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
● VA-Sen: His name hadn't previously surfaced as a possible Senate candidate, but GOP Rep. Scott Taylor is apparently thinking about running against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine this year. That news comes to us thanks to a fantastic catch by Supun Liyanage, who spotted an exchange in a Facebook post that Taylor himself had published on Saturday about the government shutdown. In that thread, a commenter asked Taylor if he would "consider challenging Kaine," to which Taylor (using his verified account) responded, "This kind of stuff"—presumably referring to the shutdown—"certainly makes one consider."
Campaign Action
While Taylor, a former Navy SEAL who was a member of the state House before getting elected to Congress in 2016, is only in his first term, he'd be a cut above the current crop of GOP candidates. That field includes Confederate fanboy Corey Stewart, crazypants minister E.W. Jackson, and state Del. Nick Freitas, whose chances of beating the far better-known Stewart and Jackson seem slim. However, if Taylor were to seek a promotion, he, too, might face a tough time winning a GOP primary over more base-pleasing options like Jackson and Stewart. And even if he did emerge with the nomination, he'd still be a heavy underdog against Kaine, given the political environment and Virginia's continued trend toward Democrats.
What's more, he'd cause massive headaches for House Republicans. Taylor's 2nd District, which is based in Virginia Beach, went for Trump by a fairly narrow 49-45 margin, and last year, Democrat Ralph Northam actually carried it 51-47 in his successful race for governor. Democrats also recently recruited a solid candidate in Navy veteran and small business owner Elaine Luria. For all we know, Taylor might not be in any way serious about a Senate run—politicians say they're "considering" something 10 times as often as they actually do anything. But someone ought to follow up with him to see if there's any there there.
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. Note that tomorrow (Friday) is the last day we'll list out individual House numbers for the fourth quarter; after that, they'll all go in our big roundup. So if you're working for a congressional campaign and want to see your haul listed here, get it to us, stat!
● CA-01: Jessica Holcombe (D): $146,000 raised, $145,000 cash-on-hand
● CO-06: Mike Coffman (R-inc): $241,000 raised, $840,000 cash-on-hand
● IN-04: Diego Morales (R): $240,000 raised
● NY-21: Tanya Boone (D): $140,000 raised
● PA-06: Chrissy Houlahan (D): $417,000 raised, $950,000 cash-on-hand
● PA-17: John Chrin (R): $46,000 raised, additional $314,000 self-funded, $915,000 cash-on-hand
Senate
● IN-Sen: GOP Rep. Todd Rokita is out with another poll arguing he's the favorite in the May primary to take on Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. The GS Strategy Group survey gives Rokita the lead with 24 percent of the vote, while wealthy former state Rep. Mike Braun and Rep. Luke Messer each take 9. Rokita previously released a poll in July (also from GS Strategy) that gave him a smaller 21-14 edge over Messer, while Braun barely registered with less than 1 percent.
Braun began the campaign with little name recognition but began advertising early, so it makes sense that he's made up ground. However, it's a whole lot more debatable whether Messer actually has lost support. While neither congressman has begun airing ads, both of them have attracted some bad headlines over the course of the campaign. In August, Politico published a detailed memo from Rokita's office describing how he was to be chauffeured around his district. The whole thing was a bit embarrassing, but Rokita struck back in November after news broke that Messer co-owns his Indiana residence with his mother while his family now lives in the D.C. area.
Rokita's poll argues that this line of attack against Messer will be fatal, but it's less clear if any of these stories have dealt either of them any damage as yet. Notably, Rokita's poll gives himself a 35-6 favorable rating, almost identical to his 34-8 score in July, but it leaves out Braun and Messer's numbers. Six months ago, Messer released a poll showing a 23-23 tie with Rokita, which may have promoted Rokita to leak his own numbers back then. We'll see if Messer feels compelled to respond to this latest survey.
The one thing that isn't in doubt is that the race between Rokita and Messer will be very nasty. While the two have similar voting records, the two former college classmates have a very long and personal animosity. As Politico wrote last year, the local GOP establishment likes Messer, a former state party executive director, but feels very differently about Rokita. As secretary of state during the last decade, Rokita wanted to make it a felony for the legislature to take into account partisan considerations during redistricting. (Talk about a fierce opponent of gerrymandering!) Rokita's proposal never went anywhere, but it did anger GOP state lawmakers.
