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

Leading Off

● VT-Sen: Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who is the chamber’s longest-serving sitting member from either party, announced Monday that he would not seek a ninth term in 2022. While Leahy is, famously, the only Democrat ever elected to represent the Green Mountain State in the Senate (Bernie Sanders campaigned as an independent in all three of his successful campaigns), there’s little question that Team Blue’s eventual nominee will prevail in this 66-31 Biden state.

While Politico reported back in May that the 81-year-old senator was leaning towards another run despite being briefly hospitalized months earlier for what he described as muscle spasms, observers have spent months speculating who could run in an open seat race. Most of the attention on the Democratic side has been directed at Rep. Peter Welch, who has represented the entire state in the lower chamber since 2007, and VT Digger wrote Monday he is “widely expected” to seek a promotion. The congressman, for his part, put out a statement that day that merely praised Leahy and did not allude to his own 2022 plans.

Welch may be able to deter most would-be foes should he run, though one could decide to take her chances. The day before Leahy announced his departure, The Intercept published an interview with state Rep. Tanya Vyhovsky where she said she was interested in taking on Welch in an open seat Senate race. Vyhovsky, however, said she’d stay out if Sanders backed the congressman, declaring, “That is a big piece of this—if Bernie is going to endorse Peter there’s not much point doing it.”

Campaign Action

VT Digger also mentioned Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, state Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint, and state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale as potential candidates, though the story noted that they’d each “suggested” they wouldn’t go up against Welch. They could, though, campaign for an open House seat if there is one. Each member of the trio declined to comment about any potential campaigns on Monday. Vermont is the only remaining state that has never elected a woman to Congress, so a win by any of those potential candidates for either Senate or House would finally break that streak.

On the Republican side, a spokesperson for Gov. Phil Scott immediately said there was “No chance!” of a Senate run. Scott himself has not yet committed to seeking re-election to his current post.

Leahy’s long career in office began in 1966 when Gov. Phillip Hoff, who was the state’s first Democratic chief executive since before the Civil War, appointed the 26-year-old Leahy to serve as Chittenden County state’s attorney. Leahy developed statewide recognition during his eight years as the top prosecutor of Vermont’s most populous county, and he began preparing for a 1974 Senate run even before longtime Republican incumbent George Aiken announced his retirement.

However, he still looked like a decided longshot once the seat opened up. The Washington Post didn’t even initially mention the state’s attorney, who had long aspired to run for governor, in its list of potential candidates. Leahy had no trouble winning the Democratic primary, but he faced a very difficult race that fall against Republican Rep. Richard Mallary. The state was anything but a blue stronghold at the time: Vermont had only ever backed one Democratic presidential nominee, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Richard Nixon had easily carried it 63-36 two years before as Mallary was prevailing 65-35 statewide.

The Watergate scandal, however, had utterly devastated the GOP nationwide, and Leahy successfully pitched himself as an outsider.  Leahy, who Vermont Business Magazine’s Chris Graff writes “fashioned his image as Chittenden County state’s attorney into a high-profile, television-savvy lawman,” also emphasized public finance reform at a time when the issue was quite popular. Leahy ultimately won 49-46, with Sanders, his future colleague, taking 4% running under the banner of the Liberty Union Party.

Leahy, who at 34 was Vermont’s youngest-ever senator when he was sworn in, had another tough battle in 1980 to stay in office. Republicans were back on the ascent, and Team Red found a formidable candidate in Stewart Ledbetter, a former official in Gov. Richard Snelling’s administration. Leahy managed to hang on by a 50-49 margin―a gap of just under 2,800 votes―even as Ronald Reagan was beating Jimmy Carter 44-38 in the state.

Few could have guessed it at the time, but 1980 would be Leahy’s last close election. Six years later, Leahy defeated Snelling, whom Reagan had recruited to run here, in a 63-35  landslide in a race that had initially looked very close. In 1992, Leahy turned back Secretary of State Jim Douglas, who would later become governor himself, 54-43; that race coincided with Bill Clinton’s 46-30 win, which started an unbroken streak of Democratic presidential victories in this one-time GOP bastion.

