The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● Pres-by-LD: Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation arrives in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the 46th state we've released data for. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.
Campaign Action
Pennsylvania surprisingly, and distressingly, gave Donald Trump a 49-48 win over Hillary Clinton last year, a big switch from Barack Obama's 52-47 victory against Mitt Romney. Far less surprisingly, Trump also carried a majority of the Keystone State's 203 state House seats and 50 state Senate districts. Trump took 119 seats in the House and 27 Senate seats. Thanks to GOP gerrymandering, Romney carried 114 House districts and also won 27 Senate seats despite losing the state four years ago, though he and Trump traded quite a few constituencies in each chamber.
Republicans flipped the state House in the 1994 GOP wave, and while Democrats won small majorities in 2006 and 2008, Team Red retook the chamber in 2010. Republicans currently hold a 121-82 majority in the lower chamber, where members serve two-year terms. (Two Democratic-held seats are currently vacant; Daily Kos Elections always assigns vacant seats to the party that last held them.)
The Senate, meanwhile, has been in GOP hands continuously since 1994. Democrats held out hope ahead of the 2014 elections that they could at least force a tie in the chamber, which a Democratic lieutenant governor would break in their favor. However, things didn't work out that way at all, and the GOP now holds a huge 34-16 edge, which would allow them to override Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's vetoes if not for their smaller House majority. Senators serve four-year terms: Odd numbered seats are up in presidential years, while the even seats are up in midterm cycles.
Before we dive into the numbers, there's one big reason for Pennsylvania Democrats to hope that the next decade will treat them far better on the legislative front than the last few have. While state lawmakers draw up Pennsylvania's congressional districts, things work differently when it comes to crafting the legislature's own lines.
An evenly split bipartisan commission handles legislative redistricting, but the state Supreme Court (whose members are elected on a partisan basis) appoints a tiebreaker if needed. The GOP had controlled the high court for ages, and the Republican tiebreaker has voted to adopt Republican-friendly maps in recent decades. However, Democrats now hold a five-to-two majority on the Supreme Court, and since they're very likely to keep that edge through 2021, we could see some very different boundaries for both the state House and Senate following the next census.
But for now, Democrats have to fight Republicans in the districts the GOP crafted itself. We'll start with a look at the House, and to help follow along, we've created an interactive map color-coded to show which 2016 presidential candidate won each district and which party holds each seat in the legislature. Democrats represent 17 of the 119 seats Trump won, while Republicans hold 19 of 84 Clinton districts. Nine of the 13 seats that swung from Obama to Trump are represented by a Democrat, while the GOP holds seven of the eight Romney/Clinton districts.
As our map shows, all the GOP-held Clinton seats are located in the Philadelphia area, where Republicans still do well down-ballot in what are otherwise Democratic-leaning suburbs. The bluest of the bunch is HD-74, which is located in highly educated Chester County and barely budged, going from 63-36 Obama to 60-36 Clinton. Republican Harry Lewis Jr. won a 2014 open seat 54-46 even as Wolf was carrying the seat 65-35 in the governor's race, and Lewis held on 51-49 in 2016. Clinton won by at least a 10-point margin in another eight GOP-held seats.
By contrast, the Democrats in Trump seats represent far more geographically diverse turf where working-class white voters helped Trump improve significantly over past GOP nominees. A few are clustered around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, an ancestrally blue area that swung hard to the right in 2016. Several others are located in Western Pennsylvania around Pittsburgh, while the rest are scattered throughout the state. None of these 17 seats are located in the Philadelphia area.
The Democrat in the reddest seat is Frank Burns, who represents a district near Johnstown in rural Western Pennsylvania. Burns' HD-72 went from an already-tough 61-37 Romney to a brutal 70-26 Trump, but Burns won his fifth term 58-42. Trump also took more than 60 percent of the vote in seven other Democratic-held seats, two of which had backed Obama four years before. HD-123, based around Pottsville in rural Eastern Pennsylvania, went from 52-47 Obama all the way to 65-32 Trump, but Democrat Neal Goodman won without any GOP opposition for the third cycle in a row. Over in HD-119 near Wilkes-Barre, Democrat Gerald Mullery won his fourth term 56-44 as his seat swung from 51-47 Obama to 62-35 Trump. The one Democrat in a Romney/Clinton seat is Carolyn Comitta in Chester County's HD-156. Romney carried her seat by an ultra- thin 49.46-49.44 margin, but Clinton won it 54-42 as Comitta unseated a three-term incumbent by 25 votes last year.
