The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● NY-27: Indicted Republican Rep. Chris Collins is going to stay on the ballot after all. On Monday, an attorney for the congressman, who was charged with insider trading in August, confirmed that he'd appear on the November ballot because of the difficulty GOP officials were having in mapping an exit strategy for him—which would have been challenged in court by Democrats no matter what route they chose.
Campaign Action
That means Collins, who announced shortly after his indictment that he wouldn't seek re-election, will indeed go before voters in November. But so many questions remain. Will he actively campaign—and thus call unwanted attention to his scandal? Or will he just hope to glide to a fourth term thanks to his district's steep Republican lean, trade his resignation as part of a plea-deal with prosecutors, and then trigger a special election?
Collins of course would not be the first sitting member of Congress to win an election while under indictment—former GOP Rep. Mike Grimm did so in New York’s 11th District as recently as 2014—but as you can see, there's quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding this bizarre situation. Combined with the favorable environment, that gives Democrat Nate McMurray an opening to pull off an upset, so we're moving our rating from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.
Race Ratings Changes
● MI-Sen (Likely D to Safe D): While Donald Trump of course won Michigan by the narrowest of margins in 2016, Republicans are faring poorly there this year at all levels, and national groups seem to have little appetite for taking on veteran Sen. Debbie Stabenow. While the GOP wound up with a more-interesting-than-usual candidate in Iraq veteran John James, who'd be the state's first black senator, he very much has his work cut out for him. James has trailed Stabenow by double digits in every poll, with Stabenow often ahead by 20 points and usually over the 50 percent mark. This race is simply out of the GOP's grasp.
● OH-Sen (Lean D to Likely D): Republicans have an enviable Senate map this year, but with all of those juicy targets, they've apparently left Ohio out of their master plan. Polls from reputable outfits have generally shown Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown well ahead, often by double digits, and outside Republican groups have made little attempt to help Republican Rep. Jim Renacci. While Renacci could make up the difference with his personal wealth, so far he hasn't: A recent analysis showed that Brown has accounted for 96 percent of ad spending in the race so far.
● KS-Gov (Likely Republican to Lean Republican): While Kansas Democrats had good reason to worry that wealthy businessman Greg Orman's independent candidacy would hurt them more than Republicans in this fall's race for governor (indeed, they tried to knock him off the ballot), Republican Kris Kobach's own deep flaws have prevented him from consolidating the GOP vote. That problem was highlighted on Friday when 27 current and former Republican officials, including a state Senate president and a lieutenant governor, all endorsed Democrat Laura Kelly.
Limited polling has shown Kelly and Kobach in a dead heat, with Orman taking around 10 percent of the vote. Given how red Kansas is, that means Kobach still has the advantage. But even with Orman sticking around, the Republican brand is badly tainted in the Sunflower State (thanks, Sam Brownback!), and Kobach is going to have to sweat.
● IL-06, MN-03 (Lean R to Tossup): Illinois' 6th and Minnesota's 3rd are both affluent, well-educated suburban districts with a history of voting for Republicans downballot but an antipathy toward Donald Trump. That's causing tremendous difficulty for the GOP incumbents in each seat, Peter Roskam and Erik Paulsen, respectively, despite the pains they've taken to distance themselves from their party brand over the years.
Both men also face strong Democratic challengers in Sean Casten (running against Roskam) and Dean Phillips (taking on Paulsen). After 2016, everyone wondered whether these kinds of seats, which moved in the Democratic direction that year, would revert to form or continue to prefer Democrats. All available evidence indicates the latter, and that puts these two districts square in the heart of the 2018 playing field.
Senate
● Polls:
- AZ-Sen: SSRS for CNN: Kyrsten Sinema (D) 50, Martha McSally (R) 43
- MI-Sen: Tarrance Group (R): Debbie Stabenow (D-inc): 49, John James (R) 38
- MN-Sen-A: Mason-Dixon: Amy Klobuchar (D-inc): 60, Jim Newberger (R): 30
- MN-Sen-B: Mason-Dixon: Tina Smith (D-inc): 44, Karin Housley (R): 37
- MO-Sen: YouGov: Claire McCaskill (D-inc): 45, Josh Hawley (R): 45
- MT-Sen: YouGov: Jon Tester (D-inc): 47, Matt Rosendale (R): 45
- NM-Sen: Research & Polling Inc. for the Albuquerque Journal: Martin Heinrich (D-inc): 47, Mick Rich (R): 26, Gary Johnson (L): 16
- TN-Sen: SSRS for CNN: Phil Bredesen (D): 50, Marsha Blackburn (R): 45
Each of these Senate surveys marks the first time each of these pollsters has looked at each of these particular contests this cycle.
