Apparently, RNC Committeeman Dave Agema hasn't caused the GOP enough trouble yet
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• MI-01: Several notable Republicans are considering a bid for this open Northern Michigan seat, and RNC Committeeman Dave Agema is the latest to express interest. Agema has a habit of drawing headlines, and not in a good way. Back in January, the RNC voted to censure the former state representative over his habit of reposting racist, homophobic, and anti-Muslim content on Facebook.
Among many other things, Agema shared a post arguing that African Americans "are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike." Agema claims he didn't necessarily agree with what he was sharing, though few people believe him. The RNC also demanded that Agema resign and encouraged the Michigan GOP to look for ways to get rid of him, but he remains at his post.
Agema's old state House seat is nowhere near MI-01, so he'd start with little name recognition. But Agema is close to tea party groups and if he runs, he could carve out enough of a niche to win the primary. While Romney carried the 1st District 54-45, this district is far from safely red. Democrats can still do well here downballot, and Team Blue has high hopes that well-connected former state party chair Lon Johnson can flip this seat, though he needs to get through 2014 nominee Jerry Cannon first.
On the GOP side, a few more electable contenders are looking at running. State Sen. and 2008 nominee Tom Casperson, state Reps. Pete Pettalia and Lee Chatfield, and former Sen. Jason Allen have all expressed interest in jumping in, though no one has announced anything. State Sen. Wayne Schmidt also hasn't ruled out a bid, though he's likely to defer to Allen.
3Q Fundraising:
• AZ-Sen:
Kelli Ward (R): $525,000 raised, $320,000 cash-on-hand
• NC-Sen: Richard Burr (R-inc): $1.3 million raised, $4.7 million cash-on-hand
• MT-Gov: Steve Bullock (D-inc): $286,000 raised, $777,000 cash-on-hand; Greg Gianforte (R): $255,000 raised (in six weeks), $184,000 cash-on-hand
• FL-02: Neal Dunn (R): $450,000 raised (in seven weeks)
• NV-03: Danny Tarkanian (R): $350,000 raised, $335,000 cash-on-hand
• PA-08: Shaughnessy Naughton (D): $283,000 raised
Senate:
• GA-Sen: After spending two months mulling a bid against Republican incumbent Johnny Isakson, prominent pastor Raphael Warnock has announced that he won't go for it. Warnock would have faced long odds in what's still a conservative state, but Democrats would have loved to have a viable candidate just in case something unexpected happened. But it's back to the drawing board for Team Blue, and it's unclear who will step up.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein mentions ex-Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, state Rep. Scott Holcomb, and Georgia School Board Association head Valarie Wilson as possible contenders, though none of them have said much about their plans. It's possible that Isakson, who was recently announced that he has Parkinson's disease, will retire, though the senator insists he's running again.
• MD-Sen: A little while ago, Rep. Elijah Cummings indicated he'd announce his 2016 plans no later than this week. Well, so much for that: Cummings now says he won't decide if he'll run for the Senate until after Hillary Clinton testifies on Bengazi on Oct. 22. Cummings says he wants to "get this behind me," before he announces his future plans, and doesn't want to make it appear that he's using his status as the senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi to advance his own career.
It makes sense that Cummings would devote most of his energy to this high profile event. Still, Cummings knew about this hearing when he indicated he was about to finalize his plans, and it's unclear why he's only pushing back his decision now. A little while ago, it looked like Cummings was about to just declare that he'd run for re-election, but maybe something has happened over the last two weeks to make a Senate bid seem more appealing.
• NH-Sen: One day after Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan's announcement that she'd run for Senate, we have some new numbers on what is no longer a hypothetical matchup with Sen. Kelly Ayotte. UNH finds Ayotte ahead 45-43, which is right around where everyone else has seen the race, though of course, this is UNH, and we wouldn't trust them to accurately poll Kim Jong Un's re-election. And note that this poll was conducted before Hassan joined the race, over an extended nine-day span that concluded Oct. 2.
