Morning Digest: New Virginia map sets off a round of musical chairs
Our new guide tells you exactly who is likely to run where—and why
Leading Off
VA Redistricting
While two important hurdles remain before Virginia can adopt new congressional districts (see our VA Ballot item below), candidates are already maneuvering in anticipation that the Democrats’ new map will be used in this year’s elections.
Below, we go seat-by-seat to assess where every major candidate is likely to run. We also include how each district would have voted in the 2024 presidential election, based on data from the Redistricting Data Hub uploaded to Dave’s Redistricting App. You can also find a summary in this chart.
VA-01 (52-45 Harris): The new 1st District would actually be the successor of the current 7th, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman. Two notable Republicans are running against Vindman. One, Army veteran Doug Ollivant, lives in Culpeper County, which would get moved to the new 7th. The other, state Sen. Tara Durant, represents a district that would largely remain in the 1st.
VA-02 (50-49 Harris): The 2nd would see only minimal changes. Former Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria would continue her comeback bid against Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who unseated her in 2022. A few other Democrats are also running, but Luria remains the frontrunner.
VA-05 (53-45 Harris): Democrat Shannon Taylor, the commonwealth’s attorney for Henrico County, had been waging a challenge against Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in the 1st District, but she quickly said she’d instead run in the 5th. GOP Rep. John McGuire could run here, though his home was drawn into the 7th.
VA-06 (51-48 Harris): Two high-profile Democrats—both of whom were previously endorsed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger—could now face off here: former Rep. Tom Perriello and journalist Beth Macy. Perriello was explicit in saying he’d run in the 6th, while Macy said she was “ready to take on [Rep.] Ben Cline when the district was ruby-red.” Cline could stick with the 6th if he’s willing to take one for the team, or he could switch over to the 9th.
VA-07 (53-45 Harris): With Vindman certain to move over to the 1st District, the 7th would lack a Democratic incumbent. That would clear a likely path for Del. Dan Helmer, who chairs the House Democrats’ campaign arm. Helmer, who lost two previous bids for Congress, has not yet announced his intentions, but Virginia Scope reports that he plans to run. McGuire, as noted above, could potentially run here, as could Ollivant.
VA-08 (58-40 Harris): It should in theory be smooth sailing for Rep. Don Beyer in the revamped 8th. However, another Democrat, Navy veteran Jason Knapp, who’d been running in the 1st, said he’d switch over to this district, and a couple of others are also running in the primary. In addition, if Republican Rep. Rob Wittman decides not to retire and instead wages a long-shot bid to remain in Congress, he’d likely do so here.
VA-09 (74-25 Trump): The 9th, in the southwestern corner of the state, would become Virginia’s only GOP safe-haven, and longtime Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith would be sure to run for reelection here. The biggest question is whether Cline would try to run against him in the primary.
The 3rd, 4th, 10th, and 11th districts would all remain solidly Democratic, and their current incumbents are all likely to seek reelection, without much in the way of GOP opposition.
For the second Saturday in a row, Democrats racked up a massive overperformance in a critical special election—and for the second Saturday in a row, The Downballot delivered a breaking news alert to your inbox the moment the race was called.
If you appreciate our dedication to covering special elections, no matter the day of the week or hour of the day, then we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Your support makes our round-the-clock coverage possible!
Election Recaps
Special Elections
Louisiana Democrats turned in a landslide win in a Saturday special election to hold a conservative seat in the state House that Republicans were eager to flip.
Chasity Martinez defeated Republican Brad Daigle by a dominant 62-38 margin in the rural 60th District—a massive 37-point overperformance compared to the 2024 presidential results. Her victory means that Republicans, who have failed to secure a legislative pickup of any kind during Donald Trump’s second term, will remain empty-handed.
Martinez prevailed despite getting outspent 3-to-1, according to the Louisiana Democratic Party, and her victory attracted attention well outside of Acadiana. The Downballot sent out a breaking news alert on Saturday night recapping the race. Click through for our complete breakdown.
Governors
NY-Gov
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul defeated Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado 85-15 at Friday’s state Democratic Party convention, a showing that denied Delgado the requisite 25% he needed to secure an automatic spot on the June 23 primary ballot.
Delgado, however, said beforehand that he wouldn’t let a setback on the convention floor keep him from continuing his campaign against Hochul, who four years ago hand-picked him to serve as her second-in-command.
Delgado now must turn in 15,000 valid signatures by April 6 to make the ballot—an expensive and time-consuming process that Hochul doesn’t need to concern herself with. The eventual Democratic nominee will likely face Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who faces no serious opposition for the GOP nod.
