Morning Digest: Why the first American pope just showed up in a campaign ad

And why Colorado bishops are deeply displeased with the spot

Pope Leo XIV delivers a speech introducing his papal teaching warning of the dangers posed by artificial intelligence on May 25, 2026. (credit: You Can Push Back ad screenshot)

Leading Off

CO-08

A deep-pocketed supporter of state Rep. Manny Rutinel in the June 30 Democratic primary for Colorado’s 8th District is turning to an unusual messenger in a new ad: Pope Leo XIV.

“I hear very troubling accounts of algorithms that can block access to healthcare, employment, and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice and injustice,” the Chicago-born pope is shown saying in a recent speech unveiling the first major teaching of his papacy. In that document, called “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” Leo warned of the dangers posed by artificial intelligence.

A narrator then extols Rutinel, saying a law he sponsored “made Colorado the first state with sweeping artificial intelligence regulations.” The voice-over adds that “Manny took on the AI companies—don’t let them defeat him” before the ad closes out with another clip of Leo saying, “Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.”

The spot is being aired by You Can Push Back, a super PAC that Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin notes is funded solely by tech billionaire Chris Larsen. According to FEC filings, the PAC has spent just shy of $1 million to help Rutinel. It had previously spent nearly $2 million to help Assemblyman Alex Bores in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th District.

But You Can Push Back is getting some, well, pushback over its latest commercial. The Colorado Catholic Conference, which is governed by the state’s four bishops, sharply criticized the ad in a post on X.

“The Catholic Church in Colorado and the Vatican do not endorse @MannyRutinel or any political candidate,” the organization wrote. “The Colorado Catholic Conference, as the united voice of the Catholic Bishops of Colorado, objects to the use of Pope Leo XIV’s image and words to imply endorsement of Rutinel.”

The group also attacked Rutinel’s stance on abortion, saying his voting record amounts to “direct participation in the grave evil of abortion and violates Catholic Church teaching.”

Rutinel faces former state Rep. Shannon Bird for the right to take on first-term Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in the swingy 8th District.

Election Recaps

All race calls and estimates of the proportion of the vote that’s been tabulated come from the Associated Press. You can also check out our cheat-sheet that summarizes the outcomes in every key race.

Maine

Ranked-choice tabulations will begin on June 12 for any contests where no one wins a majority. The secretary of state’s office anticipates they will be “completed prior to the Juneteenth holiday.”

ME-Sen (D) (52-45 Harris)

Oyster farm owner Graham Platner easily won the Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is seeking a sixth term representing Maine.

Collins’ allies at Pine Tree Results are already preparing to launch a new ad attacking Platner that features Mainers reacting to various social media posts he wrote, including ones in which he denigrated rural Americans and cops. According to Politico, the new spot is part of a seven-figure buy.

ME-Gov (D & R) (52-45 Harris)

While there are still a significant number of votes to count in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, there’s no question that ranked-choice tabulations will be required to determine the nominees to replace Mills, who cannot seek a third term as governor.

With 81% of the estimated vote in on the Democratic side, Nirav Shah, the state’s former health director, currently leads former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree 27-23. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows are close behind at about 21% each, with businessman Angus King III bringing up the rear with just 8%.

Bellows, Jackson, and Pingree joined together last month to each urge their voters to rank the other two. Neither Shah nor King, by contrast, asked their supporters to rank any other candidates.

Attorney Bobby Charles leads in the Republican primary with 38%, while fitness chain founder Ben Midgley and former health care executive Jonathan Bush are back with about 20% apiece. Former state Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason is a distant fourth with 11%, while each of the other three candidates has less than 4% of the vote. The AP estimates 72% is tabulated.

The eventual nominees for both parties will face state Sen. Rick Bennett, a longtime Republican who dropped his party affiliation last year to run as an independent. Ranked-choice voting will not be used in the general election for governor or the legislature, though it will be employed again this fall in U.S. Senate and House races.

ME-02 (D) (54-44 Trump)

Ranked-choice voting will also be needed to decide the Democratic nominee for this conservative open seat in northern Maine.

With an estimated 72% in, state Sen. Joe Baldacci, the favorite candidate of national Democrats, leads with 31%. Former congressional staffer Jordan Wood and state Auditor Matt Dunlap are just behind with 29.4% and 28.9%, respectively, while the balance goes to social worker Paige Loud.

The winner will go up against former Gov. Paul LePage, who has no opposition in the Republican primary, in the contest to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.

Nevada

NV-02 (R & D) (56-42 Trump)

Air Force veteran David Flippo appears to have prevailed in the Republican primary for this open seat in northern Nevada, though the Associated Press hasn’t called the race as of Wednesday morning. The Democratic nominee will be former state Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson, who had no trouble winning her primary.

