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

● WV Redistricting: Lawmakers in West Virginia’s state Senate passed a new congressional map on Thursday, following the same action by their counterparts in the state House the previous day, prompting two different Republicans to immediately announce they’d be running for re-election against one another … in the wrong district.

With the state shrinking from three seats to two due to population loss, the new map, as expected, slices a jagged line across West Virginia’s midsection to create one northern district and one southern. That northern district is now home to two GOP congressmen: Alex Mooney, who lives in Charles Town at the state’s easternmost tip, and David McKinley, who hails from Wheeling in the northern panhandle.

Mooney had long been adamant that he’d seek re-election no matter the outcome of redistricting, but in his enthusiasm following the map’s enactment, it seems he got rather mixed up. Under the old lines, West Virginia’s districts were numbered from north to south, but for whatever reason, lawmakers switched that up and labeled the southern district the 1st and the northern one the 2nd. Mooney, however, issued a poorly edited statement saying, “I am excited to be running for re-election in the new First District of West Virginia.”

Campaign Action

What makes the bungle even funnier is that Mooney’s geographic ties to the Mountain State have always been hazy: Prior to running for Congress in 2014, he served as a state senator in Maryland for more than a decade and even ran the state GOP there for a while after losing his seat—and before all that, he ran for the state House in New Hampshire when he was in college. Fortunately, he has Daily Kos Elections looking out: After we flagged the screw-up on Twitter, a Mooney spokesperson clarified that his boss would indeed be running in the new 2nd District. (We don’t know if it’s the same guy, but we’d like to point out that Mooney’s chief of staff is a state senator … from Maryland.)

And while McKinley had been considerably less committal about his 2022 plans, he, too, announced he’d be running for re-election—and somehow made the exact same flub Mooney had. Yes, it appears McKinley’s team failed to notice either the map’s new scheme or Mooney’s stumble (clearly, they don’t follow us on Twitter), as his campaign put out a statement hours later reading, “Our work is not done. That’s why I will be running for re-election in the new First District.” That was followed by a predictable clarification from a McKinley aide soon after.

Mutual numerical blundering aside, Mooney has been preparing for this day far more aggressively than McKinley, racking up a campaign war chest that stood at $2.6 million at the end of September. McKinley hasn’t yet filed a third-quarter fundraising report (they’re due Friday at midnight ET), but he had just $503,000 on hand as of mid-year.

But McKinley, unlike his colleague-turned-opponent, has a long history in Mountain State politics to fall back on. McKinley began a 14-year stint in the state House after first winning office in 1980, and he, too, served as state party chair—except in West Virginia, not someplace else. He later ran for governor in 1996 but took third in the GOP primary against eventual winner Cecil Underwood, who’d previously held the governorship all the way back in the 1950s.

McKinley’s time out of office was long, though not nearly as long as Underwood’s. McKinley eventually resurrected his career when he was narrowly elected to Congress in 2010—coincidentally, the same year that Mooney somehow lost re-election to the Maryland Senate despite that year’s colossal GOP wave.

McKinley also has another important advantage over Mooney, who incidentally is under investigation for allegedly spending campaign funds on personal expenses: He already represents two-thirds of the population of the new 2nd District while Mooney represents the remainder. That means he’s going to be familiar to more voters in the GOP primary, where all the action will take place: According to our new calculations, the 2nd would have gone 68-31 for Donald Trump.

The 1st is also unsurprisingly deep red and would have voted for Trump by a similar 70-29 margin. There, sophomore GOP Rep. Carol Miller has also said she’s definitely running for re-election and should face little opposition. The new map now goes to Republican Gov. Jim Justice for his signature, but it would be very surprising were he not to sign it into law, particularly since it only takes a simple majority to override a veto in West Virginia.

Redistricting

● TX Redistricting: A committee in Texas’ Republican-run House passed the GOP’s new congressional map on Wednesday, advancing the plan to the full floor. The map has already passed the Senate, so once the House approves it, it will go to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature.

3Q FUNDRAISING

● MO-Sen: Vicky Hartzler (R): $446,000 raised, $1.65 million cash-on-hand

● NH-Sen: Maggie Hassan (D-inc): $2.97 million raised, $6.5 million cash-on-hand

● OH-Sen: J.D. Vance (R): $1.65 million raised, additional $100,000 self-funded, $1.2 million cash-on-hand; Bernie Moreno (R): $700,000 raised, additional $3 million self-funded, $5 million cash-on-hand

● PA-Sen: Jeff Bartos (R): $250,000 raised, additional $400,000 self-funded, $2.25 million cash-on-hand

● UT-Sen: Ally Isom (R): $410,000 raised

● CA-39: Young Kim (R-inc): $1 million raised, $2 million cash-on-hand

● CA-45: Shawn Collins (R): $200,000 raised (in eight weeks)

