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9:47 AM PT (David Jarman): Philly mayor: Former district attorney Lynne Abraham is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary field in the open mayoral race in Philadelphia, at least according to an internal poll by Mellman Group for Abraham's campaign. (Abraham apparently also took a poll in October before getting in the race, which showed similar results.) The poll puts Abraham at 30, followed by ex-city councilor Jim Kenney and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, both at 14. Nelson Diaz, Milton Street, and Doug Oliver round out the field at 6, 5, and 2, respectively. 29 percent remain undecided.
Abraham leads not just among whites, as expected, but also among blacks; she leads Williams 24-22 among African-Americans. At this point, her large lead may have mostly to do with name recognition, though; she has 59 percent favorables, compared with 38 for Williams and 37 for Kenney. That edge might erode, as Williams and Kenney allies (charter school backers for Williams, labor for Kenney) have been dominating the air wars.
10:43 AM PT: FL Ballot: In their new Florida poll, PPP also took a look at a couple of potential ballot measures—one old, one new—that might go before voters next year and find positive news for progressives. The familiar one would legalize medical marijuana, which took 58 percent in 2014 but failed because amendments to the state constitution require 60 percent for adoption. The measure once again starts with 58 percent in favor, while 35 are opposed. As Tom Jensen notes, a younger electorate in 2016 could get this one over the top.
The new proposal would move Florida's gubernatorial elections back to presidential years, which is when they were held until racist Dixiecrats in the 1960s decided they'd have a better chance of keeping the governorship in their hands if they pushed the election to the midterms. (It didn't work.) Modern-day Democrats would like to undo this mistake and have voters pick their governor when turnout is highest, and voters are supportive: 49 percent say they like the idea and just 27 are opposed.
Again, as with medical marijuana, it would take 60 percent to change the constitution. But this is a good starting point, as supporters are closer to passage (11 points south of 60) than opponents would be toward nuking the proposal (13 points below 40). What's more, absolutely zero voter education has taken place so far—the topic has only been discussed in a handful of op-eds and blog posts. While Republicans would fight such an amendment fiercely, Democrats would have many strong, non-partisan arguments they could advance. It would be a big battle, but it's a winnable one.
10:55 AM PT: Chicago Mayor: Earlier reports said that SEIU planned to spend $2 million on behalf of Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia's bid for mayor, and it appears the union has made good on a large portion of that sum so far. According to Crain's, SEIU has donated $250,000 directly to Garcia's campaign and has spent another $520,000 supporting him, mostly for TV ads. Another $1 million may be forthcoming. However, there are barely 10 days left until Garcia's showdown with incumbent Rahm Emanuel, which is on April 7.
12:18 PM PT (David Jarman): Philly mayor: PoliticsPA proposes that Abraham may have leaked her poll results to distract from a different news story that didn't quite go her way. Jim Kenney got the endorsement on Thursday from Philadelphia's chapter of the National Organization of Women. (That's noteworthy, given that Abraham is the sole female candidate.)
12:40 PM PT (David Jarman): Demographics: The Census Bureau is out with new data regarding population changes over the one-year 2013-2014 period, at the county and metropolitan area level. And it looks like Florida has been getting the lion's share of the growth: six of the 20 fastest-growing (percentage-wise) metropolitan areas in the nation are in the Sunshine State, including the leader, The Villages (an isolated retirement community which isn't even incorporated as a city, but nevertheless has started to develop its own gravitational field, with a metro area population of 114,000 now). In terms of numeric gain, though, the two big gainers were the Houston and Dallas metro areas, which were the only two MSAs to gain more than 100,000 people in the last year.
At the county level, Harris County (i.e. Houston) was also the single biggest gainer by sheer numbers; the big gains, percentage-wise, were still in two North Dakota fracking-based counties (which may trail off in coming years, though, if collapsing oil prices are any indication). The biggest numeric losses were in Wayne County, MI (Detroit) and Cuyahoga County, OH (Cleveland), while the biggest loss percentage-wise was Chattahoochee Co., GA (where population seems to fluctuate widely, depending on military deployments).
If you look at the full list of who's growing the quickest, it's almost entirely in warm-weather locales (with a few exceptions in the intermountain west). The NYT's Upshot unpacks this relationship in some interesting ways; there's an even stronger statistical relationship between migration and pleasant climate than there is between migration and affordable housing. Affordable housing is still an important draw, though, they find, but only when it's paired with job opportunities (in other words, if housing is cheap because there are no jobs and thus no demand, then no; if, on the other hand, there are jobs, but housing is cheap because you have an endless supply of buildable land, aggressive developers, and few zoning laws holding you back -- i.e. Texas -- then, yes, it is a big draw).