Flippo, who received Trump’s endorsement late in the campaign, leads former state Senate Minority Leader James Settelmeyer 46-35 with an estimated 83% of the vote in. Both Gov. Joe Lombardo and retiring Rep. Mark Amodei supported Settelmeyer over Flippo, who was running his second campaign for the 4th District in the Las Vegas area before switching races in March.

But while Flippo’s intraparty critics seem to have failed to convince enough Republicans to reject the man they called “Vegas Dave,” Benitez-Thompson hopes his weak ties to the area will give her a better chance to score a historic victory in the fall. Benitez-Thompson would be the first Democrat to ever represent the 2nd Congressional District during its more than four decades of existence.

NV-03 (D & R) (50-49 Trump)

Democratic Rep. Susie Lee easily fended off a primary challenge from wealthy cardiologist James Lally, while businessman Marty O’Donnell glided past three opponents on the Republican side.

O’Donnell, who helped compose the soundtracks for several entries in the “Halo” videogame franchise, had both Trump and Lombardo’s support two years after he took a disappointing fourth place in the 2024 primary for this seat. Lee and O’Donnell will now compete for a competitive constituency in the southern Las Vegas area that Lee first won in 2018.

NV-04 (R) (50-48 Harris)

Businessman Cody Whipple scored a landslide win in the three-way Republican primary to face Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in the 4th District, a constituency based in the northern Las Vegas area and rural central Nevada. Trump’s national unpopularity, though, will make it difficult for Whipple to prevail in a seat Trump failed to carry two years ago.

NV-AG (D & R) (51-47 Trump)

Democrat Nicole Cannizzaro and Republican Adriana Guzman Fralick will face off in what will be a closely watched general election to replace Attorney General Aaron Ford, the Democratic nominee to take on Lombardo.

Cannizzaro, who serves as the majority leader of the state Senate, beat state Treasurer Zach Conine by a 61-35 margin. Guzman Fralick, an attorney backed by both Trump and Lombardo, scored an almost identical victory against Douglas County Commissioner Danny Tarkanian, who can add this to his long list of defeats.

NV-SoS (R) (51-47 Trump)

Election conspiracy theorist Jim Marchant holds a small lead in the Republican primary to face Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, though the AP has not called the race. Aguilar in 2022 narrowly defeated Marchant, a former member of the Assembly who insisted that anyone who had won an election in Nevada since 2006 was “installed by the deep-state cabal.”

With an estimated 87% in, Marchant enjoys a 33-31 advantage over Shirley Folkins-Roberts, a nonprofit co-founder backed by Lombardo. Former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who is best known for her disastrous 2010 Senate campaign against the late Harry Reid, is in third place with 26%.

North Dakota

ND Ballot (67-31 Trump)

North Dakota voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment known as Constitutional Measure 1 that limits future amendments to a single subject, a rule found in many other state constitutions.

South Carolina

A June 23 runoff will take place in any primaries where no candidate earns a majority of the vote.

SC-Sen (R) (58-40 Trump)

Sen. Lindsey Graham avoided a primary runoff against wealthy businessman Mark Lynch, but despite $15 million in spending by the incumbent and allied outside groups, he racked up an unimpressive 57% of the vote. Graham will face Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who easily won her primary.

SC-Gov (R & D) (58-40 Trump)

South Carolina’s GOP primary for governor will head to a runoff in two weeks between Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who had Donald Trump’s endorsement, and state Attorney General Alan Wilson, the son of longtime Rep. Joe Wilson.

With most of the vote counted, Evette led Wilson 29-26, well below the majority needed to avoid a second round. The results, however, spelled the end of not one but two House careers: Rep. Ralph Norman took third with 17%, while Rep. Nancy Mace finished in a humiliating fifth place with just 12% of the vote. Mace immediately endorsed Wilson for the second round.

The winner of the faceoff between Evette and Wilson will go up against Democratic state Rep. Jermaine Johnson, who would be the state’s first Black governor.

SC-01 (D & R) (56-43 Trump)

Both parties will host runoffs on June 23 in the race to succeed Rep. Nancy Mace, whose bid for governor crashed and burned on Tuesday night.

The Democratic contest will feature retired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, a victim of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purge of top military leaders, and attorney Mac Deford, a Coast Guard veteran who narrowly lost the 2024 primary for this district. Lacore led Deford 36-29 and has far outpaced him in fundraising.

The GOP’s second round, meanwhile, will pit Charleston County Councilwoman Jenny Costa Honeycutt against state Rep. Mark Smith. Honeycutt edged past Smith 22-18, while self-funding physician Sam McCown finished just out of the money with 16%. Former Gov. Mark Sanford took fourth with 12% despite dropping out of the race in April.

