Morning Digest: How redistricting reform could upend Ohio politics

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● OH Redistricting, OH Ballot: Supporters of a ballot initiative to end Republican gerrymandering in Ohio will reportedly turn in more than 750,000 voter signatures on Monday to qualify for November's ballot, which is well over the roughly 413,000 that are required statewide. 

As we previously explained in detail, this measure would amend the state constitution to create an independent citizens' commission of Democratic, Republican, and independent members to draw fairer maps starting with the 2026 elections. While Ohio's flawed existing process enabled Republican lawmakers to craft new gerrymanders after the 2020 census and also left the state Supreme Court unable to stop them, this amendment would remove elected officials' control over drawing maps.

Several restrictions would limit who could serve on the commission, and members would need some cross-party support to pass new boundaries. The amendment details several criteria for drawing maps, which critically include a partisan fairness formula to ensure that each party wins seats roughly in proportion to its statewide support.

That formula calculates the median two-party vote share that each party won in statewide races over the previous six years. It then determines how many districts favor each party on a proposed map by measuring the median proportion of districts each party won in those same statewide races. The proportion of districts favoring each party must be within 3 percentage points of their statewide support if at all possible.

Had this amendment been in effect in 2022, it's unlikely that Republicans would have won at least two-thirds of seats for both the U.S. House and in each legislative chamber last cycle. Across the 2016 to 2020 statewide elections, Republicans enjoyed just a 52-48 advantage, and the formula would have required a congressional map that favored the GOP by no more than 8-7. By contrast, Republicans won a 10-5 majority in 2022 using a gerrymander designed to let them win up to 13 districts.

For new maps in 2026, the GOP's statewide advantage from 2020 to 2024 would be somewhat larger thanks to its dominance in the 2022 midterms. However, Democrats would still have a stronger chance to win more congressional seats and break the three-fifths legislative supermajorities that Republicans have held since the 2012 elections.

In order for this amendment to make the ballot, election officials must verify both that the campaign collected the minimum number of signatures statewide and also that it gathered signatures equal to 5% of votes cast in the most recent election for governor in half of Ohio's 88 counties. Those officials have until July 23 to review the signatures, and organizers would get another 10 days to obtain signatures if they fall short.

Senate

● PA-Sen: Politico's Ally Mutnick reports that the conservative Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $24 million for TV, digital, and radio commercials to support Republican Dave McCormick's bid against Democratic incumbent Bob Casey. The month-long ad campaign is set to begin Sept. 3.

● TX-Sen: UT Tyler finds Republican Sen. Ted Cruz posting a small 45-42 lead over Democrat Colin Allred, with Libertarian Ted Brown claiming another 5%. The sample favors Donald Trump 48-43 against President Joe Biden in a two-way match, and by a comparable 47-41 spread when other candidates are included.

While Democrats would love to take down Cruz, we don't have much data to indicate if he's vulnerable. The only other poll that's been released here over the last two months was an early June YouGov poll for UT Texas' flagship campus in Austin, and it showed Cruz defeating Allred 45-34.

However, there's one key difference between those two surveys. While UT Tyler identified each of the candidate's party affiliations for respondents, YouGov simply asked who they'd vote for between "Ted Cruz and Colin Allred." While omitting this information may seem like a small matter, many voters make decisions about which candidates to support based on their partisan affiliation.

As we've long written at Daily Kos Elections, pollsters should identify candidates to respondents by the party they’ll be identified with on the ballot as UT Tyler did. When a pollster doesn't include this, they're leaving out important information and failing to accurately mimic the way voters will make their choices when they actually cast their ballots.

Still, while Democrats are hoping this new poll is on target and Cruz is vulnerable in this longtime GOP stronghold, both national parties are still behaving like the key Senate battlegrounds are elsewhere. While major outside groups have spent or reserved millions to defend or flip Democratic-held seats, we have yet to see any such activity in Texas.

Governors

● NJ-Gov: Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer finally confirmed his interest in running for governor next year in separate interviews with Punchbowl News and the New Jersey Globe, though not everyone thinks he's just "thinking about it." Politico's Matt Friedman wrote earlier this month that Gottheimer and fellow Rep. Mikie Sherrill will each announce they're in after they're reelected in November even though they're already "all-but-running."