Leahy had no trouble in 1998 after dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, who had starred in a 1996 film about a Senate campaign, won the GOP primary before dropping out and endorsing the incumbent, and Leahy’s final three campaigns were afterthoughts. He was a major force in D.C. as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (though plenty of Democrats remain furious at him for allowing Republican senators to essentially veto lower-court nominees from their states), and he took over as chair of the Appropriations Committee in February.

Leahy never attracted the national name recognition of Sanders, though his fellow Batman fans may remember his many appearances in various movies and shows, including as the voice of Territorial Governor in an episode of “Batman: The Animated Series” and as a civilian who stands up to the Joker in “The Dark Knight.” Leahy would say of his scene with the late Heath Ledger, “He scared the heck out of me with the knife. I didn’t have to act.”

Redistricting

● AK Redistricting: Alaska’s redistricting commission issued a proclamation finalizing the state’s new legislative maps last week, giving them the force of law, though litigation over the new lines remains likely.

● CO Redistricting: Colorado’s Supreme Court, which is required to review any new redistricting plans under a pair of 2018 amendments to the state constitution, has given its approval to new legislative maps drawn up by the state’s redistricting commission. As with the new congressional map it ruled on earlier this month, the court found that the commissioners had not engaged in an “abuse of discretion” in carrying out their duties.

The new plans by and large reflect Colorado’s shift to the left in recent years. Joe Biden would have won a 25-10 majority of seats in the state Senate and a 46-19 majority in the state House. In both cases, the median seat would have gone for Biden by about 12 points, slightly to the right of his 13.5-point win statewide. However, the breakdown is much less favorable for Democrats when looking at 2016: Hillary Clinton would have carried the Senate just 18-17 and the House 38-27. It’s worth noting as well that Colorado Republicans submitted briefs to the court in favor of the maps (Democrats did not file any briefs).

● GA Redistricting: Both chambers in Georgia’s Republican-run legislature have passed new maps for the state Senate and state House on party-line votes, sending them to Gov. Brian Kemp. The plans would lock in wide GOP advantages in both chambers despite the fact that Joe Biden carried the state last year. Work remains ongoing on congressional redistricting.

● ID Redistricting: Idaho’s bipartisan redistricting commission has forwarded its newly adopted congressional and legislative maps to the secretary of state, meaning they now take effect. The congressional lines make minimal changes to the previous map and will continue to easily elect two Republicans.

● NV Redistricting: Nevada’s Democratic-run state Senate passed new congressional and legislative maps on a party-line vote on Sunday, sending them to the Assembly.

● UT Redistricting: Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has signed Utah’s new GOP-drawn congressional redistricting plan, which splits the blue bastion of Salt Lake County between all four of the state’s districts in order to prevent Democrats from winning any seats. Lawmakers also recently passed new legislative maps but Cox has yet to sign off on them.

Senate

● NC-Sen: While Democratic state Rep. Rachel Hunt, daughter of former four-term Gov. Jim Hunt, didn’t rule out a statewide campaign back in February, she announced this week that she would run for the state Senate instead.

● NH-Sen: The New Hampshire Union Leader name-drops former Trump administration official Rich Ashooh, who narrowly lost the 2016 primary to then-Rep. Frank Guinta, and businessman Tom Moulton as possible Republican candidates.

Governors

● NY-Gov: Politico reports that New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams will announce this week that he’s entering the Democratic gubernatorial primary against incumbent Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Tish James. One person who will not be running, though, is state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who earlier this month told City & State that he had decided to sit the race out.

● PA-Gov: The Democratic Governors Association has released a survey from Public Policy Polling that shows state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a vocal Big Lie proponent who was filmed on Jan. 6 apparently passing breached barricades at the Capitol, ahead in the Republican primary. PPP finds Mastriano edging out 2018 Senate nominee Lou Barletta 18-14, with state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman in third with 4%.

The only member of this trio who has announced a bid so far is Barletta, though Mastriano has formed an exploratory committee while Corman reportedly has decided to run.

