and swing areas, but they hurt Democrats in blue areas. So the changes in Atlanta would hurt us and the changes at the top of the ballot would help us.
Thank you for the story about the utility commissioners in Nebraska. Sadly it has taken the cowardly response of Virginia Democrats to the Republicans on the state Supreme Court wiping out the people's vote when they had an easy solution in just changing the age for judges to retire to persuade the state Senate majority leaders in New Jersey and Maryland to move on redistricting their states. Ferguson still needs to pay the price for his previous blocking of redistricting. It is time for Democrats to stop just letting the GOP act unconstitutional with no fighting back.
KY-Gov: Jamie Comer saying he plans on running for governor in 2027 is like him saying that fire is hot and water is wet. Even though he waited for the seat to be open again, it was a fairly open secret that he still wanted it.
WV-2: It won't make a difference in November, but this is an interesting update:
Educator Stephanie Tomana has refused to concede the Democratic primary to organizer Ace Parsi. She says she'll wait until all votes are tabulated and certified, which could take several days. Parsi edged her out Tuesday night 40-38.
FWIW, this is my district and I supported Tomana, as she taught me in middle school.
And the Labour MP for the seat of Makerfield just resigned so Andy Burnham has a path back to parliament.
The only problem is that Makerfield was one of the closest Reform-Labour battles in 2024 (Reform got around 30% here) and Reform basically won close to 50% of the vote here last week in the local elections. On the other hand if Burnham can't convince Labour-Reform/BoJo Tories swing voters to swing back to Labour here then that deflates his case for why he should be PM.
The Greens won a Greater Manchester seat in a by-election recently, and Makerfield is the kind of seat they'd need to have any chance of displacing Labour as the main left-of-center party in Britain at the next general election.
MRP polling indicates that Makerfield will not be a constituency Greens are competitive in rather Reform are leading with ~20% margin (although against generic Labour)
That Georgia election law item boils my fucking blood. It's of a piece with the redistricting rush post Callais: if this is not evidence of discriminatory intent, what the fuck is?
A Montana judge has blocked a law preventing voters from registering on Election Day, concluding that the law disproportionally affects young and Native American voters.
Just got a flashback to election night 2006 when (I believe) this law was first introduced, and people were lined up til midnight at the Bozeman elections office to vote for Tester.
Norfolk, VA Mayor - NBA referee Tony Brothers plans to run for mayor of Norfolk, Virginia. I'm not sure about Brothers's ideology or what system Norfolk uses for its mayoral elections.
The Hampton Roads area has been discussed as a possible location for an expansion NBA franchise
I strongly doubt Hampton Roads gets an NBA franchise ahead of Seattle or Vegas if expansion even happens. Adam Silver sucks but he’s not David Stern levels attached to small markets
Someone on this board suggested a couple days ago that one "rule" that might be part of any federal legislation is that if a county can wholly include one (or more) districts, seats have to be fully contained in that county before grabbing any other turf (i.e. not OH-01, which I believe has Cincinnati proper but then grabs rural GOP counties to make it a light red seat overall).
Are there counties where this would be logistically impossible because of some geographic barrier, or where Republicans could still sneak in GOP seats in dark red parts of large counties? Trying to mentally work through each dirty trick they might try..
This is great -- thanks for the response. No guideline would be perfect, but this definitely tightens the reins a bit. Would need something in there about jumping bodies of water for no reason (i.e. St. Pete and parts of South Florida).
It would not be physically impossible to do that in Illinois (I know Cook and DuPage counties are populous enough to have at least one Congressional district entirely within it; I'm not sure about any others). In fact, the City of Chicago is populous enough that it can have two congressional districts entirely within it; however, doing that would require creating a ton of suburban-only Congressional districts and violate community of interest concerns within Chicago itself, and that would anger virtually everyone in Chicago's political leadership class. As a result, even most "non-gerrymandered" redistricting proposals in Illinois involve Chicago being baconmandered between at least four or five districts, although I believe it's possible to draw at least five Congressional districts entirely within Cook County.
I suppose the most obvious dirty trick would be to redraw the county lines first, dissolve big counties into smaller ones, etc. This isn't something that's done much, but if there were a national political advantage to doing so, I assume they'd try.