Gubernatorial
● MD-Gov: Democrat Ben Jealous has finally gone back on the air with his first TV ad since the June primary, putting $109,000 behind a 60-second spot. The ad highlights his background as the son of two schoolteachers who went on to become a Rhodes scholar. It touts Jealous' leadership in turning around the NAACP when its finances were in trouble, and the narrator praises his work as a venture capitalist who helped more than 20 companies create more than 1,000 jobs. Additionally, the commercial argues for passing Medicare for all and increasing teacher pay and education funding.
● NM-Gov: Research & Polling's new survey for the Albuquerque Journal gives Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham a 50-43 lead over Republican Steve Pearce in one of Team Blue's best pickup opportunities anywhere. That's very similar to the 52-44 lead that Lujan Grisham posted in a mid-August poll for her campaign, and another Democratic poll for Attorney General Hector Balderas found her up 52-42 at the end of last month.
Until Friday, Pearce, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, had been focused on running positive ads that portrayed him as a caring moderate. However, Pearce went up with his first negative spot a day before the Research & Polling survey was released. The narrator accuses Lujan Grisham of "shady self-dealing" and argues that Delta Consulting Group, a company she co-founded, "raked in millions overcharging vulnerable New Mexicans, fleecing poor patients with higher premiums."
Lujan Grisham's campaign immediately had a response ad ready to go. The spot featured a local man named Diego Zamora, who tells the audience that when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and called Lujan Grisham, "her company ran the state's high-risk insurance pool for critically ill patients like me." Zamora goes on to praise Lujan Grisham for getting him health coverage and saving his family from bankruptcy, "and she didn't make millions, not even close."
The Journal took a look at the background for these ads. They write that Delta Consulting, which Lujan Grisham co-founded with state Rep. Deborah Armstrong, was paid $2 million to run the state's high-risk pool from 2014 to 2017; Lujan Grisham divested her interest in the company last June, and it's still run by Armstrong, who is also her former campaign treasurer.
Pearce is arguing that, with politicians running Delta during those years, it smacks of corruption to have it get such a lucrative state contract. However, the paper says state law allows elected officials and state legislators to contract with the state government as long as there was a competitive bidding process and the elected officials publicly disclose their interests, and that Lujan Grisham and Armstrong appear to have met both conditions.
● RI-Gov: The DGA-backed group Alliance for a Better Rhode Island is out with their first general election ad against Republican Allan Fung, and they focus on tying him to Donald Trump. Fung made that task pretty easy for them since he posted a picture on Facebook of him at Trump's inauguration smiling and wearing a Trump wool cap, and the spot wastes little time in utilizing that image.
Fung also said around that time that he was excited for the Trump administration, and the commercial also makes sure to use that material against him. The narrator describes how Trump is endangering health care and a woman's right to choose and concludes, "We don't need a Trump fanboy as our governor."
● WI-Gov: Democrat Tony Evers is out with a spot starring former Middleton School Board President Ellen Lindgren, who defends him from numerous GOP ads that insist that Evers didn't do enough to protect students from lewd teachers.
Lindgren tells the audience that she led the school board that oversaw "that teacher" (the teacher in question is a middle school instructor who viewed pornographic images at school) and "the truth is, we fired him, but an independent arbitrator gave him his job back because of a legal loophole." She adds that two courts upheld the decision, so Evers worked with both parties to change the law. She concludes that GOP Gov. Scott Walker should "focus on his own record" rather than run false attack ads.
● Polls:
- AZ-Gov: SSRS for CNN: Doug Ducey (R-inc): 49, David Garcia (D): 46
- MN-Gov: Mason-Dixon for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune/MPR News: Tim Walz (D): 45, Jeff Johnson (R): 36
- OR-Gov: Hoffman Research (R): Kate Brown (D-inc): 49, Knute Buehler (R): 39
- OR-Gov: Causeway Solutions (R) for No Supermajorities PAC: Buehler (R): 43, Brown (D-inc): 41
- TN-Gov: SSRS for CNN: Bill Lee (R): 52, Karl Dean (D): 43
These are the first polls we've seen from any of these firms.
CNN's Arizona poll is considerably better for Garcia than recent surveys from the local GOP firm Data Orbital and for Fox News, which had Ducey ahead 49-41 and 51-40, respectively. The only other general election survey we'd seen was a PPP survey for Garcia that gave the governor a much-smaller 44-43 edge.
