Leading Off:
● MD-Sen: A new poll from OpinionWorks for the University of Baltimore and the Baltimore Sun finds Rep. Chris Van Hollen beating fellow Rep. Donna Edwards 45-31 in the Democratic primary for Senate, making this the first survey to show Van Hollen with a lead. Earlier polls had put Edwards on top, but as we noted previously, Van Hollen's large cash advantage would allow him to make up the gap once he started spending—and indeed he has.
Van Hollen has been airing introductory TV ads in the Baltimore market, where neither candidate is well-known, in an effort to boost his name recognition. While he probably hasn't spent all that much yet, in a race with a lot of undecideds, it's often not hard to move the needle. Edwards, meanwhile, has only a fraction of the cash and hasn't gone on the air yet. However, should Rep. Elijah Cummings ever decide to enter the race, he would still lead the field in spite of Van Hollen's recent burst of advertising, taking 40 percent to 28 for Van Hollen and 19 for Edwards. On the flipside, though, other polls featuring Cummings have shown Van Hollen in third or at best tied for second.
Senate:
● LA-Sen: Now that David Vitter's gone down to a humiliating defeat and announced that he'll skulk out the Senate's trash chute come next year, the race to succeed him is quickly turning into a spicy hot Cajun affair. Two Republican congressman have now both said they're planning "formal announcements" soon: Rep. Charles Boustany and Rep. John Fleming, who've both been jockeying for this seat for some time. Many other big names are also circulating; see our previous Digest for a full run-down.
One additional interesting note in Eli Yokley's writeup is his observation that state Treasurer John Kennedy (another Republican) could "donate" his existing campaign war chest to a super PAC that would then work to help him. Office-holders who've raised money for state campaigns can't transfer that money to a federal account (though the reverse is sometimes possible, depending on state law), but Citizens United has blown a huge loophole in that rule. That would allow Kennedy to deploy his considerable funds (which stood at $2.9 million at the end of September) immediately.
● PA-Sen: Democrat Katie McGinty, the former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf who's running for Senate, just earned the backing of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has 40,000 members in Pennsylvania.
Gubernatorial:
● MO-Gov: Missouri's raucous GOP primary for next year's open-seat gubernatorial race just got one man smaller, as state Sen. Bob Dixon dropped out of the race on Monday. Dixon had been the only Republican candidate from the southwestern part of the state, but he raised little money and saw his campaign overshadowed by his own claims that he was "ex-gay." Four contenders remain in the race: former U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, ex-Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, wealthy businessman John Brunner, and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder. All are from the St. Louis area save Kinder, who hails from Cape Girardeau in the southeast. State Attorney General Chris Koster is the only notable Democrat running.
House:
● FL-18: Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay announced on Monday that she's dropping out of the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Patrick Murphy, citing the recent entry of wealthy self-funding businessman Randy Perkins. McKinlay may not have been cut out for this contest in the first place, though: She said that she'd been a "full-time Commissioner campaigning part-time" for the last six months, but with Perkins running, she'd have to become "a full-time candidate and a barely-part-time Commissioner."
The problem is that running for Congress is really a full-time job no matter who you are, and in a district like this—one that narrowly voted for Mitt Romney—any Democrat hoping to win here has to be willing and able to run as hard as possible. That's how the indefatigable Murphy upset Allen West back in 2012, after all. Perkins may or may not be the answer, but whoever hopes to be has to be prepared to put everything else aside from now through next November. It may suck, but that's just modern politics.
● KY-06: Sports radio host Matt Jones, who'd been considering a congressional bid since August and had even been recruited by the DCCC, has decided not to run against sophomore GOP Rep. Andy Barr. Jones would have faced a difficult challenge in this district, which Mitt Romney won by a 56-42 margin, though he did suggest he might still seek public office at some point in the future.
● MD-08: State Sen. Jamie Raskin has released an internal poll (courtesy GBA Strategies) of the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Chris Van Hollen, giving us our first look at this high-powered race. Raskin, unsurprisingly, leads the way with 30 percent, while former newscaster Kathleen Matthews takes 21, Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez 11, Del. Kumar Barve 5, non-profit exec Dave Anderson 3, former Obama administration official Will Jawando 2, and former State Dept. official Joel Rubin rounds out the field with a goose egg. If you're counting, that leaves just 28 percent undecided, which seems awfully low for a House race this far from primary day.
It does make sense, though, that Raskin and Matthews would be the best-known at this stage. And befitting their higher profiles, they've also each raised quite a bit of money: Matthews has almost $900,000 on hand and Raskin a tick under $700,000. So you can bet that a lot will be spent to decide the nomination, since whoever wins the brass ring will cruise in the general election given how Democratic this seat is.
● MI-13: Democratic Rep. John Conyers, who struggled to make the ballot in 2014 thanks to a petitioning snafu but was rescued by the courts, just confirmed that he will seek a 27th term in the House next year. Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey had previously declared she'd challenge Conyers, but despite his stumble last year, he still easily won the Democratic primary in this safely blue Detroit-based seat, and he'll be difficult to beat this time, too.
● TX-15: We have our first two "ayes" as well as two confirmed "nays" on the Democratic side in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Rubén Hinojosa. Edinburg school board member Sonny Palacios and attorney Vicente Gonzalez both say they're in, while Edinburg City Manager Ramiro Garza and Hidalgo District Clerk Laura Hinojosa (who is the congressman's daughter) are staying out. Palacios says he can at least partly self-fund, but he should have plenty of competition, as many other Democrats are also looking at this seat, which should stay blue in a presidential year. For the GOP, former Rio Grande City Mayor Ruben Villarreal has been running since before Hinojosa announced he was quitting, but he's raised bupkes.
Grab Bag:
● Census: We're already just about halfway through the decade (hard to believe, I know), which means that we'll soon be closer to the 2020's census than 2010's. It's therefore not completely crazy to start looking at how the next round of congressional reapportionment might shake out, which is exactly what David Beard has done in this new post. He also goes a step further to ask how reapportionment might impact redistricting. For instance, can Republicans in Ohio, which is likely to lose a seat, really target another Democrat? Or would they once again prefer to make one of their own walk the plan to protect the rest of the GOP delegation? (If they're smart, they'll choose door number two.) Click through for a complete state-by-state roundup.
● Public Opinion: Pew Research's latest polling magnum opus actually doesn't contain a whole lot of surprises: The topic is trust in government, and as you can probably guess, not a lot of people on either side of the ledger have much of that right now. It also reveals, as you'd expect, that Republicans have a much more limited view of what government's role in society is … but, at the same time, a majority of all respondents agree, going through a list of mainstream programs, that each of those individual items should involve a major role for government.
What is interesting, though, is that Pew asks a question about politics as a team sport, a new kind of question we haven't seen asked anywhere before. Perhaps unexpectedly, both sides feel like their "side" loses more often than it wins! Fewer Democrats (52 percent), however, feel that way compared to Republicans (79 percent), and liberal Democrats actually feel like they're "winning" (by a 44 to 42 margin). This probably doesn't reflect liberals mentally toting up all the congressional and legislative seats that Democrats have lost in recent years (since, yeah, that would have to qualify as "losing"), but rather reflects the preservation of policy gains made in 2009 and 2010, as well as broader cultural and demographic shifts that don't really have much to do with politics at all. Conversely, these reasons are probably also why Republicans feel like they're losing.
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.
