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

● NH-Sen, NH-Gov: In a move that deprives Senate Republican leaders of one of their most sought-after Senate recruits, Republican Chris Sununu announced Tuesday that he would seek a fourth two-year term as governor of New Hampshire rather than challenge Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan next year. Speculation immediately swirled that former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who lost an extremely tight 2016 race to Hassan, would be the Senate GOP’s backup choice, but unnamed sources close to Ayotte soon told WMUR’s John DiStaso that she “​​will NOT be a candidate for any office in 2022.”  

We’re not sure if Ayotte tipped off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell or NRSC chair Rick Scott about her reported decision to sit out the race, but according to Sununu, they learned about his plans at the same time as the rest of us: The governor revealed he didn’t give any advance notice to McConnell or Scott, saying, “I guess you’ll have to let them know. I haven’t talked to them.”

They sure know now (with McConnell advisor Josh Holmes responded to the Sununu news by tweeting, “Unbelievable”), and it will be up to Team Red to find a new candidate to take on Hassan. However, while the senator will avoid going up against Sununu, who won re-election 65-33 even as Joe Biden was taking New Hampshire 53-45, she’ll still be a top GOP target in a state that can swing wildly from cycle to cycle. There are plenty of Granite State politicians who may now take a look, including some politicians who may have campaigned for governor if he’d decided to take on Hassan.

Campaign Action

The only notable Republican currently running for Senate is retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, who got into the race a year ago at a time when Sununu all but froze the party’s field, but he’s unlikely to scare anyone off: Bolduc lost the 2020 primary for the Granite State’s other Senate seat 50-42, and he ended September with a mere $58,000 in the bank.

One person who seems uninterested, though, is Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who moved north to unsuccessfully run for the Senate here in 2014. Brown said he was focused on helping his wife, ​​Gail Huff Brown, win the 1st Congressional District, and said of another Senate run, “I don’t think so unless something traumatic happens.” (We have no idea what Brown considers “traumatic” for this race.)

Several potential Senate names surfaced following the Sununu/Ayotte news, though some looked far more formidable than others. In the latter column is 2020 nominee Corky Messner, who defeated Bolduc before losing to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen 57-41; Messner said Tuesday that he wasn’t ruling out another campaign for the upper chamber

DiStaso also tweets that former Rep. Frank Guinta also hasn’t said no and “is calling around to donors & supporters to gauge interest,” though we’re guessing the interest will not be overwhelming. Guinta unseated Democratic Rep. Carol Shea Porter in the swingy 1st District in 2010, lost their 2012 rematch, and defeated her again in 2014, but things started going wrong for him soon afterwards.

Guinta earned embarrassing headlines when he paid an FEC fine for an illegal 2010 six-figure donation from his parents, and he resisted calls from Ayotte and other prominent Republicans to retire or even resign. The congressman won renomination just 46-45 and lost his fourth and final contest with Shea Porter 44-43 as Donald Trump was narrowly carrying his seat.

A stronger candidate might be Matt Mowers, who is currently campaigning for the 1st District again after losing a tight 2020 race there to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. Politico reports that national and local Republicans have been talking to Mowers about possibly switching races, though it remains to be seen if he’s interested. (Huff Brown quickly said she was staying in the House contest.) Multiple media outlets also mentioned state Senate President Chuck Morse and Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education Frank Edelblut as possibilities.

Sununu, for his part, will likely be the clear favorite to win a fourth term as governor. A recent Saint Anselm College poll gave him a 56-42 job approval, which, while considerably smaller than his 64-34 score back in August, still puts him well above water. No notable Democrats have launched a campaign for governor yet, though it’s unlikely Team Blue will give him a free pass especially if more polls show his numbers in decline.

Redistricting

● AK Redistricting: Alaska’s Redistricting Board, a five-member body made up of three Republicans and two independents, has settled on a new map for the state House, though work continues on a plan for the state Senate. Each district in the upper chamber is made up of two “nested” lower-chamber districts, so it’s a matter of the commissioners deciding which pairs of districts to link together. The panel must complete its work by Wednesday, at which point its maps can be challenged in court. As the Anchorage Daily News’ James Brooks notes, “Every redistricting process since statehood has involved a lawsuit.”

● GA Redistricting: Georgia’s Republican-run Senate passed the GOP’s new map for the chamber on a strictly party-line vote on Tuesday, while a committee in the state House, which is also controlled by Republicans, did the same thing with a new redistricting plan for its own districts.

● NV Redistricting: Leaders in Nevada’s Democratic-run legislature unveiled draft maps for Congress, the state House, and the state Senate on Tuesday, which lawmakers will take up when they convene for a special session likely to start later this week. The congressional plan would make the 3rd and 4th Districts bluer at the expense of the 1st District; under these boundaries, all would have supported Joe Biden by about 7-8 points. The 2nd, meanwhile, would remain solidly Republican.