Mason-Dixon's Minnesota poll comes around the same time that the RGA cut two weeks' worth of ad time, which is a big sign of pessimism about Johnson's chances. A recent SurveyUSA poll gave Walz a similar 47-40 edge.
We also have two surveys of the rarely polled Oregon gubernatorial race. Hoffman, a local GOP firm that says they did this poll independent of any political group, released their survey first, while the conservative No Supermajorities PAC (a group that's helping GOP legislative campaigns) soon responded with their own poll. An RGA-backed group spent about $300,000 on ads during the last week of August, so national Republicans are certainly acting like this is competitive. Still, there's been little sign that the race is as tight as Causeway has it.
House
● AZ-01: Republican Wendy Rogers is trying to win over a seat that only narrowly backed both Romney and Trump, but she's acting like she's running in much redder territory.
Rogers' ad, which her campaign says is running on TV, argues that a win for freshman Rep. Tom O'Halleran and a Democratic majority means not just that Donald Trump's tax bill will be repealed (the ad even shows a picture of Trump holding up the bill with a blue “x” through it), but that "they want to impeach our president." For good measure, the spot also features a photo of comedian Kathy Griffin holding a fake severed Trump head, and a burning limo. O'Halleran is a former Republican state legislator who is a member of the Democrats' moderate Blue Dog Coalition.
● IA-01: Sophomore GOP Rep. Rod Blum is being left to fend for himself this fall: According to a new report in the Des Moines Register, Blum is getting outspent 10-to-1 on the airwaves as the DCCC, House Majority PAC, and Change Now all pile in on behalf of Democrat Abby Finkenauer, while the NRCC and other Republican groups are spending zilch. Democrats are apparently feeling good about this race, too, since Medium Buying reports that the D-Trip has cancelled a week's worth of advertising for the first week in October. (It still has time booked for the final month.)
So is Blum kaput? He might be, but it's a little early to say for sure: It's only mid-September, which means there's still time for the GOP to return to this race if the polls start to shift, and Blum had looked to be in bad shape in both 2014 and 2016 but managed to survive twice. For now, though, we can comfortably conclude that Finkenauer has the edge, so we're moving this race from Tossup to Lean Democratic.
● ME-02: We have two new polls of the race for this northern Maine seat, but the state's instant-runoff voting (IRV) process adds some complications here that we don't have in other House races. Siena's poll for the New York Times gives Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin a 47-42 lead over Democrat Jared Golden, with 11 percent undecided. The poll does not appear to have included the minor party candidates (Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar), and the Times’ Nate Cohn says the poll didn't do anything differently from its other House polls in order to account for IRV.
Under this system, voters will be allowed to rank their choices—they get as many votes as there are candidates. If no one takes a majority, the last-place candidate gets eliminated and has their votes assigned to their voters' next preferences, a process that repeats until someone takes a majority of the remaining votes.
Golden's team released their own poll from the Mellman Group just before the Siena poll was finished, and it gives Golden a very different 54-46 lead over Poliquin in the final round of the instant-runoff election. However, we also don't know how much support Bond and Hoar have, since the memo only says that Golden "leads by close to 7 points now" in the first round, nor do we know what percentage of voters are undecided. Mellman's early August poll gave Poliquin a 40-39 lead, with the minor-party candidates taking a collective 4 percent and another 16 percent remaining undecided; after that poll removed undecided voters and simulated the IRV process, Golden led 51-49.
This seat swung from 53-44 Obama to 51-41 Trump, and Democrats are hoping that a strong political climate will put it back in their column. However, the Times poll gave Trump an even 47-47 favorable rating, and voters preferred a GOP-led House to a Democratic one by a 48-41 margin. (The Mellman memo didn't mention Trump or the generic ballot.) The good news for Team Blue is that Siena gave Poliquin a negative 40-47 favorable rating, with Golden still largely undefined at 32-32. Mellman had Poliquin in far worse shape with a 35-57 job approval rating (though favorability and job-approval ratings are not the same thing), while Golden had a 40-20 favorable score.
● MN-08: The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund has been running ads attacking Democrat Joe Radinovich that engage in outright lies. CLF claims the 32-year-old Radinovich was "charged with 18 crimes," more than 30 traffic violations, and "possession of drug paraphernalia." However, almost all of those were mere traffic citations such as parking tickets, which of course aren't criminal violations, and the Star Tribune noted three instances of driving with a suspended license, which is only a potential misdemeanor.
