LEADING OFF
● MD-Gov: Is Republican Gov. Larry Hogan headed for a comfortable re-election victory or in for a close race next year in this dark-blue state? Mason-Dixon's latest poll does little to resolve that tricky question. They find Hogan with a stellar 61 percent approval rating and just 26 percent disapproval, which would have the makings for a GOP landslide in just about any other state.
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However, when they actually tested Hogan against several of his various Democratic opponents, Hogan takes a tumble. He leads Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker just 46-39, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz by 48-35, former NAACP president Ben Jealous by 49-33, and state Sen. Richard Madaleno by 49-30.
The varying sizes of those leads correspond to the relative lack of name recognition each Democrat has. Baker trails by the least amount and is the best-known of the bunch, but he still has just a 37 percent favorable rating and 10 percent unfavorable. This survey suggests that Team Blue's eventual nominee may be able to close the gap once they match Hogan's near-universal name recognition.
Maryland is one of the most Democratic states in the country, but Hogan's long streak of gaudy approval rating numbers makes him a very formidable incumbent. However, if this latest poll is accurate, it could be a sign that even Hogan's personal popularity isn't enough to overcome a partisan affiliation that is toxic in a state that backed Hillary Clinton by 62-36.
Mason-Dixon also tested the Democratic primary, but with such a crowded roster of Democrats who are still relatively unknown to much of the state, it unsurprisingly shows the race is still up in the air. Baker leads with 28 percent, followed by Kamenetz at 11, Jealous at 10, Madaleno at 3, and no other candidate topping one percent, which again corresponds with simple name recognition.
3Q 2017 FUNDRAISING
● WI-Sen: Leah Vukmir (R): $250,000 raised (in three weeks)
● FL-27: David Richardson (D): $250,000 raised, $250,000 self-loaned
● MI-06: Matt Longjohn (D): $212,000 raised, $9,000 self-funded
● NY-19: Jeff Beals (D): $55,000 raised, $56,000 self-loaned, $82,000 cash-on-hand
SENATE
● IN-Sen, IN-04: State Rep. Mike Braun is hoping his personal wealth will help him compete against two better-known congressmen in the Republican primary. He raised just $200,000 in the third quarter, but self-funded $800,000 to bring him into the seven figure range. However, one potential donor awkwardly isn't in his corner: his brother Steve Braun, who maxed out to Rep. Todd Rokita instead.
Steve Braun is a former state Workforce Development Director and is running for Rokita's open 4th District, so he may have not wanted to piss off the man he is trying to succeed in the House. But it certainly doesn't make Mike Braun look great when even his own family supports an opponent. Rep. Luke Messer is also running in the GOP primary, along with several lesser-known candidates who are seeking the nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly next year.
● ND-Sen: Former Rep. Rick Berg broke his public silence for the first time since the spring about a potential Senate campaign next year, but the Republican is once again refusing to rule out seeking a rematch against Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp after his narrow 2012 loss. Berg said he's "not a candidate now," but one should "never say never." He didn't appear to be in a hurry to clarify his intentions, and pointed out that he declared in January of the election year during a previous House campaign.
Nevertheless, Berg may not be able to afford to wait that long. Wealthy state Sen. Tom Campbell has already jumped into the GOP primary and has been running TV ads during the last several weeks. Furthermore, Border States Electric CEO Tammy Miller said last month that she was considering the race, and Miller is reportedly close to Berg, so he may not really be seriously considering another Senate race if an ally is instead.
GUBERNATORIAL
● AL-Gov: September fundraising reports are now available for Alabama's 2018 gubernatorial Republican primary, and incumbent Gov. Kay Ivey's fundraising prowess nonetheless isn't deterring some of her intra-party challengers. Ivey pulled in $241,000 last month, bringing her to $1.2 million raised since she launched her campaign for a full term in August. However, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle's station might be fully operational by the time the primary rolls around, seeing as he raised $212,000 in September and finished the month with $1 million on hand.
While Battle's numbers are noteworthy given Ivey's apparent advantages, several other candidates are competing in the primary, and there will be a runoff if no one attains a majority. State Sen. Bill Hightower raised just $49,000, but he had a healthier $546,000 cash-on-hand. Evangelical minister Scott Dawson raised only $56,000 and had $301,000 on-hand.
● NV-Gov: On Wednesday, Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani became the second notable Democrat to join the primary for next year's race to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, although she won't make a formal announcement until Oct. 18. Giunchigliani has served on the county commission for the past decade and was previously a state Assembly member. Her last bid for higher office was when she ran for Las Vegas mayor in 2011, but she lost the nonpartisan runoff 61-39 to now-Mayor Carolyn Goodman, an independent who was running to succeed her husband Oscar Goodman.
