• Site News: If you’re logging on to Daily Kos for the first time since last week, you immediately noticed that things look a bit different today—quite a bit different in some cases. That’s due to the installation of a new version of the software that powers the site (known as “DK5”). If you have questions about the site, or if you encounter any bugs or display errors, we ask that you to file a support request with the helpdesk.
And to reassure regular users of Daily Kos Elections, the “Related Diaries” sidebar will be coming back. (Please see this comment from Jason Libsch, who heads our tech department.) We are very sorry about this interruption, because we know just how valuable this feature is to this community. When we have a timetable for its restoration, we will let you know. In the meantime, there is a workaround that will still allow you to see diaries tagged with “DK Elections”: You can click on this link, or click on the word "Stream" at the top of the gray right-hand sidebar on the DKE front page.
Lastly, as with most software, DK5 is still very much a work in progress. That’s why Markos, the site’s founder, is soliciting feedback. If you have constructive ideas on how to improve the site, we encourage you to share them in that post. You’re also welcome to discuss the new site here, but it’ll be easier for the tech team to receive feedback in Markos’ post. And if you discover any cool new tricks, please tell us about them!
• Radio: On Sunday night, Jeff Singer appeared on the Kudzu Vine to discuss the Louisiana gubernatorial race runoff, as well as both parties’ presidential primaries. Click here to listen to the recording.
• Houston, TX Mayor: On Friday, Adrian Garcia endorsed Sylvester Turner, a fellow Democrat. Garcia took 17 percent to earn third place in the Nov. 3 non-partisan primary; Turner and conservative Bill King advanced to the Dec. 12 runoff with 32 and 25 percent respectively. Garcia performed relatively well with Hispanic voters and he could help Turner, an African American, make inroads with this group.
• Special Elections: When in doubt, assume there’s a special election in New Hampshire. Via Johnny Longtorso:
NH State House, Strafford-1: This is an open Republican seat near the Maine border, consisting of the towns of Middleton and Milton. The candidates here are Democrat Larry Brown, a former state representative, and Republican Robert Graham, a veteran. This seat went 50-49 for Mitt Romney and 54-46 for Scott Brown in 2014.
• CA-21: Democrat Andrae Gonzales, a member of the Bakersfield school board, is the latest Democrat to express interest in challenging Republican Rep. David Valadao. The Bakersfield Californian says that Gonzales is viewed as a rising star in Kern County Democratic politics, though it’s unclear how serious he really is. While Gonzales has met with the DCCC, he was actually only in DC on an unrelated trip.
Daniel Parra is also running for Team Blue and while national Democrats are utterly unimpressed by his fundraising, Parra has been consolidating local support. Parra’s latest endorsement comes from Kern County Supervisor Leticia Perez, who lost a high-profile state Senate race in this area in 2013 and was mentioned as a possible candidate here last year.
• AL-01: Tea partying businessman Dean Young only lost to Rep. Bradley Byrne 52-48 in the 2013 GOP primary runoff, and he’s back for another try.
Young appears to be more of a perennial candidate who almost got lucky in a low-turnout race than a serious candidate. Young badly lost a 2002 runoff for secretary of state and only took 24 percent in a primary against then-Rep. Jo Bonner in 2012. Young never showed much of a talent for fundraising and doesn’t appear to be capable of self-funding much more than a low six-figure amount. Young also went full on birther towards the end of his 2013 race, though this probably didn’t do him too much damage with fellow Republicans.
Byrne has been a low-key conservative who doesn’t appear to have upset the GOP base during his time in the House. Alabama’s congressional primary also coincides with the presidential contest, so Byrne should benefit from more casual voters showing up and supporting the name they recognize. Young’s near-win last time means we should keep an eye on him, but he won’t have an easy time unseating Byrne in March. This Mobile-area seat will stay red regardless of who wins the GOP nod.