1:06 PM PT: FL-Sen: Rep. Patrick Murphy picked up his first second endorsement from a fellow House Democrat on Thursday, as South Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings offered the sophomore congressman his support. (Ted Deutch hopped on board the moment Murphy launched.) Interestingly, Hastings is the most liberal member of Florida's delegation; the fact that Murphy is the most centrist Democrat in the state evidently didn't deter him. (The linked chart compares DW-Nominate scores, which run from left to right, with the margin Obama scored in each district or the state as a whole; bluer turf is to the top.)
It also means Hastings isn't waiting for a more liberal candidate like Rep. Alan Grayson, who recently met with DSCC chief Jon Tester to discuss a bid, even though Grayson publicly ragged on the committee's influence just the other day. (Here's something else amusing: You know who the second most-conservative Florida House Democrat is, after Murphy? Alan Grayson. Sure, he's well to Murphy's left, but he's also to the right of Hastings and six other members.)
Grayson still insists he'll take a long time before deciding, claiming "most voters would appreciate the respite from politics." Perhaps he'll wait until 2018 ... and in fact, we have some numbers on that race, too. Republicans recently floated the idea that Gov. Rick Scott might run for Senate then, when Democrat Bill Nelson would be up for re-election. PPP finds that Nelson would start with a 47-43 edge, but as always, super-early polling is of limited value. Nelson would be 76 by Election Day, so perhaps he'll retire—a possibility Grayson may well be considering.
1:11 PM PT (David Jarman): Demographics: After several years -- following the economic crisis of the late 00s -- where population growth in the nation's cities was outstripping growth in other parts of the country (not just rural areas, but close-in suburbs too), it seems like the trend has reversed itself. Demographic observers like William Frey and Jed Kolko (the same ones who highlighted the earlier pro-city trend, so they don't have an anti-urbanist axe to grind) are now pointing out that growth in the exurbs has accelerated in the last few years while it has tapered off somewhat in urban cores. Your first assumption might be to point to plummeting gas prices as making exurban living more feasible again, but the trend goes back several years, predating the more recent price drop.
Bear in mind, though, their numbers are very broad and address the population in general; they don't address the separate question of whether millennials, in particular, are increasingly drawn to the cities. Given the trend, it's likely that millennials are at least part of the broader movement away from the cities, as Five Thirty Eight's Ben Casselman wrote about last week. However, an interesting critique from the Univ. of Virginia's Luke Juday rebuts that: Casselman's data, obtained from Census surveys on migration, doesn't seem to account for people living in "group quarters" (mostly dormitories, but also military barracks and prisons).
In other words, if you live in a suburb when you're 17, then a dormitory when you're 20, and then a city when you're 23, you wouldn't register in the suburb-to-city transition. Even factoring that discrepancy in, there still might be more millennials moving from city to suburb than from suburb to city, but it wouldn't be as lopsidedly in favor of suburban migration as the data, taken at face value, make it look.
1:24 PM PT: MD-Sen: For the first time, former NAACP head Ben Jealous, who had reportedly been considering a run, has confirmed on the record that he is indeed looking at a bid for Barbara Mikulski's Senate seat. However, reports Dave Weigel, Jealous says he wants to see whether Rep. Elijah Cummings joins the Democratic primary first.
It's also possible that Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is waiting on Cummings, too. Rawlings-Blake said on Wednesday that her "goal" is to stay on in her current job, but that she's trying to "work on getting someone from Baltimore" to run. That could be Cummings, who, along with Rawlings-Blake, is the most prominent African-American politician from the Baltimore area. However, Rawlings-Blake did not definitively rule herself out, so we'll see.
1:56 PM PT: PA-Sen: It wouldn't be a Franklin & Marshall poll without a metric truckload of undecideds, and that's what we've got. In the school's newest survey, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey leads Democratic ex-Rep. Joe Sestak by 34-29 spread, which means ... absolutely nothing.
