The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Matt Booker, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
●OR-04: Republican Alek Skarlatos announced Sunday that he'd seek a rematch against incumbent Peter DeFazio, a veteran Democrat who defeated him 52-46 last year after a surprisingly expensive and closer-than-anticipated race. Skarlatos made his declaration about two weeks after he learned that, even though Oregon Democrats control the governorship and both chambers of the legislature, the party will not be able to help DeFazio or anyone else during the next round of redistricting.
That's because, as we explained in a recent edition of the Voting Rights Roundup, Democrats recently reached a deal with Republican lawmakers under which Democrats agreed to give up their majorities on the legislature's redistricting committees. In exchange for granting GOP veto power over any new congressional maps, Democrats received assurances that Republicans would back off some of their unprecedented obstruction of routine legislative business. As a result, in the absence of a bipartisan compromise, it would be up to a court to craft a new map.