Morning Digest: New GOP plan to save gerrymander might be 'most embarrassing election lawsuit of 2025'

Meanwhile, activists have already gathered 100,000 signatures to repeal the new map

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R), at right (credit: Denny Hoskins Facebook)

Leading Off

MO Redistricting

Even as he finally gave approval to a ballot measure campaign to repeal Missouri’s new congressional map, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is seeking to undermine the effort by filing what a top legal expert described as potentially the “most embarrassing election lawsuit” of the year.

On Wednesday, Hoskins said that organizers seeking to qualify a veto referendum that would block the state’s new map from taking effect could start gathering signatures to place it on the ballot.

The problem is that activists, led by a group called People Not Politicians, had already begun collecting signatures weeks ago, immediately after Republicans in the legislature passed their new gerrymander.

At the time, Hoskins rejected the group’s petition after receiving a letter from state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway saying that People Not Politicians had to wait until Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the map into law. (Kehoe and Hanaway are also Republicans.)

Kehoe waited more than two weeks to approve the map, but with a limited clock—organizers only have until Dec. 11 to amass around 115,000 signatures—opponents were in no mood to wait.

Neither were Missourians. In the month since the campaign began, according to People Not Politicians, around 100,000 voters have already signed.

However, in his official announcement greenlighting the effort, Hoskins warned that “no signatures gathered before this approval date are valid, and doing so constitutes a misdemeanor election offense.”

People Not Politicians vehemently rejected that argument.

“Constitutionally, they all count,” the group’s executive director, Richard von Glahn, said in a statement to The Downballot. He called Hoskins’ claims “flatly untrue” and said they were made “without citation or legal authority.”

“The Missouri Constitution is clear: to begin gathering signatures for a citizen referendum, a cover sheet only must be submitted — not approved,” he continued. “Signatures collected before the Secretary’s approval are entirely valid and lawful.”

The dispute over signatures could wind up in court, where there’s now a case pending over the validity of the referendum itself, thanks to Hoskins.

On the same day he approved the repeal campaign, Hoskins filed a federal lawsuit naming People Not Politicians as the defendant. In his complaint, he argues that the referendum is illegal because the U.S. Constitution “expressly vests the power to apportion federal congressional districts in the state legislatures.”

Election law expert Justin Levitt was scathing in describing the merits of Hoskins’ case.

“New contestant for most embarrassing election lawsuit of 2025 just dropped,” he wrote on social media. Levitt explained that the suit relies on the “many-times-over-buried” doctrine known as the “independent state legislature” theory, which the Supreme Court resoundingly rejected two years ago.

What’s more, Missouri voters have used the veto referendum process to overturn a congressional map once before—more than a century ago. As Ballotpedia has cataloged, voters shot down a new map by a 62-38 landslide in a vote in 1922.

How Dems are fighting back—state by state

Redistricting Roundup

NC Redistricting

North Carolina Republicans have unveiled a new congressional map that would, as expected, make Democratic Rep. Don Davis’ 1st District significantly redder.

The proposal does so by moving red turf along the Atlantic coast from Republican Rep. Greg Murphy’s 3rd District into Davis’ constituency, which in turn gives back four counties in the inner Coastal Plain. Those include Davis’ home county of Greene, which would now be in Murphy’s district.

As a result, the revamped 1st District—which Republicans previously pushed to the right with a new gerrymander last cycle—would have supported Donald Trump by a 55-44 margin in 2024 and by a 53-46 spread in 2020. Under the current lines, by contrast, Trump managed a narrow 51-48 win last year while Joe Biden won it 50-49 four years earlier.

Despite being targeted by Republicans, Davis did not rule out running for reelection.

“As we look at new congressional districts, I am considering every option, drawing on my local roots, experience in the military, and commitment to education,” he posted on social media.

Senate

IA-Sen

Jackie Norris, who chairs the Des Moines School Board, announced on Wednesday that she was dropping her bid for Iowa’s open Senate race. Three other notable Democrats, however, are still running for the seat held by Republican Joni Ernst, who announced her retirement last month.

Norris’ campaign, which she launched in August, faced multiple difficulties. Despite being politically well-connected—she at one point served as chief of staff to Michelle Obama—Norris struggled to raise money. Newly filed disclosures show she brought in around $350,000 during the third quarter, which was less than all of her rivals.