Rokita was elected to the House in 2010, and when lawmakers redrew Indiana's congressional districts the next cycle, they drew Rokita's home 500 yards outside of his seat. Legislators called it a coincidence, but Rokita called it "comeuppance." Messer, who was a football player while Rokita was on the newspaper at Wabash College, has also had a better relationship with the party leadership in the House. One GOP operative summed up Rokita's feelings about their relationship to Politico saying, "Todd has a sense that 'Messer gets all the breaks and I don't.'"
Messer, meanwhile, alluded to his own feelings about Rokita in October, when he told the Journal & Courier, "I've known him since he was 19. I know how he behaves." Braun's path to victory may depend on Rokita and Messer nuking one another while laying off him, and the two congressman seem determined to oblige him.
● TX-Sen: Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke is waging an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, and last month, Cruz's team recently dropped a survey giving the senator a 52-34 lead. O'Rourke's allies at End Citizens United are now out with a PPP poll placing the incumbent below the 50 percent mark and sporting a smaller 45-37 edge. The poll finds Cruz underwater with a 38-49 favorable rating and Trump also in no great shakes with a 45-48 score, while O'Rourke posts a 20-19 rating.
● WV-Sen: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said all the way back in July that he'd seek re-election, and he reaffirmed on Tuesday that he was running. However, the New York Times' Jonathan Martin reports that in the days before Manchin's latest pronouncement, Senate Democrats were panicked that the senator was about to change his mind and leave them without a candidate in what's become a very nasty state for the party. Martin writes that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who is facing a tough race of her own in North Dakota, lobbied other moderates to encourage Manchin to run again, but as late as Tuesday morning, other senators thought he was likely to retire.
Manchin told Martin that he's made it very clear to Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he's frustrated in D.C. However, Manchin says that, after moderates helped end the government shutdown, he decided "that, goddamn it, the place is much better than we give it credit for." Manchin also hinted that his displeasure with the shutdown was leading him towards the exit, saying, "I was very vocal" and "they read between the lines."
Manchin will be in a top target in a state that backed Trump 68-26, but what limited polling there is says the former governor is still well-liked at home. West Virginia's filing deadline is Jan. 27, so if Manchin had decided to bail now, this seat would almost certainly have turned into an automatic GOP pickup. But Manchin probably doesn't mind any chance to show his conservative constituents that he's a pain in the ass for the Democratic leadership.
A few Republicans are competing to take on the incumbent. The two main contenders in the May primary are Rep. Evan Jenkins and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who have spent months fighting over which one of them is the true conservative. The Senate Conservatives Fund, which often backs candidates disliked by the party leadership, threw its support behind Morrisey this week, though more establishment groups aren't supporting Jenkins right now. Coal billionaire Don Blankenship, who is still on probation after spending time in prison for violating federal mine safety laws, is also in.
Gubernatorial
● HI-Gov: On Wednesday, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard endorsed her colleague Rep. Colleen Hanabusa over Gov. David Ige in the August Democratic primary. Gabbard says she had decided to endorse Hanabusa before Hawaii's notorious false ballistic missile alert went out on Jan. 13, an incident that has left Ige looking more vulnerable than ever. (We just can't get over that he said it took him so long to inform the public the warning was in error because he had forgotten his Twitter password.) However, Gabbard didn't shy away from mentioning what happened and argued that Hanabusa would provide some badly needed leadership.
Gabbard is often at odds with national Democratic leaders (we also haven't forgotten about her decision to meet with and defend Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad), but this time, she's seeing eye-to-eye with many state Democratic leaders. While the missile alert may wind up being remembered as the thing that ended Ige's governorship, the reality is a bit more complicated. That's because, while there's no doubt the debacle did his re-election bid some serious damage, Ige was already in real trouble long ago—and just a few years after Ige himself unseated Gov. Neil Abercrombie by a punishing 67-31 margin in the 2014 Democratic primary.