It would be a huge PITA for the county governments and residents, and would require a lot of shamelessness to push through, but I don't see either of those things as being barriers for today's GOP.
I know that Norfolk County, Massachusetts, has enclaves that make this messy, not to mention the many, MANY cities that have many enclaves and exclaves. There's also cases like Galveston County, Texas, where there is a barrier island with no bridge to anywhere else in the county, but it is connected to Chambers County.
Someone on here a while back (don't remember who) suggested potentially making a swingier WI-08 by basing the district around Green Bay to Appleton/Oshkosh or something like that -- which would allow Tom Nelson to have another shot. (I like him so I'd welcome that development.)
Appleton is in the 8th district, but if they added Oshkosh and took out rural areas in the eastern and western portions of the district, you could make the 8th stretch from Oshkosh-Appleton-Green Bay-Door County.
That arrangement could give my Wisconsin relatives a Dem Rep., which I'd love for their sake. (They all live in WI-08.)
You can probably go for a 7-1 map with that approach, but at least some districts will be vulnerable if a GOP wave ever occurs.
Here is my quick attempt (didn't balance out all the districts and left WI-08 as a barely Trump district, but the map gives you an idea): https://davesredistricting.org/join/c7196533-2fc6-4004-9f1a-407b88e98db7
Ok what do they plan to do with the legislature maps? Under the current maps, control of either chamber likely isn’t surviving 2030 if a Dem is elected President and there is a decent chance of an R trifecta at that point that redraws the legislature to be unwinnable for us in the next decade and lock in another 6R-2D congressional map that will be hard to argue is a gerrymander because of geography (remember that even the current liberal state Supreme Court dismissed a case saying the current map is a Republican gerrymander).
This is a state where Dems need to be passing an independent commission as a safeguard against future Republican gerrymander. WI isnt CA, NY, or even VA. It’s a state that Trump carried 2 out of 3 times.
This week we published a "rules of the road" for The Downballot community. As David wrote yesterday, we ask everyone to read and abide. Thank you!
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/the-downballots-community-rules-of
I'm skeptical that they didn't test Flint vs. Busse in MT-01. I'm guessing they did, but found Busse ahead, and didn't want to disrupt the narrative that Rains was the strongest candidate.
I think Cleveland could do pretty well, too. Kind of disappointed in Forstag given his progressive credentials.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/nyregion/jack-schlossberg-campaign.html
Jack Schlossberg’s campaign for NY-12 appears to be a chaotic mess, with him regularly blowing off strategy meetings and fundraising calls and having a ton of staff turnover.
His motives seem to have more to do with his ego, feeling important, being a Kennedy (when none currently hold office), etc. than improving his district, country, society, or anything other than his perception of himself in the world.
As a NY-12 resident, I've gotten a bunch of advertising from Lasher, Bores and Conway but not a single thing from Schlossberg's campaign. I fear that having so many conventional ("boring") candidates might cannibalize the establishment lane in the primary and allow Schlossberg to eke out a win.
I mean, the guy is a total joke so its not surprising if his campaign isn't the best run.
1) Chris Kennedy's failed Illinois gubernatorial bid in 2018 was similarly messy (I seem to remember CGK's campaign being locked out of sending out press releases for an extended period of time due to a forgotten password or something of that sort). The Kennedy approach to politics is more suited for the golden era of television (roughly the last four decades of the 20th century) than the digital age.
2) Alex Bores has the backing of Eliza Orlins, one of the biggest voices in the Democratic social media influencer sphere (Orlins ran for Manhattan DA several years ago and lost the Democratic primary, and her social media presence deals mainly with legal and political matters, as she's a public defender by profession). Orlins, had she run in NY-12, probably would have been the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
Why do you think Orlins would have been the frontrunner? Was she drubbed by Morgenthau?
She has over half a million followers on Instagram page that she uses for political and legal commentary, which is more than a lot of incumbent Members of Congress. The flip side of that is that, if she ran for Congress, she would have had to, at least to some extent, step away from her usual social media content and her Objection Everything newsletter on Substack to focus on her congressional bid.