The governor’s victory on Friday came after she received endorsements from every corner of her party. All 19 of the state’s Democratic U.S. House members backed Hochul on Friday, a group that includes nationally prominent progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and well-known centrists like Tom Suozzi, who challenged Hochul in her 2022 primary.
AOC, Suozzi, and 10 other representatives had served alongside Delgado, who was elected in 2018 and resigned in 2022 to become lieutenant governor. Hochul, for her part, served with five members of the delegation during her own brief tenure in the House, which began in 2011 when she won a special election for a conservative seat and ended following her defeat the next year.
Hochul, who also earned the backing of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani the day before the convention vote, has reason to feel confident about her prospects against Delgado should he make the ballot. In a recent Siena poll, she posted a dominant 64-11 lead over the challenger, who has struggled to secure influential endorsements.
This nomination contest, though, will represent a break from the past for an unusual reason. Hochul signed a law last year that requires candidates for governor to choose a running mate, with the two running together on a single ticket in the primary. Whoever wins will again compete together as a team in the general election.
The Empire State previously nominated governors and lieutenant governors in separate primaries, with the winners of each getting fused together in the general election—a system that often led to awkward “shotgun weddings.”
Last week, Hochul announced that her running mate would be former New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who was one of several candidates who lost last year’s Democratic primary for mayor to Mamdani. Delgado’s pick is India Walton, who defeated then-Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in a 2021 primary upset, only to lose months later when Brown waged a successful write-in campaign in the general election.
House
CA-03, CA-05, CA-06
Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley said Thursday evening that he would not campaign in California’s revamped 3rd District, a Democratic-leaning constituency that shares a number with the more conservative seat Kiley currently serves. Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, who represents the old 6th, is running for the new 3rd.
But Kiley, who has spent the last three months publicly deliberating which district he’ll run for, isn’t ready to end what the Sacramento Bee’s Mathew Miranda dubbed his “own political version of The Bachelor.” The Republican says he’s still deciding between two other possibilities: The 5th District, a conservative constituency held by fellow GOP Rep. Tom McClintock, and the 6th, a Democratic-friendly open seat.
Kiley has until the March 6 filing deadline to make up his mind, though the San Joaquin Sun’s Daniel Gligich says that he appears to be preparing to take on McClintock. Gligich reports that Kiley is airing TV ads in the Fresno media market, which covers the 5th District, while staying off the air in the Sacramento market, which would reach voters in the 6th.
IA-04
Iowa state Rep. Matt Windschitl dropped out of the Republican primary for the open 4th Congressional District on Friday, a move that came two days after Donald Trump endorsed Siouxland Chamber of Commerce head Chris McGowan.
McGowan’s only serious intraparty opponent is Ryan Rhodes, the former CEO of the far-right social media site Parler. Whoever wins the GOP nomination on June 2 is all but assured victory in this dark-red seat in western Iowa.
NV-02
Rep. Mark Amodei, the only Republican who represents Nevada in either chamber of Congress, announced Friday that he would not seek reelection next year.
Amodei, who first won the conservative 2nd Congressional District in 2011 in a high-profile special election, had initially sounded set to seek an eighth full term when NOTUS quizzed him about his intentions late last year.
“It’s Dec. 16. Yes, I plan on running,” the congressman said, before adding, “Ask me in 60 days.” Amodei announced 52 days later that he would not run.
Donald Trump carried the 2nd District, which includes the Reno area and rural northern Nevada, 56-42 in 2024, making the GOP favored to keep it this year. The Silver State’s candidate filing deadline is March 13, and the primary is June 9.
Democrats already had a well-heeled contender running in the form of Greg Kidd, a wealthy businessman who challenged Amodei as an independent in 2024. Kidd, who poured over $9 million of his own money into a race where Democrats didn’t field a candidate of their own, lost 55-36.
Kidd announced last month that he would run again as a Democrat, telling KUNR, “We’re not in a situation yet where third-party candidates in these congressional elections can really pull it off.”
Many Republicans, meanwhile, are sure to take a look at running for a seat that has been in GOP hands during its entire four decades of existence.
For more than a century after achieving statehood in 1864, tiny Nevada was entitled to just a single seat in the House, only gaining a second district following the 1980 census. Most of the Las Vegas area went to the new 1st District, which was first won in 1982 by a rising Democratic politician named Harry Reid, while Republican Barbara Vucanovich won the race to represent the northern half of the state.
Vucanovich’s victory marked the start of a long string of GOP successes in the 2nd. Democrats, though, hoped to finally score a breakthrough in 2011 when Rep. Dean Heller resigned to accept an appointment to the Senate, and it was Amodei who stood in their way.
