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
● PA-18: According to Bloomberg, private Republican polls of the March 13 special election in Pennsylvania's 18th District have Republican Rick Saccone with a lead over Democrat Conor Lamb in just "the single digits," and the New York Times confirms that, in fact, both parties' internals show the same thing. That helps explain why Donald Trump just graced Saccone with a visit to the area, though given the intense disgust Trump generates among many slices of the electorate, the move could very well backfire.
Campaign Action
Meanwhile, on the very same day, Democrat Conor Lamb released his first TV ad for the March 13 special election. The first half of the spot focuses on Lamb's biography, with a narrator detailing his local roots, his background as a Marine and federal prosecutor, and the fact that he "still loves to shoot," as a photo of Lamb firing a rifle at a range appears on screen.
The second part focuses on his priorities, saying he'll fight for "jobs, health care, and Social Security," then emphasizes his bipartisanship, calling him "the only candidate who said that Democrats and Republicans need new leaders in Congress" and adding that he'll "work with anyone to get the job done." In a district that voted 58-39 for Trump, he'll need plenty of Republican support to have a chance.
The National Journal's Ally Mutnick reports that Lamb is spending $100,000 to air the ad for a week, but he's still getting badly outspent by outside GOP groups, which have already poured $700,000 into the race with more on the way. Fortunately, Lamb's fundraising has far outpaced Saccone's: According to the New York Times, Lamb brought in $550,000 in the fourth quarter of last year, and he only earned the Democratic nomination on Nov. 19.
Saccone's finances, by contrast, are a disaster. The same Times report says that Saccone had only raised $200,000 "as of the end of the year," meaning that that figure refers to his fundraising for all of 2017. And that's extremely pathetic, because Saccone kicked off a bid for the Senate all the way back in February, and he can use any unspent money from that race for this one—if he even has any.
It's hard to know, though, how much he even raised for his Senate campaign because his FEC reports from that failed effort are a mess. For instance, in the third quarter of the year, he told the FEC that he'd raised less over the entire cycle to date than he had that quarter, which is literally impossible. But considering that his initial candidate filing came out looking like a ransom note, we can't say we're surprised. (Seriously, go ahead and click that link. And don't call the cops.)
4Q Fundraising
Click here for our chart rounding up all Senate fundraising numbers. As per usual, we'll have a chart of House numbers after the reporting deadline, which is Jan. 31.
● IA-Gov: Fred Hubbell (D): $3 million raised (for 2017)
● GA-06: Kevin Abel (D): $153,000 raised, additional $50,000 self-funded; Bobby Kaple (D): $167,000 raised, additional $88,000 self-funded
● MA-03: Alexandra Chandler (D): $50,000 raised (since mid-November)
● ME-02: Jared Golden (D): $240,000 raised
● TX-21: Joseph Kopser (D): $260,000 raised, $330,000 cash-on-hand; Derrick Crowe (D): $45,000 raised
● VA-06: Ben Cline (R): $108,000 raised, $78,000 cash-on-hand
Senate
● MS-Sen: On Thursday, Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley announced he wouldn't seek the Democratic nod to challenge GOP Sen. Roger Wicker. Presley had been courted by national Democrats to run in this very red state, and he seemed quite interested right after Doug Jones' victory in neighboring Alabama last month. However, Presley almost certainly knew that his narrow path to victory depended on state Sen. Chris McDaniel running and beating Wicker in the GOP primary. McDaniel has continued to procrastinate on whether or not he'll jump in, and now that his political ally Steve Bannon has fallen out of favor with Trumpworld, a Senate bid may seem a whole lot less appealing to him.
However, this may not be the last we hear from Presley. Notably, his release began by saying it was a "statement concerning the 2018 regular United States Senate race" (emphasis ours). There's no other Senate race scheduled right now, but Sen. Thad Cochran has been in poor health, and there's been open speculation that we could see a special election for his seat this year. Presley therefore is leaving that door very much open.
But no matter what happens with Cochran, Democrats still will want to have a viable candidate running against Wicker in case lightning strikes. State House Minority Leader David Baria's name very quickly came up after Pressley said no, and he told Politico that he was considering a bid. Baria said that he's been in touch with the DSCC and feels like he's the right candidate, adding that he'll decide within a few weeks. In 2015, Baria won re-election 51-49 as GOP Gov. Phil Bryant was carrying his seat 72-25, so he does have experience winning under tough conditions. And because Mississippi elects its legislature in odd-numbered years, he wouldn't have to give up his seat to run.