To get a sense of how steep a task it would be for Democrats flip the state House under the current lines, we can sort sorted every district in each legislative chamber from Clinton's greatest margin of victory to Trump's biggest edge and take a look at the seat in the very middle, known as the median seat. We have also published a handy spreadsheet listing the median seat for every other state chamber where we have data. In the Pennsylvania House, this median seat backed Trump 53-43, about 9 points to the right of his statewide win. This means that, even in a very good Democratic year, Pennsylvania's GOP-drawn map provides Republicans with a whole lot of room for error.
That doesn't mean Republicans hold on against any onslaught, though: In 2014, when Wolf unseated unpopular GOP Gov. Tom Corbett 55-45, he carried 112 of 203 seats in the House. Still, the GOP maintained its huge majority that year, benefitting from what was otherwise a bad climate for Democrats nationwide. If Democrats want to recapture the state House, they'll need to win not only voters who backed Trump, but also plenty of the people who supported Wolf and Clinton yet loyally voted Republican down the ballot.
We'll turn next to the state Senate, which may be an even heavier lift. The map actually is quite a bit better for Democrats: The median seat backed Trump 51-46, not nearly as bad as the House. (Because there are an even number of seats, we average the two middle seats' presidential results to come up with the median point in the chamber.) Wolf also won 28 of 50 seats in 2014. Nine Republicans sit in Clinton seats, while only two Democrats are in Trump districts.
If Democrats held all their seats, won all of those Clinton seats, and keep Wolf in the governor's mansion in 2018, they'd go from a 34-16 deficit to a 25-25 tie that would be broken by a Democratic lieutenant governor. (In Pennsylvania, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected together on one ticket.) But there's a huge problem that we alluded to earlier: Only half the Senate is up every two years. This means that Democrats need pretty much everything possible to go right for not one but two cycles in a row.
And Democrats very much need a lot to go right starting in 2018 because Republicans intentionally drew the Senate map so some of their more vulnerable seats are only elected in midterm years, when lower turnout ordinarily favors the GOP. Seven of those nine Clinton-district Republicans will be up next year, and three of them sit in seats that Clinton carried by less than a 3-point margin.
The tightest result was in SD-44 in the Philadelphia suburbs, which swung from 51-47 Romney to 48.0-47.9 Clinton. Republican John Rafferty, who narrowly lost a bid for attorney general in 2016, won re-election 61-39 in 2014. SD-38 near Pittsburgh is a similar story. This seat went from 53-46 Romney to 48.3-47.9 Clinton, but Republican Randy Vulakovich had no opponent in 2014. Overall, the bluest GOP-held seat is SD-26 in Delaware County, a suburban Philadelphia constituency that is also up next year. This district stayed largely the same, going from 56-43 Obama to a similar 56-41 Clinton, but Republican Thomas McGarrigle won his first term 52-48 in 2014.
Of the two Democratic-held Trump seats, only one is up in 2018. SD-14, located around Wilkes-Barre, swung from 54-45 Obama all the way to 57-40 Trump, though Democrat John Yudichak won re-election in 2014 without opposition. The other is SD-45 near Pittsburgh, which flipped from 53-46 Obama to 49-48 Trump, but where Democrat James Brewster was likewise re-elected without opposition in 2016.
Altogether, Trump traded three Romney seats for three Obama districts in the Senate. The remaining Romney/Clinton seat is SD-10 in suburban Philadelphia's Bucks County, which switched from 50-49 Romney to 50-46 Clinton. Republican Charles McIlhinney, who is up in 2018, won re-election 59-41 in 2014. The final Obama/Trump seat is SD-15 around Harrisburg, which went from an extremely narrow 49.36-49.34 Obama to 50-46 Trump, and where Republican John DiSanto unseated a Democratic incumbent 52-48 in 2016. Somewhat prophetically, this was also the one Senate seat that backed Obama and Corbett.