SC-04 (R) (61-37 Trump)

Republican Rep. William Timmons easily fended off a challenge from businessman David Atchley after surviving his last primary by just a 52-48 margin. In that previous race, Timmons had been dogged by allegations of infidelity, but Atchley was unable to gain similar traction.

Timmons, who this time prevailed 66-20, said during the campaign that this would be his final reelection campaign.

Senate

AL-Sen

Donald Trump’s pick for Alabama’s open U.S. Senate seat is locked in a nasty runoff next week, and his critics are ripping him over what had once looked like a strength: his military service.

“Stolen valor: The most disgusting, despicable lie,” the narrator says at the start of a new ad from Alabama Conservatives, a group supporting Navy SEAL veteran Jared Hudson. “And breaking reports say that Barry Moore has been caught red-handed.”

The commercial goes on to accuse Moore, a three-term congressman who earned Trump’s backing in January, of having “misrepresented his military record for years, even shamefully pretending to have served in combat.” The audience then hears audio of Moore saying, “I’ve been in those combat boots. I understand what it’s like.”

The ad cites a piece from the far-right site Gateway Pundit alleging that Moore has long identified himself as a retired staff sergeant in the Army National Guard even though his discharge papers show that he was only a cadet when he left the service. The site also claimed that military records say that Moore was never deployed.

The congressman’s campaign responded by providing the Alabama Daily News with discharge papers showing he had received the pay grade of a staff sergeant even though he was still in training.

Moore himself posted a video on Wednesday in which he said, “I was never in combat, and I never claimed to be.” In an X post sharing the video, he also wrote that Hudson was “willing to insult the 39,738 Alabamians who serve in the National Guard and Army Reserves.”

Moore’s team took issue with the suggestion that the candidate’s line about his combat boots, which came from a 2020 ad during his first successful bid for Congress, was dishonest. His campaign told CBS 42 that “members of the National Guard wear combat boots to train.”

Moore, one of the most notorious election deniers in the House, became the GOP frontrunner earlier this year when Trump blessed his bid for the Senate seat that Republican Tommy Tuberville is giving up to run for governor. Moore remained the favorite after he secured 39% of the vote in the first round of the primary on May 19, while Hudson was well behind with 26%.

But Hudson, who edged out Attorney General Steve Marshall for the second spot in the runoff—no one secured the requisite majority needed to win outright—believes he has a shot to defeat Moore next week.

“You gotta think: 10, 15 million dollars in spend on the congressman, every endorsement under the sun, and 61 percent of the people in the state voted against him,” Hudson remarked of his opponent in comments to Politico last week. “It wasn’t because they didn’t know him, it’s because they didn’t want him.”

Moore’s allies also acknowledge that Hudson, who is campaigning as a conservative outsider, is a potential threat. An affiliate of the hardline Club For Growth welcomed Hudson to the runoff last month with ads blasting him as “a stalking horse for Democrat bigwig donors.”

Pollsters, though, disagree on which man is favored to capture the GOP nomination to represent this dark red state.

Hudson posts a 42-38 advantage in a new survey released Tuesday from Strategy Management, which says it has no client.

The Alabama Poll, which regularly surveys its home state, previously placed Hudson ahead 49-39 shortly after Memorial Day. The GOP firm co/efficient, though, showed Moore prevailing 46-37 in a poll conducted just days later.

MI-Sen

AIPAC’s United Democracy Project is spending more than $2 million on an ad campaign promoting Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of the August Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, while one of her rivals, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, is getting a nearly $5 million boost.

UDP’s opening spot, as is almost always the case with the group’s ads, does not mention Israel or any related topic. The commercial instead utilizes footage of Barack Obama calling Stevens “a critical part of my team that helped the American auto industry come roaring back,” while the narrator praises her for “fighting back against Trump’s Medicare cuts.”

The Detroit News says that UDP and other Stevens allies have spent or reserved close to $9 million on TV ads through June 15.

But Stevens’ side will soon have company on the airwaves. The New York Times reports that an obscure group called Yes MI Action Committee has booked nearly $5 million to support McMorrow.

Former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, the final Democrat in the race, has yet to benefit from major outside spending, though that’s also about to change.

Fighting for Michigan PAC tells Axios it will launch “a multimillion-dollar independent expenditure campaign” to help El-Sayed, who has led in some recent polling, though it did not specify how much it plans to spend. The group’s first ad touts El-Sayed’s local roots, medical background, and the endorsement he earned from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Governors

CA-Gov

Former U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra will square off against former Fox News host Steve Hilton in November after the Associated Press called the second slot in the general election for the Trump-backed Hilton on Thursday evening.