Furthermore, Radinovich's paraphernalia citation, which was ultimately dismissed under a plea deal, came from an incident when he was just 18 years old, and, as the local CBS station noted, it happened right after his step-grandfather killed Radinovich's mother in a murder-suicide. Regardless of his past driving record, trying to portray Radinovich as some serial criminal as an adult is quite simply dishonest.
● NY-19: On Monday, independent Diane Neal got herself back on the ballot after she successfully appealed a state Board of Elections decision that had thrown her off for lack of valid signatures. Neal, who is best known for her role on Law and Order: SVU and also appeared as a judge on the Donald Trump-hosted The Apprentice, has described herself as "a little Libertarian," "a lot liberal," and "mostly progressive," so she's probably going to hurt Democrat Antonio Delgado more than she will GOP Rep. John Faso.
● PA-17, VA-10: Pennsylvania's Keith Rothfus and Virginia's Barbara Comstock are two of the most vulnerable House Republicans in the country, and the New York Times reports there are some big tensions between Team Red's two big House committees about how much help they should get.
Unnamed strategists close to the Congressional Leadership Fund say they're frustrated not only that the NRCC is not raising enough money, but also that they're unwilling to triage incumbents and redirect money to more winnable races. The Times used Rothfus and Comstock as examples of incumbents in support of whom the NRCC was still spending (they have $8 million committed to protecting the two), even though "many" in the party are convinced they're doomed.
The NRCC did cancel ad time they'd reserved to help Rothfus from Sept. 12 to 24, but the committee is now insisting that they only postponed their ads to October and they hadn't reduced their spending by "one penny." Rothfus, who along with Comstock has reportedly worried about being abandoned by the NRCC, will be glad to hear that, but the CLF probably won't be so delighted.
However, the CLF hasn't avoided blame either. Unnamed party officials tell the Times they're frustrated about the super PAC's "tepid effort" to defend GOP-held open seats, saying that they're currently advertising in less than a third of the 15 most competitive races.
The Times cites another amusing anecdote: NRCC Chair Steve Stivers is still trying to convince formerly safe incumbents to take their races seriously, and on Thursday, he even put together a slideshow with "excuses losing candidates typically offer up before they lose." Examples included "I don't need to run negative ads; my constituents know me; my district is different." In fact, those exact three examples of loser-speak were in Nathan Gonzales' 2013 piece, "10 Things Losing Candidates Say." We don't know if Stivers had to warn his members against relying on our favorite loser-speak phrase: "The only poll that matters is on Election Day."
● WI-01: The Congressional Leadership Fund has launched a $1.5 million TV ad buy hammering Democrat Randy Bryce over his past record of nine arrests, trying to portray him as a serial criminal. However, Bryce's most recent two arrests in 2011 and 2018 were for civil disobedience at political protests; but he pleaded guilty in 1998 to driving while under the influence of alcohol, and was arrested three more times over the next few years for driving with a suspended license.
● House: Newly filed independent expenditure reports have given us the size of recent ad buys to aid Republicans in numerous competitive House races. The first set is from the NRCC:
- AZ-02: $209,000
- FL-26: $385,000
- MI-08: $469,000
- MN-01: $509,000
- MN-02: $327,000
- MN-03: $480,000
- NY-19: $256,000
- NY-22: $195,000
- NJ-03: $468,000
- PA-01: $523,000
- PA-08: $123,000
- TX-07: $494,000
- TX-23: $330,000
- VA-02: $155,000
- VA-10: $710,000
The second set is from the Congressional Leadership Fund, which has ties to Paul Ryan:
- CA-10: $473,000
- CA-25: $197,000
- CA-39: $247,000
- CA-45: $271,000
- CO-06: $343,000
- IL-06: $185,000
- KS-02: $335,000
- KS-03: $266,000
- KY-06: $177,000
- ME-02: $257,000
- MN-08: $156,000
- NJ-03: $105,000
- NJ-07: $210,000
- NY-19: $175,000
- OH-01: $283,000
- VA-07: $114,000
- WA-08: $309,000
● House, Gubernatorial: Billionaire Mike Bloomberg's group Everytown for Gun Safety has revealed its first targets in the former New York City mayor's bid to help Democrats flip the House. Bloomberg previously said he planned to spend $80 million, and the New York Times reports he has now devoted $4 million to the Los Angeles media market for just the last 10 days of the campaign; the Washington Post reports he also plans to spend $8 million to $10 million in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and New Mexico. The list of Democrats they’re supporting includes:
GA-Gov: Stacey Abrams
MI-Gov: Gretchen Whitmer
NV-Gov: Steve Sisolak
NM-Gov: Michelle Lujan Grisham
CA-25: Katie Hill
CA-48: Harley Rouda
CA-49: Mike Levin
GA-06: Lucy McBath
MI-AG: Dana Nessel
McBath is particularly notable because she has been a gun-safety advocate ever since her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was murdered in a 2012 shooting, and she has previously worked with Everytown to campaign for safer gun laws.
