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

● NV-Gov: Dean Heller, the Nevada Republican who was ousted from the Senate during the 2018 blue wave, announced Monday that he would seek the nomination to take on Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak. The former senator used his first day on the campaign trail to tack to the right in a state that narrowly voted for both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, saying of Texas’ infamous new abortion law, “I like what Texas did.”

Heller may feel the need to cover his right flank because he faces serious opposition in next year’s primary. The field includes Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, whose jurisdiction includes over 70% of the state, and North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who defected from the Democratic Party earlier this year. Rep. Mark Amodei has also pledged to make his own decision in October, though the congressman sounded lukewarm about the idea last week when he expressed his trepidation about the primary becoming a “soundbite fest.”

Heller, for his part, has had a very long career in Silver State politics going back to his 1990 victory for a state Assembly seat in the Carson City area and his 1994 statewide election as secretary of state. He went on to win the tight 2006 primary to represent the conservative 2nd Congressional District in the northern part of the state by defeating then-Assemblywoman Sharron Angle by all of 421 votes. The congressman would later turn down the party’s attempts to recruit him to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010, a decision that likely made it easier for Angle and her disastrous campaign to win the primary.

Campaign Action

Heller ended up in the upper chamber the next year, though, after Gov. Brian Sandoval appointed him to replace Republican John Ensign after the senator resigned following a sex scandal. The new incumbent quickly had to gear up to defend the seat against Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley in what would be one of the most competitive Senate races of the 2012 cycle; ultimately, Heller held on 46-45 even as Barack Obama was carrying Nevada 52-46.

Silver State politicos, including Amodei, began talking as early as 2015 about the prospect of Heller running for governor three years down the line, but Heller ended up running for a second full term in the Senate instead. That decision may not have been entirely voluntary, though: Veteran Nevada journalist Jon Ralston reported in late 2016 that Heller, who showed public hostility towards Donald Trump before the election was over, was wary about his prospects in a gubernatorial primary against ultra-conservative state Attorney General Adam Laxalt.

Heller, who only acknowledged he’d voted for Trump in August of 2017, spent the 2018 cycle as the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for election, and he struggled to keep his Trump worshiping base happy while holding on to enough swing voters to survive. He found out just how tough this balancing act was in the summer of 2017 when he said he couldn’t support his colleague’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act “right now,” an announcement that inspired wealthy perennial candidate Danny Tarkanian to challenge him in the primary. Heller soon went all-in for another failed scheme to scrap Obamacare, but two polls taken later in the fall showed him trailing Tarkanian for renomination.

We never got to find out how that primary would have ended, though, as Trump’s forces successfully convinced Tarkanian to instead wage what turned out to be another failed House campaign. Heller’s general election opponent was Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, who ran a series of spots comparing her opponent to an inflatable tubeman as she argued that “Senator Spineless” was a politician who “bends with the political winds.” Rosen also made good use of footage from the previous year of Trump threatening Heller’s political future if he didn’t fall into line on healthcare, saying, “Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?”

Heller, meanwhile, campaigned as an ardent Trump ally, telling him at one rally, “​​I think everything you touch turns to gold.” Trump’s Midas Touch, however, soon transformed the incumbent’s political career into something far less shiny: Rosen unseated Heller 50-45 as Sisolak beat Laxalt by a similar 49-45 spread. Trump later attributed Heller’s defeat to him being “extraordinarily hostile” toward the GOP leader in 2016.

Laxalt announced last month that he’d campaign against Nevada’s other Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, but political observers were initially skeptical that Heller would also try to avenge his 2018 loss by running for a different office. In April, GOP sources even predicted to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that they’d avoid a competitive gubernatorial primary entirely. By challenging Sisolak, though, Heller may just give his party the competitive nomination fight he managed to avoid three years ago.

Redistricting

● AR Redistricting: Lawmakers on a joint Senate and House committee in Arkansas’ Republican-run legislature met on Monday to begin discussing a trio of proposed congressional maps. Links to the maps can be found by clicking on the button labeled “docs" on the committee’s website. The full legislature will reconvene on Sept. 29 to vote on final passage of a new map. Legislative redistricting is handled by an outside commission called the Board of Apportionment, which is also controlled by Republicans.