Senate
● AL-Sen: Change Research is out with their third poll of the Alabama Senate race in as many weeks, and they unfortunately have bad news for Democrat Doug Jones. The pollster finds Republican Roy Moore regaining a 49-44 lead after having Jones up by 46-43 in their Nov. 16 survey. However, these latest numbers are relatively similar to their initial Nov. 11 poll, which had Moore ahead by 44-40, but that one was in the field right as Moore's pedophilia scandal was breaking.
It's hard to say whether wavering Republicans are returning to the fold, possibly thanks to Trump's recent reaffirmation of his support for Moore. But it's entirely possible that either this survey or the prior one were simply outliers. One discouraging sign in this latest release, though, is that just 9 percent of Trump voters believe the allegations against Moore, which could make it very hard for Jones to persuade the necessary chunk of GOP voters to he needs to win over to pull off an upset here.
However, questions like these are incredibly tough to accurately gauge thanks to partisan signaling. For instance, a Trump voter might believe the allegations and has decided to support Moore anyway because he'll vote for Supreme Court justices they want, but realizes that it's socially undesirable to admit to such crass partisanship, so they instead tell the pollster they don't believe the charges. At the same time though, it's also a worrying sign of how distrustful of mainstream media sources many on the right have become. Indeed, two Moore staffers even "manhandled" two cameramen from Fox News of all places on Monday night at Moore's first public campaign event in 11 days, indicating just how big of a persecution complex some Moore supporters have.
Nevertheless, one thing Jones has going for him is his dominant advantage on the airwaves, with Politico reporting that the Democrat is outspending his opponent by a seven-to-one ratio. And it isn't just Jones' campaign itself that is getting in on the action. Outside group Highway 31 has been spending big on Jones' behalf, and their latest spot takes on the Moore allegations directly. Their spot begins with a voiceover asking "What do people who know Roy Moore say?" They then note that he was banned from the Gadsden Mall for soliciting underage girls and that the rumors had been going around for 30 years.
Meanwhile, Jones himself is out with a new ad where he blasts Moore for some of his Supreme Court rulings regarding sexual abuse of children in which Moore dissented to side with defendants, including one where he was the only justice to do so. It's worth stressing that Jones' ad isn't questioning the due process rights of criminal defendants. Rather, he's criticizing Moore's deeply problematic jurisprudence when it comes to victims of sexual assault, and in so doing, Democrats are flipping a hoary old script and hammering a Republican as soft on crime. Trump, however, continues to lob that very same attack against Jones, despite his storied record as a federal prosecutor, which unmasks Trump's baseless charge as the racist dog-whistle it is.
● VA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine is a heavy favorite to win a second term in blue-leaning Virginia next year, but Republican state Del. Nick Freitas may be about to jump into the race against him. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Freitas recently said in a radio interview that he would announce a decision "soon" on whether or not to run. Freitas posted on a Draft Freitas Facebook group that he "hope[s] to see you all at the Advance," which is an annual state Republican gathering on Dec. 8. (Why the "Advance"? Because it's the opposite of a "retreat." Groan.) Freitas is an Iraq War veteran who was first elected to the state House in 2015.
Republicans suffered major defeats down-ballot in this month's state House races thanks in large part to GOP nominee Ed Gillespie's blowout loss to Democrat Ralph Northam in the gubernatorial race, and Republicans should rightly be worried about a repeat performance in U.S. House races next year if they nominate a disastrous candidate for Senate. Hard-right Prince William County Supervisor Corey Stewart is the only GOP candidate in the race so far, and his neo-Confederate sympathies almost allowed him to defeat Gillespie in a shocking upset in this year's gubernatorial primary. Freitas would presumably be running as the more establishment candidate, but he may have a tough time winning over a Republican primary electorate that has increasingly descended into extremism.
Stewart isn't the only reactionary Republican who could end up on the primary ballot, though. A spokesperson for minister E.W. Jackson recently said his boss plans to run, and Jackson himself tweeted, "Rumors are flying that I'm going to run for U.S. Senate in Virginia. Stand by for the official word sometime next month." Jackson was a fringe candidate who took just 5 percent in the 2012 Senate primary, but thanks to a fire and brimstone speech before Republican convention-goers in 2013, the ultra-conservatives who dominated the convention chose him as their nominee for lieutenant governor that year.