● House, Senate, Governors: Now that all states have concluded their congressional and gubernatorial primaries, Daily Kos Elections is please to present our guide to the demographics of every Senate, House, and gubernatorial nominee in the country. This spreadsheet contains the race, gender, age, religious affiliation, LGBTQ status, and even a name-pronunciation guide for every candidate whom our race ratings give a chance to win in November; it also includes our calculations of the 2016 and 2012 presidential results by House district. We'll continue to fill in this spreadsheet as we come across new data, and you can find similar demographics for the current House and Senate members in our guide to the 115th Congress.
Democrats have a nominee in 432 of 435 congressional districts, the most they've contested since the 1974 Watergate wave, when Team Blue had a candidate in all but a single district. On the other hand, Republicans have left 39 House seats without a nominee, and such a large disparity, based on past history, points to a Democratic-wave environment this fall. Note that these figures include Louisiana, which holds a "jungle primary" on Election Day that goes to a runoff if no candidate takes a majority.
Meanwhile, one of the most important stories of the Trump era has been the astonishing surge in the number of Democratic women running for office. Including top-two general elections between members the same party, 185 Democratic House candidates are women, which is 42 percent of the total. Once you exclude Democratic incumbents, a full half of Democratic candidates are women, including in half the races that Daily Kos Elections rates as Tossup. By contrast, only 52 Republican candidates are women, which is just 13 percent of their total number. Consequently, 2018 is poised to set a new record for the number of women and people of color in Congress, thanks to likely Democratic seat gains.
● Polls:
- CO-06: Siena: Jason Crow (D): 51, Mike Coffman (R-inc): 40
- IA-03: DCCC in-house: Cindy Axne (D): 46, David Young (R-inc): 43
- IA-04: Expedition Strategies for J.D. Scholten: Steve King (R-inc): 43, J.D Scholten (D): 37
- KS-02: Siena Paul Davis (D): 45, Steve Watkins (R): 44
- NM-01: Research & Polling Inc.: Deb Haaland (D): 49, Janice Arnold-Jones (R): 41
- NM-02: Research & Polling Inc.: Yvette Herrell (R): 48, Xochitl Torres Small (D): 41
- OH-01: GBA Strategies for Aftab Pureval: Aftab Pureval (D): 46, Steve Chabot (R-inc): 44.
Siena's Colorado poll is the first independent survey of the contest so far, and it paints a very negative picture for Coffman if it's anywhere close to where things currently stand. Meanwhile, Scholten's internal poll in Iowa's 4th District is the first poll we've seen of the entire race that has a sufficient sample size for inclusion in the Digest. Daily Kos Elections currently rates this contest as Safe Republican, and no major outside groups are spending here. However, this survey gives us reason to keep an eye on the race in this deep-red district.
Furthermore, Siena's Kansas poll is the first survey from any outfit since the August primary, and it supports the widespread opinion among election analysts that the 2nd District is highly competitive, despite backing Trump by 56-37; Daily Kos Elections rates this contest as a Tossup. Finally, Pureval's internal poll is only the second survey we have there, after an April poll from Democratic firm PPP had Chabot ahead 43-42. Pureval's polling memo noted that a previous August survey from the same pollster had him tied 45-45, and an unreleased June survey placed Chabot up 49-47.
Legislative
● Special Elections: After an incredible special election cycle, Tuesday brings us our final contest until November. As always, Johnny Longtorso has the goods:
Texas SD-19: This is a runoff for an open Democratic seat stretching out west from San Antonio. Carlos Uresti resigned following a bribery conviction. The candidates are former Rep. Pete Gallego on the Democratic side, and retired game warden Pete Flores on the Republican side.
This seat went 54-42 for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 55-44 for Barack Obama in 2012, and in the first round of this special election, Democratic candidates combined to win 59 percent of the vote, while Republican candidates won a total of 40 percent.
Ad Roundup