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
● FL-Gov: Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine has long been considering a bid for governor next year, but he's been coy about his intentions for just as long. The self-described "radical centrist," who won office identifying as a Democrat, had nevertheless toyed earlier this year with the idea of running as an independent or even a Republican, going so far as to say, "I actually like the Republican Party, and I like a lot of Republican ideas." However, the window for 2018 candidates to change their party affiliation has now closed, meaning Levine won't be able to run as a Republican, but could still do so as an independent.
Campaign Action
We still don't know for sure whether he'll go for it, but Levine is certainly fundraising like he's running for higher office. Reportedly worth $100 million, the mayor raised $225,000 from donors in July and gave his own campaign another $275,000, bringing his total self-funding to $2.6 million this cycle. That pace already puts Levine at the front of the pack financially, ahead of every top-tier Democrat who's announced already, a group that includes former Rep. Gwen Graham, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, and real estate company owner Chris King.
But Levine's prospect of winning the nomination, or at least damaging the ultimate nominee, should raise alarms for Team Blue. Levine not only has a reputation for acting like Donald Trump, he even seems to like the man occupying the White House—an astounding thing for a candidate who's hoping to run in a Democratic primary.
On the behavioral front, Levine is known for lashing out at opponents on social media, and his grasp on international norms is weak: At at a forum on Cuba earlier this year, he wondered aloud, "Why aren't we discussing the invasion of the island?" (A spokesman later swore he was joking.) So it fits that Levine recently went on Fox News with the thuggish Brian Kilmeade to declare, "So far, I think the president's done a very good job." How many Democrats in the state of Florida could possibly agree?
While Levine seems to think his supposed authenticity will be a plus with voters, he's painting himself into a corner with his openness to Trump and Republican policies. Unfortunately, with the Democratic field still raising money somewhat slowly, Levine's ability to pump huge sums into the race makes him a real threat to secure the nomination. More dangerously, running an independent campaign could deal serious damage to Democrats, since Levine's extensive history of involvement with the party likely means he would take more votes from the left than the right despite his newfound admiration of Trump.
SENATE
● AL-Sen: JMC Analytics recently released their first survey of the Republican primary field in Alabama's Senate special election, and their early August poll unsurprisingly projects that no candidate will come close to breaking the 50 percent mark needed to avoid a runoff. The pollster finds that former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore leads with 30 percent, while there's a tight battle for the second runoff spot between appointed Sen. Luther Strange at 22 percent and Rep. Mo Brooks at 19 percent. No other candidate surpassed double digits in the poll.
This survey's results are a departure from recent polls from other outfits, which have recently shown Brooks lagging badly behind Moore and Strange. Unsurprisingly, Strange and his allies at the Senate Leadership Fund, which has ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have made Brooks the main focus of their TV ad bombardment ahead of next week's primary in an effort to ensure Strange makes it to the runoff against Moore.
● MN-Sen: Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar appears to be a strong favorite to win a third term in this light-blue state, but Republicans will at least have a seemingly serious candidate to oppose her in 2018. State Rep. Jim Newberger recently kicked off his campaign against Klobuchar, making him the first noteworthy Republican in the race. Newberger says he'll abide by the party nominating convention process if other Republicans also run. While Donald Trump just narrowly lost Minnesota, the popular incumbent is a prodigious fundraiser. Newberger will need a lot to go right next year, but he'll at least give the GOP a chance if the stars align.
Gubernatorial
● IA-Gov: Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who recently assumed the office after former Gov. Terry Branstad became Trump's ambassador to China, has been consolidating her support among top GOP officials ahead of next year's primary. On Friday, two-term GOP Rep. Rod Blum announced that he is backing the new governor over Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, even though Corbett hails from Blum's 1st Congressional District in northeastern Iowa.
● KS-Gov: State Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer became the latest Kansas Republican to jump into next year's gubernatorial race when he announced his candidacy on Monday. A certified public accountant, Selzer is finishing up his first term as insurance commissioner after winning office in 2014.
Selzer joins an increasingly crowded primary field to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. Secretary of State Kris Kobach, businessman Wink Hartman, and former state Sen. Jim Barnett, who was Team Red's 2006 nominee, are already in the race. Additionally, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer is a likely contender despite not having announced yet, and he may be running as an incumbent if Brownback joins Trump's administration before his term ends.
● MN-Gov: The GOP already has a crowded field in the contest to succeed retiring Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, but it could still grow larger since two more Republicans have made noise about running recently. Former state Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch said last week that she's "thinking about" launching a campaign, but won't make a decision until the fall. In 2011, Koch became the first Republican majority leader in generations, but her record isn't free of flaws for GOP primary voters. Koch resigned less than a year into her term leading the upper chamber after it came to light that she had had an affair with one of her staffers, and she declined to run for re-election in 2012 over the scandal.
Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Emmer refused to rule out another bid for governor next year, telling a reporter that you "never say never to anything." As one of the most outspokenly conservative members of the state legislature at the time, Emmer narrowly lost the 2010 gubernatorial contest as Team Red's nominee. However, he has largely kept his head down since winning a safely red House seat in 2014, which he'd have to give up to roll the dice on another statewide campaign.
● NJ-Gov: "I'm not dead yet, it's just a flesh wound!" appears to be the message of GOP Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno's recently released internal poll from National Research, which shows her trailing Democratic nominee Phil Murphy by a brutal 42-28 spread in New Jersey's November gubernatorial contest. This survey was from late June, raising the question of why Guadagno waited to release such an unflattering result until now; the answer of course, is likely because the Republican nominee has often trailed by a two-to-one margin or greater in recent independent polls from Quinnipiac and Monmouth. With outgoing GOP Gov. Chris Christie and Trump both despised in the Garden State, Guadagno faces a stark challenge as she tries to succeed her boss this fall.
● NY-Gov: No Democratic governor up for re-election next year earns more ire from the party base than New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but he has yet to draw any noteworthy foe in the 2018 Democratic primary. Two new names have emerged as possible progressive primary challengers, though neither currently holds public office. Former state Sen. Terry Gipson said in late July that he's considering running for governor, but the former legislator lost re-election in 2014 and failed to regain his Hudson Valley district last year by a wide margin as the region lurched toward Trump.
The other prospective candidate has a more unusual profile: The Wall Street Journal reports that actress Cynthia Nixon, who starred in HBO's "Sex and the City" TV series, is considering running according to unnamed associates, but there's no comment from Nixon herself. Nixon has been an activist for progressive causes, but has no experience running for office. She could potentially self-fund, but New York is an incredibly expensive state.
Despite his entrenching Republican control over the state Senate and consequently blocking a tide of progressive legislation, beating Cuomo in the primary will be far from easy for progressives. The incumbent still has a relatively strong approval rating among Democrats, and Cuomo has built up over $25 million in his war chest as of the end of June. Any progressive primary challenger will have to overcome fundraising challenges and will likely have to convince Democratic regulars to ditch Cuomo for reasons that aren't as convoluted as his enabling of the GOP-supporting breakaway faction of the Independent Democratic Conference in the state Senate.
● TN-Gov: On Sunday, Democratic state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh announced he is running for governor next year, meaning Democrats will have a real primary on their hands between Fitzhugh and former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who joined the race in February. Fitzhugh hails from a rural West Tennessee legislative district that backed Trump 59-40 and Romney by 52-47, making him one of the rare party leaders in the U.S. whose legislative seat backed the other party's presidential nominee. Despite holding a red seat, he has aligned himself more with traditional Democratic groups like organized labor, in contrast to the more pro-business Dean, who pushed for more charter schools while mayor.
Fitzhugh will first have to overcome one major obstacle if he wants to win the nomination: fundraising. He held just $12,000 in cash-on-hand at the end of June and will essentially be starting from scratch, while Dean had already raised $1.2 million in the first half of 2017. Furthermore, Fitzhugh won't be able to raise funds while the legislature is in session, a restriction that Dean won't face. As the CEO of a small local bank chain, Fitzhugh might be able to self fund a decent amount.
If Fitzhugh does secure the nomination, he'll be undertaking an uphill battle in this deep-red state. In an unusual twist, he could even end up facing a general election with his Republican counterpart in the state House, Speaker Beth Harwell, who ironically hails from a suburban Nashville seat that Clinton won.
● WI-Gov: Democratic state Rep. Dana Wachs launched his campaign for governor of Wisconsin on Monday, making him the first officeholder to join next year's race against Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Wachs is currently serving in his third term representing a strongly blue Assembly seat in Eau Claire, and he argued he would be better able to connect with the outstate voters who have swung strongly against Democrats in recent years than another Madison or Milwaukee-based nominee.
Wachs' first challenge will be securing the Democratic nomination, though. Businessman Andy Gronik, who is reportedly wealthy, is the only other noteworthy Democrat in the race already. However, both state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers have filed the paperwork to run while they're still considering it. A handful of other Democrats are also still thinking about jumping in.
