Leading Off:
● MS State House: As expected, Mississippi Republicans ignored the results of a tiebreaker won by Democratic state Rep. Bo Eaton and seated GOP challenger Mark Tullos in his stead. Eaton and Tullos had to participate in a game of chance after they each received 4,589 in last fall's election, with Eaton pulling the winning straw. But state House rules permitted Tullos to challenge the outcome—even without any basis—and since Republicans hold the chamber, they simply voted him in.
Tullos did make some claims for appearances' sake, and they were entirely bogus: He said five affidavit votes shouldn't count because voters had moved (yet still lived in the district) but failed to notify election officials. Those same officials didn't agree that this was a problem, though, since they certified the election results, as did the secretary of state. House Republicans certainly didn't care, though, since adding Tullos to their caucus gives them the three-fifths supermajority they need to rewrite tax laws without a single Democratic vote.
Eaton, understandably, sounded quite miffed, saying that the voters whose ballots the GOP belatedly decided to ignore had their rights "violated under the equal protection act of the U.S. Constitution." He also said that the "fair thing would be for them to call for another election" to coincide with the presidential primary on March 8. Talk like this suggests that perhaps Eaton is contemplating a lawsuit, but legislative bodies have wide discretion when it comes to choosing whom to seat in disputed elections, so it probably wouldn't be easy to win.
4Q Fundraising:
● AZ-Sen: Kelli Ward (R): $250,000 cash-on-hand
● VA-Gov: Ed Gillespie (R): $483,000 raised (for 2015), $444,000 cash-on-hand
● NY-21: Elise Stefanik (R-inc): $236,000 raised, $928,000 cash-on-hand
Senate:
● FL-Sen: Establishment Republicans have every reason to be bummed out about their choice of candidates in Florida's Senate race: Rep. David Jolly just announced he was going to stop trying to raise cash for himself, and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera hasn't proved to be much of a fundraiser either (though hey, at least he's now all but guaranteed to outstrip Jolly). Meanwhile, tea partying Rep. Ron DeSantis leads the pack in terms of money, and if his friends at the Club for Growth get involved, he'll have a pretty straightforward path to the nomination.
Which brings us to wealthy homebuilder Carlos Beruff, who the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports is considering a late entry into the contest. Beruff is described as "close" to Gov. Rick Scott and sounds like he'd fit right into the classic self-funding businessman role. However, he also appears to be something of an anti-tax and anti-teacher crusader, so he could ignite some interest among rowdier segments of the party as well.
Still, if Jolly and Lopez-Cantera won't budge, Beruff would be more likely to fight with them for votes than with DeSantis. And the longer the GOP spends trying to figure itself out, the better it is for Democrats.
● NC-Sen: The DSCC hasn't been afraid to make its preferences known this cycle, even in some contested (or potentially contested) Senate primaries. Last year, they endorsed Patrick Murphy in Florida and Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona, and now they're backing former state Rep. Deborah Ross in North Carolina, who faces three other candidates in the March 15 Democratic primary. Ross also just earned the support of the state AFL-CIO and last week scored an endorsement from EMILY's List, so there's no mistaking who's the establishment favorite.
However, Ross only has a small advantage for the nomination in PPP's new poll. She leads businessmen Kevin Griffin 19-14, while Spring Lake Mayor Chris Rey takes 10 and Iraq vet Ernest Reeves gets 3. That leaves 55 percent undecided, but what's odd is that Ross had a huge 41-15 lead on Griffin in December. It's impossible that the numbers actually moved like that in just a month, and in any event, no one collapses like that absent a scandal or intense media scrutiny (ala Ben Carson). So one or the other poll must be wrong.
As far as the general election goes, GOP Sen. Richard Burr is still the favorite, but his own poll numbers are as soft as they've ever been: He's up 42-35 on Griffin, 43-33 on Ross, and 44-32 on Rey. That's very similar to what we've seen in the past, and it means that Burr would be vulnerable if all the stars align for Democrats, which is why the DSCC is trying to knock a few celestial bodies into what it thinks are the right spots.
Burr doesn't, however, seem to face much of a threat on his right flank. Right at the filing deadline, he landed some intra-party opposition from tea partying physician Greg Brannon, who took a decent chunk of the vote in the 2014 primary for the state's other Senate seat. But PPP shows Burr crushing by a 55-10 margin, so Brannon's dreams are gossamer indeed. However, Burr did just make an amusing blunder that could hurt him: At a recent fundraiser, he reportedly told supporters that he'd vote for Bernie Sanders for president over Ted Cruz—and, added the AP's source, Burr "did not appear to be joking."