More recently, the school board has come under scrutiny following the arrest of schools superintendent Ian Roberts, which exposed his criminal history and false claims about his credentials. Just a day before quitting, Norris told Axios she was staying in the race, but in announcing her decision, she said in a statement that the “crisis demanded my full attention as Board Chair.”

The other Democrats vying for their party’s nomination include Army and Marine veteran Nathan Sage, state Rep. Josh Turek, and state Sen. Zach Wahls. On the GOP side, Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, is the only major candidate.

KS-Sen

Former financial services executive Sandy Spidel Neumann has entered the race against Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, making her the third notable Kansas Democrat to join the primary.

Already running are immigration attorney Anne Parelkar and former Biden administration official Christy Davis, though a much bigger name might join. Rep. Sharice Davids said this week that “every option is on the table, including a statewide run,” should Republicans further gerrymander her congressional district.

ME-Sen

CNN has unearthed a set of since-deleted online posts by Maine Democrat Graham Platner that included messages in which he called himself a “communist,” said that “all” cops are “bastards,” and responded to a post titled, “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks” by saying they “actually are.”

Platner, who is running for Senate, sought to disown the posts, which were mostly made around four to five years ago.

“That was very much me fucking around the internet,” he told CNN in an interview. “I don’t want people to see me for who I was in my worst internet comment—or even frankly who I was in my best Internet comment. … I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today, really.”

“I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran,” he added. CNN’s report offers more details on the posts and Platner’s responses to them, including one about conservative singer/songwriter Ted Nugent.

“As a combat veteran, that motherfucker makes me want to puke when he spews his warmongering macho bullshit. Suck a dick, Ted.”

“To be fair,” Platner told CNN, “I’m not really regretful of that one.”

A day earlier, Platner was joined in the Democratic primary by term-limited Gov. Janet Mills. Also running for the right to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins next year is former congressional aide Jordan Wood.

Governors

FL-Gov

Republican Rep. Byron Donalds continues to enjoy a wide advantage over actual and potential primary opponents in the race to be Florida’s next governor, according to a new survey from St. Pete Polls.

Donalds earns the support of 39% of respondents in a matchup against recently installed Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and former state House Speaker Paul Renner, who respectively take 4% and 3%. Head-to-head against Collins (who, unlike Renner, has not yet joined the race), Donalds holds a similarly large 52-12 lead.

A matchup against another would-be candidate, former TV anchor and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, would be somewhat closer, but Donalds—who has Donald Trump’s endorsement—still leads 47-21.

MD-Gov

Former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan still hasn’t closed the door on a comeback bid for his old job, but a new poll commissioned by the Baltimore Banner shows him trailing his Democratic successor in a hypothetical matchup.

The survey, conducted by OpinionWorks, gives Gov. Wes Moore a 43-37 lead on Hogan, who lost a campaign for the Senate to Democrat Angela Alsobrooks last year by a 55-43 margin. The poll also finds Moore with a 54-36 job approval rating.

Hogan, 70, declined to comment to the Banner through a spokesperson. It’s also not clear how serious he is about potentially running again. Over the summer, he tweeted a jokey Craigslist-style post offering to sell his old campaign bus but also said he might “rewrap it and get back out on the road again.”

WI-Gov

Former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who stepped down from his post earlier this year, said on Thursday that he would not run for the state’s open governorship next year. However, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he might consider a bid for statewide office in the future.

House

MA-06

Two Democrats have already launched bids for Rep. Seth Moulton’s House seat following his decision to run for the Senate, and more are eyeing the race.

The first to jump in was former state Rep. Jamie Belsito, followed quickly by former White House official Dan Koh. Both had come up as possible challengers to Moulton after he expressed his opposition to allowing trans kids to play in girls’ sports last year, but neither had taken visible steps toward running until after Moulton made his plans known.

Belsito lost to Moulton in a 78-12 landslide in 2020, but she bounced back by flipping a longtime Republican seat in the state House in a special election the following year. That seat was dismantled in redistricting, however, so Belsito did not seek reelection in 2022.

Koh, meanwhile, was a longtime top aide to Marty Walsh, who served as mayor of Boston before becoming Joe Biden’s first secretary of labor in 2021. Koh left his post as Walsh’s chief of staff to run for the open 3rd District in 2018, but he lost a packed primary to now-Rep. Lori Trahan 21.7-21.5, a margin of 145 votes.

