Democrat Josh Kaul is seeking a third term as Wisconsin’s attorney general (credit: Josh Kaul Facebook)
Leading Off
WI-Gov, WI-AG
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Tuesday that he would seek reelection rather than join the busy Democratic primary for governor.
Just months ago, Kaul had looked like a probable candidate to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Tony Evers—the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel even predicted in July that he would be “the likely Democratic frontrunner.” But in explaining his decision, he argued his current job is too vital to give up.
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“Some of our most basic rights are under threat,” Kaul said. “Severe cuts have been made to programs that provide opportunities and have helped communities move forward. It’s critical that we continue to have an AG who will stand up for our freedoms and the rule of law.”
Kaul’s choice could encourage other Democrats to run to lead this purple state, and one recognizable name is showing a renewed interest in doing just that.
“I’ve been blown away by the number of people across the state who have reached out and asked me to run, and I will have more to say very soon,” former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said in a statement shortly after Kaul made his plans known. Barnes, who was Evers’ running mate in 2018, lost a tight Senate race to Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in 2022.
Several fellow Democrats are already campaigning to replace Evers. The field includes Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who succeeded Barnes as Evers’ second-in-command; Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley; state Rep. Francesca Hong; former state cabinet member Missy Hughes; and state Sen. Kelda Roys.
The Republican primary, meanwhile, pits Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann against Rep. Tom Tiffany, though this smaller lineup may also expand. Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, now 83 years old, said last week that he remains interested in reclaiming the job he held from 1987 until he resigned in 2001 to join George W. Bush’s cabinet.
Kaul, for his part, is unlikely to face any serious intraparty opposition in his campaign to remain attorney general, but he may face a familiar Republican opponent next year.
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, whom Kaul narrowly fended off in 2022, told WisPolitics in May that he was considering another try, and the Associated Press wrote Tuesday that he’s “expected” to seek a rematch.
The contest to serve as the top lawyer for this perennial swing state is sure to once again attract outsized attention and money.
Kaul’s 2018 campaign to unseat Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel notably took place the year after the Republican Attorneys General Association unilaterally decided to end its informal “handshake agreement” with its Democratic counterpart under which both sides had long agreed not to target one another’s incumbents.
The escalation proved costly for Republicans. The Democratic Attorneys General Association responded by spending millions against Schimel, whom Kaul ousted by a narrow 49.4 to 48.8 margin. That made Schimel the only sitting attorney general to lose a bid for reelection anywhere in the country during that election cycle.
Kaul’s victory also made him the first Wisconsin Democrat to hold the post since his late mother, Peg Lautenschlager, left office following her defeat in the 2006 primary. (Schimel went on to lose a closely watched state Supreme Court race to Susan Crawford in a landslide this spring.)
In 2022, Kaul fended off Toney 51-49 on the same night that Evers also won reelection, though Barnes fell just short against Johnson.
The attorney general has since attracted renewed attention by filing felony charges against three Republicans who helped send paperwork to Congress falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in 2020. He has also joined his Democratic colleagues in other states in repeatedly suing the Trump administration.
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Republican Matt Van Epps and Democrat Aftyn Behn will face off in the Dec. 2 special election for Tennessee’s vacant 7th Congressional District after winning their respective primaries on Tuesday night.
Van Epps, a former member of Gov. Bill Lee’s cabinet and an Army National Guard veteran who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot, easily prevailed over a crowded field. He defeated his nearest opponent, state Rep. Jody Barrett, by a 52-25 margin.
Van Epps benefited from a late endorsement from Donald Trump and also had the support of Lee and former Rep. Mark Green, whose resignation earlier this year triggered the special election.
The Democratic contest, meanwhile, was a much closer affair. Behn, a member of the state House, edged past businessman Darden Copeland 28-25, while state Reps. Bo Mitchell and Vincent Dixie, respectively took 24% and 23%.
Given the district’s conservative lean, Van Epps will be favored in December. However, when Republicans gerrymandered the state’s congressional map in 2022, they added a slice of Nashville to the 7th District, giving Behn a base of voters who may be especially motivated to show up for an otherwise lower-turnout election.