● NM Redistricting: New Mexico’s new Citizen Redistricting Committee has unveiled a raft of proposed maps for Congress, the state Senate, and the state House, with an Oct. 15 deadline to forward three maps for each chamber to legislators. The committee, though, is only advisory in nature, meaning lawmakers are free to reject its suggestions. However, those same lawmakers voted almost unanimously to create the committee earlier this year, so they may be inclined to heed its advice.

Reports earlier this year said that the legislature will convene a special session in November or December to pass new maps.

● TX Redistricting: Texas lawmakers are gathering for a month-long special session to pass new maps for Congress, the legislature, and the influential state Board of Education, with Republicans enjoying virtually unfettered power to pass yet another set of extreme gerrymanders. To that end, one Republican plan for the state Senate has already surfaced, which was immediately castigated by Democrats and voting rights advocates for undermining representation for people of color, who were responsible for 95% of the state’s population growth over the last decade. One preliminary analysis indicated the map would lock in a 19-12 GOP majority, with zero swing seats.

Aside from litigation, the only avenue Democrats have to prevent maps like these from becoming law would be to stage another quorum-breaking walkout, as they did over the summer when Republicans were seeking to enact new voting restrictions. That boycott, however, could not be sustained indefinitely, and so Republicans were able to pass their bill once Democrats finally returned to the state. Democrats staged a similar exodus in 2003 in an effort to block the so-called “DeLaymander,“ but that too failed, and there’s been little talk of another such attempt. What’s more, if lawmakers were somehow unable to produce new legislative maps, the process would shift to a backup commission entirely controlled by the GOP.

● VA Redistricting: On Saturday, Virginia’s new bipartisan redistricting commission released a pair of proposals for the state’s two legislative maps, one from Democrats and one from Republicans, along with detailed supporting information (including election results) for each plan. The evenly divided panel, which held a meeting Monday to discuss the maps, must send a single proposal to the legislature by Oct. 10, with the support of at least 12 of its 16 members. If it fails to do so, or if lawmakers twice reject its maps on an up-or-down vote (no amendments are permitted, and the governor does not get a veto), then responsibility for redistricting would fall to the state’s conservative-dominated Supreme Court.

Senate

● AZ-Sen: State Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s allies at Advancing Arizona Forward have released a GOP primary poll from OnMessage Inc. that shows him well ahead with 41%, while former Thiel Capital chief operating officer Blake Masters is a distant second with 6%. The survey was conducted weeks after a pro-Masters PAC began a seven-figure buy reminding viewers that Brnovich had defied Donald Trump by recognizing Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

● OH-Sen: State Sen. Matt Dolan, who is a co-owner of Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team, announced Monday that he would compete in the Republican primary to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman. Dolan, who may have the resources to self-fund, joins a crowded field full of contenders who are each portraying themselves as the true Trump candidate, but the state senator went with a different approach by not mentioning Donald Trump at all in his launch video.

While the Columbus Dispatch writes that Dolan “played an integral role in passing a two-year spending plan dubbed the most conservative budget in legislative history,” he’s also been willing to stray from far-right orthodoxy. The paper says that Dolan voted against an anti-abortion bill, called for gun safety reforms after the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton, and came out against “legislation that would have required written consent for contact tracing during the pandemic.”

Dolan also responded to the Jan. 6 attack by calling it a “failure of leadership starting with @realdonaldtrump.” He continued, “Too many so called leaders perpetuated lies about the outcome of the November 2020 election. And the people who trust their leadership believes them.” Dolan may have a very hard time gaining traction in today’s GOP especially with that bow to reality, though packed primaries can be especially unpredictable.

It also remains to be seen whether Dolan’s baseball connections will be a help or hindrance in the nomination fight: As Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias tweeted back in January of the potential electoral effects of Dolan’s status as a team co-owner, “[W]hether or not that’s an advantage depends on what the front office is doing, so that’s open to debate right now.” At the moment, the team has won and lost a roughly equal number of games this season.

● PA-Sen: Jobs for Our Future, a PAC supporting 2018 lieutenant governor nominee Jeff Bartos, has launched what Politico says is a six-figure TV and digital ad campaign based around the news that the ​​estranged wife of GOP primary rival and Army veteran Sean Parnell sought protective orders against Parnell in 2017 and 2018. The TV spot, which does not mention Bartos, aired during this weekend’s Penn State football game.