● UT Redistricting: Republican lawmakers in Utah unveiled and passed a new congressional map in committee on Monday that would ensure GOP control of the state’s entire House delegation by dividing Salt Lake County four ways. Salt Lake is the state’s most populous county and its one sizable bastion of Democratic voters, so by quartering it and pairing each sub-section with dark-red rural areas, all four districts will remain safely Republican.

By contrast, the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission proposed maps that would have established a district centered on Salt Lake City and its suburbs by making fewer splits in the surrounding county. That, however, would have yielded a solidly Democratic seat—which is precisely why Republicans ignored the commission’s work.

The GOP’s proposal represents an exacerbation of the previous decade’s gerrymander, which had split Salt Lake County among three districts. But despite Republican efforts to juke the map in their own favor, Democrats managed to win the 4th District in both 2012 and 2018, and only narrowly lost in 2014 and 2020. For that reason, the latest map would protect freshman GOP Rep. Burgess Owens by moving the 4th from a 52-43 win for Donald Trump to a rock solid 60-34 Trump margin, according to Dave’s Redistricting App.

The other three districts all would have supported Trump with 56-57% of the vote, though that actually understates the GOP’s advantage, given the large numbers of Trump-skeptical conservative voters (including many Mormons) who eagerly vote Republican further down the ballot.

Republicans have proposed this extreme gerrymander in spite of a 2018 ballot initiative that voters passed in an attempt to end gerrymandering by creating a new redistricting commission. In response, however, Republicans passed a 2020 law that gutted the commission and made its role purely advisory, allowing lawmakers to treat it as though it doesn’t exist.

Senate

● CO-Sen: The Democratic firm Global Strategy Group’s survey for the liberal organization ProgressNow Colorado finds Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet defeating two Republican foes, Air Force veteran Eli Bremer and state Rep. ​​Ron Hanks, by margins of 48-35 and 52-34, respectively.

● PA-Sen: The conservative Free Beacon’ Eliana Johnson reports that Mehmet Oz, a TV personality who has a long history of dispensing what medical experts have warned is false advice, “is preparing” to run for this open seat as a Republican. Oz’s spokesperson didn’t deny it, saying, “Since last year, Dr. Oz has lived and voted in Pennsylvania where he attended school and has deep family ties. Dr. Oz has received encouragement to run for the U.S. Senate, but is currently focused on our show and has no announcement at this time.”

Johnson writes that Oz is registered to vote in neighboring New Jersey. She adds, “Oz has a non-permanent voter registration in Pennsylvania connected to a Montgomery County address that appears to belong to his mother-in-law.”

● WA-Sen: SurveyUSA’s poll for KING5 finds Democratic Sen. Patty Murray with a 49-31 lead over her best-funded Republican foe, motivational speaker Tiffany Smiley.

Governors

● CT-Gov: Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont confirmed Tuesday that he would seek a second term next year. His move came about a month after Lamont said he hadn’t decided if he’d run for re-election, though there was little indication he was seriously thinking about retiring.

● IL-Gov: Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts said Thursday that he was stepping down as Republican National Committee finance chair with more than a year left on his term, a move that reignited media speculation that the ultra-wealthy businessman could campaign for governor. Back in December, Politico reported that Ricketts was ​​not “ruling out a run” against Democratic incumbent J.B. Pritzker, but we’ve heard nothing new since then.

● LA-Gov: Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards will be termed-out of office in two years, and LaPolitics Weekly’s Jeremy Alford takes a look at the many Republicans who could compete in the 2023 all-party primary to succeed the governor in this very red state.

Political observers have long anticipated that Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and Attorney General Jeff Landry will each run, and recent events have only intensified that speculation. Last month, Nungesser confirmed his interest and said that “we’ll make a decision sometime next year.” Days later, one of Landry’s top aides, Liz Murrill, filed paperwork to campaign for attorney general, and her team added that she “plans to run and she intends to run if Jeff Landry does not run for re-election.” Landry himself soon used his appearance at a party meeting to make it clear he was mulling a run for governor.

Nungesser and Landry are two of the most prominent Republicans in Pelican State politics, but they would likely run very different campaigns if they both got in. Landry, an ultra-conservative who has advised employees how they can avoid COVID vaccination requirements, was one of several prominent Republicans who led the drive earlier this year to do away with the all-party primary system and replace it with a traditional partisan primary.

Nungesser, however, successfully fought to keep the status quo in place, arguing the proposed change would produce “extreme candidates.” The lieutenant governor has been willing to work with Edwards at times, and he’d almost certainly be better positioned to pick up Democratic voters if he and Landry both advanced to an all-GOP general election.

