The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Matt Booker, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Programming Note: Daily Kos will be off Friday in observance of Juneteenth, so there will be no Morning Digest on Monday.

Leading Off

● AZ-Gov: Former Rep. Matt Salmon announced Wednesday that he would seek the Republican nomination for governor of Arizona, the office he narrowly lost back in 2002. Salmon, who was a regular headache for party leaders during two separate stints in the House, quickly earned an endorsement from a like-minded organization, the radical anti-tax Club for Growth.

Salmon got his start in politics in the state Senate in 1990, but he was soon elected to Congress in the GOP wave four years later when he flipped an open Democratic-held seat. Once there, he quickly became one of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s loudest intra-party foes. Salmon, who pledged to serve just three terms, was disgusted after Gingrich and his allies ensured that a term limits bill wouldn’t pass, later recounting, “I decided all bets were off. If he can speak his mind, I can speak mine.” The Arizona congressman lived up to that credo in the years that followed, making his mark as one of several fiscal ultra-conservatives willing to vote against the leadership even on important bills.

Campaign Action

In early 1997, Salmon called for Gingrich to step aside due to an ethics investigation and took part in that year’s coup attempt against the speaker. That effort crashed and burned, but Salmon had considerably more success in 1998 after the GOP unexpectedly lost seats in the midterm elections. He took to “Larry King Live” days later to announce he had enough votes to keep Gingrich from being named speaker again, and party leaders agreed he wasn’t bluffing; soon thereafter, Gingrich resigned from Congress.

Unlike most of his fellow members of the class of ‘94 who’d pledged to serve just three terms—a popular promise at the time—Salmon stuck to his word and retired in 2000 before becoming a lobbyist. He was hardly done with politics, however. A devout Mormon who remained popular with social conservatives, Salmon decisively won the 2002 primary for governor ahead of a tough general election with the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Janet Napolitano. The state was in rough financial shape at the time, but while Salmon insisted he’d represent needed change from termed-out GOP Gov. Jane Hull, Napolitano argued that the problem lay with 12 years of Republican leadership.

Reporters ended up dubbing the contest the “tightest and ugliest race for governor in memory.” Napolitano declared that Salmon’s votes in the state Senate against education funding were partially to blame for the deficient condition of the state’s schools. Salmon’s allies, meanwhile, argued that Napolitano had done a poor job protecting victims while she was U.S. attorney.

Ultimately, Napolitano edged out Salmon 46-45, while 7% went to former Secretary of State Dick Mahoney, a Democrat-turned-independent who viciously attacked both his main rivals. Salmon actually managed to carry Phoenix’s Maricopa County 48-45, which makes him one of the very few candidates in recent memory to win Arizona’s most populous county while losing statewide.

Salmon went on to lead the state party and returned to lobbying, a career that included work heading the now-defunct Electronic Cigarette Association, but he had yet another campaign in him. In 2012, he ran for the open 5th Congressional District, a safely red seat based in Mesa and Gilbert, and beat state House Speaker Kirk Adams 52-48 in the primary. Salmon made news the next year when he reaffirmed his opposition to same-sex marriage even though his son was gay.

And while the congressman said he wouldn’t adhere to any term limits rules “until everybody else does,” he did pick up right where he left off in the 1990s by making himself a nuisance to his leadership. Salmon was one of the founding members of the House Freedom Caucus, a nihilistic cohort that made endless trouble for Speaker John Boehner.

Salmon supported Boehner at the last moment in the 2013 speakership vote and reluctantly backed him again in 2015, but he expressed his hope later in the year that internal fights “may even result in a change in some of our leadership.” He got his wish as Boehner resigned from Congress, though Salmon uncharacteristically ended up voting for Paul Ryan to replace him.

Salmon also spent part of that year considering a primary challenge against John McCain, but he instead shocked everyone in February of 2016 when he revealed that he wouldn’t run for anything that year. Well, almost everyone: State Senate President Andy Biggs immediately announced that he’d campaign for the congressman’s now-open seat, and Salmon wasted zero time endorsing him. Biggs narrowly won the primary and established himself as one of the far-right’s most ardent allies on Capitol Hill.

Salmon is now back once again, seeking to capture the office that eluded him almost two decades ago, but he’s no sure bet to win the nomination to succeed termed-out GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. Salmon faces primary opposition from state Treasurer Kimberly Yee; Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson; and Kari Lake, a former TV anchor who has recently taken to spreading far-right conspiracy theories. The Democrats are fielding Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and former homeland security official Marco López.

Governors

● OH-Gov: EMILY’s list has endorsed Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley in the Democratic primary for Ohio’s gubernatorial race next year. Whaley’s chief rival for the right to take on Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley.