● GA-06: Jake Evans (R): $400,000 raised, additional $500,000 self-funded, $836,000 cash-on-hand; Meagan Hanson (R): $300,000 raised

● GA-10: Alan Sims (R): $310,000 raised

● IL-07: Danny Davis (D-inc): $67,000 raised, $346,000 cash-on-hand; Kina Collins (D): $102,000 raised, $110,000 cash-on-hand

● IL-16: Adam Kinzinger (R-inc): $562,000 raised, $3.3 million cash-on-hand

● OR-05: Kurt Schrader (D-inc): $585,000 raised, $3.3 million cash-on-hand

● PA-08: Teddy Daniels (R): $270,000 raised, $211,000 cash-on-hand

Senate

● IA-Sen: Retired Vice Adm. Mike Franken confirmed Thursday that he would seek the Democratic nomination to take on Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Franken will go up against former Rep. Abby Finkenauer in the primary ahead of what will be a difficult general election for Team Blue.

Franken ran for Iowa’s other Senate seat last year in a campaign where he was also the underdog. Franken’s main intra-party foe, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, had the backing of the national Democratic establishment and benefited from close to $7 million in outside spending for the primary. Greenfield ended up winning the nomination 48-25 before losing to Republican Sen. Joni Ernst months later.

Governors

● AK-Gov: While there was some speculation that former state cabinet member Mike Navarre could run as a Democrat against Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy, Navarre is instead backing his old boss, former independent Gov. Bill Walker.

● NJ-Gov: Barack Obama will campaign with Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy on Oct. 23 in Newark, which is the same day he’s also set to stump for Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

● NY-Gov: EMILY’s List has endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul ahead of what could be a competitive 2022 Democratic primary to keep her new post. One of her possible intra-party foes is Attorney General Letitia James, whom EMILY supported in 2018.

● OR-Gov: The New York Times announced Thursday that columnist Nicholas Kristof has resigned from the paper after 37 years of employment, a move that came days after he filed paperwork for a likely bid for the Democratic nomination for governor.

● VA-Gov: Donald Trump spent Wednesday night calling into a rally in support of Republican Glenn Youngkin, and Democrat Terry McAuliffe has already turned footage into an ad. The audience hears Trump saying, “Glenn Youngkin is a great gentleman. I hope Glenn gets in there, and he’ll do all of the things that we want a governor to do.” The spot then replays old footage of Youngkin declaring, “I was honored to receive President Trump’s endorsement.”

Youngkin, for his part, said Thursday he wasn’t involved with that “Take Back Virginia Rally” Trump virtually took part in, which the candidate didn’t attend. When asked if he’d like Trump to campaign for him in person, Youngkin also declined to provide an answer.

House

● IL-13: Former Biden administration official Nikki Budzinski earned an endorsement this week from 6th District Rep. Sean Casten in the Democratic primary to take on Republican incumbent Rodney Davis.

● TN-09: Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen on Thursday unambiguously denied that he was considering retiring, a proclamation that came the day after Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth suggested he was thinking about leaving the House.

Yarmuth, a fellow Democrat who himself announced Tuesday that he would not seek re-election, told WLKY the next day, “You know my best friend in the house, Steve Cohen from Memphis, he’s agonizing over whether to run right now because he said ‘I’m going to lose my best friend,’ and that’s kind of how many of us feel.”

Punch Bowl News’ Jake Sherman went on to tweet Yarmuth’s words out, which led Cohen to reply, “To paraphrase Bernard Baruch / The reports of my retirement have been greatly over exaggerated.” (Now there’s a major politico of yesteryear we hadn’t mentioned before!) Sherman tweeted back, “Are you considering retiring ?” to which Cohen simply wrote, “No.” Cohen previously said in 2019 that he’d keep running through 2022.

● TX-15: An unnamed person close to Mauro Garza, a Republican who is waging his second campaign against Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro in the safely blue 20th District, tells the Texas Tribune’s Patrick Svitek that Garza is “seriously” considering switching to the new 15th District, which would be a 51-48 Trump seat under the proposed GOP gerrymander.

Garza previously campaigned in the 2018 primary for what is now the 21st District and took just 1% of the vote, and he went on to lose to Castro last year in the 20th District by a predictable 65-33 spread. Svitek, though, writes that Garza ended September with a notable $365,000 on-hand.

The only notable Republican currently running for the 15th District is 2020 nominee Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, who has House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s support for her second bid. Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez, for his part, said earlier this month that he was thinking of switching to the 34th District, which supported Joe Biden 57-42 under the GOP’s map.

Mayors

● Cleveland, OH Mayor: Baldwin Wallace University is out with the first independent poll we’ve seen of the Nov. 2 general election, and it gives nonprofit head Justin Bibb a 35-25 lead over City Council President Kevin Kelley. Bibb outpaced Kelley 27-19 in last month’s nonpartisan primary; Kelley soon released an internal showing him edging out Bibb 32-30.