Morning Digest: Nevada's top Republican is trying to thwart far-right throwbacks

Remember Sharron Angle? Of course you do.

Nevada Republican Sharron Angle, during her unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010 (credit: AmericanSolutions / CC-BY-2.0)

Leading Off

NV-SoS

Democrat Cisco Aguilar flipped the office of Nevada secretary of state in 2022 following a tight race, but now Republicans want to retake this important election post in this perennial swing state.

Just a few days after candidate filing closed last week, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo endorsed Shirley Folkins-Roberts, a nonprofit co-founder whom journalist Jon Ralston says was recruited to run against Aguilar by the governor.

Folkins-Roberts, though, faces a contested primary against three other candidates.

One is former Assemblyman Jim Marchant, a notorious election conspiracist whom Aguilar beat four years ago.

Republicans who dread the idea of nominating Marchant again may be in luck, though, because the presence of a far-right blast from the past could make it tougher for him to win another primary.

That throwback is none other than former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who is best known for her disastrous 2010 Senate campaign against the late Harry Reid.

Angle is likely to appeal to the same cohort of conspiracy-obsessed primary voters as Marchant, who insisted four years ago that anyone who had won an election in Nevada since 2006 was “installed by the deep-state cabal.”

A fourth candidate, Socorro Keenan, is also running, but she’s unlikely to be much of a factor. Keenan took less than 2% of the vote in the 2022 primary for this office after she, too, spread lies about the 2020 election.

Keenan has never been a major figure in Silver State politics, but Angle and Marchant were both once stars on the far right. The two ex-lawmakers, though, have struggled to remain relevant since losing high-profile statewide elections.

Angle became a conservative sensation in 2010 when she appeared poised to unseat Reid, whose position as Senate majority leader made him a bogeyman for Republicans both nationally and at home. But Angle’s extreme rhetoric, numerous gaffes, and what Ralston called Reid’s “Terminator-like single-mindedness” to win helped propel the incumbent to a surprise 50-45 victory on an otherwise dreary night for his party.

While Angle talked about running for president soon after that upset loss, she instead kept a relatively low profile for the next few years. She finally reemerged in 2016 after Reid announced he would not seek reelection, but there was little appetite on the right for her return. Rep. Joe Heck easily beat her 65-23 in the primary before narrowly losing to Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.

An undeterred Angle went on to challenge Rep. Mark Amodei for renomination two years later, but she ended up on the wrong side of a 72-18 landslide. After another break, Angle then campaigned for a Democratic-friendly state Senate around Reno in 2024, but she lost that primary 51-42.

Marchant’s career has been on a similar downward trajectory.

The former legislator also built a following among hardliners in 2022 when he assembled an “America First” slate of conspiracy theorists who were running for the post of secretary of state across the country.

Marchant himself won a contested primary to replace termed-out incumbent Barbara Cegavske, a fellow Republican whom the state party censured in 2020 for “put[ing] the reliability of our elections in Nevada in question.”

National Democrats recognized the threat posed by Marchant, who had repeatedly addressed QAnon gatherings, and his counterparts. The New York Times reported in late October that Democratic candidates for secretary of state and their allies outspent the Republican side on TV by an astonishing 57-to-1 spread.

That massive outlay may have made all the difference. Aguilar defeated Marchant 49-47, while his slate likewise fell short in Arizona, Michigan, and New Mexico. Their only win came in deep-red Indiana, where Diego Morales came out on top.

Marchant, like Angle before him, tried to rebound by running for the Senate, but he also discovered the hard way that his 15 minutes of fame were up. His campaign to take on Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen ended when he took a meager 7% of the vote in the primary.

Marchant announced last April that he’d oppose Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, but he raised less than $5,000 through the rest of the year to finance his newest venture. He abandoned that campaign shortly before last week’s filing deadline and instead put his name forward for secretary of state again.

Folkins-Roberts, who founded a children’s cancer foundation in Reno, lacks the same kind of electoral baggage that accompanies her opponents. She also enjoys the support of Lombardo, the state’s most prominent Republican elected official.

The governor hopes his endorsement will help primary voters avoid the mistakes they made when they selected Angle and later Marchant. And Lombardo isn’t only concerned with ensuring his party has a strong contender against Aguilar. He has his own competitive reelection campaign to worry about, and he’s unlikely to want to share a ticket with either loser from yesteryear.

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The Downballot Podcast

The big takeaways from the Illinois primaries

Illinois’ high-profile, high-dollar primaries are finally in the rearview, and oh man have the hot takes come fast and furious. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard dial down the temperature to understand what really happened, with a special emphasis on the races for Senate and the 9th Congressional District. And no, Kat Abughazaleh did not run a “too online” campaign, as the Davids explain.

The hosts also speak with Torey Dolan, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an expert on how election law intersects with the lives of Native voters. Because Native citizenship is guaranteed by federal law while elections are governed by state law, major gaps between the two exist, especially for those living on reservations. Dolan details the challenges many Native voters face, and how they can be remedied.

Senate

ME-Sen

Oyster farmer Graham Platner released a responsive TV ad one day after Gov. Janet Mills’ first negative spot of the Democratic primary that attacked him for misogynistic comments he made online.

