As you can see, most of these polls featured generic Democrats rather than actual candidates, so as usual we urge caution in interpreting this data. But the reliance on these unnamed stand-ins reflects a happy problem for Democrats: We have so many races with multiple credible contenders that it simply wouldn’t make sense to pick a single name out of the pile. (And if you’re trying to poll quickly and cheaply in a whole bunch of districts, you also don’t want to ask about every possible candidate.)
● AL-Sen: Democrat Doug Jones is ever-so-carefully trying to capitalize on the widespread (but sadly, not universal) disgust with Roy Moore in a new TV ad that obliquely references Moore's predatory behavior. The spot features a series of self-identified Republican voters (including Tracy James, a cousin of former GOP Gov. Fob James) explaining how they simply can’t vote for Moore. The only specific knock on Moore’s record is the fact that, as one person notes, he was “removed from office twice,” but, says another voter, “This time it’s even worse.” A woman then gets to the heart of the matter, saying, “You read the story and it just shakes you.” You know something’s gotten universal exposure when a campaign ad only has to refer to it as “the story.”
Meanwhile, "the story" about Moore only keeps getting worse. On the same day that a fifth woman came forward and accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, the New Yorker reported that Moore had been banned from the mall in his hometown of Gadsden, Alabama for cruising teen girls.
At this point, with Republican leaders in the Senate calling on Moore to drop his campaign and even saying he should be expelled from the chamber should he win, the GOP's last hope seems to be a write-in campaign of some sort. But Sen. Luther Strange, the man Moore beat in the primary, says he's "highly unlikely" to make such a bid, while Mitch McConnell, who floated Jeff Sessions (the former holder of this seat), admits that he doesn't know whether the attorney general is interested—and apparently he isn't.
● MI-Sen, MI-06: GOP Rep. Fred Upton has been publicly debating whether to challenge Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow or seek re-election to his Kalamazoo-area seat, and he told Newschannel 3 that he’d decide in the next two weeks.
● MS-Sen: State Sen. Chris McDaniel has been talking about launching a GOP primary bid against Sen. Roger Wicker for months, but he’s also left the door open to a run for lieutenant governor in 2019. McDaniel recently told the Clarion Ledger that he’s “come to peace with one of those seats,” and “will make an announcement one way or the other in a matter of weeks.”
Gubernatorial
● IA-Gov: On behalf of the Democratic blog Iowa Starting Line, 20-20 Insight is out with the first poll of the crowded Democratic primary to face GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds:
Businessman Fred Hubbell: 22
State Sen. Nate Bolton: 13
SEIU 199 leader Cathy Glasson: 6
Former Tom Vilsack chief of staff John Norris: 5
Former state party chair Andrea McGuire: 3
Former Des Moines School Board President Jonathan Neiderbach: 2
Former Iowa City Mayor Ross Wilburn: 1
If no one takes at least 35 percent of the vote in the primary, the nominee will be decided at a state party convention.
Hubbell began airing ads last month, so it makes sense if he’s already staked out a clear lead. Hubbell is wealthy and can likely afford to stay on TV, while his opponents almost certainly will need to save their resources for closer to the June primary.
● IL-Gov: Businessman Chris Kennedy is up with his first TV ad ahead of the March Democratic primary, and Politico says he’s spending $200,000 to air it. The commercial opens with Kennedy declaring, “Violence which can touch our society anywhere will eventually touch our society everywhere. Just as it did to my family.” As footage of Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, appears, another voice describes how the candidate was only a toddler when his father was assassinated. Kennedy then says he understands how difficult it is to recover from that, as another person describes how he has a program to combat gun violence.
● NM-Gov: State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn dropped his GOP primary bid to succeed Republican Rep. Steve Pearce last month, but we may not have heard the last of him this cycle. Dunn’s son and political adviser says that the commissioner is giving “heavy consideration” to running for governor… as a Libertarian or an independent.
Pearce, who faces no credible primary opposition, will already have a tough time winning next year. New Mexico is a Democratic-leaning state, and GOP Gov. Susana Martinez is quite unpopular. If Dunn actually makes good on his threat, it’s almost certainly going to make Pearce’s task even more difficult. Dunn’s camp did not say why he’s considering this move.
● PA-Gov: On Tuesday, state House Speaker Mike Turzai told the Associated Press that he would indeed seek the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. Turzai has been talking about running all year, but Republicans noted back in September that the speaker seemed to be doing nothing to actually prepare a campaign. Turzai has flirted with seeking higher office for years but never done it, so it's actually a bit surprising to see him actually go through with it.
Turzai very much does not have the GOP primary to himself. The early frontrunner looks like wealthy state Sen. Scott Wagner, who like Turzai is an ardent Wolf opponent. Wagner most notably was caught on tape in an anti-Semitic outburst about George Soros, in which he bashed Soros as a “Hungarian Jew” who harbors “hatred for America,” and he very much did not apologize for it. Attorney Laura Ellsworth and wealthy businessman Paul Mango are also running.
Back in September, Wagner touted an internal poll from the unreliable McLaughlin & Associates that gave him a huge 45-13 lead over Mango and had Ellsworth at 5, but he interestingly did not release numbers for Turzai. Turzai, Ellsworth, and Mango are all from Allegheny County while Wagner is from York County at the other side of the state, however, so Turzai could just end up splitting the Western Pennsylvania vote and helping Wagner.
House
● NH-01: Yet another Democrat has joined the race for this open swing seat. Environmental scientist Mindi Messmer, who first told state officials that there was a small cancer cluster that had killed several children in what later was dubbed the “Seacoast Pediatric Cancer Cluster,” announced this week that she was joining the contest.