House

● Rhode Island: Candidate filing closed Wednesday for Rhode Island's Sept. 10 primary, but there won't be much action in any of the Ocean State's congressional races this year. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and his fellow Democrats, Reps. Gabe Amo and Seth Magaziner, each have nothing to worry about in their respective primaries, and Republicans aren't fielding serious opponents against any of them.

However, while anyone who wanted to run in the September primary had to file this week, they're still not assured a place on the ballot. The state requires candidates to turn in signatures by July 12: U.S. Senate hopefuls must collect at least 1,000 valid signatures, while candidates for the lower chamber need half that amount.

There are now only two states left where major party candidates can file for office this cycle: Delaware, which closes on July 9, and Louisiana, where qualifying concludes 10 days later.

● WA-03: Election conspiracy theorist Joe Kent has publicized an internal poll from Cygnal that shows the Republican tied 42-42 against Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in a general election rematch, though the memo did not include 2024 presidential numbers.

Kent unveiled these numbers shortly after the Northwest Progressive Institute released its own survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that placed Kent ahead 46-45. PPP also found Donald Trump prevailing 50-45 in the 3rd District four years after he carried this southwestern Washington constituency by a similar 51-47 spread.

Kent still needs to get past Camas City Councilmember Leslie Lewallen, who is arguing she's the more electable Republican, in the Aug. 6 top-two primary, but Cygnal argues this won't be a problem. The internal shows Gluesenkamp Perez in first with 38% as Kent beats out Lewallen 34-6 for the second general election spot. This is the first poll we've seen of the top-two contest.

● House: The National Republican Congressional Committee finally joined its peers when it announced its first batch of fall TV ad reservations on Tuesday, making it the last of the four largest outside groups involved in House races to do so.

The NRCC's bookings total $42.2 million across 29 different media markets, which the committee says is intended to target 22 districts. As is typical for such announcements, though, the NRCC largely did not identify specific races.

In addition, a press release said the committee was reserving $45.7 million overall, though adding up the provided market-by-market figure only gets you to that lower $42.2 million number. (It's possible the difference is intended for digital advertising, which is reserved differently.)

To help match markets to districts, we've added this latest batch of reservations to our continually updated tracker. All told, Republicans (including the NRCC and the Congressional Leadership Fund) have booked $183 million so far, while Democrats (that is, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the House Majority PAC) have reserved $163 million in TV time.

But the GOP's planned spending is more narrowly concentrated and skips over some major markets where Democrats are investing heavily, most notably Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, DC. While groups like these can and always do add additional reservations later in the cycle, the omission of Las Vegas is particularly striking.

That's because airtime in Nevada will grow increasingly expensive and scarce, with hotly contested races for the White House and the Senate crowding out media buyers seeking to play in Vegas' three competitive House districts. It's unlikely Republicans are writing off these contests, but the longer they wait to get involved, the shorter their dollars will stretch.

Attorneys General

● MO-AG: Appointed Attorney General Andrew Bailey's backers at Liberty and Justice PAC have publicized an internal from Public Opinion Strategies that shows him fending off Trump attorney Will Scharf 52-19 in the expensive and ugly Aug. 6 GOP primary.

This release came shortly after Scharf's backers at the hardline Club for Growth showcased their own survey giving Bailey a 37-17 advantage that pollster WPA Intelligence argued could be overcome by launching certain attacks on the incumbent. That pitch seems to have worked because the Missouri Independent's Jason Hancock reports that the Concord Fund, which is part of Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo's powerful conservative network, has contributed another $2 million to the Club's Missouri affiliate to help Scharf.

Scharf, for his part, also agrees he's behind, though not by as much as these two polls show. An early June Remington Research Group poll placed Bailey ahead 24-18; a more recent RRG survey for a different client, the political tipsheet Missouri Scout, gave the attorney general a comparable 27-23 advantage.