• OH-Sen: A new poll from Democratic pollster Harstad Research, taking on behalf of the Senate Majority PAC, finds ex-Gov. Ted Strickland edging GOP Sen. Rob Portman by a 46-43 margin. That's in the same region that limited public polling has shown the race this year, and the margin is identical to Quinnipiac's last survey (conducted in August), which had Strickland ahead 44-41.
But speaking of Quinnipiac, the school is due out with a new Buckeye State poll this week, so why is Senate Majority releasing these numbers now? It's conceivable that Quinnipiac's results leaked early and no longer look as rosy for Strickland as they once did. (In fact, we'd questioned their blue lean previously.) Buttressing this possibility is the fact that the Harstad poll went into the field on Sept. 10, nearly a month ago, so putting it out now could be a sort of prebuttal. We'll know more soon.
Gubernatorial:
• KY-Gov: Democrat Jack Conway is out with two more ads as the Nov. 3 election rapidly approaches, and they both hit Republican Matt Bevin. Each spot starts the same way by going after Bevin for taking a bailout while refusing to pay his own taxes. The first spot accuses Bevin of planning to cut education, while the second zeroes in on his tax delinquency.
• LA-Gov: Early voting for the Oct. 24 jungle primary begins on Saturday and that means two things: More polls and more ads! First up is JMC Analytics on behalf of a local NBC affiliate:
John Bel Edwards (D): 28
David Vitter (R): 19
Scott Angelle (R): 8
Jay Dardenne (R): 7
This survey has far more undecideds than
most of the polls we've seen, but the overall narrative is the same. Edwards and Vitter are positioned to take the top two spots that would send them to a November runoff, while Angelle and Dardenne are splitting the non-Vitter Republican vote too much for either of them to threaten Vitter's place.
Cygnal is out with their inaugural poll, and they're presenting two different versions: One where African Americans make up 19 percent of the sample, and one where they're 25 percent. Black voters made up 25 percent of the electorate in the 2011 race where GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal easily won re-election: It's safe to assume that African American turnout won't drop below that number in two weeks from now, so we'll use the latter sample, though the difference are very minor overall:
Vitter (R): 22
Edwards (D): 21
Dardenne (R): 12
Angelle (R): 11
Same story as before: Vitter and Edwards are well-positioned to advance to November.
Both frontrunners are also out with new spots. Vitter accuses Dardenne of taking an expensive birthday trip to Europe and sending the bill to the taxpayers. Another Vitter commercial features nothing but headlines describing what an awesome conservative Vitter is.
Edwards' spot features his wife describing how she was encouraged to have an abortion after her unborn daughter was diagnosed with spina bifida, and praises Edwards for declaring that they'd love the baby no matter what.
• NH-Gov: Now that Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan is forgoing re-election to run for the Senate, more candidates from both sides of the aisle are expressing interest in running to succeed her. Democratic state Sen. Andrew Hosmer has been mentioned as a possible candidate for a long time, and he confirms that he's considering it. State Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, a Republican who represented half of the state in the House until his 2006 defeat, also is talking about jumping in for the first time. A number of other politicians are mulling bids, though only Executive Councilor Chris Sununu, a Republican, is officially in.
• OR-Gov, SoS: State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian had never formally ruled out a challenge to Gov. Kate Brown in next year's Democratic primary, but on Tuesday, he eliminated that option by announcing that he'd instead run for secretary of state. That post was held by Brown until her ascension to the governorship earlier this year after Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned; it'll be an open seat because the woman Brown appointed to replace her, Jeanne Atkins, decided not to run for a full four-year term next year.
With Avakian's decision, it should be smooth sailing for Brown, who is running for the final two years of Kitzhaber's term: No Democrats are opposing her in the primary, and the GOP is having a hard time finding anyone prominent to take her on in the general.
House:
• AZ-01: Democratic state Sen. Barbara McGuire formed an exploratory committee for this open swing seat all the way back in late June, but she's held off jumping into the race. McGuire says she's "leaning toward" getting in, and she will make her decision by the end of the month. Former GOP state Sen. Tom O'Halleran is running for Team Blue, and he's been winning endorsements from key Grand Canyon State Democrats. However, while state Sen. Catherine Miranda expressed interest back in May, she recently announced that she'd stay in the legislature.
