Republican Dan Donovan
Leading Off:
• NY-11: Well, this is seriously bad news on several levels for Democratic hopes of winning back Mike Grimm's seat. Some unknown person just leaked a DCCC poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group, that shows Republican District Attorney Dan Donovan absolutely crushing the Democrats' preferred candidate, Assemblyman Michael Cusick, by a 48-28 margin. What's more disheartening is that even after a battery of negative messages are tested against Donovan, he still comes out on top—over and over again.
With numbers like these, it's hard to imagine Cusick, who hasn't said much publicly since Grimm resigned, taking the plunge. But while Cusick was gonna have access to this information no matter what, you have to wonder why this poll got out there in the first place. Our best theory: Perhaps national Democratic operatives want to demonstrate that the party's chances are so poor, there's just no point in blowing a few million bucks on a hopeless race.
That may be overthinking things, though. In a particularly unusual development, the full crosstabs—54 pages worth—were also shared with Capital New York. That's something you almost never, ever see in the wild, and if all you want to do is make the point that you're effed, there's no need to go that far—just the summary toplines will do—so maybe someone went rogue.
But whatever the backstory, Democrats are in a really rough spot here. Lots of facile commentators will insist that this is a seat the party "has" to compete in—Obama won it! it's in New York City!—without recognizing the other factors (a low-turnout special election plus the heightened inflammation of Staten Island's corrosive politics of resentment) at play here. At the same time, many activists and donors will be quite disappointed if Democrats concede a seat to the guy who failed to get an indictment in the Eric Garner case.
The data are what they are, though, and in the ultra-expensive New York City media market, there's probably no amount of money that can budge this harsh reality. Democrats will likely have a better shot in this district in Nov. 2016, when presidential-year enthusiasm should offer a turnout boost. Right now, though, it's hard to see this seat changing hands in the special election.
Senate:
• CA-Sen, -15, -17: Even though Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell just won re-election to his second term last fall, he sounded unusually interested in pursuing a bid for Barbara Boxer's open Senate seat, despite the serious difficulties a California-wide run would entail. That wasn't too surprising, though, given that Swalwell was ambitious enough to challenge (and defeat) fellow Democratic Rep. Pete Stark in 2012, while others missed their chance by waiting for the cantankerous Stark to retire.
But Swalwell's dialed back his aggressiveness this cycle and decided against running for Senate after all. Instead, Swalwell has endorsed state Attorney General Kamala Harris, the most prominent—and so far only—candidate to enter the race. (The two were both former prosecutors in the Alameda County district attorney's office, though their tenures did not overlap.)
Presumably Swalwell, who is just 34, will seek re-election to the 15th District, a solidly blue seat in the Bay Area. That could in turn have implications for Rep. Mike Honda, who just narrowly survived a challenge from fellow Democrat Ro Khanna in the adjacent 17th District. If Swalwell had vacated the 15th, Khanna, who was one of those hesitant pols who sat around hoping Stark would call it quits, might have tried a second bid there. Instead, if he tries again, he'd probably go for a rematch in the 17th, though it's hard to see how he'd do better there in 2016 than he did last fall.
• FL-Sen: Sen. Marco Rubio, who has often said that he won't try to keep his Senate seat if he runs for the presidency, name-checked a couple of potential successors on Wednesday in case he does make a White House bid. Rubio specifically mentioned former state House Speaker Will Weatherford and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera as possible candidates, though plenty of other Republicans would be interested as well. There are also quite a few Democrats who could run, too, though it seems like everyone's waiting on what Rubio decides.
• IA-Sen: Has six-term Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley ever definitively said, "Yes, I'm running for re-election"? That's not so clear—some pols just get so cagey about this sort of thing—but in a new interview, Grassley claims he's been working on his campaign since last year. However, he didn't offer any concrete evidence that he was, in fact, gearing up, though Grassley did note he expects GOP presidential contenders to shower him with cash as they make an effort to win Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses.
If Grassley does actually seek a seventh term, he'd be unlikely to face strong Democratic opposition. But if he finally decides to bail (he's 81 and has served in political office since 1959!), then we can expect a competitive race to succeed him.
Gubernatorial:
• GA-Gov: The last time a Southern Republican governor disappeared and his staff wouldn't answer questions about his whereabouts, things got pretty interesting. Is it too much to hope it's happening again?
• KY-Gov: Kentucky's branch of the AFL-CIO just endorsed Jack Conway for governor this week, signaling that they either don't expect any other Democrats to enter the race, or that they'd prefer none did. A couple of other big-name contenders are still lurking in the corners, but the filing deadline is really soon—Jan. 27.
House:
• NY-13: Former Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV just became the first Democrat to formally announce a bid to replace Rep. Charlie Rangel, who will retire next year after 23 terms in office. (Well, we think. Rangel is still sending out fundraising appeals, though perhaps he's just trying to retire debt or pay consultants.) Powell, whose father lost a famous primary challenge to Rangel in 1970, twice tried to avenge that defeat, once in 1994 and once in 2010, but never showed any great chops and is unlikely to be a favorite despite his well-known family name.
What's more, plenty of other potential candidates are still in the mix, including state Sen. Adriano Espaillat (who came close to unseating Rangel in both 2012 and 2014); state Sen. Bill Perkins; Assemblyman Keith Wright; ex-Gov. David Paterson; pastor Mike Walrond (a 2014 also-ran); New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito; City Councilwoman Inez Dickens; and former DNC political director Clyde Williams (who tried his hand in 2012)—just to name a few.
Other Races:
• Philadelphia Mayor: Former City Solicitor Ken Trujillo rather unexpectedly dropped out of the open Philadelphia mayor's race on Wednesday, citing family concerns. That leaves the underwhelming duo of state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams and former District Attorney Lynne Abraham as the most prominent remaining Democratic candidates; indeed, Trujillo's statement seemed to encourage some other unnamed candidate to get in to replace him. There were also earlier reports that former judge Nelson Diaz was also dropping out, but Diaz is saying that he's still in the race.
Grab Bag:
• Oregon: If your impression of Oregon as a quirky island of tolerance is formed by its blue-state status and its history of progressive ballot measures (or by watching Portlandia), you should check out a fascinating history long-read by Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo. Novak goes into great detail about Oregon's mostly-swept-under-the-rug racist past.
For starters, Oregon is the only state that explicitly enshrined outright racial exclusion into its state constitution at its founding, forbidding any black residents from living there. Novak details not just decades of Jim Crow-style segregation in Portland businesses, but also the mostly-forgotten Vanport flood, which wiped out a mostly-black section of Portland in 1948, and, maybe most shockingly, the KKK's infiltration into the state's corridors of power in the 1920s. If you've ever wondered why Portland is the nation's whitest major city, it's not merely a demographic accident.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Taniel, and Dreaminonempty.