Morning Digest: Why this Trump endorsement has Democrats sighing with relief

Democrats have spent months worrying about a top-two disaster in California. That scenario looks even more unlikely now.

Former Fox News host Steve Hilton (middle), Donald Trump’s choice for governor of California. (Credit: Steve Hilton Facebook)

Leading Off

CA-Gov

Donald Trump endorsed former Fox News host Steve Hilton on Monday morning, a move that’s likely to diminish the GOP’s chances of locking Democrats out of the general election for governor of California.

Democrats have spent months fearing that Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff ​​Chad Bianco, who is the other prominent Republican in the race, could both advance out of the June 2 top-two primary if the large field of Democratic candidates divides up the state’s considerably larger bloc of liberal voters too much for any one of them to move forward.

While such a nightmare scenario has always been unlikely, as The Downballot explained in a January analysis, those worries have overshadowed much of the conversation about the race to replace term-limited Democrat Gavin Newsom.

The Los Angeles Times last month published a column titled, “Scary time for California Democrats,” and other state, national, and even international outlets have also focused their coverage on whether the Golden State’s unusual election laws could result in a GOP pickup in June.

Trump’s decision to back Hilton, though, gives Hilton the opportunity to consolidate Republican support and to make Bianco an afterthought—an outcome that would make it almost impossible for the sheriff to deprive Democrats of a spot in the general election.

But Hilton, a British native who served as a high-level strategist for then-Prime Minister David Cameron, says that Trump hasn’t done Democrats a favor at all by boosting him over Bianco.

“That scenario of two Republicans, I’ve been saying this for months, was always a fantasy,” he told Fox Business. “The idea that the Democrat machine in California was just gonna hand over this state to two Republicans was never serious.”

Hilton went on to argue that two Democrats might have advanced had Trump not intervened and left voters with “no chance of change.”

Bianco, for his part, responded to Trump’s snub by using transphobia to question Hilton’s conservative credentials. The sheriff tweeted a picture of Hilton and Newsom embracing with the caption, “Find someone who looks at you like Gavin Newsom looks at Steve Hilton when they attend events for charities promoting gender confusion in children together.”

Hilton’s main Democratic rivals, by contrast, each responded to Trump’s decision to back him by arguing that they’re the candidate who will keep Trump’s agenda out of the Golden State.

“If there was any doubt what this race is about, now it’s certain: It’s California values against MAGA,” tweeted former Rep. Katie Porter, whom polls show is one of the three leading Democrats.

Billionaire Tom Steyer and Rep. Eric Swalwell, who are the other two Democratic frontrunners, piled on with their own messages arguing that they are the best choice to stand up to Trump.

10 of the hottest races for governor

Election Night

WI Supreme Court

While the officially nonpartisan election for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is the main event on Tuesday, conservatives aren’t spending much money to try to break their losing streak on the state’s highest court.

WisPolitics reported last week that progressive-backed Judge Chris Taylor and her allies enjoy a 9-1 spending advantage over conservative Judge Maria Lazar and her backers. The site tracked just under $9 million in total spending for the race to replace retiring conservative Rebecca Bradley—a far cry from the $115 million that went into last year’s contest.

It would normally be all but unthinkable for conservatives to put so little effort into a high-profile election in this perennial swing state. Right-wing candidates, though, have struggled for the better part of a decade to turn out their supporters in April races for the Supreme Court, while progressives have had no such trouble rallying their voters.

Elections for the seven-member court looked very different not so long ago. Conservatives seized control of the body in 2008 after waging a nakedly racist campaign to oust the court’s first-ever Black member, Louis Butler. While liberal candidates would score some wins over the ensuing decade-and-a-half, conservatives would continue to hold a majority of the seats until 2023.

Republicans had much to smile about in 2019 when Brian Hagedorn scored a tight 50.2 to 49.7 victory in his race to succeed a retiring liberal justice, an outcome that left conservatives with a hefty 5-2 majority. Almost no one, though, anticipated that Hagedorn would be the last conservative to so much as come close to winning a state Supreme Court race for quite a while.

Progressive Jill Karofsky unseated conservative Justice Dan Kelly 55-45 the following year in an election that took place just weeks into the COVID pandemic. Fellow progressive Janet Protasiewicz won by an identical margin in 2023 against Kelly in a hard-fought contest that gave liberals a majority on the Supreme Court for the first time since Butler was forced out.