House
● IN-02: Democrats haven't had luck winning Indiana's 2nd District since Republicans drew it to become redder during the last round of redistricting, but the newsletter Howey Politics reports that Democratic former state Sen. Jim Arnold is strongly considering a campaign, though there's no word from Arnold himself. Arnold previously served as assistant minority leader until retiring from the legislature last year after nearly a decade in office. He currently holds a seat on the LaPorte School Board, and Arnold is also a former La Porte County sheriff, meaning he could start off with some decent name recognition if he runs.
Covering South Bend and Elkhart, the 2nd District favored Trump 59-36 and Romney by 56-42, making it decidedly red, but not overwhelmingly so. Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski won re-election easily in 2016 and 2014, but had only scraped by with a 49-48 win when this seat was last open in 2012. Democrats would face a daunting challenge to prevail on such hostile turf, but it's possible that this race could become competitive during a pro-Democratic wave election.
● SC-01: Republican state Rep. Katie Arrington recently filed her paperwork with the FEC to run for South Carolina's 1st District against GOP Rep. Mark Sanford. While she hasn't formally kicked off her bid yet, her political consultant promised that "an announcement is forthcoming." This Charleston-area seat backed Trump 53-40 and Romney by 58-40, meaning Republicans start out as strong favorites to hold it regardless of whether Sanford or Arrington wins the nomination.
Following his 2009 "hiking the Appalachian Trail" affair scandal, Sanford defied the odds to regain his old House seat in a 2013 special election. While he faced no major challengers in 2014, he only earned a weak 56-44 primary victory against an underfunded state representative in 2016. Thanks in part to his vocal opposition to Trump, Sanford declared earlier this year that "I'm a dead man walking. If you've already been dead, you don't fear it as much. I've been dead politically." It remains to be seen whether Arrington will finally be the one to end Sanford's career, but it wouldn't be the first time he has seemingly come back from the dead.
● TN-02: Longtime Rep. Jimmy Duncan announced last week that he would retire from this safely red East Tennessee seat, and two local Republicans have kicked off their bids to succeed him. Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett kicked off his long awaited bid on Saturday, a few days after state Rep. Jimmy Matlock entered the race.
Burchett has talked about running for the House for months, and he also expressed interest in a primary bid against GOP Sen. Bob Corker. Just before Duncan made his decision to retire public, Burchett said he would announce his 2018 plans within days—and that he was unlikely to run for the Senate. It's not clear whether Burchett helped convinced Duncan to call it a career rather than go through a tough primary, but Burchett could be a formidable candidate in this open seat primary. A little more than 60 percent of this seat is in Burchett's Knox County and the entire district is in the Knoxville media market, so Burchett should start out with plenty of name recognition.
When Burchett was flirting with a bid for governor earlier this year, he predicted that he'd have trouble raising money. However, a bid for the House is a lot less expensive than a gubernatorial campaign would have been. And unlike in most Southern states, it takes just a simple plurality to win a Tennessee primary, so it's not implausible that Burchett could coast to victory on just name recognition in a crowded race.
Before Burchett was elected county mayor in 2010, he served for over a decade in the legislature. In 2005, after the GOP took a one-seat majority in the state Senate, then-Sen. Burchett got to play a deciding role in selecting the chamber's speaker… just not in a way other Republicans may have liked. Burchett and another GOP state senator voted to keep John S. Wilder, a Democrat who had led the Senate since 1971, in power. Two years later, Burchett switched sides and backed Republican Ron Ramsey over Wilder, and Ramsey won the gavel.
Burchett's machinations don't seem to have hurt him at all at home: Burchett won renomination to the state Senate without opposition in 2006, and he won the 2010 GOP primary for county mayor with 85 percent of the vote. It seems unlikely that voters will be angry with Burchett almost 14 years later. Still, this story could resonate with conservative purists if someone attacks him for it.
Matlock, who represents a state House seat outside of Knox County, got on the wrong side of his party's leadership much more recently. Last year, Matlock tried to unseat fellow Republican Beth Harwell as speaker, but he lost the party nomination vote 40-30. A few months later, Matlock was canned as chairman of the Transportation committee.
● UT-03: A few days ago, the anti-tax group the Club for Growth endorsed Chris Herrod, a former state representative who won the state party convention back in June. With a week to go before the Aug. 15 GOP primary for this reliably red Provo-area seat, the Club is up with their first, and likely last, TV spot. Apparently, the Club's ad makers binged on The Nightmare Before Christmas before this commercial was due, because they produced a Halloween-themed ad aimed at Herrod's two primary foes, Provo Mayor John Curtis and consultant Tanner Ainge.