As Daily Kos Elections community member Skaje explained in an excellent piece just after Ige's win, Abercrombie had managed to offend just about every important major Democratic constituency in the state, and stakeholders backed Ige to get rid of him. However, these same players had little actual loyalty to the new governor, leaving him without much of a base of support when he needed it. That's certainly a problem a lot of other troubled governors can relate to.
Prior to the missile fiasco, Ige made some missteps through his first three years in office. Notably, he fell far short of his pledge to provide air conditioning to 1,000 school classrooms by early 2016, which greatly displeased the powerful Hawaii State Teachers Association and also left parents unhappy. But as Honolulu Civil Beat's Nathan Eagle wrote in 2017, Ige's biggest problem may just be that he never secured any major accomplishments, instead focusing on unexciting things like "eliminating unfunded liabilities" and "updating the tax system."
By contrast, Hanabusa is a longtime Hawaii politician and a protégé of the legendary late Sen. Daniel Inouye, and she's proved quite appealing to some of the powerful local movers-and-shakers who had helped dump Abercrombie and wanted to switch out Ige. Hanabusa already was arguing that Ige had displayed a "deeply troubling" lack of leadership and vision before the missile scare, and this crisis seemed to fit exactly into her narrative for why Hawaii needs change.
Maybe Ige's low-key style could have been enough to secure him renomination in this very blue state before Jan. 13. But now that he's angered pretty much everyone in the state, it's tough to see him beating a well-known and well-connected opponent like Hanabusa.
Back in 2014, Ige made history when he gave Abercrombie the widest primary defeat for any incumbent governor in American history, but unless something very dramatic changes (or Ige drops out of the race), he's on track for another milestone. According to the National Journal's Alex Clearfield, the last time two governors from the same state were ousted in back-to-back primaries was decades ago in Massachusetts. Gov. Michael Dukakis lost his 1978 primary to conservative Democrat Ed King 51-42, but won their 1982 rematch 53-47. And the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier says that there haven't been any other examples since at least 1964. So, David Ige … congrats?
● ID-Gov: Wealthy developer Tommy Ahlquist has been airing TV ads since May for the May 15 GOP primary, and Lt. Gov. Brad Little has now joined in. Little, who has the support of retiring Gov. Butch Otter, has begun what Advertising Analytics tells Politico is a $122,000 buy that will last until early March. His new ad begins with Little saddling up a horse as the narrator explains how he "grew up on an Idaho ranch, and he still works on one today." The narrator goes on to say Little wants to keep government "off our backs," and believes in "faith, honesty, [and] hard work." Rep. Raul Labrador, a notorious tea partying bomb thrower, is also running.
● IL-Gov: Businessman Chris Kennedy knows he just dropped himself into a hole, but he's making the classic mistake of trying to dig himself out of it. A few days ago, Kennedy unaccountably told a reporter that billionaire Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner "should be applauded" for his "willingness to speak truth to power" and was swiftly pilloried by his Democratic primary rivals, venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker and state Sen. Daniel Biss. Now, after lamely claiming he'd been taken out of context (he wasn't), Kennedy says that Rauner's cuts to social services are "reprehensible" and "inhuman" … and that would be fine, if only he'd just stopped there.
Of course, he didn't. Kennedy once again spoke positively of Rauner, saying that the governor was rightly "critical of Mike Madigan and the pay-to-play culture that's present in our state." Mike Madigan, by the way, is the Democratic speaker of the state House. Now, running against the powerful Madigan, whose decades-long tenure is often targeted as the apotheosis of corruption in state politics, might not be the dumbest move politically for someone who wants to cast himself as a reformer. But at best, it's a calculated risk, since it might inspire Madigan to do everything he can to keep Kennedy from winning the nomination. But whether or not Madigan cares, to take this tack while alternately praising and then criticizing Rauner is just stupid as all get-out for any Democrat.
