Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning.
Sign up here.
Leading Off:
• MI Ballot: There's a disturbing, under-the-radar effort in Michigan to curtail abortion rights that progressives should be aware of—but unfortunately, there's almost nothing that can be done to stop it right now, thanks to a bizarre provision in state law. Here's how it works: Once proponents of a ballot measure obtain the necessary signatures, the proposal is referred to the legislature. Lawmakers then get to vote on the measure, and if they pass it, not only is there no opportunity for the governor to veto it, it doesn't even appear on the ballot at all!
That's right: sufficient signatures + legislative thumbs-up = automatic passage into law. So you can view the legislature's vote as substituting for the people's vote on an actual ballot measure, or you can view the signatures as replacing the governor's role in the normal legislative process. It's a pretty insane short-circuit of normal procedures, but it's one that conservatives are taking advantage of, in an attempt to force insurance companies to only provide coverage for abortions through separate riders, rather than as a standard part of their regular policies.
That means women would have to be aware of these riders and buy them before ever knowing if they need an abortion. What's more, women would not be able to purchase these riders after becoming pregnant, even in cases of rape. It's outrageous, and even Republican Gov. Rick Snyder isn't on board, which is why activists are trying to go around him. And they're very likely to succeed: They've already turned in far more than that 258,000 signatures they need, and the legislature is all but certain to give its approval to the measure.
For advocates of reproductive freedom, the best remaining avenue of opposition at this point is to try to win back the legislature from the GOP next year. It won't be easy, but Michigan will be a top target for Dems next year. And Republicans are about to give Democrats more fodder.
Senate:
• MS-Sen: As zero hour approaches for Sen. Thad Cochran to decide whether he'll seek another term, the Senate Conservatives Fund is going up with a $245,000 buy to air an ad on behalf of their horse in the GOP primary, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. The spot mostly features clips of platitudes uttered by McDaniel during some random speech, with only remotely punchy line being McDaniel's claim that "national debt is the greatest moral crisis of this generation."
• WY-Sen: Around halfway through Liz Cheney's first ad (which is supposedly airing on TV), I utterly tuned out. It's a very boring, 60-second family biography that goes into five generations of minute detail to highlight Cheney's Wyoming roots. Cheney, of course, lived in Virginia for years before recently moving back to the state of her birth to run in the GOP primary for Senate, so this is all a very transparent (and did I mention boring?) attempt to push back against carpetbagger charges.
Gubernatorial:
• FL-Gov: Man. This stuff just won't die. Back in the spring, you may recall that Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, fresh off a re-election victory in November, refused to rule out a bid for governor next year. Now Nelson's chief of staff is reportedly calling prominent Florida Dems to let them know his boss is indeed considering a run. And there's apparently a claque of Nelson partisans who still seem to think that ex-Gov. Charlie Crist—the only prominent Democrat actually running against Gov. Rick Scott—has a glass jaw that Scott's fortune will shatter sooner or later.
This is of course all quite galling to Crist supporters, who feel their guy isn't getting a fair shake, especially since he's led in every single public poll to date. That even includes a brand-new survey from the super-crummy Gravis Marketing, on behalf of the conservative website Human Events, that shows Crist beating Scott 46 to 36. You can't really trust Gravis, but it's worth noting that this poll was taken on Nov. 9, which was well into the "Democrats are now hosed thanks to Obamacare" panic regime, as opposed to the "Republicans are now hosed thanks to the shutdown" era.
• TX-Gov: Alas, it's not to be. Tea partier Debra Medina, who took a surprisingly respectable 19 percent in the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary, had been threatening to run for governor again—as an independent. Such a bid might have helped Democrat Wendy Davis by siphoning some right-wing votes away from Republican Greg Abbott, but in the end, Medina decided to stick with her campaign for state comptroller, and to stick with the Republican Party. And in any event, a recent PPP poll showed that while she did help tighten the gap between Abbott and Davis, Abbott still led by 10 points (versus 15 in a straight two-way matchup).
House:
• IL-12: Green Party candidate Paula Bradshaw, who took 5.6 percent of the vote in Illinois' 12 Congressional District year, just announced that she'll run a second time. Fortunately, Bradshaw didn't act as a spoiler in 2012, as Bill Enyart successfully defended this seat for Democrats with a 52-43 win over Republican Jason Plummer. Enyart faces a potentially competitive re-election challenge from state Rep. Mike Bost, and in a close race, Bradshaw could cause problems.