● TX-Gov: Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke announced Monday that he would challenge Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a move that gives Texas Democrats a candidate they’ve eagerly sought for months. O’Rourke is unlikely to face any serious opposition in next year’s primary, but he’ll have a very challenging task ahead of him in next year’s general election in a place where Democrats haven’t won a single statewide race since 1994.

O’Rourke, who was elected to the House in 2012 from an El Paso-based seat, emerged in the national spotlight in 2018 when he went up against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a contest that very few initially thought he could win. The Democrat, though, raised close to $80 million thanks in large part to Cruz’s utter radioactivity, as well O’Rourke’s own strong social media campaign, and he held the incumbent to a 51-48 victory during that blue wave year.

O’Rourke’s near-loss, which was the closest Team Blue had come to winning a Texas Senate seat since Democrat Lloyd Bentsen earned his final term all the way back in 1988, only magnified his stardom, but he turned down the chance to challenge Sen. John Cornyn in 2020. Instead, the former congressman launched a bid for the presidency that started out with strong fundraising and national coverage (though O’Rourke himself would later regret the Vanity Fair cover story where he said, “I’m just born to be in it”), but he struggled to maintain his momentum as the campaign continued and dropped out well before the Iowa caucus.

O’Rourke launched his bid for governor Monday by taking Abbott to task for signing the state’s infamous anti-abortion law and for the February power grid failure that resulted in massive blackouts. The former congressman also said of his foe, “He doesn’t trust women to make their health care decisions, doesn’t trust police chiefs when they tell him not to sign the permitless carry bill into law, he doesn’t trust voters so he changes the rules of our elections, and he doesn’t trust local communities.”

Abbott’s team quickly responded by utilizing a clip from O’Rourke’s presidential bid of him advocating for a mandatory assault weapon buyback program by proclaiming, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” O’Rourke two years ago trumpeted that debate line by tweeting, “If it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on the battlefield, we’re going to buy it back,” while Abbott’s campaign is now trying to caricature him as an enemy of gun rights.

We’ve seen two October polls, which were each conducted online by YouGov for different clients, but they very much disagreed on how competitive this race is right now. The survey for the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and Rice University had Abbott edging out O’Rourke just 43-42, while a poll done later in the month for the University of Texas at Austin for the Texas Tribune showed the incumbent up 46-37.

House

● CA-10: Former Trump administration official Ricky Gill announced Friday that he was running for Congress again in a state where redistricting is far from complete.

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. Gill went on to serve in the Trump administration in the State Department and at the White House National Security Council.

● FL-15: 2020 Democratic nominee Alan Cohn said Friday he was “strongly considering" seeking a rematch against freshman Republican Rep. Scott Franklin, who turned him back 55-45 last time.

Florida Politics also writes that there’s “talk” that former state Rep. Adam Hattersley or 2016 state House candidate Rena Frazier could try; Hattersley lost last year’s primary to Cohn 41-33, while Frazier’s own campaign ended in a 54-45 defeat against Republican state Rep. Ross Spano as Trump was narrowly carrying HD-59. (Spano was elected to the 15th Congressional District two years later only to lose renomination to Franklin in 2020.)

● FL-20: Broward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott on Friday declared that businesswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was the “apparent winner" in the Nov. 2 Democratic primary after she retained her 5-vote lead over Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness with all the district’s overseas and military ballots counted. Holmes said later that evening, “I will be talking to my attorneys in the next few days to determine our course of action.”

The Democratic nominee should have absolutely no trouble in the January special election to succeed the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, who decisively beat Cherfilus-McCormick in their 2018 and 2020 primaries, in this 77-22 Biden seat.

● IN-05: Former Democratic state Rep. ​​Melanie Wright said Monday that she was ending her month-long campaign against Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz in favor of running for the state Senate. Wright’s old GOP colleagues in the legislature did everything they could to secure the 5th District with a new gerrymander that transforms it from a seat Donald Trump carried just 50-48 to one he took 57-41.

● MI-03: Conservative commentator John Gibbs has announced that he’ll challenge incumbent Peter Meijer, who is one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump earlier this year, and Trump himself endorsed Gibbs for the Republican nomination soon thereafter. Gibbs joins a nomination contest that includes Army National Guard veteran Tom Norton, who ran in the primary last year, and so-called “MAGA bride” Audra Johnson.