• FL-21, 22: Redistricting has dramatically changed Democratic Reps. Ted Deutch and Lois Frankel’s South Florida seats. While the two members have pledged not to oppose one another, an ambitious Democrat is considering a campaign for one of the new seats. Attorney Stephanie Toothaker, who served as a special counsel to former Sen. Bob Graham, tells The National Journal that she’s strongly considering running for one of the two seats.
Toothaker, who also served as co-lead counsel for Broward County for the Obama presidential bid, sounds well-connected. North Florida Rep. Gwen Graham says that Toothaker is like a sister to her, though Graham also says she won’t be getting involved. But Frankel and especially Deutch have been preparing for a primary challenge. Frankel raised $354,000 over the last three months and has $660,000; Deutch brought in a monster $636,000 during that time and has $1,021,000 on hand.
It’s also possible another Democrat will try to take advantage of the chaos and run for one of these safely blue seats, but it’s not clear if anyone else is interested. State Rep. Kristin Jacobs, who ran against Frankel in the 2012 open-seat primary, has been mentioned as a possible contender. However, Jacobs recently turned down a state Senate bid by saying she “just got elected to serve as a House member and feel I have an obligation to stay here as long as voters will have me. Running for a higher office at this time, just didn’t feel like the right thing to do.” It’s very unlikely that Jacobs is thinking about a run for the U.S. House after making a statement like that.
• MI-01: On Monday, GOP state Sen. Tom Casperson announced that he would run for this competitive open northern Michigan seat. Casperson, then a state representative, badly lost his 2008 bid for this district against then-Rep. Bart Stupak, but Casperson seems to be well-regarded in GOP circles. There were rumors that Rep. Dan Benishek would only run for re-election in 2016 so that he could retire in 2018 and give Casperson a better chance to win the seat in a GOP-friendly midterm (Benishek ended up retiring this cycle).
But not everyone is on board with Casperson. Scott Hagerstrom, the former head of the state’s Americans for Prosperity chapter, has formed a PAC to attack Casperson over taxes. It’s unclear how much Hagerstrom’s group will be able to spend, but expect Casperson’s primary opponents to echo their attacks.
And it sounds like Casperson can expect an intra-party foe or two. The Petoskey News-Review says that state Rep. Peter Pettalia and ex-state Sen. Jason Allen are expected to enter the race next year. Both men have expressed interest in running, but neither has said much publicly since Benishek announced his departure in late September. Romney won this seat 54-45, but Democrats often do well in the area, and Team Blue has a well-funded candidate in Lon Johnson.
• Alabama: We had our first candidate filing deadline of 2016 on Friday, and AL.com has a list of candidates. GOP Sen. Richard Shelby and all seven of Alabama’s House members (six Republicans and one Democrat) are all running for re-election.
Shelby never looked very vulnerable in the March has a massive $19 million on hand in any case. Jonathan McConnell, the founder of a global maritime security company, is running, but he won’t have much of a shot unless he’s rich or well-connected enough to spend huge amounts of money. Ex-state Sen. Shadrack McGill, who famously said that strippers had once shown up to his home at 1 AM, is also running, because why not. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic candidates are all of the Some Dude variety. With the possible exception of Republican Bradley Byrne (see our AL-01 item), none of the Yellowhammer State’s House members face any serious opposition in the March 1 primary or in the general.
• CO-Sen: El Paso County Commissioner Peggy Littleton is reportedly considering a bid against Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, though she hasn’t said anything publicly. Littleton’s colleague Darryl Glenn has been running since the beginning of the year to zero fanfare, and it’s unclear if Littleton will get the attention of national Republicans who want to give Bennet a serious challenge.
However, we can cross one potential candidate off the list. State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg briefly flirted with a bid, but told The Colorado Statesman last month that he won't run. The Statesman also says that state Senate President Bill Cadman and state Senate Majority Leader Mark Scheffel have ruled out bids as well. Neither man appears to have said no on the record, though they also never publicly expressed interest either.