Messmer, who first won a spot in the 400-person state House last year, pledged to make the Trump EPA’s response to the Cluster a focal point in her campaign. Messmer decried the EPA for declaring that the cleanup site was not a public health threat, declaring that, “at a time when the EPA is being dismantled, and environmental policy and regulations are being decimated, I vow to fiercely advocate for evidence-based policy if elected to Congress.” Messmer joins several other Democrats, most notably Executive Councilor Chris Pappas, in the contest.
● NV-02: This seat, which includes the Reno area and much of rural Nevada, went from 53-45 Romney to 52-40 Trump, and it’s very much a longshot Democratic target. Still, Team Blue has an interesting new candidate against GOP incumbent Mark Amodei. Clint Koble, who served as a state-level Department of Agriculture official during the Obama administration, announced he was in on Monday. Amodei himself has not yet committed to running for re-election, and while he said in September he probably would seek another term, he said he wouldn’t decide until March.
● OH-16: On Tuesday, state Rep. Tom Patton dropped out of the GOP primary for this Canton-area seat and announced that he would seek re-election to the state House. Patton cited a “health crisis” involving his grandson as a big reason for his departure. Andrew J. Tobias writes at cleveland.com that the candidacy of Anthony Gonzalez, who was a football star at Ohio State, also messed with Patton’s plans.
Patton’s team assumed that the longtime state legislator would be in a strong position to win. However, Gonzalez entered the race in mid-September and quickly raised a hefty $523,000, well ahead of Patton’s $278,000 haul. Gonzalez picked up support from influential donors and local political figures that Patton may have been counting on. Unnamed insiders tell Tobias that, while polling gave Patton a narrow edge, he always kept the door open to running for re-election.
Gonzalez and state Rep. Christina Hagan now have the primary to themselves in this 56-39 Trump district. Hagan, who was a vigorous Trump supporter in last year’s GOP primary, has been running since April, but she had just $123,000 in the bank at the end of September, and Gonzalez very much looks like the person to beat.
● TN-07: This week, songwriter Lee Thomas Miller joined the GOP primary for this safely red Middle Tennessee seat. Miller, a three-time Grammy nominee who also serves as head of Nashville Songwriters Association International, has written songs for country music stars for Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley, and Chris Stapleton.
While Miller has never run for office, he touted his role in a group called Praying Parents, which met in 2006 to “pray for the children, the teachers and the Lord’s protection over the elementary school their kids attended.” Miller’s campaign claimed that the American Civil Liberties Union tried and failed to halt their gatherings. The only other notable Republican running for this open seat is state Sen. Mark Green, whose nomination for secretary of the Army collapsed earlier this year.
● TX-07: EMILY’s List, an influential group that backs pro-choice Democratic women, has waded into the crowded primary to face GOP Rep. John Culberson and endorsed attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. One other woman, progressive group Daily Action founder Laura Moser, is also running for this suburban Houston seat.
● TX-29: Longtime Rep. Gene Green said on Monday that he would retire in this safely blue Houston seat, an announcement that came less than a month before the Dec. 11 candidate filing deadline. Green’s potential successors don’t have much time to make up their minds, and state Sen. Sylvia Garcia and state Rep. Armando Walle each quickly announced that they would seek the Democratic nod.
Garcia is a longtime Houston politician whom the Texas Tribune’s Abby Livingston says will have plenty of establishment support. Garcia’s state Senate seat also takes up about 90 percent of the 29th Congressional District, so she should have plenty of name recognition. Walle was a staffer for Green before he was elected to the state House in 2008.
Plenty of other Democrats are also eyeing this seat. Ex-Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia has not said anything publicly yet, but the chair of the county Democratic Party said he requested filling paperwork on Monday. Garcia sought higher office twice last cycle, but neither bid went very well.
When Garcia decided to run for mayor of Houston in 2015, he was legally required to resign as sheriff. There was no question that a Republican would be named as his replacement, and his decision to resign and run alienated some of his Democratic allies. (Democrat Ed Gonzalez ended up unseating the appointed Republican the next year.) Garcia’s mayoral rivals also questioned his performance while in office, especially when it came to handling the county jail. While Garcia spent months looking like at least one of the two frontrunners, he took third place in the non-partisan primary with 17 percent of the vote.
About a month after his defeat, Garcia launched a surprise primary challenge against Green. Garcia argued that the district, which is predominantly Hispanic, would benefit from having a Hispanic representing it instead of an Anglo congressman like Green, and even kicked off his campaign by arguing that he’s “not challenging Gene Green. I’m challenging Donald Trump.” However, prominent local Hispanic politicians sided with Green, and Garcia never raised much money in the short amount of time he had to campaign. Green ended up winning renomination 57-39.
A few other Democrats are eyeing this seat. A consultant for state Rep. Carol Alvarado says she’s “seriously considering” getting in, while Livingston writes that state Rep. Ana Hernandez and attorney Beto Cardenas, who worked for both Bill Clinton and ex-GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, are both thinking about running. So far, neither Hernandez nor Cardenas has said anything publicly. If no one takes a majority in the primary, there will be a runoff.
Grab Bag
● Pub Quiz: Once again, Steve Kornacki and Harry Enten are hosting a political trivia night in New York City on Dec. 18 at 8 PM, and this time, David Nir and Jeff Singer will be there! We’re hoping to put together a DKE team (or teams), so please reach out to davidnir -at- dailykos -dot- com if you’re interested in joining. Let’s win this thing!