● WY-Sen: It's been three months since we heard from Erik Prince, the notorious founder of the mercenary company Blackwater. However, Prince tells Politico that he very much still is considering challenging Sen. John Barrasso in the GOP primary, and that he'll decide by next month. Prince declared that "Wyoming needs a fighter," even though his own ties to Wyoming can charitably be described as thin. Zillionaire conservative mega-donor Foster Friess also talked about challenging Barrasso last year, but we haven't heard from him since early November.
Gubernatorial
● CO-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in for the final quarter of 2017 for this open seat race, and both sides have crowded primaries in late June. We'll start with a look at the Democrats:
Businessman Noel Ginsburg: $35,000 raised, additional $190,000 self-funded, $224,000 cash-on-hand
Former state Sen. Mike Johnston: $256,000 raised, $732,000 cash-on-hand
Former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy: $277,000 raised, $286,000 cash-on-hand
Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne: $240,000 raised, additional $60,000 self-funded, $452,000 cash-on-hand
Rep. Jared Polis: $52,000 raised, additional $750,000 self-funded, $367,000 cash-on-hand
A bit surprisingly, Johnston continues to have by far the most cash-on-hand, though the wealthy Polis certainly won't need to worry about being outspent. And while all of these candidates have a respectable amount of money available, Colorado's unusual primary system could prevent some of them from reaching the ballot.
The same is also true for the GOP field, whose numbers are below:
State Attorney General Cynthia Coffman: $86,000 raised, $15,000 transferred from previous committee, $85,000 cash-on-hand
Larimer County Commissioner Lew Gaiter: $290 raised, $1,800 cash-on-hand
Businessman and former state Rep. Victor Mitchell: $5,200 raised, $2.18 million cash-on-hand
Former investment banker Doug Robinson: $78,000 raised, $430,000 cash-on-hand
State Treasurer Walker Stapleton: $750,000 raised, additional $250,000 self-funded, $875,000 cash-on-hand
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo: $79,000 raised, $63,000 cash-on-hand
Coffman and Tancredo both entered the race in the final quarter of 2017, and both of them put together pretty underwhelming opening hauls. Coffman does have an independent expenditure committee called Stronger Colorado Ahead that raised $158,000 in six weeks, so she will have some air support. Still, it's not a strong showing for her at all. Tancredo, meanwhile, has an ardent fan-base among the far-right, so he could make it through a primary even if he gets badly outspent.
The money battle went a whole lot better for Stapleton. Like his second cousin Jeb Bush did before running for president, Stapleton spent months raising money for an allied campaign committee before he entered the race. That group, Better Colorado Now, had $738,000 on-hand.
Meanwhile, Mitchell seems to have the opposite problem as Tancredo. Mitchell donated millions to his campaign early in the cycle, then essentially stopped fundraising. But while Mitchell will have the money to get his name out, the self-proclaimed "longshot" candidate admits he didn't back Trump in 2016, a problem that no amount of cash might be able to fix.
● IL-Gov: GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner recently went up with a minute-long ad aimed at Democratic primary frontrunner J.B. Pritzker that consisted entirely of a recording of a phone call between Pritzker and disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in November of 2008, taped as part of an FBI wiretap during the feds' long-ago corruption investigation against Blago. Rauner has decided to get even more trollish, and his campaign says they've bought time in every major media market on Saturday and Sunday to air a 14-minute commercial that they say will feature the "full, unedited, original wiretap recordings."
As we noted when audio of these calls became public last year, Pritzker never suggested anything untoward. Blagojevich and Pritzker are heard discussing the possibility that Pritzker could be appointed attorney general or state treasurer, but nothing was said suggesting any sort of illegal exchange, or even any exchange at all. (Blagojevich at one point asked for a campaign donation, but Pritzker demurred, though he'd donated to Blago in the past.) What's more, had the FBI had any suspicions about Pritzker, they would have looked into them long ago. Ultimately, these conversations represented unappealing transactional politics rather than actual wrongdoing. However, that's obviously more than enough for Rauner and his ad people.
Both Rauner and Pritzker have to get through their March 20 primaries first before they can really nuke each other, though. However, a new poll says that Rauner doesn't have much to worry about from state Rep. Jeanne Ives. Conservative pollster We Ask America, which did not identify a client, gives Rauner a 65-21 lead, almost identical to his 64-19 advantage they found in November. This latest poll gives Rauner a 65-25 favorable rating with primary voters, not great for an incumbent, but not a sign he's in trouble in March.
No other outfits have released any polls of this primary, but Ives' team isn't acting like they have better numbers. Ives' spokesperson unconvincingly argued that the governor's "inch-deep support will dissipate quickly once GOP voters are aware of the choice they have." We'll be waiting.