● PA-Gov: Republican strategist Charlie Gerow, whose work in GOP politics dates back to Ronald Reagan’s challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976, has joined next year’s open-seat race for governor. Gerow has run for local, state, and federal office unsuccessfully at least half a dozen times, including three straight failed bids for the GOP nomination in the old 19th Congressional district in 1996, 1998, and 2000.

House

● NJ-05: Marine veteran Nick DeGregorio says he’s considering a bid against Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District. The New Jersey Globe’s David Wildstein says that DeGregorio has hired consultant Chris Russell, who is also working for GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli and whom Wildstein calls “one of the state’s premier political strategists.” DeGregorio also has ties to newly installed state GOP chair Bob Hugin, whose unsuccessful 2018 Senate campaign he assisted on.

● OH-11: Hillary Clinton has endorsed Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown in the special election for Ohio’s vacant 11th Congressional District. In the 2016 presidential primary, the 11th was Clinton’s best district in the state, giving her a 68-32 win over Bernie Sanders.

● WV-02: Roll Call’s Chris Marquette reports that the Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating whether Republican Rep. Alex Mooney used campaign funds for personal purposes, including thousands spent at hotels, resorts, and wineries in his home state of West Virginia. If the OCE concludes that Mooney has likely violated campaign finance regulations, it can ask the House Ethics Committee, which has the power to punish such violations, to investigate further.

Mooney’s political future is already cloudy because West Virginia will lose a seat in Congress thanks to reapportionment, which is very likely to result in Mooney getting double-bunked with fellow Republican Rep. David McKinley, who represents the 1st District. The 49-year-old Mooney has insisted he’ll run for re-election while McKinley, 74, has been less committal.

Legislatures

● Special Elections: Georgia held all-party primaries in two GOP-held state House seats, and as expected, there will be runoffs in both on July 13. Here’s a look at the results:

GA-HD-34: Republican businessman Devan Seabaugh took first with 47% of the vote, while educator Priscilla Smith beat out attorney Sam Hensley, a fellow Democrat, 25-16 for second. Altogether, Seabaugh and a second Republican took 59% of the vote, while 40% went to the pair of Democrats. Donald Trump won 51-47 last year in what has been an ancestrally red Cobb County seat.

GA-HD-156: Two Republican business owners, Leesa Hagan and Wally Sapp, advanced to July, with Hagan holding a small 43-42 edge. The balance went to Democrat Wright Gres, who earned 15% of the vote. This is a strongly Republican seat in the Vidalia area that backed Trump 75-25 last year.

Mayors

● New York City, NY Mayor: Two new polls of Tuesday’s Democratic primary show something we haven’t seen before: former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia narrowly defeating Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams in the final round of instant-runoff voting.

The Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies’ survey for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, finds Adams initially edging out Garcia 21-20, with attorney Maya Wiley and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang at 18% and 13%, respectively. After the pollster simulates the ranked choice process, though, it’s Garcia who emerges with a 52-48 lead over Adams in the 11th and final round of tabulations.

Note that this poll asked a few issue questions before getting to the horserace, including views of the NYPD. We always encourage pollsters to ask these sorts of questions after the horserace to avoid “priming” voters to lean one way or the other.

We also have new numbers from the Democratic pollster Change Research for New Generation of Leadership, which the newsletter Primary School says is a newly-formed PAC that appears to support Garcia. It finds Adams leading with 23% in the first round, while Garcia and Wiley tie 19-19 for second and Yang takes fourth with 12%. Change, though, also has Garcia pulling ahead as the instant runoff process proceeds, and it has her narrowly beating Adams 51-49 in the 11th round.

These results are both quite a bit different than what other recent polls have shown. Marist College recently had Adams leading Garcia by a wider 24-17 in round one and defeating her 56-44 in the last round of tabulations. Data for Progress, which supports Wiley, didn’t simulate the instant runoff process in its own poll, but it found Adams leading Wiley 26-20, with Yang and Garcia at 16% and 14%, respectively.

Prosecutors

● Manhattan, NY District Attorney: Hillary Clinton has endorsed former prosecutor Tali Farhadian Weinstein ahead of next week’s Democratic primary.

Grab Bag

● Where Are They Now?: President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he was nominating former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar to serve as ambassador to Mexico. Salazar was elected to the upper chamber in a 2004 race to succeed retiring Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell, which made him the first Latino to represent the Centennial State in the Senate. He resigned in 2009 to become Barack Obama’s first secretary of the interior, and while he eyed a 2018 campaign for governor, he hasn’t been on the ballot since his 2004 victory.