2:29 PM PT (Jeff Singer): Jacksonville Mayor: We have our first poll of the May 19 runoff, and it's surprisingly good for Democratic Mayor Alvin Brown. St. Pete Polls gives the incumbent a 49-46 lead over Republican Bill Curry in this officially non-partisan race. On Tuesday, Brown outpaced Curry 43-38, with Republican Bill Bishop taking 17, and so far it looks like Bishop's voters aren't flocking toward one candidate or the other. St. Pete Polls doesn't have a particularly good track record, and Brown isn't going to have an easy time prevailing in a city as conservative as Jacksonville, but it looks like he's still very much in the fight here.
2:31 PM PT: FL-18: We have our first official candidate in the race to succeed Rep. Patrick Murphy, and it's a Democrat: Palm Beach County Commissioner Priscilla Taylor. Taylor previously served in the state House and was appointed to the commission by then-Gov. Charlie Crist (a Republican at the time) in 2009; she's since been elected twice. However, she does not live in the district.
Taylor's move apparently came as a surprise to local Democrats (we'd never heard her name mentioned before), with Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay saying she was "stunned" and state Sen. Jeff Clemens calling the decision "disappointing." It sounds like the party had been trying to unite behind a single candidate and avoid a divisive primary for this difficult-to-hold seat, but both McKinlay and Clemens are still considering bids of their own. (For what it's worth, they don't live in the district either.)
Two other Democrats have bowed out, though. Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who had seemed very uninterested in a bid, confirmed on Thursday that he would not run. Meanwhile, state Rep. Dave Kerner, who said he'd spoken with the DCCC, announced the same thing. But there's also one new name in the mix, St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Dzadovsky, though he's only at Great Mentioner level for now.
3:09 PM PT (Jeff Singer): IN-Sen: On Thursday, Republican Eric Holcomb, the chief of staff to retiring Sen. Dan Coats, became the first candidate to enter the race. While a few House staffers have won their bosses' old seats, it's very rare for their Senate counterparts to pull it off. In fact, we can't think of any recent examples of this happening, excluding gubernatorial appointments. As Smart Politics reminds us, Maine's Susan Collins used to work for her predecessor William Cohen, but she'd left his office several years before she was elected in his stead. However, Holcomb has close ties to influential state Republicans, including former Gov. Mitch Daniels, and he should be able to easily raise the money he'll need to win here.
Holcomb shouldn't expect a clear field though. Tea party flavored Rep. Marlin Stutzman has been talking about running, and sources say his colleague Jackie Walorski is also thinking about it, and they're far from the only ones eying the seat. Rep. Susan Brooks, who represents Indianapolis' northern suburbs, recently confirmed that she's taking a look at this contest. Rep. Todd Young of Southern Indiana also announced on Thursday that he's considering a campaign, while Rep. Todd Rokita is reportedly mulling things over.
State Sen. Mike Delph is talking about joining in, and Howey Politics' Brian Howey tells us that Attorney General Greg Zoeller is being urged to run and great mentions state Sen. Jim Merritt, though it's unclear how interested either man is. House Speaker Brian Bosma didn't rule anything out, but he doesn't sound like he's chomping at the bit to get in.
Democrats don't have a huge bench here, but a few politicians are looking things over. Former Rep. Baron Hill has been publicly considering since Tuesday, and state Rep. Christina Hale recently expressed interest as well. The DSCC would love it if former Sen. Evan Bayh moved to reclaim his old seat, but his camp has only said that he's not presently running.
3:26 PM PT (Jeff Singer): KY-Gov: Republican pollster Triumph Campaigns takes a look at the fast approaching May 19 GOP primary. They give former Louisville Councilor Hal Heiner a 33-19 lead over state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, with tea partier Matt Bevin and former state Supreme Court Justice Will Scott at 12 and 3 percent respectively. The only other recent primary poll we've seen came from SurveyUSA, and they gave Heiner a 28-20 edge over Comer. As the Courier-Journal's Joseph Gerth notes, Heiner has been outspending Comer $1.5 million to $250,000, so it makes sense that Heiner would have an advantage at this point.
Unsurprisingly, Comer's team is crying foul over this poll, with his campaign manager arguing that Triumph "started with a negative statement about Commissioner Comer and Matt Bevin and a positive statement about Heiner." Triumph's write-up doesn't include any leading questions, though that's not going to convince any Comer partisans (Triumph didn't say if they were polling on behalf of anyone). But Comer's campaign trashed the last SurveyUSA poll too while refusing to provide any contradictory numbers, which may be a sign that they're not in good shape.