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

Leading Off

● MT-02, MT-01: Donald Trump endorsed Ryan Zinke’s bid to return to the House on Thursday, a development that came about two and a half years after the Montana Republican resigned as secretary of the interior, reportedly due to Trump White House pressure, in the face of 18 federal investigations. Montana will gain a second congressional district following the 2020 Census and Zinke, who represented the entire state in the House from 2015 through 2017, has filed to run for the as of yet undrawn 2nd District.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to aid Zinke’s career, but his last intervention went poorly for Big Sky Country Republicans. Zinke had won a competitive campaign in 2016 for a second term, and politicos widely expected that he’d challenge Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018. Trump completely changed that calculus, though, when he announced that he was tapping the congressman to lead the Department of the Interior. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly was aghast at the idea of losing this top recruit and tried to persuade the White House to reverse itself, but Zinke still got the post.

Campaign Action

Zinke’s career switch worked out quite well … for Tester, that is. The senator and his allies made sure to inform voters that the man Republicans ultimately nominated, state Auditor Matt Rosendale, had only moved to Montana from Maryland in 2002, and that the self-described “rancher” didn’t own any cattle or actually ranch his property. It’s impossible to know how a Tester-Zinke matchup would have gone, but the Tester-Rosendale contest we actually got ended in a 50-47 victory for the Democrat.

Zinke’s time in the cabinet also came to an end just a month later. The secretary had spent his tenure beset by corruption allegations, including charges that he’d spent tens of thousands in taxpayer funds on personal travel and used public resources to advance a private land deal with the chair of the oil services company Halliburton.

Zinke was hardly the only Trump official under scrutiny, but what appears to have finally done him in was Democrats’ victory in the 2018 midterms, which would have exposed him to congressional subpoenas. The White House, the Washington Post reported, told Zinke “he had until the end of the year to leave or be fired.” He resigned in mid-December, a development that was welcomed by environmentalists, who resented his aggressive efforts to roll back environmental protections while promoting expanded fossil fuel extraction.

Zinke was never legally implicated in anything, though, and he announced last month that he’d be trying to return to the House now that the state has gained back the second seat it lost after the 1990 Census. He did list the seat he was seeking as the 2nd District in his FEC paperwork, though Zinke acknowledged the unpredictability of the redistricting process when he said of his plans, “We’ll see what the (redistricting) commission decides.”  

The last two-district map divided the state west to east, which if drawn today would make the eastern district more safely red than the west, though no one knows exactly what the boundaries will look like this time, much less how competitive either seat will be. Republicans trying to assert greater control over the mapmaking process also rushed through a measure in April directing the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to follow certain criteria when drawing new lines. However, the state constitution was revised in 1972 to mostly take redistricting out of the hands of legislators, and similar laws attempting to shackle the commission have been struck down in the past.

Another potential factor for Zinke is Rosendale, who bounced back from his 2018 Senate defeat last year by winning the final race, at least for a while, for Montana’s at-large House seat. Rosendale and Zinke did face off in the crowded 2014 primary for the House, a contest Zinke won, but the two well-established politicians may be able to avoid running against one another now that the state will be divided in two. Complicating things, though, is that the two could wind up in the same seat when all is said and done: Rosendale moved to the city of Great Falls in western Montana last year, while Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish is located even further to the west.

If Rosendale and Zinke do run for different districts, though, Trump’s support for the former congressman may scare off many would-be Republican foes. The only other noteworthy Republican who has announced a campaign for the House so far is former state Sen. Al Olszewski, who fared poorly in the 2018 and 2020 primaries for Senate and governor, respectively.

2Q Fundraising

● GA-Sen: Raphael Warnock (D-inc): $7 million raised, $10.5 million cash-on-hand

● NV-03: Susie Lee (D-inc): $600,000 raised, $925,000 cash-on-hand

● NV-04: Steven Horsford (D-inc): $570,000 raised, $1.2 million cash-on-hand

● NY-18: Colin Schmitt (R): $281,000 raised, $240,000 cash-on-hand

Senate

● AZ-Sen: Thiel Capital chief operating officer Blake Masters has filed paperwork with the FEC ahead of a possible GOP bid for Arizona’s Senate seat next year. If Masters were to join the race, he’d benefit from the largess of his boss, right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who dumped $10 million into a super PAC to support him earlier this year. (Thiel also invested this same amount into another group to aid another one of his Republican acolytes, J.D. Vance, who launched a Senate bid in Ohio earlier this month.)

● IA-Sen: Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley says that he’ll decide whether to seek an eighth term sometime in the two months between Labor Day and Nov. 1.

● NC-Sen: Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley has earned a Democratic primary endorsement from Rep. Alma Adams, who represents much of the city of Charlotte.

Governors

● TX-Gov: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has dusted off a mid-June internal from Public Opinion Strategies that shows him in strong shape for both renomination and in the general.

The survey finds that 69% of primary voters favor Abbott, while former state party chair Allen West is a distant second with 13%. (West announced his bid early this month after this poll was completed.) Another 3% favor Abbott’s other intra-party foe, former state Sen. Don Huffines, while that same percentage went for state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who has since said that he won’t run.

POS also shows Abbott beating former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who was Team Blue’s 2018 Senate nominee, 52-42. O’Rourke has not yet announced if he’ll run statewide next year.

House

● CA-50: Former Marine prosecutor Joseph Rocha announced Wednesday that he would campaign as a Democrat against Rep. Darrell Issa, a veteran Republican who returned to Congress after a two-year absence by winning this inland San Diego County seat last year.

The current version of the 50th District backed Donald Trump 53-45, which was a sizable drop from his 55-40 performance four years ago but still a tough margin for Team Blue. Issa, who retired from the considerably more Democratic 49th District ahead of the 2018 wave, won his new constituency by a similar 54-46 spread after an expensive general election.

● IL-17: Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara has confirmed that he’s thinking of running to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Cheri Bustos. No major Democrats have so far entered the race for what is currently a 50-48 Trump seat in northwestern Illinois, a constituency that could look quite different after legislative Democrats finish with redistricting. On the GOP side, 2020 nominee Esther Joy King is currently the only notable contender running.

● KS-03: Republican state Rep. Chris Croft said Thursday that he would run for re-election rather than take on Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids. Croft will still have an impact on this race, though, as he chairs the state House redistricting committee. This suburban Kansas City seat favored Joe Biden 54-44, but legislative Republicans have the numbers necessary to pass a gerrymander over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.

● OH-11: Former state Sen. Nina Turner is out with a new ad where she pushes back on the perception that she has been too critical of the Democratic Party. Turner says of her Aug. 3 primary opponent, “Shontel Brown and her out of state special interests are not telling the truth. I’ve spent my career fighting for the Democratic Party.”

A voiceover later claims that Shontel Brown, who is a member of the Cuyahoga County Council, is running a “negative campaign.” The spot also notes the Cleveland Plain Dealer's endorsement of Turner, which also referred to Brown’s time on the body as “undistinguished.”