Kennedy continued to cement his reputation as a none-too-adept campaigner at a debate on Tuesday night, when a moderator asked both him and Pritzker to "name a positive thing your opponent has brought to this race." Pritzker courteously said he admired Kennedy's work on the Special Olympics, but Kennedy awkwardly paused before using the opportunity to attack Pritzker. "I mean, I'm challenged in this election because, as Democrats, we believe government can be our ally, and when J.B. emerges as the poster child of all that's wrong with the corrupt system in our state, it's difficult for me to heap praise on him. And that's where I unfortunately need to end it."
That has to be one of the most ungracious things ever said in a debate. Kennedy found it in him to offer kind words about Rauner but not Pritzker? Hell, even Hillary Clinton managed to come up with a nice thing to say about Donald Trump in their second debate! Kennedy says he apologized to Pritzker afterwards, but man is that ever maladroit. Can't say we're surprised, though.
● KS-Gov: Just ugh. Independent Greg Orman, who'd technically been in "exploratory" mode since last month, has now officially kicked off his campaign for governor, and it's just awful news for Democrats. That's because the wealthy Orman is indelibly associated with the left side of the political spectrum after his 2014 bid for Senate, in which Democrats eased out their own nominee and consolidated behind Orman, when he likewise ran as an independent.
And it's particularly distressing because Kansas Democrats have—or perhaps had—a genuine opportunity to take the governor's mansion, thanks to the historic unpopularity of GOP Gov. Sam Brownback, whose radical tax cuts proved so disastrous to the state's economy that members of his own party in the legislature wound up rescinding them last year.
Even Brownback himself is getting out of dodge: After half a year of delays and even a renomination, his appointment to serve as Donald Trump's ambassador for religious freedom just finally mustered enough support from the Senate to win confirmation. (Indeed, so disliked is Brownback by his former colleagues—he served 14 years as a senator before becoming governor—that Mike Pence had to be summoned to break a 49-49 tie in his favor.)
Just as soon as Brownback departs (where is that embassy, by the way?), his lieutenant governor, Jeff Colyer, will ascend to the top job, which Colyer himself is seeking for a full term this November. Indeed, Colyer had been acting as governor-in-name-only for some time, as Brownback had grown increasingly uninterested in his actual job and had been handing off duties to his number two. Colyer, though, faces a primary with half a dozen opponents, among them Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is best known as the nation's leading crusader for vote suppression.
As for Democrats, well, in a sign of how enthusiastic they'd been about this race, no fewer than four notable candidates had entered: former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, state House Minority Leader Jim Ward, former state Secretary of Agriculture Josh Svaty, and, most recently, state Sen. Laura Kelly. In fact, this is the first time Democrats have hosted a contested primary for governor since 1998. Sadly, it's hard to see a path now with the headstrong Orman mucking things up. The best hope for Team Blue is that he'll either fade away or drop out, but given that he's already almost outraised the entire Democratic field combined, that seems unlikely.
● MI-Gov, MI-Sen: On behalf of the Detroit News and local news station WDIV, the Glengariff Group takes a look at both of this year's top statewide races. In the governor's race, they test GOP Attorney General Bill Schuette against two Democrats, former Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer and former Detroit Health Commissioner Abdul El-Sayed. They give Whitmer a 40-33 lead but have El-Sayed trailing Schuette 38-34. Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley and wealthy businessman Shri Thanedar, who is seeking the Democratic nod, were not tested. In the Senate race, meanwhile, Glengariff finds Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow leading venture capitalist Sandy Pensler and businessman John James by the same 51-30 margin.
Overall it's a very good poll for Michigan Democrats, but there's a massive caveat. The horserace matchups were presented after a barrage of other questions, including whether Trump is qualified to be president, whether Trump's comments about accepting immigrants from other nations (the infamous "shithole countries" remark) was racist or not, and whether things have gotten better or worse for the state since termed-out GOP Gov. Rick Snyder took office. As we always say, it's better to ask about the horserace early rather than risk allowing other questions to influence respondents one way or another.
● OH-Gov: We always thought that termed-out Gov. John Kasich's habit of criticizing Trump would make him more of a liability than an asset in Ohio GOP primaries, but this is something else. Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor was Kasich's running mate in his two campaigns for governor, she stumped on behalf of his doomed 2016 presidential bid, and she has the governor's endorsement in the campaign to succeed him … except she doesn't want you to know that last bit.
