Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning.
Sign up here.
9:43 AM PT: KY-Sen: FYI:
Alison Lundergan Grimes to meet with supporters at 2pm then make statement to media at 3pm in Frankfort #KySen @AlisonForKY @Team_Mitch
— @joearnoldreport
10:18 AM PT: HI-Sen: Honolulu Civil Beat has a new poll on Hawaii's Democratic primary for Senate, where Rep. Colleen Hanabusa is challenging appointed Sen. Brian Schatz. The survey, from Merriman River, finds Schatz narrowly ahead, 36-33, and he also owns a better favorability rating (49-27 vs. 48-41). The only other poll of this race was an unanswered Hanabusa internal from February that put her up 54-32.
Merriman, though, always needs to be viewed with caution. They've had a weak track record for some time, and three of their four final polls—in HI-02, HI-Sen, and for president—missed by about 10 points last year (though in fairness, it can be harder to poll blowouts accurately). They're also the pollster who conducted an internal for Ed Case in last year's Senate primary that was so off-base, even the DSCC felt compelled to smack it down. On top of everything, Hawaii is a notoriously difficult state to poll, so I'm not confident about reading anything into these results.
10:22 AM PT: The Grimes announcement will apparently be livestreamed here.
11:10 AM PT: NV-03: Democrat Erin Bilbray, who has been talked up as a potential candidate since January, has finally launched her campaign against sophomore Rep. Joe Heck. Bilbray (who has sometimes gone by "Bilbray-Kohn") runs an organization called Emerge Nevada, part of a network of groups that encourages women candidates to run for office. She's also the daughter of ex-Rep. Jim Bilbray, who represented Nevada's old 1st Congressional District from 1987 to 1995. The DCCC seems pretty high on her, and if she lives up to her billing, she ought to be able to give Heck a run for his money, considering he's one of just a handful of Republicans who sit in districts won by Barack Obama.
12:49 PM PT: KY-Sen: Wow. It's game on. Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who's been talked about as a possible candidate for many months, just announced that she'd run against Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky's Senate race next year. It's a high-risk, high-reward proposition for Grimes, a top Democratic recruit who hails from a prominent political family and won her first term as SoS in fine fashion back in 2011. McConnell, though, is another story altogether. He's a ruthless campaigner and already has a seven-figure war chest. What's more, he won't hesitate to go as harshly negative as he needs to in order to hang on.
And he'll certainly have to. Polls have consistently shown McConnell with abysmal approval ratings, and in dark red Kentucky, that's kept him under 50 percent in hypothetical head-to-heads with Grimes. The question is whether Grimes will be able to retain enough crossover appeal to win what is already a vanishingly small group of undecideds to her cause, because there simply aren't enough reliably Democratic voters in the state to win with the base alone.
For Grimes, though, this race amounts to something of a free shot, since she's not up for re-election until 2015 and doesn't have to give up her current job to challenge McConnell. And while Democrats have usually done less well in midterms than in presidential years, the calculus may be different in Kentucky, where Grimes won't have to contend with an unpopular President Obama at the top of the ticket. Indeed, in her brief announcement, Grimes trotted out what sounded like a focus grouped line on that very issue, saying:
"We can't change who our president is. But we can change who represents us in Washington."
But make no mistake: This will be an incredibly difficult contest. Grimes will have to raise a ton of cash and be ready to weather the McConnell attack machine for a solid year-and-a-half. McConnell certainly won't lack for funds, and what he lacks in popularity he'll make up for in brutality. But Grimes gives Democrats a real chance at an upset, and the very fact that she'll force McConnell to run a real campaign means Republicans will have a harder time trying to take back the Senate. And a Grimes victory? That would be the ultimate icing on the cake.
1:49 PM PT: MA-Sen: With Democrat Ed Markey's victory in the special election over Republican Gabriel Gomez, we're changing our rating on the race from Likely D to Safe D. NRSC chief Jerry Moran may believe Gomez wants to run again next year, but even if that's true, his chances will only get worse, not better. A low turnout summertime special election is a much better occasion for a Republican to pull off an upset in Massachusetts than a regular November midterm. With so many other more alluring opportunities, why would the GOP want to waste its time in the Bay State?
2:45 PM PT: NV-04: Our thoughts are with Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, who just announced that he recently underwent "non-elective" cardiac surgery. Horsford, first elected to Congress just last year, is only 40 years old, but fortunately, he says in his statement that "doctors expect a full recovery and indicate, that after a few weeks of medically mandated recovery, he will be back to 100%."
3:17 PM PT: CA-45: Roll Call's Emily Cahn plays Great Mentioner in California's 45th, where Rep. John Campbell's retirement will open the door for one lucky fellow Republican. So far, only state Sen. Mimi Walters has confirmed she'll run, but the most interesting name may be Rep. Gary Miller, who faces a Wargames-style re-election situation of his own. Instead of a nice game of chess, though, Miller could try swapping districts yet again, seeing as last cycle, he carpetbagged into the 31st despite the fact that his old 42nd District seat didn't overlap there at all.
This time, at least, he'd be moving on to slightly more familiar turf, since he represented about a quarter of the 45th in the 2000s. And given how much redder the 45th is, Miller would have a much better shot at returning to Congress, which may be why he offered a non-answer when Cahn asked him whether he'd try running there. But whether he does or doesn't, several other Republicans may be interested, including state Rep. Don Wagner, Orange County Supervisors Pat Bates and Todd Spitzer, Laguna Hills Mayor Pro Tem Andrew Blount, ex-state Sen. Dick Ackerman, and Irvine Mayor Steven Choi.
3:37 PM PT: ME-02: Remember a couple of weeks ago when Paul LePage thought was he George Carlin and offered up a really lame burn of a Democratic state legislator that involved Vaseline, copulation, and the good people of the state of Maine? Well, that guy—state Sen. Troy Jackson, an assistant majority leader—just announced that he's running for Congress. And one Republican also jumped in the race for Mike Michaud's open seat, state Rep. Alexander Willette. Dude's lucky the election's not until next year, because he's all of 24 years old, one year younger than the Constitutional minimum. Jackson and Willette join Democratic state Sen. Emily Cain, who previously had been the only declared candidate in either primary.
3:47 PM PT: MD-Gov: Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake just endorsed Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown in next year's Democratic gubernatorial primary. Baltimore may play an interesting role in the race, since none of the three likely candidates (Brown, AG Doug Gansler, and Delegate Heather Mizeur) hail from the area. That means Baltimore's votes may be very much up for grabs, so if Rawlings-Blake has real juice, she could play an important role in delivering support for Brown.
3:50 PM PT: LA-Gov: This is why you should always be wary of people who announce for office four years in advance: Four years is a damn long time! Republican state Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said back in January of 2012 that he planned to run for governor... in 2015. Big surprise, his plans have changed, and he'll seek re-election instead. Unless those plans change, too, of course.
3:58 PM PT: 2Q Fundraising:
• CO-Sen: Sen. Mark Udall (D): $1.3 mil raised, $3.4 mil cash-on-hand
• WV-02: Nick Casey (D): "nearly" $500K raised, $420K cash-on-hand
4:11 PM PT: AK-Gov: State Rep. Les Gara says he hasn't ruled out running for governor next year, but it sounds like he'd prefer to defer to two other Democrats, state Sens. Hollis French and Bill Wielechowski, both of whom haven't made up their minds yet. Right now, the big thing in Alaska politics is a new tax cut for oil companies that Republicans pushed through in April. Opponents are gathering petitions to put a repeal on the ballot, and they need to file 30,000 (no easy task in Alaska) by July 13, so other matters get put on hold until after that deadline.