Amodei, who had recently finished up his tenure in the state Senate, was serving as state party chair when Republican Sen. John Ensign resigned in disgrace due to the ongoing fallout from his attempts to conceal an extramarital affair. Gov. Brian Sandoval picked Heller to fill Ensign’s seat, a move that set off a special election to replace Heller in the House.
Democrats believed they might have an opening after John McCain carried the 2nd by just 88 votes during his 2008 presidential run, especially if Republicans were to nominate a weak opponent. But while Democrats hoped that former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who had just waged a disastrous U.S. Senate campaign against Reid, would get the prize, she disappointed them by not running.
Local GOP leaders instead gave the nomination to Amodei, who had dropped out of the 2010 primary that Angle ultimately won. (There was no primary for the special election.) Democrats, though, still hoped that their nominee, state Treasurer Kate Marshall, could score an upset.
But while the contest attracted plenty of money and attention, it wasn’t close. Barack Obama, who was coming off a bruising fight over the debt ceiling with Congress, was posting some of the worst approval ratings of his presidency, and Amodei took advantage of the political climate to win in a 58-36 landslide.
The new congressman never again had to worry much about Democratic opposition, and when Angle finally did run in 2018, he crushed her in the primary—a victory that seemed to indicate he didn’t have much to be concerned about on his right flank.
Things started to change the next year, however, when Amodei infuriated conservatives by expressing openness to an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. But while Amodei, who joined the rest of the GOP caucus in voting against both the inquiry and Trump’s first impeachment, avoided serious primary opposition in 2020, he wasn’t quite so fortunate two years later.
Douglas County Commissioner Danny Tarkanian, a legendary perennial candidate who had finally won office in 2020, decided to challenge an incumbent he portrayed as insufficiently right-wing. Amodei’s side fought back by reminding northern Nevada Republicans that Tarkanian had only recently moved out of the Las Vegas area, but he held on with a relatively soft 55-33 win.
Amodei avoided serious intraparty opposition in 2024 and went on to decisively defeat Kidd in the race for what would be his final term.
Ballot Measures
VA Ballot
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed several bills on Friday setting elections for four different constitutional amendments that fellow Democrats in the legislature recently passed.
On April 21, voters will be asked to approve an amendment allowing lawmakers to adopt a new congressional map in response to Republican gerrymandering in other states.
On Thursday, Democrats unveiled their proposed districts, which would transform four GOP-held seats all carried by Donald Trump into districts that Kamala Harris would have won. First, though, they must convince the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that determined the legislature had failed to follow proper procedures in passing the Democrats’ amendment.
Democrats, though, are already running ads in support of the redistricting measure. In its first spot, a group called Virginians for Fair Elections warns of “an unprecedented power grab to rig elections and redraw congressional maps” and urges viewers to “vote yes” on “a temporary last resort to restore fairness now and preserve independent redistricting in the future.”
The other three amendments will all go before voters in November. One would automatically restore the voting rights of those who’ve served felony sentences upon release. Currently, such persons can only ask that their rights be restored by applying directly to the governor, who has absolute discretion over such requests.
Another would repeal the ban on same-sex marriage that voters enshrined in the state Constitution in a 2006 vote. While that ban has been null and void ever since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage nationwide in its 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, several states have since repealed similar laws out of concern that the court could overturn Obergefell.
The fourth and final amendment would guarantee the right to reproductive freedom, including the right to an abortion. As with same-sex marriage, abortion is legal in Virginia, but Democrats want to enact constitutional protections to help ward against backsliding should Republicans ever regain control of the state government.
Mayors & County Leaders
Los Angeles, CA Mayor
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman announced Saturday that she would challenge Mayor Karen Bass, a fellow Democrat who faces renewed scrutiny over her response to last year’s devastating wildfires.
Raman, whose 2020 win made her the first City Council member elected with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, immediately became Bass’ most prominent opponent in the officially nonpartisan June 2 primary.
But Raman, who has long been compared to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is by no means alone among challengers. The councilmember nicknamed “The L.A.O.C.,” who launched her campaign mere hours before candidate filing closed, is one of 40 hopefuls who’ve filed to run, though not all will make the ballot (in Los Angeles, candidates submit paperwork first and only then gather signatures). Candidates need to win a majority of the vote to avoid a runoff on Nov. 3.
The roster includes Adam Miller, a wealthy tech executive and nonprofit founder who entered the race on Wednesday. Miller, who also identifies as a Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times he would use his own money to kickstart his campaign but would also raise money from donors.
The field also includes housing activist Rae Huang, a DSA member who launched a bid in November, and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a Republican who entered the race in January. None of the other 37 names has generated much attention so far.