Gesturing to a digitally inserted version of a short clip from Mills’ ad, Platner begins, “If I saw these ads, I’d have questions.”

“These are words and statements I abhor from a time in my life when I was struggling deeply after returning from war. These words are not who I am,” he continues. “So Maine, I’m asking you not to judge me for the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago, but who I am today and the kind of senator I promise to be.”

Mills’ ad features a narrator quoting a Reddit post Platner wrote in 2013 saying that women who fear getting raped shouldn’t drink so much that “they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” The commercial goes on to feature several women saying that Platner “blamed the victim” and that he “gives off a vibe.”

NE-Sen & Douglas County, NE Sheriff

One Nebraska Democrat who was tossed off the ballot learned on Wednesday that he’d gotten back on, while another still awaits her fate.

Democrat Cindy Burbank filed a lawsuit before a state trial court on Tuesday evening challenging Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen’s decision to bar her from running for the Senate. A judge heard her case the following day, but he had not issued a ruling as of Wednesday evening.

Separately, Mark Martinez got welcome news when state Supreme Court Justice William Cassel ordered him back onto the ballot in the race for Douglas County sheriff.

Martinez, who served as Nebraska’s former U.S. marshal after a career in the Omaha Police Department, is the only candidate challenging Republican Sheriff Aaron Hanson in the state’s largest and bluest county.

The local GOP filed a complaint last week saying that Martinez could not run because of a 2024 law requiring that candidates for sheriff have a certificate or diploma from the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center. Martinez has such a certificate, but because it’s currently inactive, Republicans argued that he’s ineligible to serve.

The county’s election commissioner agreed and ordered Martinez off the ballot on Friday, but the candidate quickly sued. Cassel ruled in Martinez’s favor on Wednesday, writing that the law “does not distinguish between an active and inactive certificate.”

Martinez and Hanson are now set to face off in the November general election. Hanson narrowly won his first term in 2022 in a 50.1 to 49.5 squeaker, while Kamala Harris carried Douglas County 54-44 two years later.

A separate complaint, this one from the state GOP, argued that Burbank shouldn’t be allowed to run for Senate because she was merely a “proxy” for independent Dan Osborn in his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Evnen agreed and said that, by expressing her support for Osborn’s campaign, Burbank would violate an oath candidates take in which they promise to “serve if elected.”

Burbank’s legal team said in legal filings that she would indeed serve if she were elected. They also argued that Evnen wasn’t applying the same set of standards to the only other candidate in the Democratic primary, Bill Forbes, an anti-abortion activist whom Osborn has accused of being a “stooge” for Ricketts.

TX-Sen

Texas’ Tuesday deadline for candidates to formally withdraw from primary runoffs came and went without either Sen. John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton dropping their bids for the GOP nomination for Senate.

Cornyn was never going to quit, of course, but his backers had hoped Paxton would bail after reports emerged immediately following the primary earlier this month that Donald Trump would endorse the incumbent.

That, however, didn’t happen—and may never.

Though Trump told NBC on Saturday that he’d issue an endorsement “over the next week or so,” he still seems uninterested. According to unnamed White House aides who spoke with CNN on Tuesday, “The decision hasn’t been on the president’s mind for days” because he’s been “preoccupied by the war with Iran.”

Governors

IA-Gov

Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, the longest-serving governor in American history, has endorsed Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra for the job he held for more than 22 years.

Feenstra is running to replace Branstad’s successor, Gov. Kim Reynolds, who announced last year that she would not seek reelection. He faces several opponents in the GOP primary, including self-funding investor Zach Lahn and businessman Adam Steen, a former Reynolds Cabinet official with close ties to Christian conservatives.

On the Democratic side, state Auditor Rob Sand has the field to himself.

House

NY-21

The New York Republican Party has endorsed Assemblyman Robert Smullen in the June 23 primary for the open 21st Congressional District, a move Politico characterizes as “rare.” Party leaders, though, have little affection for Anthony Constantino, a wealthy businessman who has antagonized just about everyone in his quest for the GOP nod.

“The Republican state committee, which hasn’t won a statewide election in 23 years, wants to dictate to Republican voters in my district who they can nominate,” Constantino wrote on social media in response. “Once I’m elected to Congress, I have no choice but to clean out the Republican committees because they are losers.”

WY-AL

State House Speaker Chip Neiman, who had told Cowboy State Daily he was “praying a lot” about a possible bid for Wyoming’s open U.S. House seat, instead endorsed Secretary of State Chuck Gray for the GOP nod this week.

Gray is one of several Republicans seeking the seat held by Rep. Harriet Hageman, who is running for Senate. Other notable names include state Senate President Bo Biteman, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, and billionaire businessman Reid Rasner.

Ballot Measures

OK Ballot

Oklahoma election officials said earlier this month that the campaign to bring the top-two primary to the state had failed to submit enough valid signatures to place its proposal on this year’s ballot.

Republicans in the legislature, though, want to make it tougher to make such a change in the future. A committee in the state House has advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine the current party primary system.