Worth noting that this is Eliza Orlins from Survivor: Vanuatu, the 9th season of Survivor in the US. She got 4th place and then returned in a later season as a "fan favorite," so a big part of her social media following comes from Survivor fans, many of whom are not especially political.
(Although, if they're still following her on social media now, they probably are at least somewhat political. She now basically only posts about politics.)
It sounds like how his uncle, JFK Jr. ran his magazine "George"....minus the physical fights with staff.
https://people.com/why-did-jfk-jr-george-magazine-close-11922478
In fairness, there was no market for a political lifestyle magazine.
This seems right about the EV margin needed for Democrats to outvote Republicans overall in the Georgia primaries, which means those crucial State Supreme Court seats are likely in play for us and we could even actually win them.
https://x.com/DjsokeSpeaking/status/2054919563121246456
Penultimate day of EV in Georgia today for the primary and judicial races
I’d guess we get ~30% of total EV today and tomorrow for 1m+ ev turnout. I think cumulative ballot choice will end up around D+15 for early voters
Would be nice to snag those SCOGA seats.
If they were partisan races instead on the ballot, I think they would be favored to win. Now GA Republicans are making metro Atlanta and Dem-leaning county races nonpartisan to try to slip in Republican candidates.
I think you made the key distinction here that’s very important. Nonpartisan races help Democrats in red and swing areas, but they hurt Democrats in blue areas. So the changes in Atlanta would hurt us and the changes at the top of the ballot would help us.
Thank you for the story about the utility commissioners in Nebraska. Sadly it has taken the cowardly response of Virginia Democrats to the Republicans on the state Supreme Court wiping out the people's vote when they had an easy solution in just changing the age for judges to retire to persuade the state Senate majority leaders in New Jersey and Maryland to move on redistricting their states. Ferguson still needs to pay the price for his previous blocking of redistricting. It is time for Democrats to stop just letting the GOP act unconstitutional with no fighting back.
KY-Gov: Jamie Comer saying he plans on running for governor in 2027 is like him saying that fire is hot and water is wet. Even though he waited for the seat to be open again, it was a fairly open secret that he still wanted it.
Lines in New Orleans yesterday as part of a recall effort against governor Jeff Landry.
https://www.nola.com/news/jeff-landry-recall-new-orleans/article_eca8e82c-c333-4a9c-b4bc-e06d54840c44.html
https://archive.ph/ldfyl
The same two ladies spearheading the Landry recall also got a recall petition certified for the equally awful attorney general Liz Murrell.
https://www.klfy.com/top-stories-news/louisiana-attorney-general-liz-murrill-faces-recall-petition/
WV-2: It won't make a difference in November, but this is an interesting update:
Educator Stephanie Tomana has refused to concede the Democratic primary to organizer Ace Parsi. She says she'll wait until all votes are tabulated and certified, which could take several days. Parsi edged her out Tuesday night 40-38.
FWIW, this is my district and I supported Tomana, as she taught me in middle school.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8p7p83vdzo
Across the pond: Wes Streeting, considered a likely intraparty challenger to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has resigned from Starmer's cabinet.
Additional by subtraction
This is likely the first move in him taking on Starmer
And the Labour MP for the seat of Makerfield just resigned so Andy Burnham has a path back to parliament.
The only problem is that Makerfield was one of the closest Reform-Labour battles in 2024 (Reform got around 30% here) and Reform basically won close to 50% of the vote here last week in the local elections. On the other hand if Burnham can't convince Labour-Reform/BoJo Tories swing voters to swing back to Labour here then that deflates his case for why he should be PM.
The Greens won a Greater Manchester seat in a by-election recently, and Makerfield is the kind of seat they'd need to have any chance of displacing Labour as the main left-of-center party in Britain at the next general election.
MRP polling indicates that Makerfield will not be a constituency Greens are competitive in rather Reform are leading with ~20% margin (although against generic Labour)
NC Senate Harper:
Cooper 50 Whatley 39
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/thecentersquare.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/8/85/885dfc5a-352d-4949-8a33-aad807ecee4c/6a05ccdfa3461.pdf.pdf
Also has the rankings for the NC Supreme Court:
Earls 41.3 Stevens 35.6
Would Republicans have a better chance if it was Dr. Tim Whatley?