Before Saturday, there was no indication that Raman, a prominent progressive who had endorsed Bass last month, was looking to challenge an incumbent who had emerged from a political low-point and seemed to be well-positioned for reelection. The mayor was still facing vocal criticism over her handling of the wildfires and the long rebuilding process, but she nonetheless appeared to be the favorite to secure a second term.
Bass, though, once again became the subject of intense and unwelcome attention on Wednesday when the L.A. Times reported that she’d played a “behind-the-scenes role in watering down” an after-action report about the city’s failures during the Palisades fire.
Bass’ team pushed back by accusing the paper of “rely[ing] on third hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false.” That response, though, didn’t silence critics, who’ve argued that America’s second-largest city badly needs new leadership.
It wasn’t clear, though, whether Bass would draw a well-known opponent as Saturday’s candidate deadline drew closer. The man who’d been Bass’ top rival, former schools chief Austin Beutner, dropped out Thursday following the death of his daughter. Miller’s late entry meant Bass would still face a candidate with access to major resources, but his kickoff didn’t quiet talk that someone stronger was looming.
Both Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and billionaire Rick Caruso, who was Bass’ foe in the 2022 general election, talked about launching last-minute campaigns, but they each begged off before Saturday’s filing deadline. Raman, though, decided to take up the challenge on the last day possible.
The city councilmember, who at 44 is almost three decades younger than the 72-year-old Bass, launched her campaign by portraying herself as an alternative to an administration that hasn’t done enough for residents.
In an interview with the New York Times, Raman argued that, while she and Bass “are very aligned on our values,” the mayor had failed to properly address challenges like homelessness, affordable housing, and disaster preparedness. The challenger charged that Bass had instead overseen a “system that lacks clear ownership and accountability” and “is leaving people stuck in crisis while the city cycles from emergency to emergency.”
The mayor’s campaign responded with a statement defending her record, saying that, among other things, she’s presided over “L.A.’s first sustained decrease in street homelessness,” while also portraying Raman as the wrong person to run the city.
“The last thing Los Angeles needs is a politician who opposed cleaning up homeless encampments and efforts to make our city safer,” a Bass spokesperson said.
Poll Pile
AL-Sen (R): The Alabama Poll: Steve Marshall: 26, Barry Moore: 17, Jared Hudson: 8, Rodney Walker: 4, Morgan Murphy: 1, undecided: 43. (Dec.: Marshall: 30, Moore: 12, Hudson: 8.)
IL-Sen (D): Public Policy Polling (D) for the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association (pro-Juliana Stratton): Raja Krishnamoorthi: 34, Juliana Stratton: 23, Robin Kelly: 8. (Dec.: Krishnamoorthi: 32, Stratton: 20, Kelly: 9.)
IL-Sen (D): Victory Research (R): Krishnamoorthi: 32, Stratton: 21, Kelly: 11, undecided: 30. (Nov.: Krishnamoorthi: 29, Kelly: 22, Stratton: 18.)
TX-Sen (R): Cygnal (R) for an unidentified Republican candidate for another office: Ken Paxton: 26, Wesley Hunt: 25, John Cornyn (inc): 22, undecided: 27.
TX-Sen (R): Ragnar Research (R) for Texans for a Conservative Majority (pro-Cornyn): Cornyn (inc): 31, Paxton: 29, Hunt: 24.
TX-Sen (R): Pulse Decision Science (R) for Lone Star Liberty PAC (pro-Paxton): Paxton: 34, Cornyn (inc): 26, Hunt: 18. (Dec.: Cornyn: 38, Paxton: 38, Hunt: 16.)
AL-01 (R): The Alabama Poll: Jerry Carl: 25, Rhett Marques: 9, Joshua McKee: 9, undecided: 57. The pollster tells The Downballot that the poll was taken for a non-candidate client. The memo indicates opposition to Carl.
Correction: This piece incorrectly said that 40 candidates placed their names on the ballot for mayor of Los Angeles, California. Because candidates submit paperwork first and only then gather signatures, candidates still need to go through another step before they can appear on the ballot.
I honestly don't get why Delgado is continuing to primary Hochul. It makes sense why he initially announced, but the writing's on the wall. He should preserve his dignity and try to salvage what relationships he can so he can maybe run for something in the future, not continue this quixotic campaign for god knows what reason.
WISC: Chris Taylor and Wisconsin Dems have collectively raised over $3.3 million since January 1. Maria Lazar? Less than $200,000
https://www.wispolitics.com/2026/wisdems-following-disastrous-fundraising-report-from-right-wing-extremist-maria-lazar-wisdems-and-taylor-campaign-on-offense-with-over-3-million-raised-during-pre-primary-period/