Democrats will need everything to go right, though, as the portion of Nashville in the 7th makes up less than a quarter of the district’s population, according to calculations by The Downballot. Overall, the district remains strongly Republican: Trump carried it 60-38 last year, and Green won his final term by the same margin.
3Q Fundraising
IA-Sen: Ashley Hinson (R): $1.7 million raised, $4 million cash on hand
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said over the weekend he’d decide in “the next few weeks” whether he’ll seek the Democratic nomination for Florida’s open governorship, though Politico already anticipates he’ll run. Demings would join former Rep. David Jolly, an ex-Republican who recently joined the Democratic Party, in next August’s primary.
House
AZ-01
The Arizona Republic’s Laura Gersony takes a detailed look at the possible GOP candidates who could run to succeed GOP Rep. David Schweikert, who is leaving the swingy 1st District behind to run for governor.
No notable Republicans have announced campaigns just yet, though the GOP is sure to work hard to defend a seat Donald Trump won just 51-48. Following Schweikert’s move, a few Republicans began talking about running last week. Gersony provides some additional information about a few of those potential contenders while also mentioning a few new names.
One person in the first category is Republican consultant Sean Noble, who tells Gersony that he’s “very seriously considering” a campaign to succeed Schweikert. Noble is a longtime force in state and national politics: ProPublica ran a profile of him back in 2014 titled, “The Dark Money Man: How Sean Noble Moved the Kochs’ Cash into Politics and Made Millions.”
Gersony also identifies GOP activist Kathy Petsas as another possible candidate, but unlike Noble, Petsas does not appear to have said anything publicly about her interest. Petsas, however, has been quite vocal about her disgust with Donald Trump, as well as her support for the state’s abortion rights amendment last year.
A more prominent would-be candidate has also found herself on MAGA’s bad side. State GOP chair Gina Swoboda, who suggested she might run last week, won another term as party leader in January with Trump’s support, but his acolytes are anything but thrilled with the idea of her serving in Congress.
Far-right influencer Laura Loomer took to social media over the weekend to accuse Swoboda of “working against MAGA grassroots activists” and “going on podcasts badmouthing” Turning Point USA, the hardline organization run by the late Charlie Kirk.
State Rep. Joseph Chaplik, who is also publicly considering a bid, is not a fan either. Chaplik, who is a leader of the state’s branch of the Freedom Caucus, has called Swoboda “a recent Hillary Clinton supporter.”
Finally, Gersony relays speculation that former Attorney General Mark Brnovich and election conspiracy theorist Kari Lake could jump in.
Brnovich, who lost the 2022 primary for U.S. Senate, was Trump’s nominee to become ambassador to Serbia, but the administration abruptly withdrew his name last week. Brnovich, who is of Serbian descent, claimed without evidence that his nomination fell victim to a conspiracy.
“As the process dragged on, it became clear that the bureaucracy of the ‘deep state’ does not want to serve anyone with my political, ethnic and religious background in Serbia,” he said in a statement.
He added, “I believe that staying close to family and friends in Arizona and finding an opportunity to play a greater role in the domestic political plan is the best way at this moment.” Brnovich, however, has not said anything yet about whether this “greater role” could include a run for Congress.
Lake, for her part, became Trump’s head of Voice of America following her back-to-back losses in the 2022 race for governor and 2024 Senate contest. Over the weekend, Lake tweeted a picture of herself with Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh, who represents Arizona’s 8th District, and wrote, “So much to talk about….” While she did not elaborate, local election analyst Garrett Archer responded, “This is Lake signaling a potential run for #az01.”
Democrats would be more than happy if Lake, who is currently engaged in a legal battle over whether she can fire 500 VOA employees, wins yet another GOP primary. Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin notes that she lost the 1st District by 5 points against Democrat Ruben Gallego last year, an 8-point underperformance compared to Trump’s 3-point win—and identical to how far she ran behind Trump statewide.
Not every local Republican, however, wants in on the race. Phoenix City Council member Jim Waring, who didn’t quite rule out the idea in August, now tells Gersony he’s a no.
Democrats, by contrast, have a busy field of candidates, all of whom began running for the 1st before Schweikert decided to seek a promotion.
