Leading Off:
● IL-Sen: Leave it to Mark Kirk to pick up right where David Vitter left off. In a revolting new ad, the endangered Illinois Republican is stoking the exact same xenophobic hatred that his colleague from Louisiana desperately tried to foment in a last-ditch effort to save his failing campaign for governor.
Narrator: ISIS disguised as Syrian refugees attacked Paris. Next target: the U.S. But Tammy Duckworth still wants to bring 200,000 Syrian refugees to America, even though the FBI says they cannot be safely screened. Duckworth supports 20 times more refugees than the president.
Duckworth: I signed on for 200,000 refugees.
Narrator: Mark Kirk opposes more Syrian refugees until it can be done safely. For your family's safety, who do you trust?
Politico's Kevin Robillard says Kirk's buy is for $185,000—small potatoes in a big state like Illinois—but you won't be surprised to learn that the ad is only appearing on Fox News. Evidently Kirk feels that hating on refugees is best saved for firing up the conservative base. Duckworth, his likely Democratic opponent, agrees, because she hasn't backed down one bit, releasing a statement that likens Kirk to Donald Trump and smashes him for appealing to "fear and the lowest common denominator." If there is any justice in this world, Kirk will meet the same fate as Vitter.
Senate:
● FL-Sen: We always urge caution whenever we see stories about campaign staff turnover, simply because it's so hard to know whether any one instance is just the usual shuffling that's typical of a very fluid industry, or whether it's a sign of deeper distress. Case in point: Several top staffers quit Indiana GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman's Senate campaign in October, but he turned in a reasonably good fundraising quarter and no further reports of internal turmoil have since surfaced.
On the other hand, plenty of candidates have seen key aides bail (or get shoved out) and then quickly found themselves floundering, such as ex-Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, who went on a pitiful performance in last year's Republican primary for Senate. So what'll it be for Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, whose campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, and chief spokesman are all leaving, according to Politico's Kevin Robillard. One possible tell: A nameless source told Robillard that the close of the calendar year was a "good time to make staff changes," which makes absolutely no sense at all. What does December have to do with anything? Again, though, we'll have to wait and see how things shake out.
● LA-Sen: These days, whenever a seat opens up in Louisiana, some Republicans inevitably start suggesting that someone from the "Duck Dynasty" family ought to run for it. And once again, it's Zach Dasher, a "Dynasty" cousin who finished less than a point behind fellow Republican Ralph Abraham for the second runoff slot in last year's race to dethrone Kissin' Congressman Rep. Vance McAllister. (Abraham went on to obliterate Democrat Jamie Mayo in the runoff.) Dasher's celebrity alone wasn't enough to get him over the top in that contest, though, and he'd face a much tough time against the heavyweight Republicans gearing up to run for Senate, including Reps. Charles Boustany and John Fleming and state Treasurer John Kennedy.
House:
● CA-20: State Senate Majority Leader Bill Monning, who had considered a bid for retiring Rep. Sam Farr's House seat, has instead decided to seek re-election. That means that prosecutor Jimmy Panetta, the son of ex-Rep. Leon Panetta, is still the only Democrat in the race for this safely blue seat, though others are looking. However, given Panetta's pedigree—his father represented this area in Congress for 16 years before Bill Clinton tapped him for his cabinet in 1993; pops later went on to serve as Obama's secretary of defense—it's possible other contenders will defer.
● DE-AL: On Tuesday, Iraq vet Sean Barney became the fourth Democrat to join the race for Delaware's lone House seat, which Rep. John Carney is vacating to run for governor. Barney quickly earned the backing of the increasingly influential group VoteVets, which supports progressive veterans for office and had previously pledged to endorse Barney if he ran. Last year, Barney, who survived a sniper shot in the neck in Fallujah, lost a bid for state treasurer by 10 points, but that may have had more to do with 2014's GOP wave than anything else.
It will also be interesting to see whether an issue Barney raised at the time of his campaign launch winds up resonating in his primary and appearing in others: the Syrian refugee crisis. Barney wanted the U.S. to accept 100,000 refugees in the next year, 10 times as many as Barack Obama has called for, and he also castigated the House for passing a bill that "scapegoats people who are fleeing ISIS tyranny."
Two other Democrats in the race—state Sen. Bryan Townsend and former state Secretary of Labor Lisa Blunt Rochester—have vocally opposed the House legislation (which Carney shamefully voted for), while a third, state Rep. Bryon Short, has equivocated. The lone Republican running, former Wyoming Mayor Hans Reigle, unsurprisingly supports the bill, but Democrats are heavily favored to hold this seat.
● IA-01: The International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, better known as "SMART," has regularly conducted polls on rail-related issues across the country over the past few years, and they often include horserace election numbers as part of their message-testing, too. The union's latest survey, conducted by DFM Research, checks in in Iowa's 1st Congressional District, where Democrats are hoping to knock off freshman GOP Rep. Rod Blum. Against 2014 nominee Pat Murphy, Blum leads 45-42, while he beats Cedar Rapids City Councilwoman Monica Vernon 46-38. Murphy's higher share is likely due to his higher name recognition: Only 27 percent of respondents have never heard of him, while 46 don't know Vernon.
That might not seem so great for the Democrats, but better news lies in the presidential results, where Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 48-39 and Marco Rubio 48-41. Barack Obama carried this seat 56-43 in 2012, and there's no reason to think Clinton would do appreciably worse, so these numbers likely understate Democratic strength in this district.
● VA-10: Various Democratic functionaries in Northern Virginia are saying, on the record, that businesswoman LuAnn Bennett will indeed challenge GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock next year, with an announcement supposedly scheduled for later this month. However, Bennett still hasn't commented publicly even though she first surfaced as a possible contender back in October. Bennett, who was once married to former Rep. Jim Moran, is apparently well-to-do and might be able to self-fund. Some other Democratic names have been circulated, but if Bennett gets in, that probably means they're staying out, given how difficult it will be to unseat GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock.
Legislative:
● State Legislatures: In the second installment of an ongoing series on the current Democratic plight downballot, Steve Singiser explored another potential point of peril for Democrats: the tendency of Democratic presidential voters to cross party lines and elect Republican legislators far more often than Republican voters are apt to. Is it because of voter dropoff between presidential elections and midterms? Or are voters on the red team simply less likely to be bipartisan? The data is clear, but the conclusions are a bit less so. Check out the link for the full story.
Grab Bag:
● Polltopia: The Centers for Disease Control has become the leading authority on how many Americans have landlines, how many have cellphones, and how many have both. (If you're wondering why the CDC, of all people, it's because they're concerned with the problem of contacting as many folks as quickly as possible in emergency situations.) And so the agency is out with its semi-annual report on the state of cord-cutting in America, as of January through June 2015, which has big implications for polling, and thus electoral politics, regarding which media to use to reach people in order to obtain a vaguely representative sample.
As with every previous CDC report, it shows slow but steady progress away from the landline and toward cell-only households. In 2014, America tipped to a cell-only plurality, and now it's a little further along: 47 percent of households are cell-only, 42 use both, and only 8 percent are truly landline-only. The cell-only percentages don't vary much based on gender, income, or education. However, they do vary considerably based on age: 71 percent of 25-to-29-year-olds are cell-only, while only 19 percent of the 65+ set are. There's also an interesting regional variation, which has gotten more pronounced over the years: Just 31 percent in the Northeast are cell-only, while the rest of the country is all in the 50 percent range.
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.