Jackson had a long history of offensive statements, and he made no effort to temper them during the campaign. Some of his worst quotes included comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, calling LGBT people "sick," accusing the Democratic Party of being "anti-God," and urging black Virginians to become Republicans so they don't "betray God." Jackson himself is black, but he recorded a video in 2012 where he he told "black Christians" that Planned Parenthood "has been far, far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was," and that the "Democrat Party [sic] and Planned Parenthood are partners in this genocide."
Jackson predictably went on to lose in a blowout in the 2013 general election to none other than Northam himself after Republicans largely gave up on winning that race. Even if they can’t beat Kaine next year, setting themselves up for a landslide loss by nominating someone like Jackson or Stewart won't do the GOP any favors in terms of turning out their voters further down the ticket, which could cost them in crucial House races. Republicans have wisely settled on a primary to pick their 2018 Senate nominee instead of a convention, but Stewart's near-victory in this year's primary shows even that is no silver bullet for getting a more mainstream conservative to win the nomination.
Gubernatorial
● CT-Gov: Ned Lamont … that's a name we haven't heard in a long time. A long time. While Lamont said earlier this month that he wouldn't run for governor of Connecticut, he's now reconsidering. The wealthy businessman told Hearst Media's Neil Vigdor that he was "thinking about" a bid for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring Gov. Dan Malloy and plans to decide by the end of the year. A number of other Democrats are raising money here, but there's nothing resembling a frontrunner.
Back in 2006, Lamont captured the imagination of progressives across the nation when he launched a primary bid against Sen. Joe Lieberman, an ardent supporter of the Iraq War. Lamont ended up beating Lieberman 52-48, but Lieberman turned right around and ran in the general election as the first and last nominee of the Connecticut for Lieberman party. Lieberman earned the support of most Republican voters and enough Democrats and independents to prevail 50-40.
Lamont decided to run for governor in 2010 and spent most of the primary as the frontrunner against Malloy. However, Malloy had the support of much of the state Democratic establishment, and he scored points by attacking Lamont for layoffs at his company. While late polls showed Malloy closing in, it was still a big surprise when he defeated Lamont by a decisive 57-43 margin. Lamont stayed out of the headlines after that—until now that is.
While Connecticut is a reliably blue state in federal elections, Malloy's considerable unpopularity gives the GOP plenty of optimism that they can retake the governor's mansion after eight years. The GOP could have a tougher time linking Lamont to his old rival than they might have with another Democrat, though they'll certainly try no matter what. And while Lamont may not have too much name recognition left after so long out of the spotlight, his wealth and business connections could allow him to reintroduce himself to voters.
Meanwhile, a different development could also shape the Democratic field. On Monday, Democratic Attorney General George Jepsen surprised political observers and announced that he would retire rather than seek a third term. A bid for attorney general could be more appealing for some of the Democrats eyeing a run for governor, and at least one seems to be keeping his options open. Former federal prosecutor Chris Mattei, who has been raising money for a potential gubernatorial bid but hasn't announced he's in, said on Monday that, "Although his decision may fuel speculation among some, today is a day to honor George's service." That's certainly a good way to fuel speculation among some.
● ID-Gov: On behalf of Rep. Raul Labrador, Magellan Strategies is out with a mid-October poll of the open GOP primary. The survey, which the National Journal says was in the field Oct. 11-12, gives Labrador a 37-23 lead over Lt. Gov. Brad Little, who has retiring Gov. Butch Otter's endorsement. Wealthy developer Tommy Ahlquist, who has been running ads for months, takes 21 percent. We haven't seen any other polls here so far, so we don't have a good read on this race.
● MI-Gov: On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley launched his long-expected bid for the GOP nod to succeed termed-out Gov. Rick Snyder. Snyder has not publically taken sides, but he's made it no secret that he wants Calley to win. Snyder praised Calley at a Monday press conference as a "wonderful partner" and headlined a fundraiser for him the same day.
However, Calley starts out as the underdog against Attorney General Bill Schuette in the primary. Perhaps most importantly, Schuette has Donald Trump's endorsement (even if Trump initially misspelled his name as "Attorney General Bill Shuette"). While September's Alabama Senate runoff demonstrated that Trump's support doesn't guarantee Republican primary voters will back his candidates, Schuette also passed an important Trump test for the base last year that Calley flunked. After the Access Hollywood tape emerged, Calley called for Trump to drop out of the race while Schuette loyally stood with him. Schuette has also posted clear leads over Calley in the few primary polls we've seen, and he held a $2.3 million to $1.2 million cash-on-hand edge at the end of September.