Burr's campaign immediately howled and demanded a retraction, but the AP said it was sticking by its story. Burr also tweeted that he'll "support whoever the GOP nominee is," but notably, he didn't take the easy way out and just insist that he was making a wisecrack about Cruz. (Brannon's instant press release: "Burr goes full Socialist.") Burr must really hate Cruz, and it must really chap his hide that he has to try to keep his disgust secret. Fun stuff!
Gubernatorial:
● NC-Gov: For the first time basically ever, we've been treated to a poll that shows North Carolina's gubernatorial race as something other than a tossup … except it's from GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, so there's your explanation. McCrory's survey, from TelOpinion Research, gives him a large 49-36 lead on state Attorney General Roy Cooper; McCrory's next-largest advantage in the past year was just 5 points, in a PPP poll from last January.
And speaking of PPP, they continue to find the contest as close as ever, with Cooper sporting a small 43-40 edge on McCrory in their latest poll that also came out Thursday. If anything, it looks like McCrory leaked his internal to counter the new PPP numbers, since he's probably sick of the media reporting how tight things are month after month. But note that it's not just PPP who's called it that way: Other outfits, including the conservative Civitas Institute, have also shown little daylight between the two contenders, which is almost certainly the case.
House:
● FL-06, 11: Dan Webster wants to run for re-election this year, but he's just not sure where. The Republican congressman knows he can't run again in Florida's 10th, his home district, since the state's new court-ordered congressional map made the seat far too blue for him to have any shot. Instead, he's considering two open seats, each of which he currently represents a small slice of: the 6th and the 11th. It sounds, though, that he's leaning toward the latter, since he just said that he's "not looking at" the 6th "that much."
That makes sense: He only represents 8 percent of the constituents in the revised 6th District, compared to 18 percent in the 11th. And the primary in the 6th has also heated up recently, with the entry of a couple of state legislators and a politically-connected Afghanistan vet; by contrast, things are taking shape much more slowly in the 11th, which only became open in November. What's more, the 6th could potentially see a competitive general election whereas the 11th is safely red. However, Webster did not offer any kind of timetable, and if he doesn't move quickly, events could overtake him.
● IL-08: The day after Sen. Dick Dubin announced his support for businessman Raja Krisnhamoorthi, state Sen. Mike Noland, one of Krishnamoorthi's opponents in the Democratic primary, countered with an endorsement from an unlikely quarter: ex-Gov. Pat Quinn. What's odd here is that Quinn isn't exactly known for being popular: On the eve of his unsuccessful re-election bid in 2014, his statewide job approval rating stood at a miserable 31-54, according to PPP, and even among Democrats, he only had a meh 58-24 score. Noland, Krishnamoorthi, and Villa Park Mayor Deb Bullwinkel are all running to succeed Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who is running for Senate.
● MD-06: While Democratic Rep. John Delaney barely held on during the 2014 GOP wave, he should be much safer with presidential turnout. Still, Republicans are eyeing this seat as a longshot pickup, and a group called Maryland USA is getting involved in the GOP primary. Politico says that Maryland USA is up with a TV ad praising national security consultant Amie Hoeber as someone with "the experience a dangerous world requires."
Hoeber is married to Qualcomm executive Mark Epstein. Bethesda Magazine reported back in October that Epstein was willing to put as much as $1 million behind a super PAC to help her, and it seems that Maryland USA is his group. There's no copy of the ad or word on the size of the buy, though TV time isn't cheap in the DC media market. Hoeber faces Washington County Commissioners President Terry Baker and Del. David Vogt in the GOP primary for this Obama 55-43 seat.
● NY-22: Assemblyman Anthony Brindisi, one of only two notable Democrats who were considering a bid for New York's open 22nd Congressional District, is saying no to a bid. That leaves just Broome County Legislator Kim Myers as a potential recruit who might interest DC Democrats, unless there are any mystery candidates out there we haven't heard of. Former Oneida County Legislator David Gordon is already running but he has a weak track record and has done himself no favors by calling himself a "conservative Democrat."