Both Giunchigliani and Democratic primary rival Steve Sisolak are two of just seven commission members for a county that covers two-thirds of the electorate, so they could already have some decent name recognition. However, she'll likely be starting with a considerable fundraising deficit against Sisolak, who was able to transfer roughly $3 million from his commission campaign when he joined the race in July.
On the Republican side, state Attorney General Adam Laxalt was poised to announce his long-awaited candidacy on Monday, but the horrific mass-shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night has understandably delayed his plans. Laxalt has looked to be an all-but-certain candidate for months, so we may not have to wait much longer for him to make things official.
● VA-Gov: Republican Ed Gillespie's latest ad continues to employ racist tropes to attack Democrat Ralph Northam over so-called "sanctuary cities" that don't enforce federal immigration law. Gillespie features Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman singing his praises and bashing Northam for voting "in favor of sanctuary cities," even though Virginia has none. Plowman continues Gillespie's line of trying to tie sanctuary cities to the violent gang MS-13 and use it as a boogeyman.
HOUSE
● CO-02: Nederland Mayor Kristopher Larsen announced on Tuesday that he is running for the open 2nd Congressional District to succeed Democratic Rep. Jared Polis, who is running for governor next year. Larsen was elected mayor in 2016, but his small town in Boulder County is home only to about 1,500 people, meaning he likely starts off with very little name recognition. He is also a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado and was formerly a science education policy analyst in D.C.
Larsen joins a Democratic primary that includes state Department of Regulatory Agencies Executive Director Joe Neguse, who narrowly lost the 2014 secretary of state race, and consulting business CEO Mark Williams, who recently stepped down as the Boulder County party chair. This Boulder-based seat voted for Clinton by 56-35 and should remain securely in Democratic hands.
● FL-18: Navy veteran and labor lawyer Pam Keith had appeared to be running a relatively unheralded race for the Democratic nomination in Florida's 18th District, but she just secured the endorsement of VoteVets, a major group that tries to elect progressives with military service to public office. Keith previously ran for the Senate nomination in 2016, but came in a distant third place with just 15 percent of the vote. She faces former State Department Official Lauren Baer in next year's Democratic primary for this House seat located in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. The winner will face freshman Republican Rep. Brian Mast in a seat that favored Trump 53-44 last year.
● MA-03: Ah, the fall … when the leaves change colors, the weather cools off, and pumpkin spice begins to infect everything from iced coffee to Oreo cookies. One more thing that fall brings: the end of the third fundraising quarter and utterly jaw-dropping hauls for select candidates. This latest episode saw Democrat Daniel Koh, who recently resigned as chief of staff to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, raise a staggering $755,000 in just one month while he officially explores a bid for the 3rd District. Koh also self-funded $50,000, bringing his total $805,000 for the quarter. His campaign expects to officially announce his candidacy "in the coming weeks," but it's pretty obvious what the decision will likely be.
Team Blue's primary to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Niki Tsongas has only slowly begun to take shape, but Koh's monster fundraising haul could deter some of the many interested aspirants from jumping into the primary for this Merrimack Valley-based seat. Nevertheless, Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen and hotel CEO Abhijit Das joined the race in recent days.
While this district backed Hillary Clinton by a solid 58-35, Republican candidates have had some success carrying it even when they lost statewide in recent Senate elections. Wealthy auto-parts company owner Rick Green, who founded the conservative advocacy group Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, recently made his campaign official in hopes that Republicans may be able to flip this seat.
● MD-06: Democratic state House Speaker Mike Busch, who has led the legislature's lower chamber since 2003, has endorsed state Del. Aruna Miller in the Democratic primary for Maryland's 6th District. Democratic Rep. John Delaney is leaving this western Maryland seat open next year, and Miller faces a primary that includes state Sen. Roger Manno and wealthy liquor store magnate David Trone.
● NH-02: Republican Stewart Levenson announced he will run against Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster in the 2nd District. Levenson is a physician who doesn't appear to have run for office before, but he recently earned news coverage as a whistleblower regarding inadequate conditions at the Manchester Veterans Administration Medical Center. Kuster so far hasn't drawn a notable Republican opponent and doesn't typically top the GOP's target list. However, her soft 50-45 victory last year in this 49-46 Clinton seat in western New Hampshire means she may not be able to rest easy next year.