However, Calley is hoping that his ties to Snyder will help him offset Schuette's alliance with Trump. Calley argued that Michigan has prospered under their watch, arguing that Schuette is "proposing to do what we have been doing all along." Schuette has been investigating Snyder's role in the poisoning of Flint's water, and Calley came down on his boss's side and blasted the attorney general's probe as "politicized." Two other Republicans, state Sen. Patrick Colbeck and obstetrician Jim Hines, are also running, but they've raised little money and barely registering in the polls.
● MN-Gov: State House Speaker Kurt Daudt has put off deciding on whether or not to seek the GOP nod for months, so what's a bit longer? While Daudt said in early October that he'd decide within a month, he admitted on Monday that he's still considering, and he did not provide a new timeline for deciding. The current GOP field doesn't seem to be wowing party leaders, and if Daudt ends up getting in, he could be the primary frontrunner. However, ex-Gov. Tim Pawlenty very much has not ruled out a comeback bid, and that could be factoring into Daudt's considerations.
House
● AZ-03: On Tuesday, the Washington Times reported that in 2015, Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva used taxpayer dollars to pay out a $48,000 severance package to a former staffer who accused the congressman of being "frequently drunk" and creating a hostile workplace environment. Though the aide had been on the job for just three months, the Times says Grijalva wouldn't comment on why she had been paid a settlement equivalent to five months' salary.
Grijalva did comment on the report itself, saying that "at no time was any allegation of sexual harassment made, and no sexual harassment occurred" and accusing the Times of publishing a "misleading article trying to link me to sexual harassment complaints made against other people." Grijalva did not, however, deny the charge of drunkenness, saying only that he could not discuss the matter further because doing so would "violate the agreement" his office made with his former employee. The ex-staffer, whom the Times has not named, has also declined to comment. Grijalva's southern Arizona seat, which stretches from Yuma east into Tucson, is solidly blue and backed Hillary Clinton 62-33.
● IL-03: On Tuesday, a host of progressive groups endorsed businesswoman and anti-bullying advocate Marie Newman in the Democratic primary for Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, located in southwest Chicago. The list of organizations includes NARAL, a leading supporter of reproductive rights, and the Human Rights Campaign, which promotes LGBT rights. Newman is taking on incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski, whose socially conservative voting record includes strident opposition to abortion access, funding for Planned Parenthood, and the humane treatment of refugees and immigrants. Daily Kos itself previously endorsed Newman back in June in this safely blue seat, which backed Hillary Clinton by a 55-40 margin and can and should elect a much more progressive Democrat.
● IL-04: On Tuesday, with less than a week to go before the Dec. 4 candidate filing deadline, Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a leading voice for immigrant rights, announced that he would retire from the House. Prior to his service in Congress, Gutierrez was a Chicago alderman and close to Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, and he won his House seat in 1992 as an ally of then-Mayor Richard Daley, though the two later became adversities. Indeed, Gutierrez wanted to leave the House a decade ago, and he considered challenging Daley in 2007 and even announced that his 2006 re-election bid would be his last.
Ultimately, Gutierrez decided he wouldn't run against Daley after all, though he said at the time that he'd stick to his plans to leave public office. He didn't: After Democrats retook the House in 2006, Gutierrez changed his mind and stuck around for another 10 years, even foregoing the 2011 race to succeed Daley. However, unless Gutierrez changes his mind really fast, there's no going back this time.
Illinois' 4th District is an unusually shaped set of "earmuffs" that cut through two distinct swaths of Chicago; while it's often mistakenly criticized as a partisan "gerrymander," the district was designed this way not to maximize partisan gain but rather to link two separate, heavily Latino areas and thus comply with the Voting Rights Act while ensuring the district sandwiched in the middle remains predominantly black. Indeed, the modern 4th District was first required by a court in the 1990s round of redistricting based on the GOP’s own proposal, which Democrats also largely agreed to. As such, this seat is 70 percent Hispanic, and it's therefore unsurprisingly blue: Hillary Clinton carried it by an enormous 82-13 margin, so all the drama will be in the Democratic primary.
