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
●NC-10, NC-13, NC-Sen, NC-LG: GOP Rep. Mark Walker announced Monday that he would not run for anything in 2020, a decision he made weeks after North Carolina's new court-ordered congressional map utterly scrambled his old 6th Congressional District. GOP Rep. George Holding also announced his retirement earlier this month after his own seat was un-gerrymandered.
Campaign ActionWalker didn't want to leave Congress, though, and he quickly started looking for ways to stick around. The congressman knew he couldn't win in the new 6th District, a seat that backed Clinton 59-38, but he talked about launching a primary bid against Sen. Thom Tillis or taking on fellow GOP Reps. Patrick McHenry or Ted Budd in the new 10th or 13th Districts. There were even reports that Republicans wanted Walker to run for the open seat race for lieutenant governor, and Donald Trump reportedly said he'd back Walker if he did this.
However, with days to go before the Dec. 20 filing deadline, Walker announced Monday that he'd be sitting out the 2020 cycle altogether. We may have him to kick around again soon, though, since the congressman said he's considering running for the Senate in 2022 to succeed GOP incumbent Richard Burr, who says he'll retire.
Walker's spokesperson said last week that Trump had offered him "an open endorsement" for this contest, and Walker himself may think that he already has Trump's backing. In his Monday statement Walker also said that after this election cycle is over "we will take a look at the 2022 Senate race, and we are thankful to have President Trump's support."
However, plenty of other Republicans are likely to take a look at the Senate seat assuming Burr keeps his word and retires, so Walker probably shouldn't count on automatically having Trump's support this far ahead of time no matter what he was told at the White House. And of course, no one should ever count on Donald Trump to keep a promise, much less "an open endorsement."