The Club's commercial begins with the narrator asking if it's Halloween already, because Curtis and Ainge are "pretending to be conservatives." The two men are shown with cheap masks on, and as some more tacky Halloween-themed graphics flash by, the narrator argues that Curtis actually has backed numerous hikes in tax and fees, including a $12 million sales tax increase. She then insists that Ainge "says we need to be more 'bipartisan' in Congress… just like Nancy Pelosi!" Herrod is not mentioned in the spot at all. The Deseret News reports that the commercial is airing for $140,000.
Legislative
● Special Elections: We have three Midwestern specials on Tuesday. Via Johnny Longtorso:
Iowa HD-82: This race is in the southeast of the state to succeed Democrat Curt Hanson, who died in June. The candidates are Democrat Phil Miller, a veterinarian; Republican Travis Harris, a former school board president; Libertarian Joshua Miller, a candidate for a neighboring House district in 2016; and independent Edward Hee III.
This seat swung heavily to the Republicans in 2016, voting for Donald Trump by a 58-37 margin in 2016 after backing Barack Obama 50-48 in 2012. If the GOP flips this district, it would be their first legislative pickup of the Trump era in a contested special election: Democrats ceded a conservative Louisiana House seat back in March when they didn't field a candidate.
Missouri SD-28: This is an open Republican seat southeast of Kansas City. The candidates here are Democrat Al Skalicky, a retired teacher, and Republican state Rep. Sandy Crawford. Daily Kos Election's preliminary results have Trump winning this district 76-20, while Mitt Romney carried it 68-30 in 2012.
Missouri HD-50: This is an open Republican seat just outside of Columbia. The candidates for this seat are Democrat Michela Skelton, an attorney (and yes, a distant relative of former Rep. Ike Skelton), and Republican Sara Walsh, a state party committeewoman and delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Daily Kos Election's preliminary results have Trump winning this district 58-37, while Romney took it 60-38 in 2012.
Grab Bag
● Deaths: On Saturday, former Texas Gov. Mark White died at the ago of 77. White was the last living Texas Democratic governor, and there are only two former Lone Star State governors alive today: George W. Bush and Rick Perry.
White was elected state attorney general in 1978, defeating Republican James Baker, who would later serve as George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, 55-44. White publicly feuded with Bill Clements, the first Republican to serve as governor of Texas since Reconstruction. Notably, White sued coal companies to try to lower utility bills. White challenged Clements in 1982 and blamed him for the rising cost of utility bills and rising unemployment.
White was decisively outspent but successfully portrayed Clements as a tool of the wealthy, running a spot showing well-dressed people eating caviar while the narrator proclaimed, "From up here, the view of the economy is rosy," before White appeared in jeans and told the audience, "Texans don't need a Governor who will listen only to the big shots on Wall Street." White ultimately won 53-46.
As governor, White backed a law known as "no pass, no play" that required students to pass their classes in order to participate in sports. The law upset plenty of people who were unhappy to see high school and college athletes taken off the playing field. White also established new standards for teachers and raised their pay, capped elementary school class sizes, and required high school students to pass basic skill tests before they could graduate. White raised taxes to finance his education policies, even during an economic downturn caused by the falling price of oil. White also worked to try to make the state's economy less dependent on the fortunes of the petroleum industry.
In 1986, Clements sought a rematch. This time, Clements attacked the incumbent over the condition of the state economy. "No pass, no pay" also hurt White at the ballot box. Ultimately, Clements unseated White 53-46, completely reversing his 1982 defeat.
Clements retired in 1990, and White entered the Democratic primary to succeed him in December of 1989, months after state Treasurer Ann Richards and Attorney General Jim Mattox jumped in. White took third place in the primary with just 19 percent of the vote; Richards ended up winning the primary and the general. White never sought public office again. However, days before his death, he endorsed nonprofit director Alex Triantaphyllis in the crowded Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. John Culberson in the Houston-area 7th Congressional District.
● International Digest: Poland's radical right-wing Law and Justice Party won an unprecedented majority in parliament in 2015, and in short order it has launched a full-scale assault on critical democratic institutions. In a surprise development amid mass protests, the president vetoed two major bills that would have effectively ended any semblance of judicial independence in Poland, but democracy's future is far from secure. Read more about Poland, Kenya's upcoming presidential election, and other countries in the August edition of Daily Kos Elections' International Digest.
● Voting Rights Roundup: Following a recent court order, North Carolina will not have to hold 2017 special elections after GOP legislators redraws its state legislative maps to correct for unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, leaving the existing districts in place until the regularly scheduled November 2018 elections. Meanwhile, a court ruling could force Massachusetts to become the latest state to adopt same-day voter registration, and an effort to restore voting rights to more than 1 million disenfranchised Floridians is gaining steam. Read about these stories and more in the latest edition of Daily Kos Elections' Voting Rights Roundup.