● PA-10: After previously considering the race, Republican state Sen. Mario Scavello announced on Tuesday that he won't run for the 10th District when Republican Rep. Tom Marino becomes the Trump administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy chief. Several other Republicans are considering running for the likely special election in this dark-red northeastern Pennsylvania seat once the Senate confirms Marino's nomination.
● PA-18: Gone, goodbye: GOP Rep. Tim Murphy, whom we learned on Tuesday had urged his mistress to have an abortion—despite having voted for new abortion restrictions that very same day—announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election next year. Murphy says he'll serve out the remainder of his term, his ninth in Congress, but it wouldn't be surprising to see him resign early. Whatever he decides, there's likely to be a hotly fought Republican contest for this seat, which is nestled into Pennsylvania's southwestern corner, but given the district's deep red lean (Donald Trump won it 58-39), Democrats probably won't be able to put it in play.
● SC-05: Democrat Archie Parnell, a financial adviser who previously worked for Goldman Sachs, could be back for a rematch in 2018 with new Republican Rep. Ralph Norman following his surprisingly narrow 51-48 loss in a special election this past June. Parnell's spokesperson says he'll make an "announcement" on Oct. 9, and the York County Democratic Party has him scheduled to appear at an unspecified "kick-off" event that same day.
In June, Parnell significantly overperformed Clinton's 57-39 defeat in this Rock Hill-based district. However, that was in a low-turnout environment where fired-up enthusiasm among Democrats may have helped make the electorate more Democratic-leaning than it ends up being in next year's regularly scheduled midterm. This is a decidedly red district that Democrats normally wouldn't seriously contest, but the first step to finding out whether Norman is indeed vulnerable in 2018 is to run a capable Democratic candidate.
● TX-27: Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold has been a lucky duck in terms of congressional races, winning an upset in a longtime Democratic district during the 2010 wave only for GOP lawmakers to make his Corpus Christi-based seat safely Republican in redistricting the next year. However, that fortunate timing and his solidly conservative voting record aren't enough to ward off intra-party foes thanks to his long history of scandalous behavior. Former Victoria County Republican Party Chair Michael Cloud announced on Tuesday that he will challenge Farenthold in the primary next March.
Farenthold only prevailed 56-44 in last year's primary against foe who raised just under $200,000, and he may finally lose renomination against a more polished opponent. Cloud certainly who won't be lacking for attack material in 2018, either.
For starters, Farenthold settled a sexual harassment lawsuit in late 2015 that his former communications director had filed against him. We also found out in late 2014 that he had owned the domain name "Blow-me.org" for over a decade and had posted misogynistic comments to an online forum between 2006 and 2010, during which time he was a conservative radio host. Of course, in an era when Donald Trump sits in the White House, even these transgressions may not cost Farenthold victory in a Republican primary.
LEGISLATIVE
● Special Elections: On Tuesday night, Mississippi held an officially nonpartisan special election to fill its vacant 102nd State House District, which Missy McGee, a one-time aide former Sen. Trent Lott, won by a crushing 68-32 margin over social worker Kathryn Rehner. McGee (unsurprisingly) had been supported by Republicans while Rehner was endorsed by the state Democratic Party, who had hoped a win here would deprive the GOP of its three-fifths supermajority needed to raise or impose new taxes without any Democratic support.
However, neither candidate's party label appeared on the ballot. That makes it difficult to compare this outcome with the results of last year's presidential election, which our preliminary calculations say Donald Trump won 47.6-47.3, a margin of 23 votes.
That's certainly still a rare underperformance for Democrats compared to their performance in traditional special elections in the Trump era, but it's also one of the less surprising ones. In last month's blanket primary, Rehner took just 25 percent of the vote while three other candidates who identified with the GOP, including McGee, combined for 75 percent. Those are exceptionally stiff odds to overcome. What's more, the district's prior GOP incumbent had always won re-election by giant margins (including by 45 points in 2015, when this seat was last up), so this area has a history of supporting Republicans down-ballot even if it's more flexible at the top of the ticket.
MAYORAL
● Albuquerque, NM Mayor: New Mexico's largest city held its nonpartisan mayoral primary on Tuesday, and Democratic state Auditor Tim Keller and Republican City Councilor Dan Lewis advanced to the Nov. 14 general election. Keller took first place with 39 percent of the vote, while Lewis defeated ex-state Democratic Party Chair Brian Colón, who outspent the rest of the field, 23-16 for the other general election spot.