Gibbs, who spent three years working in the Trump-era U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was in the national spotlight for a short time in 2020 when his nomination to head the Office of Personnel Management failed because of his conspiratorial ravings. Among other things, Gibbs repeatedly amplified the batshit conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair, John Podesta, had partaken in some sort of satanic ritual, based on personal emails stolen by Russian hackers.

● MI-08: Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett said Monday that he’d challenge Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin in a state where redistricting is still in progress, and he immediately gave us a preview of the sort of campaign he’ll be running.

Barrett, who also revealed he was leaving the Army after 21 years, said, “​​I’ve spent my entire career fighting for freedom in the Army and as a state legislator, yet Joe Biden wants to discard me because I oppose his coercive, forced vaccination mandate.” The state senator, who came down with COVID-19 last year, has worn a “naturally immunized” wrist band and refused to say if he’s vaccinated.

Barrett could have some company in the primary before long, as 2020 nominee Paul Junge says he “fully” plans to run again. Slotkin fended off Junge 51-47 even as Donald Trump was carrying her seat 50-49.

● MO-04: Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin kicked off his bid for this safely red open seat on Monday by doing his part to spread the Big Lie, saying, “(COVID19 election changes) led to the exploitation of it and the capability of the fraudulent voting,” and, “I do believe that Trump did win the election.” Brattin is a former state representative who won a promotion last year by beating one of his colleagues in a close GOP primary.

Several other Republicans are running to succeed Senate candidate Vicky Hartzler in this west-central Missouri seat, and the Missouri Scout reports that former state Sen. Kurt Schaefer is considering joining the field. Schaefer campaigned statewide for attorney general, but he lost the primary by a rough 64-36 margin to Josh Hawley, who successfully ran for the U.S. Senate two years later.

One person who did take his own name out of contention on Sunday, though, is former state Rep. Caleb Jones.

● NC-04: Democrat Pat Timmons-Goodson, who was the 2020 nominee in the current 8th District, said Monday she’d decided against running in this new open seat.

● NC-14: Republican state Sen. Kevin Corbin said Monday that he was thinking about running for this new western North Carolina seat, which is open because GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn decided to campaign for the neighboring 13th District instead. (Republican officials in the 13th expressed, shall we say, some choice words about Cawthorn’s announcement.)

Local GOP party official Michele Woodhouse also says that, should she also run to replace Cawthorn in the 14th, she’d announce “relatively quickly.” We’re not sure how she defines that, but the state’s Dec. 17 filing deadline certainly is coming up “relatively quickly.”

● NE-01: Democratic state Rep. Patty Pansing Brooks said Monday that she would challenge Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who was indicted last month for lying to federal investigators. Pansing Brooks, though, said she didn’t plan to focus on her opponent’s legal predicament, and she instead took him to task for voting against the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.

The new 1st District, according to Dave’s Redistricting App, backed Donald Trump 54-43, while the current seat supported him by a 56-41 spread.

● OH-01: Businessman Gavi Begtrup, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Cincinnati earlier this year, has decided to run for the state House rather than take on Republican Rep. Steve Chabot.  

● TX-17: Willie Blackmon, who retired back in 2004 as a municipal judge in Harris County, said Thursday that he’d challenge Rep. Pete Sessions in the Republican primary for this 61-37 Trump district. We’re not sure why he’s running here, though, because the new version of this seat not only doesn’t include any of Harris County, it’s also shed College Station, where Blackmon was part of Texas A&M’s 1970 Southwest Conference Championship Track and Field Team. (Brazos County, which is home to College Station, is now entirely located in GOP Rep. Michael McCaul’s 10th.)

Blackmon doesn’t appear to have said why he thinks that Sessions should be fired, though we’re guessing it’s not because he’s mad about how the incumbent got to this constituency in the first place. The congressman spent 22 years representing the Dallas area until losing the 32nd District to Democrat Colin Allred in 2018, but he quickly turned around and campaigned for the 17th District about 80 miles (and two or three congressional districts) away.