Lenoir County Commissioner Eric Rouse has joined the race for North Carolina’s swingy 1st District, making him the third notable Republican seeking to oust Democratic Rep. Don Davis.
Rouse ran for Congress once before, in the special election for the neighboring 3rd District following Republican Rep. Walter Jones’ death in 2019. His campaign went poorly, though: Rouse finished in sixth place in the 17-way GOP primary with a desultory 8% of the vote.
Businessman Michael Goldfarb tells Bloomberg that he’s decided to challenge veteran Rep. Yvette Clarke in next year’s Democratic primary for New York’s 9th District, a safely blue constituency based in central Brooklyn. Goldfarb, who is 38, praised the 60-year-old incumbent’s record while arguing that “it’s time for a new generation of leadership with a new set of ideas.”
Clarke, who was first elected in 2006, has only once struggled to win renomination. In 2018, she held off community organizer Adem Bunkeddeko just 53-47, but she won a rematch 54-25 two years later after a larger number of challengers divided the anti-incumbent vote. Clarke has faced no primary opposition since.
Utah
As Utah prepares to adopt new congressional lines, several Democrats have begun expressing interest in running for the House, even though a judge hearing a long-running dispute over the state’s gerrymandered map has yet to greenlight a replacement.
State Sen. Kathleen Riebe was the most eager, saying in a statement that she’s “seriously considering” a bid, adding that she’s “confident there will be a winnable seat in my area” regardless of whether Judge Dianne Gibson approves the GOP’s new map or picks a different one.
Another state senator, Nate Blouin, was less certain, telling Politico that, in the publication’s words, “his decision depends on what the final map looks like.” Politico also says that former Rep. Ben McAdams, who represented a prior version of the 4th District for a single term after winning an upset in 2018, is “expected to announce a bid once a map is finalized,” according to unnamed sources.
VA-08
National security expert Michael Duffin, who was fired by the State Department along with many colleagues earlier this year, has announced a challenge to Rep. Don Beyer in next year’s Democratic primary.
Duffin, 47, called the 75-year-old Beyer, who is seeking a seventh term representing Northern Virginia’s safely blue 8th District next year, an “honorable man” in a statement kicking off his bid, but he criticized the incumbent for not opposing Donald Trump forcefully enough.
“That said, our party and district need someone who truly understands the economic pain the people of Northern Virginia are feeling and will work in lockstep with unions to fight for the rights of federal workers and others,” he continued. “And, Don Beyer has become a part of the establishment of the Democratic Party that is not doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies that are dismantling the greatest democracy in history.”
Duffin is the second notable Democrat to launch a bid against Beyer, following former Alexandria City Councilman Mo Seifeldein, who entered the race in August.
Judges
PA Supreme Court
Pennsylvania’s top Democrat is stepping in to help three justices who are running for reelection to the state Supreme Court this November, a contest in which Democrats continue to hold a wide spending edge.
In a new ad, Gov. Josh Shapiro argues that “in Pennsylvania, the threats to our freedoms are very real” and urges voters to retain the three incumbents on the ballot this fall: Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. The trio, says Shapiro, has “proven we can count on them to protect a woman’s access to abortion and birth control and stand up for all our freedoms.”
According to data from AdImpact shared by CNN, Democrats have spent or reserved around $4 million on advertising, compared to about $1.5 million for Republicans. That gap is similar to where things stood at the end of last month, though Democrats remain concerned that Pennsylvania’s wealthiest man, conservative megadonor Jeff Yass, could upend that state of affairs with a single check.
EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in a 2022 interview warned supporters of reproductive rights that "one day it’s going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn." "
Mindy O'Neall, the Democratic candidate, ousted MAGA Fairbanks mayor David Pruhs in last night's municipal election, by around 8 points.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/perfect-storm-alaska-democrats-flip-gop-seat-for-the-first-time-in-10-years/ar-AA1O5Ipa?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Surprised that this didn't make it to the Morning Digest.
"MeidasTouch
@MeidasTouch
EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in a 2022 interview warned supporters of reproductive rights that "one day it’s going to be your turn."
"Murder is murder. And one day it's going to be your turn." "
https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1975980637388763371
Another October surprise.