● MD-Gov: Campaign finance reports covering all of 2017 are in. GOP Gov. Larry Hogan pulled in $5.4 million for the year, and he had $9 million in the bank. Meanwhile, Democrats have a crowded June primary to face him. Here's what their fundraising looks like:
Former NAACP President Ben Jealous: $1.5 million raised, $643,000 cash-on-hand
Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz: $1 million raised, $2 million cash-on-hand
State Sen. Richard Madaleno: $320,000 raised, $194,000 cash-on-hand
Tech entrepreneur Alec Ross: $1.1 million raised, $445,000 cash-on-hand
Attorney Jim Shea: $1.5 million raised, additional $530,000 self-funded, $1.35 million cash-on-hand
Former Michelle Obama staffer Krish Vignarajah: $330,000 raised, additional $100,000 self-funded, $405,000 cash-on-hand
The only recent primary poll we've seen was a January Gonzales Research survey, which gave Baker the lead with 24 percent of the vote and had Kamenetz and Jealous each at 14. That same poll gave Hogan double-digit leads against all comers; however, Democrats hope Trump's unpopularity in this dark blue state will drag down the otherwise popular governor.
House
● CA-49: This week, San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Brian Maryott announced he would run for this open suburban San Diego seat as a Republican. San Juan Capistrano is located in the Orange County portion of the seat rather than the far-larger San Diego County part, and the city has a population of just 36,000, so it's unlikely many voters know Maryott. However, Maryott says he'll spend more than $100,000 of his own money, though he says he'll also fundraise.
Maryott joins fellow Republicans Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (who is a notoriously weak fundraiser) and Board of Equalization Chair Diane Harkey in the June top-two primary to replace retiring Rep. Darrell Issa. A number of Democrats are also running, and Maryott's entry should make it a little more difficult for two Republicans to take the top spots in June and lock Team Blue out of the general election. This seat went from 52-46 Romney to 51-43 Clinton, and it's a top Democratic target.
Issa is backing Harkey, but her opponents have plenty to attack her over. As we've written, Harkey and her husband, Dan Harkey, drew bad headlines in 2013 when they were sued for preying on elders in a Ponzi scheme. Diane Harkey was later dismissed from the case, but her husband was ultimately found culpable and ordered to repay $11.6 million. That didn't end Diane Harkey's involvement in the matter, however: After investors proved unable to recover money from either Harkey, they succeeded in garnishing Diane Harkey's wages as a legislator.
Somehow, though, this whole mess didn't stop Harkey from decisively winning an open seat on the four-member Board of Equalization in 2014 by a 62-38 margin, even though Hillary Clinton carried the same district 54-40 two years later. However, Harkey's time on the board, which administers tax collection across the state, hasn't gone smoothly at all. Last year, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law taking away much of the board's powers after years of problems. Notably, the board has been accused of placing $350 million in sales taxes into the wrong accounts and misallocating money.
Many of these issues predate Harkey's time on the board, but her antics haven't escape notice. In Nov. 2016, someone on her staff successfully requested that 98 board employees be redirected from their duties and instead handle routine tasks at a conference in Harkey's district. Harkey denied she had any role in what happened, saying it was handled by people she was "not in charge of." Harkey argued that, while there were clearly issues at the board, "I think the current structure of the BOE is really very good," but the state's audit tells quite another story.
● MI-09: This week, Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner announced he would stay out of the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Sandy Levin. The August primary remains a three-way contest between attorney Andy Levin, who is the congressman's son; state Sen. Steve Bieda; and former state Rep. Ellen Lipton. This suburban Detroit seat backed Clinton 51-44, and it looks unlikely to be a GOP target.
● MS-03: This week, two more Republicans entered the GOP primary for this very red central Mississippi seat. Whit Hughes, the president of the Baptist Health Foundation and the chief development officer of Baptist Health Systems, announced he would run to replace retiring Rep. Gregg Harper, and it looks like he has some important connections.
Notably, Hughes was Haley Barbour's finance chairman during his successful 2003 race for governor, and he went on to be deputy director of the Mississippi Development Authority. Hughes also was a prominent member of the Mississippi State University's 1996 basketball team, which made it to the Final Four. MSU itself is located in the 3rd District, and the Clarion Ledger previously wrote that Hughes has deep connections to the reportedly "powerful" MSU fundraising PAC Bully Bloc.
Investment manager Perry Parker also joined the primary this week, though it's not clear if he has the connections to run a serious race here. Michael Guest, the district attorney of Madison and Rankin Counties, has also been running for weeks. A number of other Republicans could jump in before the early March filing deadline, but the Clarion Ledger reports that state Rep. Andy Gipson, lobbyist Rhonda Keenum, and businessman Gerard Gibert have all decided not to get in. If no one takes a majority in the June 5 primary, there will be a runoff three weeks later.