Conservatives hoped that Donald Trump’s narrow 2024 win in the state would set the stage for them to retake control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court the following spring, and Elon Musk and his network spent $25 million in an attempt to replace a departing liberal incumbent. Susan Crawford, though, instead won by that now-familiar 55-45 margin and preserved the 4-3 progressive majority.

Lazar’s would-be backers appear to have decided long ago that there’s no use throwing good money after bad in a cycle where they have so many other things to worry about, and they’ve largely left her to fend for herself.

A win for Taylor, who has used her huge resource advantage to frame the race as a choice between a supporter of abortion rights and an ardent opponent, would expand the progressive majority to 5-2.

Taylor’s victory would also mean that the soonest conservatives could win back control would be 2030. This timeline, however, would get even worse for them if they lose next year’s race to replace Justice Annette Ziegler, another conservative who has announced that she will not run again.

Special Elections

Republican Clayton Fuller faces Democrat Shawn Harris in the general election to replace Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who officially resigned in January as the representative for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District.

There’s little question that Fuller, the district attorney for the Lookout Mountain circuit, will prevail in a northwestern Georgia constituency that Donald Trump carried 68-31 in 2024. Both parties, though, are watching to see if Harris, a retired Army brigadier general who lost to Greene 64-36 that year, performs better than Democrats are accustomed to in this conservative area.

Republicans are also taking action to help Fuller avoid a potentially embarrassing underperformance: Punchbowl News reports that two conservative outside groups have together spent over $1.5 million on advertising to promote the Republican and attack Harris as a “radical liberal.”

The Peach State will also hold two special elections for vacant seats in the state legislature, but there’s little suspense concerning either outcome. The 130th House District in the August area favored Kamala Harris 68-32, while the 53rd Senate District in the northwestern corner of the state backed Trump 79-21.

1Q Fundraising

• MI-Sen: Mallory McMorrow (D): $3 million raised

• MN-Sen: Angie Craig (D): $2.5 million raised, $5 million cash on hand

• NV-Gov: Aaron Ford (D): $1.2 million raised

• CA-07: Doris Matsui (D-inc): $560,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand

• CO-03: Dwayne Romero (D): $500,000 raised (in one month)

• FL-02: Keith Gross (R): $80,000 raised, additional $5.5 million self-funded, $5.1 million cash on hand

• LA-05: Michael Echols (R): $800,000 raised (in seven weeks), additional $1 million self-funded, $1.4 million cash on hand

• MA-08: Patrick Roath (D): $288,000 raised

• NH-01: Carleigh Beriont (D): $102,000 raised

• VA-11: Bree Fram (D): $250,000 raised

Senate

Senate Leadership Fund

The Senate Leadership Fund, the main pro-Republican super PAC in Senate elections, tells the New York Times that it’s booked a total of $342 million in fall TV time across eight states: Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio.

These reservations range from $15 million in Alaska all the way to $79 million in Ohio. However, these are only SLF’s preliminary bookings, and it’s sure to put down much more money in these states—and other battlegrounds like Texas—as Election Day draws closer.

Governors

ME-Gov

The Maine Supreme Court issued a unanimous advisory opinion Monday saying that general elections for governor and the legislature can’t be decided using ranked-choice voting.

While the opinion is not legally binding, Democrats in the state legislature had held off on sending a bill to Democratic Gov. Janet Mills explicitly allowing RCV to be used in general elections for state level offices until the justices said whether they believed the state constitution allows it.

The unfavorable ruling, though, means that this legislation, known as LD 1666, won’t be implemented, and the status quo that’s left the state with two different election systems since the 2018 elections will remain in place. In primaries for both congressional and state offices, voters cast ranked-choice ballots, but in general elections, they only do so for Congress.

The question of how far ranked-choice voting could go in Maine began in 2016 when voters approved a ballot measure broadly enacting RCV. Lawmakers, however, soon asked the state Supreme Court to advise them how the new system should be implemented.

The justices responded by issuing a unanimous advisory opinion determining that Maine’s governing document mandates that state-level posts be elected “by a plurality” of the vote, while RCV would force the winner to secure majority support. This rule, though, did not apply to the primaries for those offices, or to federal offices at all. (Presidential elections were unaffected by the new law.)

Proponents of ranked-choice hoped things would go differently this year when Democrats in the state legislature asked the Supreme Court for a new advisory opinion concerning LD 1666.