But oddly, Enyart ran a couple of points ahead of Barack Obama, who carried the 12th 50-48, while Plummer was the one who wound up running behind the top of the ticket. So despite her party label, it's possible that Bradshaw drew more protest votes from the right than the left. It may sound strange, but it's a phenomenon we occasionally see with third-party candidacies on either side of the spectrum. It's also certainly possible, as Stephen Wolf suggests, that Enyart's moderate profile enabled him to score enough Romney crossover voters to offset any shortfall due to Obama/Bradshaw supporters.
• NY-26: This is story is kind of crazynuts. Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins, who once upon a time may have been vulnerable but now sits in a safely blue seat, is getting a bunch of help from major Republican donors in western New York, and the roster includes one very striking name: former NRCC chair Tom Reynolds. (Also aiding Higgins are former GOP Reps. Jack Quinn and Amo Houghton, as well as the father of ex-Rep. Chris Lee.) I'm pretty flabbergasted that someone like Reynolds is doing this—can you imagine Rahm crossing over like this?
It's also hard to discern what the real reason for all this GOP largesse is in the first place. But it sounds like Anthony Gioia, a wealthy philanthropist and Republican money-man who's the ringleader here, is happy with Higgins' advocacy on behalf of his local charitable (and possibly development) interests, so it looks like the parochial is outweighing the partisan here. And if Gioia and his buddies want to spend time raising money for a Democrat instead of some Republicans, who am I to complain?
Other Races:
• IN Ballot: A new poll from Ball State University finds wide opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Indiana, with 58 percent against and just 38 percent in favor. That's a bit wider than a year ago, when voters were opposed by a 54-38 margin. However, other polling has found a much tighter spread, and one survey for a conservative group found widespread support.
• NJ State Assembly: Wow! Democrat Vincent Mazzeo says he now trails Republican Assemblyman John Amodeo by just two votes in New Jersey's 2nd Legislative District. Republicans claim Amodeo is up by 10, but either way, Democrats accuse the GOP of challenging an excessive number of provisional ballots, especially those from minority-heavy districts. Dems say they're headed to court to dispute the results, and they seem confident about Mazzeo's chances.
• NY State Senate: Mainstream New York Democrats just scored a top recruit in their efforts to take back the state Senate from minority Republicans and a band of renegade Dems. Attorney Justin Wagner, who came within two points of upsetting GOP state Sen. Greg Ball last year, says he'll seek a rematch in 2014. Ball's 40th District, which extends north along the Connecticut border from the NYC suburbs in Westchester County, was hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy, and there's a decent chance that Wagner only lost due to the storm. Ball is also one of the nuttier (if not outright nuttiest) Republicans in the chamber, so Democrats have a real pickup shot here.
• Washington: Think the Virginia attorney general's race is close? Check out Proposition 1 in SeaTac, Washington, the union-backed initiative to create a $15 minimum wage for airport and hotel employees. It currently leads by just 19 votes! Granted, that's out of only 5,479 votes total, so it's not as close as, percentage-wise, as VA-AG, but it certainly underscores the importance of every vote counting.
In other late-game news from Washington (whose slow counting procedure is legendary, due to al-mail voting and relaxed rules allowing any vote to be counted if postmarked by Election Day), things are definitely moving sharply to the left in Seattle. Ed Murray's lead in the mayoral race over incumbent Mike McGinn is down to 5 percent (after he led by 9 points on election night), and more interestingly, the openly Socialist (with a capital S) Kshama Sawant has taken a 402-vote edge over the more conventionally liberal Richard Conlin in one of the at-large city council races, after initially trailing by 7 percent.
It's pretty well-known that in statewide races in Washington, the results move significantly in the Democratic direction as the count unfolds; at first glance, that would seem to be because the small rural counties can complete their counts quickly while it takes Seattle's King County more than a week to sift through its million-plus votes. But looking at these results show something else might be going on. In suburban SeaTac, the count has gotten worse, not better, for labor, as it unfolds, and the GOP margin in the suburban SD-26 special election hasn't budged (it's still 52-48).
But the vote purely within Seattle's city limits has still moved very much to the left as the count unfolds, so an alternative hypothesis may be needed. It may simply boil down to a pathological aversion by the state's younger, leftier voters (who are heavily concentrated in Seattle proper) to submitting their ballots more than a day before they're due. (David Jarman)