Albuquerque is usually a reliably blue city, and on Tuesday, Democratic candidates took a combined 62 percent of the vote, while the Republicans together gathered 33 percent. Republican Mayor Richard Berry, who is retiring this year, decisively won re-election back in 2013, but he's unlikely to be much help to Lewis. A recent poll from the local firm Research & Polling gave Berry a weak 34-54 approval rating, with the pollster blaming the city's recent spike in crime.
Keller decided to accept public financing for his campaign, and local political observer Joe Monahan writes that he'll be limited to $125,000 in spending for the general election, though outside groups can come to his aid. Lewis will likely try to use crime to attack Keller, though Monahan argues that Lewis' support from the NRA could be a liability here next month.
● Atlanta, GA Mayor: With a month to go before the Nov. 7 nonpartisan primary to succeed termed-out Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, SurveyUSA is out with another poll on behalf of the NBC affiliate 11Alive. They once again show City Councilor Mary Norwood, a rare candidate who identifies as an independent in this heavily Democratic city, out in front, but they've started to show some movement in the race for the second spot in the December runoff. The results are below, with SurveyUSA's July results in parentheses:
City Councilor Mary Norwood: 28 (27)
City Councilor Keisha Lance Bottoms: 15 (9)
City Council President Ceasar Mitchell: 10 (10)
Ex-Atlanta chief operating officer Peter Aman: 7 (6)
Ex-state Sen. Vincent Fort: 7 (8)
City Councilor Kwanza Hall: 7 (9)
Ex-City Council President Cathy Woolard: 7 (6)
Ex-Fulton County Commission Chair John Eaves: 2 (4)
The only other poll we've seen here in the last few weeks was a late August survey from the GOP pollster Landmark Communications for another local news station. They also showed Norwood up front with 25 percent, but they had Lance Bottoms and Aman tied at 12 percent each for second, with Mitchell just behind at 10.
And what does Reed think of the candidates running to replace him? Reed recently declared, "Let's be real clear, nobody running for mayor could beat me," which is one of the nicer things he's said about some of the contenders. Back in 2009, Reed defeated Norwood in the December general election by just over 700 votes, and he's not exactly charitable now, calling his narrow win "light work," and he's continued to portray her as a secret Republican.
Reed has also fought with Mitchell, who serves as City Council president, with him calling Mitchell "not man enough to respond to another man" after a recent Twitter spat and "a disaster in terms of his integrity"; labeled Woolard "a quitter"; and called Fort, whom Bernie Sanders recently campaigned for, "One of the most disappointing human beings I've ever seen."
Reed has been much kinder toward Bottoms and to Aman, who used to work in Reed's administration. At the beginning of the year, Reed blasted an invite to a Bottoms fundraiser to his email list, though he has not officially taken sides. Reed has also refrained from criticizing Hall.
As we've noted before, racial politics might also play a role in how this contest turns out: Fort, Eaves, Hall, Mitchell, Bottoms, and Sterling are African American, while Norwood, Woolard, or Aman would be the city's first white mayor since the mid-1970s. While Atlanta remains a majority-black city, black professionals have been moving to the suburbs and are being replaced with well-off new white residents. According to Governing Magazine's Alan Greenblatt, "Atlanta is still majority-black, but just barely."
The city's rising cost-of-living has emerged as a major issue in this campaign, though it's not clear which candidates are benefiting from the debate. It's also not clear what role Reed's legacy will play in this contest. Last week, former city procurement director Adam Smith pleaded guilty to taking bribes as part of a deal with federal prosecutors. Reed has not been implicated in the matter, but his critics are arguing the scandal is a sign that the city needs a new direction.
● Birmingham, AL Mayor: On Tuesday, former Birmingham school board president Randall Woodfin unseated Mayor William Bell, a fellow Democrat, by a 59-41 margin in the nonpartisan general election. Woodfin's campaign attracted the attention of national progressives. Notably, Woodfin called for free college tuition for the city's high school graduates. Woodfin has also argued while downtown Birmingham is benefiting from the Bell administration, the city's black and poor residents are not.
● St. Petersburg, FL Mayor: On behalf of the blog Florida Politics, St. Pete Polls takes another look at the Nov. 7 nonpartisan race, and they find a tight contest. Ex-Mayor Rick Baker, a Republican, leads Democratic incumbent Rick Kriseman 46-45. In August's primary, Kriseman led Baker 48.36-48.23. St. Pete consistently found Kriseman trailing in the primary, though they argue that Barack Obama's decision to back the mayor days before the primary helped move things in Team Blue's favor. No other groups have released numbers here.