They pointed to a 2022 decision by the Alaska Supreme Court in a similar case that explicitly rejected the reasoning of Maine’s top court on what exactly a “plurality” meant. The justices in Alaska determined that, because “the vote count is not final after the first round of tabulation,” candidates don’t necessarily win if they have the most first-choice votes.

That argument did not go over well. The Maine Supreme Court said in its opinion that it was “not persuaded by the Alaska court’s reasoning” about how Maine’s elections should be conducted.

The justices also determined that “LD 1666’s conception of a vote as being a series of instructions or rankings that when tabulated pursuant to a ranked-choice process leads to an eventual final vote is inconsistent with the constitutional concept of a ‘vote.’”

While the opinion noted that the constitution could be amended to expand RCV—the 2016 ballot measure was strictly statutory in nature—a partisan divide in the legislature has made it all but impossible to do this.

It takes two-thirds of each chamber of the legislature to place an amendment on the ballot (Maine voters cannot use the initiative process to amend their constitution), and Democrats aren’t anywhere close to having the numbers necessary to do this without significant GOP support. Republicans, who spearheaded an unsuccessful 2018 ballot measure to do away with RCV altogether, remain broadly hostile to the system.

MS-Gov

Former state House Speaker Philip Gunn will announce on April 14 that he’ll enter next year’s Republican primary for governor of Mississippi, according to an invitation obtained by Taylor Vance of Mississippi Today.

Gunn would be the second prominent Republican to enter the race to replace Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican who is prohibited from seeking a third term. State Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson said last June that he would run for governor, and he spent the following eight months as the only notable declared candidate.

Gipson and Gunn, though, are far from the only Mississippi Republicans who want to lead this conservative state.

The conservative Magnolia Tribune last year suggested that Gipson was launching his campaign so early because state Auditor Shad White was in the midst of a “relentless” drive to win over backers and donors, a push that was “forcing others to move earlier than they would probably like.” While White has not announced his plans yet, he ended 2025 with a hefty $3.8 million in the bank.

Vance also says that billionaire Tommy Duff, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann are considering seeking the GOP nomination.

Most of the chatter on the Democratic side has centered around former Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, who lost to Reeves just 51-48 in 2023. Presley, who is the second cousin of Elvis Presley, wrote the day after his defeat that “the word ‘quit’ isn’t in my vocabulary.”

House

OK-01

Air Force veteran Dan Rooney said Thursday that he would seek the Republican nomination for Oklahoma’s open 1st District, an announcement that came one day before candidate filing closed.

Rooney is one of 12 Republicans who put their names forward to succeed GOP Rep. Kevin Hern, who doesn’t face any serious opposition for Senate, in this Tulsa-based constituency. Donald Trump carried the 1st District 60-38 in 2024.

The June 16 GOP primary field includes businessman Nathan Butterfield, former congressional aide Jed Cochran, state Corporation Commissioner Kim David, pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, Navy veteran Jackson Stallings, and state Rep. Mark Tedford. Candidates need to win a majority of the vote to avert a runoff on Aug. 25.

VA-07

Democratic state Sen. Saddam Salim announced Monday that he’ll seek Virginia’s proposed 7th Congressional District should voters approve an amendment on April 21 that would allow the state to enact a new, Democratic-drawn map. Several other Democrats were already running ahead of the vote.

Salim, who worked as a financial consultant, drew attention in 2023 when he challenged veteran state Sen. Chap Petersen for renomination. Salim, who ran as a progressive alternative to the incumbent, overcame a huge financial disadvantage to win the nomination 54-46 before easily prevailing in the fall.

Salim would be the first Muslim person to represent Virginia in Congress, as well as the first member of Congress from any state who was born in Bangladesh.

Poll Pile

• MI-07 (D): GQR for Bridget Brink:

  • Bridget Brink: 31, William Lawrence: 14, Matt Maasdam: 7, undecided: 46.

• MI-07 (D): Impact Research for Maasdam:

  • Lawrence: 17, Brink: 15, Maasdam: 8.

• MI-07 (D): Strategic National:

  • Lawrence: 6, Brink: 5, Maasdam: 4, undecided: 85.

  • Strategic National is a Republican firm.

• MT-01 (D): Tulchin Research for Ryan Busse:

  • Ryan Busse: 35, Russell Cleveland: 20, Sam Forstag: 13, Matt Rains: 5.