It's also likely that another Latino politician will succeed Gutierrez. However, potential candidates need to decide what they're doing very quickly. Democrats need to turn in over 800 valid signatures to make the ballot, and candidates will want to collect even more to be safe: Chicago politicians frequently try to get their opponents ejected from the ballot by challenging their signatures.
Indeed, three Democrats have already announced that they're in: Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, Chicago Aldermen Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and Proco "Joe" Moreno. We'll start with Garcia, whom Gutierrez endorsed as he announced he was retiring. Garcia ran for mayor of Chicago against incumbent Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Democrat, in 2015, and earned endorsements from a number of progressive organizations, including Daily Kos. In a stunner, Garcia forced Emanuel into a runoff, trailing him by a respectable 45-34 in the first round. However, the very well-connected former White House chief of staff decisively outspent his challenger and ultimately won 56-44.
According to Matthew Isbell, however, Garcia carried the Chicago portions of the 4th District 68-32. (About 75 percent of this seat is in the city, while the balance is located in nearby suburbs.) Gutierrez ardently backed Emanuel during that campaign despite having opposed him four years earlier, but says he only did so because Garcia entered the race after Gutierrez had already signed on to help the mayor. After his defeat, Garcia became a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, and he talked about challenging Emanuel in 2019 as recently as a few weeks ago. According to the Green Papers, Sanders carried this district 58-42, so Garcia could benefit by being associated with him.
Ramirez-Rosa also quickly made it clear that he'd run to succeed Gutierrez, and he's also close to Sanders' allies. Ramirez-Rosa was elected to the Chicago city council in 2015 at the age of just 26, making him its first-ever gay Latino member, and he was a Sanders delegate at the Democratic convention the next year. It wouldn't be Ramirez-Rosa's first bid for office this cycle, though: State Sen. Daniel Biss initially picked Ramirez-Rosa, a vocal member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to be his running mate in next year's gubernatorial primary in what appeared to be an effort to appeal to Sanders supporters and progressive outsiders.
That union didn't last long. Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider unendorsed Biss in September over Ramirez-Rosa's support for the so-called "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" (or BDS) movement targeting Israel, and Biss soon dropped him from the ticket. Biss said that the alderman told him he opposed BDS when he was being vetted, even though Ramirez-Rosa had made public remarks last year that sounded very supportive of BDS. Afterwards, Ramirez-Rosa insisted he'd "been consistent in my position for several years."
Finally, Moreno, another member of the city council, also announced that he's collecting petitions to run. While Moreno easily won his first full term in 2011, he took just 51 percent of the vote in a three-way race in 2015, just barely enough to win without a runoff. It's possible other folks could still get in: Indeed, Alderman George Cardenas also expressed interest in this seat. But as we noted above, anyone considering needs to move almost immediately if they want to make the ballot.
● MI-13: Things only seem to be getting worse for longtime Democratic Rep. John Conyers regarding the sexual harassment allegations against him. A second former staffer named Deanna Maher has now come forward to accuse him of making unwanted sexual advances and inappropriately touching her multiple times when she worked for him from 1997 to 2005. This allegation follows a damning BuzzFeed report from last week that Conyers had settled a case for $27,000 with another former staffer who claimed Conyers had fired her for rejecting his sexual advances, while a third former staffer had also previously filed a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment but dropped it after the court denied her request to keep the lawsuit under seal.
Conyers stepped down as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee on Sunday, and the House Ethics committee previously announced it would launch an investigation. However, he has so far denied the allegations against him and insists he won't resign even though his office confirmed he did agree to the legal settlement described above after initially claiming otherwise. Nevertheless, the 26-term congressman may face increasing pressure to finally step down in light of these additional accusations.
Indeed, CNN now reports that several members of the Congressional Black Caucus are in talks aimed at getting the congressman to resign, though late on Tuesday, CBC chair Cedric Richmond issued a statement in which he said, “Any decision to resign from office before the ethics investigation is complete is John’s decision to make.” Conyers' history in the civil rights movement and his role as one of the founding members of the CBC has made this scandal a particularly thorny issue, with some in the CBC particularly wary of turning on one of their most powerful members after the group fought so hard to attain the clout it had long been denied. CNN also relays that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tacitly supports the effort despite not personally leading it, according to unnamed Democratic sources.