He soon rebounded by winning a 2019 race for the Board of Selectmen in Andover, a community that, following the most recent round of redistricting, is now entirely in the 6th District. He didn’t stay long, though, as he resigned in 2021 to rejoin Walsh as his chief of staff at the Department of Labor. Walsh departed the Cabinet the following year to lead the National Hockey League Players Association, but Koh remained in the Biden administration.

Software engineer Bethany Andres-Beck was the lone Democrat already running before Moulton’s departure. In newly filed fundraising disclosures, they reported raising $84,000 in their first quarter in the race.

Many others, however, could join the contest. State Rep. Tram Nguyen says she’s considering the race, while the Boston Globe reports that Lynn Mayor Jared Nicholson, Moulton chief of staff Rick Jakious, attorney John Beccia, and former Lynn Mayor Tom McGee are also looking at it.

Two notable names quickly took themselves out of contention, though: Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and state Sen. Brendan Crighton. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be heavily favored to hold the 6th District, which includes Massachusetts’ North Shore and voted for Kamala Harris by a 59-39 margin last year, according to calculations from The Downballot.

MD-07

Baltimore City Councilman Mark Conway, who’d been eyeing a bid for Congress, launched a primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume on Thursday, setting up yet another generational clash.

Conway, 36, was first elected to his current post in 2020. In his launch video, he addresses the woes that have seemingly become endemic in his hometown.

“A sacrifice zone is a community that has been abandoned because those in power decide that making working families poorer, sicker, or less safe is an acceptable cause of doing business,” he begins. “It happens when politicians and corporations strike a bargain that puts profit first and people last.”

“Too many of our communities in Baltimore are bearing the brunt of that bargain, and I’m running for Congress to change that.”

Conway told Maryland Matters that he has “an immense amount of respect” for the incumbent, who turns 77 next week, but he informed WYPR that he doesn’t think Mfume is doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump.

“A mixture between the threats to democracy and the very real things people experience day to day have sort of pushed me into a position where I have been looking for leadership to step in, but I’m not really seeing that and I’ve decided I was going to be that change that I wanted to see,” he said.

Mfume has served two separate stints in Congress, winning a safely blue seat in Baltimore in 1986 before resigning a decade later to become president of the NAACP. He later returned to the House after prevailing in a special election in 2020 following the death of Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings.

PA-01

A new internal poll for Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie finds him tied with Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick at 41 apiece in the race for Pennsylvania’s competitive 1st District.

The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling and obtained by NOTUS, also gives Fitzpatrick an underwater 32-47 approval rating and puts Donald Trump at 47-52. Harvie, a Democrat who was first elected to his post in 2019, is much less well known, chalking up a 26-17 score.

TX-18

A new poll from the University of Houston and YouGov shows that the Nov. 4 special election for Texas’ vacant 18th Congressional District is all but certain to head to a runoff.

The survey finds Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards taking the all-important top two slots with 27% and 23%, respectively. In third is state Rep. Jolanda Jones at 15%, while everyone else is in the single digits. (All three candidates mentioned above are Democrats.)

In a second round of voting, which might not take place until mid-February, the two frontrunners would remain neck-and-neck, with Menefee leading Edwards 36-34, though a large number of respondents remain undecided.

TX-32, TX-AG

In response to speculation that he might resign and run for another office, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson posted on social media this week, “I am NOT running for anything, and I will continue serving our great city as its mayor!”

Johnson, a former Democrat who joined the GOP in 2023, had at various points this year declined to rule out bids for attorney general and the newly gerrymandered 32nd Congressional District.

UT-04

Former Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams, who’s reportedly been considering a comeback bid, has filed paperwork with the FEC ahead of a possible campaign.

McAdams listed the district he’s interested in as Utah’s 4th, though exactly where he might run will depend on what map a state court greenlights in a long-running redistricting dispute. Previous media reports have said that Adams is likely to run once a map is finalized, which is likely to happen soon.

Voting Rights & Election Law

New York

New York’s top court has upheld a Democratic-backed law that would move many elections from odd-numbered years to even ones, a shift that would boost turnout.

In a unanimous decision issued Thursday, the Court of Appeals rejected Republican arguments that lawmakers lacked the power to make such a change. A trial court judge had originally ruled against the law, but an intermediate appellate court reversed that ruling earlier this year.

The law does not affect all elections, however, since the timing of some races—such as those for county district attorney and New York City mayor—is specified in the state Constitution. Changing those dates would require a constitutional amendment, which must be approved by lawmakers twice before voters can weigh in.