Governors

● AZ-Gov: Democratic state Rep. Aaron Lieberman said Monday that he was resigning from the legislature in order to focus on his campaign for governor.

● NJ-Gov: Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s campaign has publicized a survey from National Research that shows him trailing Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy just 45-42 ahead of the November general election; the memo says that unreleased surveys from April and June found Murphy ahead 47-30 and 49-37, respectively. Ciattarelli’s allies at the Club for Growth recently released their own poll from Fabrizio Lee that gave the governor a similar 43-41 lead, but Monmouth University found the Democrat up 52-36 a little more than a month ago.

● NY-Gov: Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin disclosed over the weekend that he’d been diagnosed with early stage leukemia in November but said that the disease is now in remission following successful treatment. The congressman also declared he was continuing with his campaign against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

● OR-Gov: Melissa Unger, the executive director of SEIU Local 503, said last week that she would not run in next year’s open Democratic primary. Willamette Week also writes that two other Democrats, state Treasurer Tobias Read and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof “are expected to enter the race in coming weeks.”

● PA-Gov: Guy Ciarrocchi, who recently stepped down as head of the Chester County Chamber of Business and Industry, announced Monday that he’d run in the Republican primary to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. He joins a still-developing GOP field that includes 2018 Senate nominee Lou Barletta; Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale; GOP strategist Charlie Gerow; former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain; and surgeon Nche Zama.

While Ciarrocchi’s only previous stint in elected office appears to be his time as supervisor of Tredyffrin Township in the mid-2000s, which took place between his narrow 1992 and 2008 defeats for the state House, he has some notable political connections. Among other things, Ciarrocchi led George W. Bush’s unsuccessful 2004 campaign to win Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and served as chief of staff to then-Rep. Jim Gerlach and Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley.

Cawley, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer says that some Republicans have wanted to run here, is instead chairing Ciarrocchi’s campaign; Gerlach, for his part, was mentioned as a candidate back in July, but we’ve heard nothing from him since.

● TX-Gov: Axios reports that former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke is “expected” to announced a bid for governor “later this year,” according to unnamed “Texas political operatives,” though a spokesman for O’Rourke told the website, “No decision has been made.” In the spring, O’Rourke declined to rule out a campaign.

● VA-Gov: A new poll for the Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School, conducted by Abt Associates, finds Democrat Terry McAuliffe leading Republican Glenn Youngkin 50-47 among likely voters. It’s the Post's first survey of the race, but likely every other nonpartisan poll (and, in fact, every poll except for a single Youngkin internal), it has McAuliffe ahead. It did not, however, test Virginia’s two other statewide contests on the ballot this fall, for attorney general and lieutenant governor.

Meanwhile, a trauma surgeon named Joseph Sakran stars in McAuliffe’s latest ad, taking Youngkin to task for opposing vaccine mandates for healthcare workers and mask requirements in schools.

House

● NY-19: Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, who was the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in 2018, filed FEC paperwork last week for a potential bid against Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado and is teasing an announcement set for Tuesday afternoon.

Attorneys General

● IA-AG: Democratic incumbent Tom Miller, who is already the longest-serving state attorney general in American history, announced Saturday that he would seek an 11th term next year.

Miller was first elected to this post in 1978 on his second try, and he gave it up in 1990 to unsuccessfully compete in the primary for governor. He campaigned to return to the attorney general’s office in 1994 when his successor, Bonnie Campbell, left to run for governor herself, and he won 53-45 despite the GOP wave. Miller has won each of his subsequent six races by double digits, and he didn’t even face any GOP opposition in 2018.

● SD-AG: Republican and Democratic leaders in the South Dakota legislature are asking their colleagues to agree to convene a special session in order to bring impeachment proceedings against state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who pled guilty to misdemeanor charges last month and avoided jail time for striking and killing a man with his car last year. It would take the support of two-thirds of all lawmakers to call a special session. Ravnsborg can be impeached with a simple majority vote in the state House, but it would take a two-thirds vote in the Senate to remove him from office.

Ballot Measures

● Minneapolis, MN Ballot: Mason-Dixon’s new Minneapolis survey for several local news outlets found a 49-41 plurality favoring “replacing the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety, which may include police officers and will focus on public health, and giving the City Council more authority over public safety.” The poll did not directly ask whether respondents would support Question 2, which employs similar ballot language.