While the allegations against Conyers are serious and demand consequences, the internal party politics surrounding the matter are fraught with tensions that have led Democratic leadership to undertake moves that have not played well publicly. On Sunday, Pelosi herself publicly called Conyers an "icon" while questioning his accusers' reliability, which drew immediate and widespread rebuke. Pelosi may calculate that she has a fine line to walk because she’s fearful of alienating key groups within the Democratic caucus, like the CBC, who support her continued leadership role in the face of critics, but it’s terribly disheartening to see her put personal politics ahead of what’s right.
For Pelosi and the Democratic Party, it would therefore be simplest if Conyers' fellow CBC members can convince him to do the right thing and step down, and it would be best for the country as well. But as Daily Kos Elections' David Beard recently argued, Democratic leadership needs to devise a more systematic process for dealing with charges of sexual harassment and sexual assault, lest we wind up with a series of ad hoc “trials by social outrage” that have the potential to mete out different punishments for black members of Congress than for white ones. Richmond himself echoed that sentiment, calling on Congress to “treat all members who have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other crimes with parity.”
● NJ-02: On Tuesday, Democratic state Sen. Jeff Van Drew announced that he would seek this competitive open South Jersey seat next year. National Democrats had tried to recruit Van Drew to challenge GOP Rep. Frank LoBiondo every cycle beginning in 2006, but Van Drew never went for it. However, immediately after LoBiondo surprisingly announced he would retire earlier this month, Van Drew sounded very interested in jumping in.
This seat, which includes New Jersey's southern coast, swung from 54-45 Obama to 51-46 Trump, but Democrats hope that they'll have a good shot to flip it now that the entrenched LoBiondo is leaving. And indeed, Van Drew does have experience winning over the type of swing voters he'll need here. Earlier this month, Van Drew won re-election 65-34 in a legislative seat that went from 53-46 Obama to 53-44 Trump.
Van Drew is one of the more conservative Democrats in the legislature—he even voted against legalizing same-sex marriage in 2013—which could give him a tough time in a primary, but so far, no other notable Democrats have made noises about running here. Powerful South Jersey party boss George Norcross also committed to endorsing Van Drew if he ran. As we've noted before, New Jersey is a state where political machines still hold a huge amount of influence in primaries, and it's tough to beat a candidate backed by the establishment. So far, no noteworthy Republicans have even publicly expressed interest in running here, but Team Red will be hunting for someone to hold this competitive turf.
● TX-05: Bunni Pounds, who raises funds for Republicans and is a former campaign manager for retiring GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling, has filed to run to succeed her former boss next year, although she has yet to say publicly whether or not she's actually running. Former state Rep. Kenneth Sheets is so far the only notable Republican who is officially running for this dark-red seat, which sprawls from Dallas into rural areas to its southeast and should remain securely in Republican hands next year.
● TX-06: Jake Ellzey, a veteran who serves on the Texas Veterans Commission, has filed to run in the Republican primary for the Ft. Worth-area 6th District, which backed Trump by 54-42. Ellzey has some previous electoral experience after running for a state House seat in 2014, but he took just 16 percent in that contest. Nevertheless, he secured an endorsement from ex-Gov. Rick Perry in that race, meaning he may have some useful connections. Ellzey hasn't officially said whether he's actually running or not, but we'll likely know soon enough with the Dec. 11 filing deadline swiftly approaching.
Meanwhile, beleaguered GOP Rep. Joe Barton still hasn’t decided whether to seek an 18th term following the embarrassing release of graphic photos of the congressman. However, the Star-Telegram reports that a group of prominent local Republicans have met privately with Barton to urge him not to run again. Barton reportedly told the crowd he's waiting to see the results of polling and receive feedback from D.C. Republicans before reaching a decision.
● TX-21: Immigration attorney Ivan Andarza is the latest Republican to jump into this open-seat race to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Lamar Smith. The Texas Tribune's Patrick Svitek describes Andarza as having a "long history" with the Texas Republican Party, and he has served in various party and state-appointed roles.
Andarza joins a Republican primary that includes state Rep. Jason Isaac, former Rep. Quico Canseco, Bexar County party chair Robert Stovall, and retired CIA officer Eric Burkhart. This seat stretches from Austin to San Antonio and contains a big chunk of the Texas Hill Country, while it shifted leftward from 60-38 Romney to 52-42 Trump last year.