• PA-16: On Monday, GOP state Sen. Lloyd Smucker announced that he would run for retiring Rep. Joe Pitts’ southern Pennsylvania seat. A number of other Republicans have been mentioned as potential candidates here, and two more have expressed interest. Don Eberly, who served as an aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, says he’s "leaning toward a run."
Businessman Chet Beiler says he expects to decide by early December, though Beiler’s electoral record is nothing to be proud of. Lancaster County Commissioner Scott Martin expressed interest in running before Pitts finalized his departure, but Roll Call reported that he’d likely run for Smucker’s state Senate seat instead.
• DE-Gov: Several months ago, New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon, a Democrat, expressed interest in running for this open seat, but he said nothing about his plans after Rep. John Carney jumped in. Gordon now says his “plan is to run for re-election.” Gordon hasn’t explicitly said no to a gubernatorial run, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything whatsoever to gear up for a statewide bid and in any case, he has bigger problems at home. David Grimaldi, a former top aide, was fired last week. Gordon says that Grimaldi tried to use his position to get out of a traffic citation; Grimaldi says he was let go after he criticized Gordon, and he’s now considering running against him.
• MD-Sen: Chris Van Hollen is up with his third ad in the Baltimore media market, where neither he nor his Democratic primary opponent, Donna Edwards, are well known. Van Hollen talks to the camera and argues that he knows “when to fight and when to find common ground.”
• WV-Gov: Democratic billionaire Jim Justice has been airing ads portraying himself as a generous man who cares about his community, but Justice’s foes just got a barrel full of ammunition for their future ads portraying him as a spoiled jackass.
The Bluefield Daily Telegraph posted a video of Justice getting pulled over by a police officer last December for speeding. The officer decides to give Justice a break and agrees to change his citation from 14 miles over the speed limit to four, but Justice is far from satisfied with his light punishment. Justice is seen calling the officer a “total lunatic” and declares he wants “you to explain it to your boss.”
The Justice campaign says he’s apologized to the police chief, though they don’t say anything about the actual officer he confronted. Justice’s camp also blames likely GOP nominee Bill Cole for releasing the video, though Cole denies having anything to do with it. Justice faces state Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler in the Democratic primary, who also isn’t wasting any time arguing that the incident proves Justice shouldn’t be governor.
• MO-01: Dave Drebes, who publishes the highly regarded subscription-only newsletter Missouri Scout, has graciously given us access to a poll of the Democratic primary in Missouri's 1st Congressional District conducted for his publication by Remington Research. (Remington is a GOP pollster but Missouri Scout is a non-partisan tipsheet.) The survey finds Rep. Lacy Clay with a dominant 53-19 lead on state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, with 28 percent undecided.
Chappelle-Nadal does slightly better with white voters, losing them 47-21; she trails among blacks 58-18. Whites are a smaller portion of the primary electorate, though, making up 43 percent of this poll's sample, versus 54 percent who are African-American. In order to win, MCN probably has to dominate with whites while making sufficient inroads with blacks (which is why she's hammered Clay over his allegedly invisibility during the Ferguson protests, and why she's recently gone so far as to tout her Afro), but it can be tricky to do both at once.
Clay is a poor fundraiser (he took in just $78,000 in the last quarter), but for all his considerable faults as a congressman, he's an established name in his district. We haven't seen any fundraising numbers from Chappelle-Nadal yet, but she'll need more than just money to dislodge the incumbent.
• CO-Sen, FL-Sen, OH-Sen, WI-Sen: On behalf of the Democratic group Democracy Corps, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research surveys four competitive Senate races.
In Colorado, they give Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet a 50-44 lead against GOP Rep. Scott Tipton. In Florida, they test Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy against Republican Rep. David Jolly and give the GOP a 44-43 edge. In Ohio, they have Democrat Ted Strickland and Republican incumbent Rob Portman tied 47 to 47. And in Wisconsin, they have Democrat Russ Feingold leading Republican Sen. Ron Johnson 51-46. None of these results are rosy for Democrats compared to other polls (though we’ve seen very few surveys out of Colorado). In fact, aside from Marquette in August, no one else has released numbers showing Wisconsin this close.
