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, and David Beard.
Leading off
● GA-06, SC-05: In a disappointing result for Democrats, investigative filmmaker and former congressional aide Jon Ossoff lost the hotly anticipated special election runoff for Georgia's 6th Congressional District on Tuesday night by a 52.1-47.9 margin to Republican Karen Handel, a former secretary of state. At the same time, in another special election that had received far less attention, Republican Ralph Norman, a former state representative, defeated tax expert Archie Parnell, the Democratic nominee, in South Carolina's 5th Congressional District by a far closer-than-expected 51-48 spread.
This seat, which is in the northern part of South Carolina, went in the wrong direction last year, going from 55-44 Romney to 57-39 Trump. But the opposite was true in Georgia's 6th, which Democrats hoped offered a potential pickup opportunity because Trump only carried this affluent, well-educated district in the Atlanta suburbs 48-47—a huge drop from Romney's 61-38 win here four years earlier. Thanks to an early endorsement from Daily Kos, Ossoff caught fire with progressives nationwide, who were eager to send a message to Trump and filled Ossoff's coffers with unprecedented sums of money.
That enthusiasm, combined with a disciplined campaign by Ossoff, allowed him to win 48 percent of the vote in the April primary, when all candidates from all parties ran together on a single ballot. Handel, as the runner up with 20 percent, advanced to the second round and was able to consolidate almost all of the GOP vote that had gone to her rivals. Polls regularly showed Ossoff with a small edge, but in its waning days, the race appeared to tighten into a dead heat.
While countless post-mortems will be written about this race, in the end it's simply likely that this district's historical Republican lean—there had never been a close House race here before, ever—was too much to overcome. But even though Ossoff and Parnell both fell short, these contests once again fit into a pattern we've seen in special elections across the country ever since Trump's election: Democrats have been outperforming Obama's 2012 numbers in seats where Trump improved on Romney, while taking a comparable amount of support as Clinton in seats where she did better than Obama.
A similar phenomenon happened in South Carolina. Unlike in Georgia, where spending was through the roof (thanks to Ossoff's enormous grassroots support and to a huge influx of GOP dark money to prop up Handel), very little outside money came in to South Carolina, and there was little sign the race would be close. The only recent poll, for instance, showed Norman with a comfortable 53-44 lead, making the final result a major surprise.
Undoubtedly there will be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking over the decision by Democrats and progressives everywhere to go all-in for Ossoff while largely ignoring Parnell, but the fact remains that neither of these seats should have been remotely competitive in the first place. Indeed, there's a reason why Trump's team picked cabinet members from solidly red districts—they weren't about to give Democrats any easy pickup opportunities.
Republican flacks and lazy reporters will undoubtedly deride any serious analysis of the results as liberal efforts to spin losses into moral victories, but that can't erase the fact that there are dozens of districts that are considerably bluer than these that will be up for election next year—not to mention the fact that Trump will continue to provide daily fuel for the resistance. Republicans can't afford more wins like this come 2018.
And while Ossoff fell short, Team Blue should be encouraged that the race was as close as it was in a seat where Republicans not named Donald Trump have routinely romped to victory. A number of other historically Republican districts also swung against Trump while still electing GOP candidates further downballot last year. In 2016, voters made a distinction between Trump and local GOP politicians, but the Georgia result is at least a sign that these voters won't be so forgiving in 2018. A loss is a loss, but if the normally Republican voters who turned against Trump turn against the rest of the GOP, it could spell a whole lot of trouble for Team Red in the 23 Clinton seats they hold.
Senate
● MI-Sen: At a recent state GOP event, Republican ex-state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Young jumped the gun on his official announcement and declared that he was running for Senate against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow next year. Young stepped down from the bench in April after nearly two decades in office, and he could be a formidable contender after having won three nonpartisan statewide races over Democratic opposition. Despite Trump winning Michigan by a razor-thin margin, Stabenow is by all accounts a strong favorite to win a fourth term in 2018. While Young's outspoken conservative record might help endear him to GOP primary voters, he'll face a daunting task persuading swing voters to ditch the longtime incumbent.
While Young has the highest profile so far, he isn't the only candidate in the Republican primary. Businesswoman Lena Epstein, who was the Trump campaign's state co-chair, had previously announced her candidacy, although Republicans might prefer someone with more of a track record in electoral politics like Young. If Young were to pull off the upset against Stabenow, he would become the first African American to represent Michigan in the Senate.
● NV-Sen: Sound the alarms! Politico and other news outlets are reporting that unnamed insiders close to Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen relay that she plans to run for Senate next year against Republican incumbent Dean Heller. Rosen has yet to confirm it publicly, but will reportedly announce after the second quarter ends in late June.
Rosen only won her first term 47-46 last year against flawed GOP candidate Danny Tarkanian in the open 3rd District in Las Vegas' southern suburbs, which flipped from 50-49 Obama to 48-47 Trump in 2016. However, her victory in that heavily contested race made Rosen one of just four non-incumbent Democrats to win a congressional race in Trump territory last year, meaning she likely has just the sort of strong campaign skills that Democrats will need against Heller in 2018.
Heller is the only Republican incumbent facing re-election in 2018 in a state that voted for Hillary Clinton after she won the Silver State 48-46, likely making it the single best chance for a Democratic pickup in a year where the rest of the Senate map will largely force Team Blue to play defense. After being appointed to the Senate following disgraced GOP ex-Sen. John Ensign's resignation in 2011, Heller only won a full term by a slim 46-45 plurality in 2012, which has left Democrats eagerly anticipating the opportunity for years to oust him in 2018.