● NJ-02: Will Cunningham, a former staffer to Sen. Cory Booker, is the latest Democrat to throw his hat into the ring for the open seat of outgoing GOP Rep. Frank LoBiondo. Cunningham has worked as a middle school history teacher and an investigator for the House Oversight Committee, but he does not appear to have run for office before. Cunningham joins a primary in which state Sen. Jeff Van Drew likely starts off as a heavy favorite. The winner will be trying to flip this South Jersey district, which flipped from 54-45 Obama to 51-46 Trump.
● NM-02: Water-rights attorney Xochitl Torres Small has joined the Democratic primary for New Mexico's open 2nd District, which GOP Rep. Steve Pearce is leaving to run for governor. Torres Small is a former staffer for Democratic Sen. Tom Udall, and her husband is Democratic state Rep. Nathan Small, meaning she should have some good connections in state politics. Indeed, Torres Small kicked off her campaign with endorsements from several prominent legislators, county party chairs, and local officials in this sprawling southern New Mexico district. Democrats had been struggling to land a heavyweight candidate for seat, which voted 50-40 for Trump but has a large Latino population, making it ripe for an upset in this environment with the right nominee.
Torres Small joins a Democratic primary that includes Madeleine Hildebrandt, whom we previously had not written about. However, Hildebrandt raised a decent $132,000 in the fourth quarter, so she may have the potential to run a good race. Hildebrandt is a professor and a Coast Guard veteran, and she appears to be making her first bid for public office. In the meantime, attorney David Baake and former pharmaceutical executive Tony Martinez have ended their campaigns after struggling to gain traction in the Democratic primary.
● NY-23: Retired cardiologist Linda Andrei announced on Tuesday that she would seek the Democratic nomination to take on GOP Rep. Tom Reed, and unlike one of her former primary opponents, she's not going around the district campaigning in character as Mark Twain. However, Andrei did say she'd raised $132,000 since she started fundraising in mid-December.
This upstate seat, which includes the liberal college town of Ithaca and nearby conservative areas, went from 50-48 Romney to 55-40 Trump. In 2012, Reed won re-election by a surprisingly close 52-48 margin against a candidate with little national support, and Democrats made a more serious effort to take him out over the next two cycles. However, Reed decisively won during the 2014 GOP wave, and he had little to worry about as Trump romped to victory here two years later. But Democrats will want a serious candidate in case this seat snaps back, and at least until now, they didn't have one.
Until recently, the most well-known Democratic hopeful had been Ulysses Town Board member John Hertzler, who played Klingon General Martok on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine under the stage name J.G. Hertzler. Hertzler kicked off his campaign against Reed by saying he'd be "making appearances thoughout [sic] the district of 11 counties, sometimes in my birth persona as JG Hertzler and at other times I will endeavor to present my ideas and policies through the brilliant humorist for all ages, Citizen Twain."
As they say in Martok's home in the Ketha lowlands, that strategy wasn't exactly a recipe for kapla, and in any event, Hertzler left the Democratic Party in November and is now running as an independent. Team Blue is hardly losing a viable candidate, though. Several other Democrats are running as themselves, but they hadn't raised much money by the end of September.
● PA-09: PoliticsPA has reported that state House Majority Leader Dave Reed will join the fray in the Republican primary for Pennsylvania's 9th District, where Rep. Bill Shuster is retiring, although Reed has yet to confirm things publicly. Reed has served in the state House ever since gettomg elected at just 24 years old back in 2002, and he has been the majority leader since the 2014 elections. This Altoona-based district is dark-red and should easily remain in GOP hands.
● PA-15: Businessman Dan David is the latest Republican to announce his candidacy for the open 15th District to succeed GOP Rep. Charlie Dent. David, a first-time candidate, says he felt compelled to run because Congress won't take action to strengthen financial protections against Chinese companies that defraud foreign investors, which is probably not an issue that most voters can relate to.
David joins a crowded GOP field that includes state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries, Lehigh County Commissioner Marty Nothstein, former Lehigh County Commissioner Dean Browning, and former CIA officer Scott Uehlinger. This Lehigh Valley-based district favored Trump by 52-44 and could be competitive in November.
● VA-06: When Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte announced in November that he wouldn't seek a 14th term in this very red Shenandoah Valley seat, local Republican leaders had a choice. They could have decided to pick their nominee through a traditional state-run primary, where the date would have been set far in advance, where as many interested voters could participate as possible, and where the rules would be clear. Instead, they've chosen to hold a party convention, where absolutely none of these things are true, and one major candidate is now accusing the GOP of trying to "rig" the process against him.