While there’s little doubt who both parties will nominate in Ohio and Wisconsin, there’s a lot more ambiguity in the other two states. While Tipton has not ruled out a bid, he hasn’t taken any obvious steps towards running. In Florida, Murphy and Jolly both face competitive primaries, and it’s possible neither will make it to the general. Still, it makes sense why GQR tested the matchups it did.
In Colorado, Tipton is the best known opponent Bennet could draw, so he makes for a good worst case scenario for Democrats. Yes, one of Bennet’s unheralded Republican foes could turn out to be a solid candidate like Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst did last year, but there’s no way to account for that this far from Election Day. It’s a good sign that Bennet is posting a lead against Tipton, though a 6-point edge is far from rock solid this far out. In Florida, Jolly is probably the strongest candidate the GOP could get for the general election, so it makes sense for national Democrats to test him against Murphy, their preferred primary candidate.
• LA-Gov: So here's David Vitter's response to John Bel Edwards' scalding new ad about his prostitution scandal:
Fifteen years ago, I failed my family, but found forgiveness and love. I learned that our falls aren't what define us, but rather, how we get up, accept responsibility, and earn redemption. Now Louisiana has fallen on hard times. A budget crisis, low wages, failing schools. You know me. I'm a fighter. And as your governor, I'll get up every day to fight for you. For a much better, stronger Louisiana.
First off, you know that this isn't an ad Vitter wanted to cut—contra Edwards, whose team insists they've been raring to release their "prostitutes over patriots" spot since September. Secondly, while it's just this side of endearing when Alfred Pennyworth tells Bruce Wayne, "Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up," it doesn't have quite the same effect when Vitter says it (especially since he lacks Michael Caine's charming accent).
And of course, he's comparing his own personal failings to Louisiana's struggles as a state—kind of icky, no? As Kaili Joy Gray points out, there's something weirdly trollish about the name Vitter's campaign chose for this ad: "Hard Times." Er, really? The question now, though, is whether this ad can actually neutralize Edwards' attacks, or whether it will just reinforce them. The record of "apology" ads is mixed: On the one hand, you have guys like Mark Sanford, who successfully pulled it off. But there are also plenty of Don Sherwoods and Tom Feeneys littering the landscape, too.
Edwards did suffer a bit of a stumble with his own spot, though. The family of a National Guardsman named Thomas Florich, who died in a training accident earlier this year, complained about Edwards' use of images of tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery; Florich's relatives say Vitter helped ensure he could be buried at Arlington, even though he was not eligible under cemetary rules because he was not on active duty when he died. Edwards says he'll release a new version of he ad without the shots of Arlington.
• AR-Sen: Former Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who was reportedly sniffing out a second bid for Senate, did not wind up filing when the deadline to do so passed on Monday. That'll leave the Democratic nomination to former U.S. Attorney Conner Eldridge, who is waging a longshot campaign against GOP Sen. John Boozman.
• LA-Gov: Uh, this is kind of amazing. Vitter changed the name of his ad from “Hard Times” to “Difficult Times,” even though he uses the phrase “hard times” in the ad.
• TX Redistricting: Unbelievable. Despite having had many years to come up with a solution for Texas' disputed maps for Congress and state House, the three-judge panel that has been hearing the main lawsuit against these maps since 2011 just ruled that the interim lines that have been in place for the last two cycles must once again be used for 2016. That means that at least three of the five elections scheduled for this decade will be run using maps whose constitutionality is in doubt—just ridiculous. The court held a second trial in the summer of 2014, but all the judges have to say is that they've been "working diligently" but have "not yet reached a final decision." The constitutional rights of 27 million people are at stake. This incredible sluggishness is neither justifiable nor acceptable.