Two Republicans, meanwhile, are in the race, Assemblywoman Claudia Tenney and former Broome County Legislator George Phillips, but several others are still looking. This is a swing district that should yield a very competitive race, if both sides can land legit contenders.
● WA-07: So if you saw a headline that said "Indian-American woman who'll be on the left flank of the already-very-liberal field gets in the WA-07 race," you'd probably think Kshama Sawant (Seattle's openly socialist city councilor), right? Nope! It's Democratic state Sen. Pramila Jayapal, who kicked off her bid on Thursday for the open seat created by Jim McDermott's retirement, and announced the endorsement of fellow state Sen. David Frockt. (As for Sawant, she refused to rule out a bid when McDermott retired at the beginning of the year, but she's been quiet since then.)
Publicola's Josh Feit thinks Jayapal may start out as frontrunner, perhaps by virtue of being the only woman in the field, with state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw and King County Councilor Joe McDermott (no relation to Jim) vying for the second general election slot in the August top-two primary. However, Jayapal (who was director of pro-immigrant organization One America before joining the Senate) has one key disadvantage. Almost all of her south Seattle legislative district is in WA-09, so her constituents won't be able to vote for her.
● WV-02: While ex-Del. Mark Hunt recently kicked off his campaign against freshman Republican Alex Mooney, local Democrats reportedly want someone else as their standard bearer. Roll Call's Simone Pathé reports that Army lawyer Cory Simpson, who is finishing up active duty, is going to run, though Simpson hasn't said anything publicly. State Democrats tell Pathé they're excited about Simpson and can think he can raise money. 2014 nominee Nick Casey made some noises about running again a few months ago, but Pathé says he won't do it.
While Romney carried this seat 60-38, Mooney only beat Casey 47-44 in 2014 even with the GOP wave at his back. Democrats drew some blood last cycle by pointing out that Mooney had only just moved to West Virginia to Maryland to run for Congress. The carpetbagging charges may not resonate as much now that Mooney is the incumbent, but Democrats are unlikely to let him off the hook. Mooney also is a weak fundraiser: As of the end of the year he only has $263,000 on hand. While most of the district is pretty cheap to advertise in, about a third of the seat's denizens live in the expensive DC media market, and Mooney will need a whole lot more money if he wants to saturate the district.
Simpson currently lives in Maryland (his wife is an Army doctor stationed there) and Team Red will undoubtedly see if they can tag him as the real carpetbagger. However, unlike Mooney, Simpson does have family roots in this area. There's no doubt that West Virginia has been moving in the wrong direction for Democrats and that it won't be easy for them to pull off a win this year. Still, Mooney seems weak enough to lose to the right foe.
Grab Bag:
● Demographics: Sociologist Richard Alba has written a provocative article for the American Prospect, wondering whether the Census is understating the white population. It's not by way of missing people when the Census enumerates, though … but by using the "one drop rule" in classifying mixed-race persons (or persons who check the "white" box and then the "Hispanic" box) as non-white, even when they might end up thinking of themselves as white. Alba's thinking primarily of children, who aren't the ones filling out the survey, and may wind up identifying as white when they're older anyway. Alba brings some history into the mix, in that Italians, Irish, and Jews were all considered something less than "white" when they first arrived in the country, but would certainly be considered "white" now.
Another way to approach it, though, is to accept that race is an always-evolving, nebulous category, and that the only workable way to quantify someone's race is to see what boxes that person actually checks off. If they check off multiple race boxes on a Census form, well, then they're by definition multi-racial. And if a child who is currently considered multi-racial decides to identify as white when she is old enough to fill out the form herself, and that happens on a broad-enough scale that it turns out we have a larger-than-expected white population 10 or 20 years from now, that doesn't mean that we're currently misconceiving race. It just means that our consensually-defined definitions of race continued to evolve, much like they always do.
● FL Redistricting: Florida Republicans have decided not to appeal a court ruling implementing a new state Senate map that improves the playing field for Democrats. The new map contains 21 seats carried by Barack Obama to 19 won by Mitt Romney; the old map was either 23-17 or 22-18 in Romney's favor (one seat was extremely close, and it's hard to calculate these results perfectly). Democrats still face a difficult battle in winning back the chamber, and it almost certainly won't happen this year barring a miracle, but they're now poised to make gains in a chamber where the GOP enjoys a 26 to 14 majority.
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.