We'll start with that last bit first, which feels like it should be a passage of a Robert Caro book. Del. Ben Cline arguably is the frontrunner in the eight-person field to succeed Goodlatte, but he got some bad news this month. It wasn't the announcement that the 6th District Republican Party Committee had voted to conduct a convention instead of a primary, since that move was both widely expected and Cline was happy with it. However, party leaders also decided that there would only be one round of voting, meaning that the candidate earning a bare plurality of delegate support would win the GOP nomination outright.
Usually, party conventions (in Virginia and elsewhere) require a candidate to earn a majority of the delegates' support to win, which typically requires multiple rounds of balloting where the lowest vote-getters drop off and their supporters pick again from the remaining field. Cline was not happy with this unorthodox change. In fact, he went ballistic.
Cline charged that party leaders were attempting "to rig the convention to help their chosen candidate because they do not believe their candidate of choice is strong enough to win a majority of delegates under the standard Convention rules." Cline also argued that the convention delegates themselves needed to be the ones to set the convention rules, and the former state party's general counsel even agreed with him. But right now, it's entirely unclear as to when this very important rules decision will be made, or who will be the one to make it.
Cline suspects the rival that local GOP poobahs are trying boost is Republican National Committee Member Cynthia Dunbar, who attracted national attention in 2015 when her right-wing textbook company published a volume called Mexican American Heritage that was replete with racist passages. And Cline seems to be correct. As the Roanoke Times' Carmen Forman reports, it was a 6th District Committee vice chair and Dunbar ally, Matt Tederick, who was the one that pushed for the rules change, arguing, "There's a lot of gamesmanship that takes place within the establishment career politicians and what the vote by plurality has done is eliminate this."
And Tederick didn't stop there:
Presenting his case for the rules change, Tederick cited an anecdote in which the Dunbar campaign received a phone call from a lawyer in Washington, D.C. The lawyer said he had been encouraged to run in the 6th District by a group called Anybody But Dunbar. The group instructed the lawyer to campaign as normal, but throw his support behind fellow candidate Del. Ben Cline upon losing at the convention, Tederick said.
Tederick's tale of scary calls from D.C. swamp creatures was enough to get the GOP committee to vote 18-10 to require one ballot. Dunbar was very happy with how things turned out, and she tweeted, "Plurality = no backroom deals. Our campaign is proud to see that the committee is fighting back against the tricks of the swamp."
However, some would-be swamp-drainers are going to need to miss the May 19 convention no matter how much they might want to attend. Liberty University, which is a major bastion of the religious right in the district, is holding its commencement that day, as is Mary Baldwin University (home of the Fighting Squirrels), which will likely keep several would-be delegates from showing up to the convention.
Unlike the attempted majority rules change, there's no indication that the convention was scheduled so as to help or hurt any particular candidate, though it's worth noting that Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr. is supporting Cline. Still, this is a problem that would have been avoided with regular primary, where voters can vote absentee if they can't make it to the polls on Election Day.
The good news for the GOP (such as it is) is that all of these machinations probably won't hurt them in the fall regardless of who emerges from the convention or how ugly their victory is. This district supported Mitt Romney by a 60-40 margin and Trump by an even wider 60-35 spread. Even in a wave year, it's going to be an incredibly stubborn target. While Democrat Ralph Northam won last year's governor's race 54-45 statewide, he lost the 6th District 60-39.
However, both parties in Virginia often elect to pick their nominees through conventions in other, more competitive, seats. We've always opposed this system for the simple fact that it takes power away from regular voters and puts it into the hands of party insiders. And as this twisted saga demonstrates, the losing candidates at conventions can often make a case that the process was, in fact, tilted against them, whether unintentionally or by design.
In this very red seat, the GOP can probably afford for hurt feelings to linger, but this kind of division could be damaging for a party's chances in a competitive general election. Most voters in America get to pick their nominees through a primary, and Virginians should have that chance, too, instead of having to deal with this kind of backroom chaos.
● VA-10: The June Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock is already incredibly expensive and crowded, but there may be room for one more. CNN's Ryan Nobles tweeted that Susan Platt, who served as Joe Biden's chief of staff in the Senate in the 1990s, is considering a bid. Platt hasn't said anything publicly yet, but she did retweet Nobles' report. Platt ran for lieutenant governor last year and lost the primary 49-39 to eventual winner Justin Fairfax. This Northern Virginia seat went from 50-49 Romney to 52-42 Clinton, and Comstock is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the House.
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