Retiring Rep. Bill Flores was pissed at his old colleague for parachuting back to his childhood home of Waco, where he hadn’t lived in decades, but primary voters were more forgiving. Sessions beat a Flores-backed opponent 54-46 in the GOP runoff, and he had no trouble in the fall as Donald Trump was carrying the 17th by a 55-44 margin. Only a little more than half of this new seat, though, includes Sessions’ existing district (and no, none of the current 32nd District made its way in here), so he’ll have to introduce himself to plenty of new voters once again.

● TX-30: Longtime Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson has an “important special announcement" set for Saturday, and the Democrat’s media advisory notably included a logo bearing the word “Re-Elect!” The 85-year-old Johnson, who is the second-oldest member of the House, said two years ago that her 2020 campaign would be her last, but she and her staff have rebuffed all efforts to confirm her plans since she claimed her 15th term.

Legislatures

● Special Elections: Louisiana held three special legislative elections on Saturday, and we’ve recapped the results below:

LA-SD-27: Republican Jeremy Stine, a former legislative aide and local businessman, kept this seat red by defeating Democrat Dustin Granger 59-39. The chamber returns to full strength with a 27-12 GOP supermajority.

LA-HD-016: Businessman Adrian Fisher won the all-Democratic race by beating teacher Alicia Calvin 69-20.

LA-HD-102: Delisha Boyd, a local and state Democratic Party official who had several prominent elected officials in her corner, won her intra-party battle 62-38 against activist Jordan Bridges. The state House goes back to a 68-34 GOP majority, with three independents holding the remaining seats.

Other Races

● Orleans Parish, LA Sheriff: Longtime Sheriff Marlin Gusman was forced into a Dec. 11 runoff against a fellow Democrat after he narrowly failed to take the majority he needed to prevail outright in a Saturday all-party primary that criminal justice reformers were watching closely. Gusman won 48% of the vote while former New Orleans Police Department Independent Monitor Susan Hutson outpaced her nearest foe 35-9 for second place.

Hutson and the other challengers argued that the four-term sheriff has done a poor job overseeing the Orleans Justice Center, a jail that has been under a federal consent decree since 2013 for what the Justice Department called “unlawful conditions at the prison.” WWNO’s Bobbi-Jeanne Misick writes, “Gusman lost operational authority over the jail — the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s main duty, as deputies do not typically patrol the city’s streets — after an independent monitor reported a lack of progress in reforming the facility.”

Control was restored to the sheriff last year, but Misick adds that in recent weeks, federal monitors have “blasted the Orleans Justice Center for slow progress in achieving the goals set out in the consent decree, particularly in mental and medical health care.” The judge overseeing the consent decree, however, still commended Gusman for making needed improvements and declared that his pandemic measures were “nothing short of life-saving.”

Hutson and his other opponents have also faulted the incumbent for trying to build a new facility to house inmates with mental health problems, which critics argue will only increase the number of prisoners overall. They’ve further focused on the 15 deaths that were reported at the Orleans Justice Center from 2014 to 2019, a death count that Politico’s Jessica Pishko says was exceeded in Louisiana by just two jails that were each larger than Gusman’s.

Gusman, who has the backing of Gov. John Bel Edwards and Rep. Troy Carter, has pushed back by arguing that he’s helped reduce the number of inmates during his long tenure. “When I was elected, there were 13 jails,” said the sheriff, adding, “I have since closed, abandoned or demolished every single one. We had 7,000 inmates when I came in. Now we have less than 900.” Misick writes, “Much of that reduction in the jail population has been attributed to pressure from criminal justice reform groups.”

Gusman additionally has talked about reforms he’s made during his tenure, including re-entry programs. His side has also portrayed Hutson as too inexperienced to hold the sheriff’s post while insisting that only he understands the problems afflicting the jail enough to solve them.

Only about 27% of registered voters took part in Saturday’s all-party primary in the city of New Orleans, which is coterminous with Orleans Parish, and turnout could plunge much further next month. That’s because, while four statewide ballot measures and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s easy re-election campaign took center stage this weekend, there will be far less to bring voters back next month. It’s possible this will be good news for Hutson, who could benefit from disproportionate turnout among voters upset with the status quo, but no one can know for sure.