It's difficult to say just how endangered Heller is next year though, since publicly available polling has been nearly nonexistent. A recent PPP survey found Heller trailing a generic Democratic opponent 46-39, but of course "generic Democrat" is sort of a Rorschach test where voters can envision the perfect challenger, unlike any imperfect actual nominee. The more important result from that poll is likely Heller's approval rating, which was underwater at just 44 percent compared to 50 percent disapproval. Heller's likely support for passing Trumpcare when the GOP plans to hold a vote soon could give Democrats a major opening again him in 2018, especially since Heller has backed phasing out the popular Medicaid expansion in his own state.
After a career in technology and leading her synagogue, Rosen would be running for higher office less than a year into her first term. Consequently, voters might not look too kindly upon a candidate seeking a promotion so soon into her first stint in public office. However, she would be far from the first House member to do so and win. Like Rosen would be attempting, Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and Montana GOP Sen. Steve Daines both successfully captured Senate seats from the other party in 2014 despite having served just a single House term and not having held elected office before that. On the other hand, ex-Rep. Rick Berg lost in North Dakota as the 2012 Republican Senate nominee with just one House term under his belt.
Politico also reports that Rosen has the support of former Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, who retired from office last year yet still wields immense influence in Nevada Democratic politics, while the Nevada Independent relays that she's the first choice of the DSCC too. This unfolding support from key establishment Democrats could be persuading other potential Democratic Senate candidates to reconsider their plans. Ex-state Treasurer Kate Marshall had previously indicated she was thinking about it, but the Independent also reported Marshall now says she believes Rosen will be the party's standard-bearer and sounds unlikely to run, although there's no direct quote from Marshall herself yet.
House
● FL-07: Republicans intend to make first-term Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy one of their top offensive targets in 2018, and Steven Lemongello from the Orlando Sentinel gives us the name of a new potential candidate with his report that GOP state Rep. Mike Miller is considering running, though there's no word from Miller directly. Republican state Sen. David Simmons had previously said he was "98 percent headed towards a run," and he also recently reaffirmed his interest in the race. Team Red had represented similar territory in Orlando's northern suburbs for over two decades until 2016, but the 7th District as currently drawn flipped from a razor-thin Obama victory to a 51-44 Clinton edge last year.
● ID-01: Layne Bangerter, who led Trump's election campaign in Idaho, is the latest Republican to express interest on the record in running to succeed outgoing GOP Rep. Raúl Labrador after the latter launched his gubernatorial bid last month. Bangerter currently works as a special assistant to Trump on matters concerning the Environmental Protection Agency, but he recently told the Associated Press that he might be appointed to a position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so it's unclear just how keen he is on running for House.
Bangerter claims he'll have Trump's full support if he runs for overwhelmingly Republican western Idaho's 1st District, but Trump's record of supporting his allies is far weaker than his track record of punishing his enemies, so it remains to be seen if Bangerter has what it takes to win the GOP nomination. Former state Sen. and 2014 gubernatorial primary runner-up Russ Fulcher is already running with Labrador's support, while ex-Lt. Gov. David Leroy also previously jumped into the race.
● NV-03, NV-04: Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen hasn't officially jumped into the Senate race yet, but her swingy 48-47 Trump and 50-49 Obama 3rd District in Las Vegas' southern suburbs will undoubtedly draw heated interest from both parties if she does seek higher office in 2018. On Tuesday, GOP state Sen. Scott Hammond told the Nevada Independent that he would run here. Hammond had previously said he was considering a bid against Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen in the adjacent 4th District, but an open redder seat likely looks more appealing. While none of Hammond's legislative seat in the northwestern Las Vegas area overlaps with the 3rd District, this region's more transient population is likely to blunt the potency of any "carpetbagging" attacks compared to many other regions of the country.
Last week, before news broke that Rosen was planning a Senate bid, Bloomberg's Greg Giroux caught that former Clark County GOP chairman Dave McKeon had recently filed to run. However, McKeon has yet to announce he's in, and it's unclear how Hammond's campaign will impact his plans.
Grab Bag
● Pres-by-LD: Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits Idaho, the 26th state we've done. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new data sets; you can also find all of our calculations from 2016 and past cycles here.
Idaho is one of the reddest states in the nation, and that didn't change in 2016. Donald Trump carried the state 59-27, a similar margin as Mitt Romney's 65-33, though third party candidates did relatively well here thanks in large part to Idaho having the second highest share of Mormons of any state, a demographic in which many supported conservative Mormon independent Evan McMullin. The GOP has controlled both chambers of the legislature since the 1960 elections, and that's not changing anytime soon. Team Red holds a 59-11 supermajority in the state House, and a 29 to six Senate edge.
Each of the Gem State's 30 legislative districts has two state representatives and one state senator. The two House members are each elected every two years: Candidates must choose whether to run for the A or B seat. The two House seats, as well as the Senate seat, have identical boundaries. Senators also serve two years.
Trump carried the same 26 districts that Romney took. Trump did notably lose support in LD-34 in the heavily Mormon eastern part of the state, though it was to third-party candidates rather than to Clinton: The seat went from 92-7 Romney to 60-8 Trump. Unsurprisingly, all four Obama/Clinton seats have all-Democratic delegations, but only two Democratic state senators and three state representatives hail from Romney/Trump districts. The reddest seat with a Democratic legislator is LD-29, which went from 53-43 Romney to 46-37 Trump.