That Nungesser-Landry duel is far from a certainty though, especially since plenty of other Republicans could also get in. State Treasurer John Schroder said back in May that he was thinking about seeking the governor’s office, while state Sen. Rick Ward himself expressed interest in October. State Rep. Richard Nelson also added his name to the list just last week, telling Alford, “The bigger boys have the kind of money that scares people away, but I don’t think the field is settled.”

As for the Democrats, Alford writes, “So far no reliable names have surfaced, but party leaders insist they will have a marketable candidate.” Donald Trump carried Louisiana 58-40, and Edwards is the only Democrat to win statewide in over a decade.

● TX-Gov: Democrat ​​Beto O’Rourke’s PAC posted online Tuesday, “We’ve got something big to announce, and we want you to be a part of it.” The former congressman has spent months thinking about challenging Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, and no other notable Democrat has gotten in during this time.

House

● CA-10: Politico reports that former Trump official Ricky Gill is thinking of taking on Democratic Rep. Josh Harder in what is currently a competitive seat in the Modesto area.

Gill was on the ballot almost a decade ago at the age of 25 when he challenged another Democratic congressman, Jerry McNerney, in the neighboring 9th District. Gill raised $3 million for a campaign that attracted national attention, but McNerney beat him 56-44 as Barack Obama was carrying that constituency by a 58-40 spread.

● MD-04: Former Del. Angela Angel has filed paperwork for a potential campaign to succeed Rep. Anthony Brown, a fellow Democrat who is leaving to run for state attorney general, in a safely blue seat in the D.C. suburbs. Angel was elected to her only term in 2014, and she earned headlines two years later when she launched a high-profile, but unsuccessful, attempt to pressure legislative leaders to act on her domestic violence bill. She ran for the state Senate in 2018 but lost the primary 55-37 to a fellow delegate.

Meanwhile, Del. Jazz Lewis earned an endorsement Monday from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is his old boss and the congressman from the neighboring 5th District.

● NC-06: While Hillsborough Town Commissioner Matt Hughes, who is an official in the state Democratic Party, expressed interest last month in running to succeed retiring Rep. David Price, sounds like he’s now ruled it out. Hughes responded to Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam’s campaign kickoff on Monday by tweeting, “I’m so proud of @NidaAllam as she begins her next phase of public service.”

Another Democrat we hadn’t previously mentioned is former Wake County Commissioner Jessica Holmes, who also said she was interested last month before the Republican-dominated legislature passed its new gerrymander. Holmes ran statewide last year for the open post of commissioner of labor and lost the general election by a close 51-49 margin.

North Carolina’s candidate filing deadline is Dec. 17, so we’ll have a full candidate lineup before too long.

● NC-07, NC-Sen: Former Rep. Mark Walker last week told Dallas Woodhouse, the infamous former executive director of the state GOP, that he was considering campaigning to return to the House, though the Republican said he was still going forward with his Senate bid for now. Walker announced his involuntary retirement from the lower chamber in 2019 after court-supervised redistricting left him without a winnable seat to run for, but the GOP’s newest gerrymander may belatedly solve that problem for 2022.

Walker didn’t say which constituency he was interested in, though Woodhouse believes that if he ran anywhere, it would be in the new and open 7th District. This seat, which includes areas between Greensboro and Raleigh, supported Donald Trump 57-41 according to data from Dave’s Redistricting App, and it includes much of the turf held by one of Walker’s Senate primary rivals, Rep. Ted Budd.

Walker, though, wouldn’t have the primary to himself if he made the switch. Law student Bo Hines, a former North Carolina State University football player who announced a bid to succeed Budd in the current 13th District, has made it clear he’s now seeking the new 7th. Hines, who has self-funded part of his campaign, ended September with $371,000 on-hand, though Walker had a larger $613,000 Senate war chest he could use here instead.

State Rep. Jon Hardister also says he’s thinking about running for the House, though Woodhouse added that he “indicated he is unlikely to enter a primary against Walker.”

● NV-04: Boxer Jessie Vargas said Monday that he would seek the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in Las Vegas’ northern suburbs. The candidate indicated he could do some self-funding, saying he did “very well” in his career in the ring.

Vargas, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, was on Mexico’s 2008 ​​Olympic team, and he was the 2016 world champion welterweight. He gave up the title later that year when he badly lost to Philippines Sen. Manny Pacquiao (who, coincidently, is running next year for president of his country), though Vargas received a $2.8 million guaranteed payout for that fight.

● NY-22: Democrat Josh Riley, an attorney who is a former counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced a bid against Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney. The current version of this Utica-area seat backed Donald Trump 55-43, though it could look very different once redistricting is complete.

● NY-24: Physician assistant Tim Ko said this week that he would launch a primary challenge against Rep. John Katko, who is one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump. Ko is a first-time candidate, but he could have a prominent ally in his corner soon. The Conservative Party, which is often aligned with the state GOP, is set to endorse a candidate on Nov. 16, and Onondaga County chair Bernie Ment said he’d advocate for Ko next week.