Legislatures

IN State Senate

A group tied to U.S. Sen. Jim Banks has launched TV, radio, and digital commercials attacking five Republican state senators in Indiana who defied Donald Trump on congressional redistricting.

This ad campaign from Hoosier Leadership for America is the first from anyone ahead of the state’s May 5 primaries, when state Sens. Jim Buck, Spencer Deery, Greg Goode, Travis Holdman, and Greg Walker will all face Trump-backed challengers.

Redistricting, though, is just one of the grievances Banks’ outfit is leveling against this group. Its opening commercial against Goode, for example, first accuses him of voting to “let a Chinese company own farmland right here in Indiana” before the narrator takes him to task for opposing Trump’s desire to further gerrymander the congressional map. None of the ads mentions any of the challengers.

Politico reported last week that Hoosier Leadership plans to spend a total of $3 million in these five contests as well as in two additional Senate primaries.

Trump is also backing former state Rep. Jeff Ellington’s campaign to replace retiring Sen. Eric Bassler, who also opposed mid-decade redistricting. Bassler, who faces two opponents, joined the five challengers on a recent trip to the White House that Banks also attended.

Politico didn’t identify the seventh primary Hoosier Leadership plans to get involved in, but Banks himself called for state Sen. Liz Brown to “be primaried” last June after she used her influence to kill an anti-immigration bill.

Brown, unlike the majority of her caucus, was an ardent supporter of Trump’s gerrymander and claimed that state Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray ousted her as chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee as a result.

But Banks, who was elected to the U.S. House in 2016 after defeating none other than Brown in the primary, is apparently not one to forgive. Instead, he’s backing Darren Vogt, who works for him as an aide, in the May primary. Trump, for his part, has yet to take sides in this particular race.

Mayors & County Leaders

Chicago, IL Mayor

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley said in January that he’d wait to launch his planned bid for mayor of Chicago until after Illinois’ primaries, but he’d start his next campaign after a wobbly performance in his last one.

Quigley won renomination 65-24 on Tuesday against Matthew Conroy, an opponent who never reported raising any money, with the balance going to two other unheralded candidates.

While Quigley, who has represented the safely blue 5th Congressional District since 2009, didn’t come anywhere close to losing, his showing was unimpressive for a longtime incumbent, especially ahead of what would likely be a more challenging race for mayor.

Quigley is one of several candidates who might challenge first-term incumbent Brandon Johnson next year. The congressman, whose constituency includes the neighborhoods of Lake View and Lincoln Park, told WGN Radio 720 two months ago that he planned to run but was waiting to make a formal announcement.

“I am, but we’ll have a formal announcement to talk about that after the March primary,” Quigley responded when asked if he intended to campaign for mayor. “I’ve filed again for reelection, I’ve got another year to serve.”

He continued, “The primary for mayor is in February of 2027. Look, what I’m trying to do is show proper respect for the March 17th primary. I don’t want the voters to get too far ahead of ourselves. I want to focus on the issues of the day. You asked me a question and I wanted to answer honestly. I’m not equivocating, I’m just prioritizing the here and now and that is the issues of the day and the primary, March of just next year.”

At a candidate forum last month, Conroy suggested that Quigley was already concentrating on his next race instead of doing his job in Congress. Block Club Chicago reported that Quigley countered that he remained attentive to his duties in the House and his constituents but otherwise “did not offer a direct rebuttal to Conroy’s critique.”

Poll Pile

• KY-Sen (R): Public Opinion Strategies for Keep America Great (pro-Barr):

  • Daniel Cameron: 31, Andy Barr: 29, Nate Morris: 13. (Sept.: Cameron: 37, Barr: 29, Morris: 8.)

• CA-Gov (top-two primary): UC Berkeley for the Los Angeles Times:

  • Steve Hilton (R): 17, Chad Bianco (R): 16, Eric Swalwell (D): 13, Katie Porter (D): 13, Tom Steyer (D): 10, Xavier Becerra (D): 5, Antonio Villaraigosa (D): 4, Matt Mahan (D): 4, Betty Yee (D): 1, Tony Thurmond (D): 1, undecided: 16.

• AL-01 (R): The Alabama Poll:

  • Jerry Carl: 28, Rhett Marques: 19, Joshua McKee: 9. (Jan.: Carl: 25, Marques: 9, McKee: 9.)

  • The pollster tells The Downballot that the poll was taken for an unspecified client. The write-up indicates opposition to Carl.

• GA-13 (D): Z to A Research for Jasmine Clark:

  • David Scott (inc): 31, Jasmine Clark: 30, Heavenly Kimes: 10, Emanuel Jones: 8. Everton Blair: 6, others 1% each.

• MI-10 (R): Strategic National:

  • Michael Bouchard: 29, Robert Lulgjuraj: 11, Some Other candidate: 12, undecided: 48.

  • Strategic National did not identify a client. The firm, which works for Perry Johnson in the Republican primary for governor, emphasized a portion of the poll showing that Republican voters in the 10th District would prefer GOP Rep. John James to seek reelection or retire rather than continue his campaign for governor.

• NJ-11: GBAO for Analilia Mejia:

  • Analilia Mejia (D): 53, Joe Hathaway (R): 36.