Probably not; there may be a large hidden anti dentite vote in NC.
It's that sense of humor that's sustained us as a people for 3,000 years.
Maybe my favorite Seinfeld episode of all time. "Next thing you'll be saying they should have their own schools." "They do have their own schools!"
That Georgia election law item boils my fucking blood. It's of a piece with the redistricting rush post Callais: if this is not evidence of discriminatory intent, what the fuck is?
A Montana judge has blocked a law preventing voters from registering on Election Day, concluding that the law disproportionally affects young and Native American voters.
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/montana-voters-will-be-able-to-register-to-vote-on-election-day-judge-rules/
Just got a flashback to election night 2006 when (I believe) this law was first introduced, and people were lined up til midnight at the Bozeman elections office to vote for Tester.
Norfolk, VA Mayor - NBA referee Tony Brothers plans to run for mayor of Norfolk, Virginia. I'm not sure about Brothers's ideology or what system Norfolk uses for its mayoral elections.
The Hampton Roads area has been discussed as a possible location for an expansion NBA franchise
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYUkvY_tudl/?igsh=cnZjY3I5dnExMTJp
He's a community organizer and nonprofit founder, so probably a Democrat.
I strongly doubt Hampton Roads gets an NBA franchise ahead of Seattle or Vegas if expansion even happens. Adam Silver sucks but he’s not David Stern levels attached to small markets
If Hampton Roads gets a franchise before we (Seattle) do, I am going to lose my *&^%...
Ongoing redistricting guidelines --
Someone on this board suggested a couple days ago that one "rule" that might be part of any federal legislation is that if a county can wholly include one (or more) districts, seats have to be fully contained in that county before grabbing any other turf (i.e. not OH-01, which I believe has Cincinnati proper but then grabs rural GOP counties to make it a light red seat overall).
Are there counties where this would be logistically impossible because of some geographic barrier, or where Republicans could still sneak in GOP seats in dark red parts of large counties? Trying to mentally work through each dirty trick they might try..
This is great -- thanks for the response. No guideline would be perfect, but this definitely tightens the reins a bit. Would need something in there about jumping bodies of water for no reason (i.e. St. Pete and parts of South Florida).
OH supposedly has guidelines like this.
Can't remember if it is by city or county, but there are restructions for slicing & dicing heavily populated areas.
In a certain range they have to be wholly included in a district. Beyond that they have to make up as much of a district as possible.
It is why Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton cannot be cracked. Too big. They have to anchor the district.
It must be city-based, because Hamilton is cracked in the Landsman seat.
It would not be physically impossible to do that in Illinois (I know Cook and DuPage counties are populous enough to have at least one Congressional district entirely within it; I'm not sure about any others). In fact, the City of Chicago is populous enough that it can have two congressional districts entirely within it; however, doing that would require creating a ton of suburban-only Congressional districts and violate community of interest concerns within Chicago itself, and that would anger virtually everyone in Chicago's political leadership class. As a result, even most "non-gerrymandered" redistricting proposals in Illinois involve Chicago being baconmandered between at least four or five districts, although I believe it's possible to draw at least five Congressional districts entirely within Cook County.
I suppose the most obvious dirty trick would be to redraw the county lines first, dissolve big counties into smaller ones, etc. This isn't something that's done much, but if there were a national political advantage to doing so, I assume they'd try.
It would be a huge PITA for the county governments and residents, and would require a lot of shamelessness to push through, but I don't see either of those things as being barriers for today's GOP.
I know that Norfolk County, Massachusetts, has enclaves that make this messy, not to mention the many, MANY cities that have many enclaves and exclaves. There's also cases like Galveston County, Texas, where there is a barrier island with no bridge to anywhere else in the county, but it is connected to Chambers County.
NJ 7
HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP and top campaign officials have no idea what’s going on w @CongressmanKean
He has told leadership no more than he’s said publicly. He’s been gone two months with basically no explanation.
link.punchbowl.news/click/45701566…
It’s not even just him anymore. Dem Rep. Frederica Wilson has been gone a month without explanation, and is 83.
https://newrepublic.com/post/210433/democratic-lawmaker-missing-month-midterms
Additionally Neal Dunn is supposed to be dead by June, according to Trump.