While Liberty and Justice PAC, which is the main pro-Bailey PAC, has considerably less money available than its rivals at the Club, it still has enough to air ads attacking Scharf over his 2007 arrest for serving alcohol to underage college students. The narrator declares that, while Bailey was leading troops in Iraq, Scharf was charged that same day at Princeton University. The ad continues, "Andrew Bailey served his country with honor. Will Scharf threatened to sue the police who charged him."

The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Kurt Erickson, who first reported the story, says that the charges against Scharf were dropped several months later and no lawsuit was filed. The candidate himself argues, "I did absolutely nothing wrong and these municipal tickets were dismissed unconditionally as soon as they made it inside the courtroom."

Legislatures

● MI Redistricting: Michigan's independent redistricting commission approved a new state Senate map on Wednesday to replace several Detroit-area districts that a federal court struck down in December over how mapmakers relied on race to an impermissible degree. If the court-appointed expert and the court itself sign off on the new map by the court's July 26 deadline, it will take effect after the 2024 elections since the Senate is only up in midterm years.

The new Senate map significantly increased the Black population in a few Detroit districts while making several suburban districts much whiter, but its partisan impact was just a modest boost to Republicans. According to VEST data from Dave's Redistricting App, Joe Biden won a 21-17 majority of districts, just as with the previous map where Democrats won a 20-18 majority in 2022.

One solidly blue seat did see a considerable shift, though. Biden's margin dropped from 57-42 to just 51-48 in Democratic state Sen. Rosemary Bayer's 13th District in Detroit's northwestern suburbs. However, Democratic state Sen. Veronica Klinefelt's 11th District northeast of Detroit moved left from 51-48 Biden to 53-45 Biden.

These changes are similar to those recently made to Michigan's state House map, which commissioners revised earlier this year. Because members of the lower chamber serve two-year terms, the new House boundaries will be used this fall.

● WI State Assembly: The Wisconsin Elections Commission determined Thursday that an effort to recall Assembly Speaker Robin Vos failed to qualify for the ballot because the campaign didn't collect enough signatures before last month's deadline.

The decision came just two days after enemies of Vos, a Republican who refused to help Donald Trump decertify Joe Biden's victory, appeared to have gotten some welcome news following the failure of their first attempt in April. Those organizers were heartened when the commission released a report concluding that the recall committee had turned in a sufficient number of signatures, albeit just 16 more than the minimum.

A majority of WEC members, however, determined that too many signatures were collected in the two days after May 26, which was the end of a 60-day window proscribed by state law.

Organizers argued that they were entitled to those extra days because the deadline fell in the middle of Memorial Day weekend. Two Democratic commissioners agreed, but a third Democrat sided with the board's three Republicans in concluding this latest recall attempt had failed.

Vos' detractors responded by tweeting, "Now, more than ever, we must vote out Robin Vos and demand the dismantling of the Wisconsin Elections Commission!" However, they lost perhaps their best chance to vote him out when his one primary opponent, conservative writer Andrew Cegielski, dropped out in June. (Cegielski remains on the ballot.)

In the general election, the speaker will still face independent Kelly Clark, who aided this recall campaign, as well as Democrat Al Kupsik, who is a former mayor of Lake Geneva. But because Trump scored a 63-35 in 2020 in the constituency that Vos is seeking, the 33rd District, the incumbent will be the heavy favorite.

Vos' 12 years as speaker could, however, come to an end following November's election—just not in the way that the far right wants. The state approved new legislative maps to replace Republican gerrymanders that the state Supreme Court struck down late last year, and the revamped boundaries give Democrats their best chance to flip the chamber since the GOP seized power in the 2010 red wave.

Democrats aren't letting the opportunity pass them by. They're fielding candidates in 97 of the 99 seats in the Assembly, while Republicans are contesting 84 races.

Ad Roundup

• AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D)
• NV-Sen: Sam Brown (R) (in Spanish)
• OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown (D-inc); Bernie Moreno (R) - anti-Brown
• NC-Gov: Mark Robinson (R)
• FL-13: Liz Dahan (D); Whitney Fox (D)
• MO-03: Bob Onder (R)
• VA-07: Derrick Anderson (R