With approximately 90% of votes tallied, Becerra leads Hilton 28-25, with the third-place Democrat, billionaire investor Tom Steyer, at 23%. Immediately following last week’s primary, Hilton had a 28-25 edge on Becerra, while Steyer was at 20. Later-counted ballots boosted both Democrats and reduced Hilton’s vote-share, but they weren’t enough to catapult Steyer into second place.

WI-Gov

Former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan on Tuesday became the first of the seven Democratic candidates competing for Wisconsin’s open governorship to begin airing TV ads ahead of the state’s August primary.

Brennan, whose opening spot features his children highlighting his time in the business and nonprofit world, as well as his service as Gov. Tony Evers’ “top cabinet official,” tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he’s spending six figures to introduce himself.

But he won’t be the only candidate on TV for long. Brennan faces former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong, former state cabinet member Missy Hughes, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, and state Sen. Kelda Roys in a contest that lacks a frontrunner.

The winner will almost certainly go up against Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who faces only minor intraparty opposition.

House

CA-06

The Associated Press projected on Tuesday evening that Rep. Kevin Kiley, a former Republican running as an independent, and former state Sen. Richard Pan, the leading Democrat, would move on to the November election for California’s 6th District.

With more than 90% of votes tallied, Kiley held a 25-23 lead on Pan, with another Republican, Michael Stansfield, at 20. Immediately after election night, however, Kiley and Stansfield occupied the top two slots with 27 and 22 percent, respectively. Thanks in part to a split field of five Democrats, Pan was just behind with 21%.

Those partial results briefly generated fears that Democrats could get locked out of the general election, but as is often the case in California, later-counted ballots saw the Democratic candidates all increase their share of the vote while Kiley and Stansfield both sagged.

Facing a difficult path to reelection under California’s new, Democratic-drawn map, Kiley ditched his GOP affiliation in March and appeared on the ballot without a party preference. However, he continues to caucus with House Republicans and has received financial support from Speaker Mike Johnson.

CA-07

The AP called the second general election slot in California’s 7th District for Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang on Thursday evening, though Vang now actually leads Rep. Doris Matsui 31-29 with most votes counted.

On Friday, the AP called the first slot for Matsui, who at the time held a slender 30-28 lead on Vang, a fellow Democrat who has called for a new generation of more progressive leadership. Matsui’s allies had sought to prop up little-known Republican Zachariah Wooden as a way to block Vang from advancing, but Wooden wound up a distant third with 22% of the vote.

CA-22

Randy Villegas, an outspoken progressive with support from figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has defeated a more moderate fellow Democrat, Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, and will take on Republican Rep. David Valadao in the fall, the AP projected on Tuesday.

With more than 90% of the estimated vote counted, Valadao leads Villegas 41-32, with Bains, who had the assistance of the DCCC, at 27. While the AP called the first slot for Valadao on election night, though, when he had a wider 45-30 edge on Villegas, his share of the vote has steadily dropped since then. With the two Democrats combining for nearly 60% of the vote, that could spell serious trouble for the GOP in November.

CA-40

California’s 40th District will host an all-Republican general election between two incumbents as the Associated Press projected on Tuesday that Rep. Young Kim would join Rep. Ken Calvert for a second bout in November.

The AP called the first spot for Calvert on election night, when he led Kim 36-22, while Democrat Esther Kim Varet was in third with 16%. Later-counted votes did not appreciably change the standings: With approximately 85% of the vote tallied, Calvert holds a 35-21 advantage over Kim, while Kim Varet only nosed upward to 17%.

While the outcome was disappointing for Democrats on one level, they deliberately drew the Orange County-based 40th District to pull in as many Republican-leaning voters as possible with their redrawn map, allowing them to make surrounding districts bluer.

FL-22

Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter announced Monday she would seek the Republican nomination for Florida’s open 22nd Congressional District.

Baxter, who faced a tough primary challenge in August to keep her seat on the County Commission, will instead now compete in a busy nomination contest for a constituency the GOP just gerrymandered extensively.

The Republican lineup already included three notable names, all of whom can self-fund: crypto businessman Michael Carbonara, university administrator Belinda Keiser, and fast-food franchise owner Casey Askar. The eventual nominee will likely take on businesswoman Pia Dandiya, the only prominent Democrat in the race.

Candidate filing closes on Friday, so the field will be set soon. Donald Trump would have carried the new 22nd 55-44 in 2024, though Joe Biden would have taken it 51-48 four years earlier.

Poll Pile

• CO-Sen (D): Colorado Community Research:

  • John Hickenlooper: 41, Julie Gonzales: 34.

• MN-Sen (D): GQR for Peggy Flanagan:

  • Peggy Flanagan: 55, Angie Craig: 38.

  • Jan.: 49-36 Flanagan.