• KS-01, NC-11, VA-07: FreedomWorks recently went up with TV spots praising three tea party-flavored Republican incumbents, and Politico has the size of the buys. Unsurprisingly, FreedomWorks isn't exactly splurging this early: The spot for Tim Huelskamp of Kansas is going for $41,000, while the ads helping North Carolina's Mark Meadows and Virginia's Dave Brat have $50,000 each behind them.
• NY-19: Republican businessman Andrew Heaney looked like a relatively anonymous figure when we first took notice of him, but now we're going to have to pay him more attention. Heaney just announced a third-quarter haul of $643,000 and adds that he didn't self-fund anything. That sum came from just 500 contributors, though, so Haney obviously had a lot of wealthy donors who gave the maximum and thus can't be tapped again. However, that's a serious amount of money, and former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso, who is the establishment favorite to hold this swingy seat for the GOP, will also have to take Heaney seriously.
• OH-08: State Rep. Wes Retherford is the latest politician to say no to a bid for John Boehner's soon-to-be open safely red seat. Right now, state Sen. Bill Beagle is the only notable Republican in the race, but that may be about to change. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Butler County Auditor Roger Reynolds will announce he's in on Wednesday.
• PA-02: On Tuesday, state Rep. Brian Sims announced that he would challenge indicted Rep. Chaka Fattah for renomination in this safely blue Philadelphia seat. Sims is well-known for his work on LGBT issues, which could give him a nationwide fundraising base.
But while Fattah is in plenty of legal hot water, there's no guarantee that Sims will be able to beat him. Fattah's trial won't be until after next year's primary: While this means that the Fattah will be running with a multitude of corruption allegations hanging over him, he has plenty of allies who won't abandon him unless and until he's found guilty.
And Fattah has influential friends in Philadelphia Democratic politics, though some of them are motivated by self-interest more than anything else. If Fattah ends up resigning, the local ward leads will pick a new nominee, and the congressman's many would-be successors don't want to offend Fattah's supporters by deserting him early. While some notable Philadelphians may back Sims, many others will support Fattah so they can pick or be the new congressman if he ends up resigning later.
Sims also has a few other notable obstacles. Ward leader Dan Muroff and Lower Merion Township Commissioner Brian Gordon are also running, and they could split the anti-Fattah vote enough to secure the congressman renomination. While Sims is the most prominent member of this trio, he can't afford to lose too many votes. All three Fattah challengers are also white, while the incumbent and 58 percent of this district's denizens are black.
Racial politics don't always dominate: Jim Kenney won a decisive 56-26 victory over an African American opponent in this year's mayoral primary in a city where blacks make up a small plurality of the population. But it's impossible to ignore the racial element here, and it could give Fattah a boost when he needs one. State Rep. Dwight Evans, who is African American, is reportedly interested in running, though it's unclear what effect he'd have on this contest.
Sims gives anti-Fattah Democrats a better chance of beating the congressman, but nothing's assured. But at the very least, a Sims campaign gives us the closest thing we've ever had to SimCongress.
Other Races:
• KY-AG: National Republicans usually don't splurge on state attorney general contests, but they're making an exception in Kentucky. This year's contest pits Democrat Andy Beshear, the son of outgoing Gov. Steve Beshear, against state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, and The Courier-Journal reports that the Republican Attorneys General Association has dumped $2.2 million here so far. By contrast, the Republican Governor's Association spent $2.8 million to help gubernatorial nominee Matt Bevin as of Sept. 14, though they've (at least temporarily) left Bevin to his fate since then.
The GOP wants to stop the next generation of Beshears from building a bench in the Bluegrass State, and their efforts seem to be working: A recent SurveyUSA poll shows the contest deadlocked, while Beshear held a 7-point lead in July. So far, national Democrats haven't gotten involved much to help Beshear. However, Beshear has raised far more money than Westerfield, so he needs less outside help.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, and Stephen Wolf.