The current version of the 24th District went for Joe Biden 53-44, which makes Katko one of just nine Republicans in a Biden constituency. There’s some speculation, though, that redistricting could lead to a primary between Katko and hard-right Rep. Claudia Tenney, and Ko says he would drop out and support the 22nd District congresswoman if that happened.  

● OR-06: Democratic state Rep. Andrea Salinas on Tuesday kicked off her long-anticipated campaign for the new 6th District, a 55-42 Biden seat that includes the state capital of Salem and other parts of the mid-Willamette Valley. Salinas, who co-chaired the state’s congressional and legislative redistricting committees, is the daughter of an immigrant from Mexico, and she would be the first Latina to represent Oregon in Congress.

On the GOP side, fellow state Rep. Ron Noble told Oregon Public Broadcasting last month that he was getting ready to run, though he hasn’t announced yet.

● TX-01, TX-AG: Democrats and House Republicans leaders may finally be rid of Rep. Louie Gohmert because the legendary far-right bomb thrower threw up a website Tuesday saying he was thinking about challenging scandal-ridden Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP primary.

Of course, this being Gohmert, the revelation came after a complete train wreck: The Texas Tribune’s Patrick Svitek tweeted, “He was supposed to have an announcement at 11:30 in Tyler, [but] tweeted a livestream around noon that didn’t work.” (The Houston Chronicle's Taylor Goldenstein later said that he was felled by a “wifi problem.")

Gohmert’s new site went up, though it could have benefited from some extra proofing: It declared that the congressman “needs 100,000 citizens to send $100 each (or any other amount to get to $1,000,000) by November 19,” which actually adds up to $10 million. He may struggle to reach either number, as his congressional campaign ended September with a mere $83,000 on-hand.

No matter what he raises, though, Gohmert would be in for a very uphill primary if he did decide to challenge Paxton. Donald Trump endorsed the attorney general earlier this year despite (or maybe perhaps because of) the myriad of scandals surrounding him, and a recent YouGov poll gave Paxton a 54-18 lead over his main primary foe, Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

If Gohmert did decide to take his chances statewide, there’s no question that Republicans would have no trouble holding on to his dark red 1st District in East Texas. However, few House Democrats would be sad to part ways with Gohmert, who said of the Jan. 6 attack, “It’s absolutely dishonest to say ‘insurrection’ when not a single person has been charged with insurrection.”

● TX-35: Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said Tuesday that he would seek re-election rather than run for the open 35th Congressional District, adding that he’d be involved in fighting the new gerrymander in court.

That announcement came weeks after the Republican legislature made a last-minute change to the congressional map that placed Martinez Fischer’s home in the 35th, a move he acknowledged was done at his request. However, a fellow state representative may have deterred him from running after all: Primary School writes that Martinez Fischer is an ally of Eddie Rodriguez, a fellow state representative who has filed paperwork for a campaign and has an announcement set for Wednesday morning.

● VA-07: Republican state Sen. Amanda Chase filed paperwork last week for a potential congressional bid, but the far-right legislator now says, “I’ve not officially announced and we won’t announce that until after the lines have been officially drawn because we don’t know where we’re going to land.”

● WI-03: Former CIA officer Deb McGrath said Tuesday that she was competing in the primary to succeed her fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Ron Kind, in what is currently a swingy seat in southwestern Wisconsin. McGrath is the daughter of Al Baldus, a Democrat who was elected to a previous version of this district in 1974 and narrowly lost it six years later.

Legislatures

● NJ State Senate, Where Are They Now?: Democratic Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker has flipped a long-held GOP state Senate seat by defeating former Republican Rep. Michael Pappas 53-47 in the 16th Legislative District, which supported Joe Biden 60-38. This marks the latest defeat for Pappas, a one-term congressman whose brief moment in the political spotlight came in 1998 when he took to the House floor to deliver an ode to the special prosecutor probing the Clinton White House that began, “Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr / Now we see how brave you are.”

Mayors

● Atlanta, GA Mayor: Attorney Sharon Gay, who finished fourth in last week’s race for mayor with 7% of the vote, has endorsed City Councilman Andre Dickens in the Nov. 30 runoff.

Other Races

● Nassau County, NY Executive: Nassau County election officials have announced that they will start counting the nearly 20,000 absentees and 1,200 affidavit ballots on Monday. Republican Bruce Blakeman leads Democratic incumbent Laura Curran by about 12,000 votes, a margin of 52-48.

Obituaries

● Georgia Democrat Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam veteran whose long career in politics concluded with his 2002 loss after serving a single term in the Senate, died on Tuesday at the age of 79. We’ll bring you a detailed look at Cleland’s electoral history, including the notorious campaign Republican Saxby Chambliss waged against him in his final race, in the next Digest.