The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● Primaries: The 2020 downballot primary season starts off with a bang on March 3 as Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas all hold their nominating contests, kicking off a long and exciting period that runs all the way through September. With so many races in so many states, it can be tough to keep tabs on which primaries matter, which is why Daily Kos Elections has published our new 2020 Primaries to Watch tracker. You'll also want to bookmark our handy calendar of primary dates and candidate filing deadlines.
Campaign Action
Our tracker will be regularly updated throughout the year as new races come onto the radar. For instance, we added the GOP primary for North Carolina's 11th Congress District in late December when GOP Rep. Mark Meadows unexpectedly announced his retirement and set off an open-seat rumble. We may also add contests if some otherwise unheralded candidates turn out to be credible contenders. Conversely, we might remove some races as candidates drop out, if it becomes clear that one contender is the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination, or if a race simply looks like a dud.
There's still always a judgment call about which races to include or exclude. We don't want to list primaries in districts where one party has no realistic chance of winning the general election. (You won't see a GOP primary for NY-15, a district Hillary Clinton won 94-5, for instance.) We do lean towards inclusion, though, so we catalog some races where we think the party with a contested primary will have a tough, but not impossible, task winning the general election. Examples include the Democratic primary for Texas' open 17th District and the Republican battle to take on Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton in Virginia's 10th.
In addition, there are probably some races lurking out there right now that do have contested primaries but don't look like they'll host interesting general elections. Some of them will, however, develop into competitive contests, especially in an election year like this one, so we're always on alert for races like this. And on occasion (though hopefully rarely!), it's even possible we'll miss a race, since there will always be a handful of little-known candidates in seemingly uncompetitive primaries who pull off surprising victories.
For all these reasons, we'll be continually revising our list as needed. As always, we welcome reader input on our tracker, which we hope you'll bookmark and put to good use in this busy election cycle.
4Q Fundraising
● NY-17: Evelyn Farkas (D): $460,000 raised (in six weeks)
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Thiel Foundation President Blake Masters announced on Thursday that he would not challenge appointed Sen. Martha McSally in the GOP primary.
While national Republicans fretted over the summer that McSally could face a serious intra-party opponent ahead of what will be an expensive general election, it doesn't look like she'll have much to worry about on her right flank. McSally's most notable primary opponent is skincare company executive Daniel McCarthy, who had very little money at the end of September.
Gubernatorial
● UT-Gov: Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman recently went up with his first two TV spots, and Utah Policy reports that one of them aired on New Years Eve right after the University of Utah's defeat in the Alamo Bowl. The ads are running for a reported $25,000 ahead of the June GOP primary.
Both Huntsman and former state House Speaker Greg Hughes, whose team says he will enter the race on Wednesday, also recently said that they'll collect signatures to advance to the GOP primary ballot, though Huntsman added that he'd also take part in the late April GOP convention. Utah allows statewide candidates to reach the primary by turning in 28,000 valid signatures or by taking enough support at their party convention, though candidates have the option to try both methods.
All of the other credible Republican candidates also will collect petitions to make it to the ballot, though a few say they'll also take part in the party gathering. However, Rep. Rob Bishop recently said that he would only compete at the convention if he got in and planned to forgo the signature-gathering route.
House
● CA-50: Convicted Rep. Duncan Hunter said in early December that he would resign from Congress "[s]hortly after the Holidays," but the new year has begun and the Republican remains in office. The California Target Book's Rob Pyers writes that, by delaying his departure for this long, Hunter has likely ensured that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom can't consolidate a special election with the state's March 3 presidential primary.
● NJ-03: Former Hainesport Mayor Tony Porto recently entered the GOP primary to take on Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, but he doesn't look like a strong candidate at all. The New Jersey Globe's David Wildstein writes that Porto caused an uproar at home in 2016 when he posted a misogynistic meme to Facebook. The following year, Porto and his running mate lost renomination in the GOP primary in a landslide.
● NY-02: GOP Assemblyman Andrew Garbarino told Newsday that he raised $218,000 since he opened up his fundraising account in early December, though he still hasn't announced that he'll run for this competitive open seat. Garbarino told the paper that he wanted to show he was a serious contender before he entered the race, adding, "And to be a legitimate candidate, I thought I should raise at least $200,000."
● TN-01: We got our first House retirement of the new year on Friday when GOP Rep. Phil Roe announced that he would not seek a seventh term in Tennessee's safely red 1st Congressional District.
Roe is the 26th House Republican to decline to seek re-election to the House this cycle, while just nine Democrats are retiring so far. That's about the same number of Republicans who had announced their departures at this point in 2018, but because there were a lot more GOP members back then, a larger proportion of the caucus is calling it a career now.
Roe's East Tennessee seat, which is home to Johnson City, Kingsport, and Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park, contains some of the most ancestrally red turf in the whole country. While the Republican Party barely existed in most of the South for almost a century after Reconstruction, the GOP dominated this seat and most of the rest of East Tennessee during that period. The last time this area elected a Democrat to the House was 1878, and at 77-20 Trump, this district isn't going to break the GOP's winning streak anytime soon.
The filing deadline is in early April, and the GOP could again be in for a very crowded primary in August. Roe, a medical doctor who served as mayor of Johnson City, was one of 13 Republicans who competed here in 2006 when the seat last opened up. That contest was won by state Rep. David Davis, who defeated another candidate by a narrow 22-21 margin, while Roe took a close fourth place with 17%.
Two years later, though, Roe sought a rematch against Davis. The incumbent had a solidly conservative voting record, but Roe ran ads tying him to the oil industry. One spot declared, "While East Tennesseans have been struggling with out-of-control gas prices, David Davis has pocketed thousands from oil companies," and continued, "Why is 'Big Oil' trying to buy our seat in Congress, and why is Davis accepting their cash?" Roe self-funded a large portion of his campaign, which allowed him to compete with Davis' larger war chest.
Roe ended up winning the primary 50-49, a margin of just 492 votes, which made Davis the first Tennessee U.S. House member to lose renomination since 1966. Davis, though, initially refused to concede, and he argued that Democrats had illegally voted in the primary to put Roe over the top. Tennessee doesn't allow voters to specify a party when registering to vote, though, so the incumbent didn't have much of a legal case. Davis finally threw in the towel a week later and admitted that he probably should have conceded defeat on election night, but petulant to the last, he still insisted Roe had won with "illegal votes."
Davis threatened to challenge Roe in both the 2010 and 2016 cycles, but their third bout never took place. Instead, Roe won renomination with minimal opposition, and he never had trouble in his other campaigns. Roe, who had said in 2008 that he'd only serve five terms, flirted with retirement in 2018, but he instead broke his pledge and easily won his sixth and ultimately final term.
● UT-01: Box Elder County Commissioner Stan Summers has announced that he won't seek the GOP nod for this open seat.