The Cincinnati Enquirer's Jessie Balmert writes that last week, Taylor addressed a group of Clermont County Republicans and was asked how she'd separate herself from Kasich in a conservative part of the state. Clermont County GOP chairman Dave Uible recounts that Taylor "said that she has not seen the governor for about a year and that Kasich is endorsing [Mike] DeWine," who is Ohio's attorney general and Taylor's rival in the May primary. Taylor's comment did not go unnoticed, with another party official saying, "I about fell off my chair, because it's widely known that John Kasich had endorsed Mary Taylor."
DeWine's team wasted zero time rubbing Kasich's support in Taylor's face. Secretary of State Jon Husted, who is DeWine's running mate, appeared next at the meeting and pulled up an article on his phone titled, "John Kasich backs Mary Taylor for Ohio governor. Will it help?" The answer seems to be a resounding no, but Taylor apparently has only come to that conclusion quite recently. The Enquirer's Jason Williams reminds us that Taylor herself said less than a year ago, "I absolutely welcome and want his endorsement."
However, this move, while clumsy, wasn't even the first time that Taylor tried to portray DeWine as the Kasich candidate. Last week, she told the Columbus Dispatch that the majority of the governor's team was for DeWine, adding, "I expect that that's the way it's going to continue, and we're going to continue to run this race and be the alternative to the establishment."
Ironically, Taylor's very strange routine may have helped her at the Clermont meeting. The county party endorsed her that night, and Uible even said that she won their support because she distanced herself from Kasich. Still, it's going to be very, very tough for Taylor to win as the anti-Kasich candidate in May if she chooses to campaign that way.
For one thing, the governor's team doesn't seem interested in playing along. A Kasich spokesperson said that, while Taylor insisted she hadn't seen to the governor in the last year, "The governor and lieutenant governor have certainly talked many times over the past year." And despite what Taylor claims, it turns out she and Kasich have seen each other quite a bit. Balmert writes that state records show that the two were in the same room at least eight times in the first half of 2017, most recently in June.
Taylor already had a very difficult path to victory against DeWine, and unless all Republican primary voters are as gullible as the Clermont GOP members seem to be, we're struggling to see how she still has any path.
House
● AZ-01: Former Air Force pilot Wendy Rogers is back for her fourth House campaign in a row. Rogers will seek the GOP nomination to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran in a competitive seat that takes up much of northern Arizona and part of the Tucson suburbs. Rogers ran in the primary here last cycle and finished third with 22 percent of the vote, with winner Paul Babeu taking 31. Before that, Rogers narrowly lost a primary in 2012 for the Tempe-area 9th and lost the 2014 general election to Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema 55-42 in that same district two years later.
Trump narrowly carried O'Halleran's seat, and Team Red naturally wants to target it, though whether they'll be able to in a cycle like this one remains a question. Rogers joins state Sen. Steve Smith and farmer Tiffany Shedd in the late August primary. Smith struggled with fundraising through much of 2017, while Shedd entered the race during the fourth quarter, so she still has yet to report her opening fundraising numbers.
● CA-39: Slowly but surely, Navy veteran Gil Cisneros has been rolling up endorsements from the Democratic members of California's congressional delegation. His latest (and seventh overall) comes from Rep. Norma Torres, who represents the state's 35th District, which is just next door to the 39th, a seat that recently became open when GOP Rep. Ed Royce unexpectedly announced his retirement. Cisneros faces several other Democrats and a growing field of Republicans who will all vie against one another in June's top-two primary.
● MI-13: Hedge fund manager John Conyers III, who'd been considering a bid to succeed his father, former Rep. John Conyers, has now filed paperwork with the FEC to create a campaign committee, but he still hasn't formally announced that he's running. The elder Conyers pre-endorsed his 27-year-old son on his way out the door last month, but that hasn't dissuaded a ton of other candidates from expressing interest in this safely blue Detroit-based seat. The only two notable Democrats actually in the race so far, though, are state Sens. Coleman Young II and Ian Conyers, who is the former congressman's grand-nephew.
● NY-18: Democratic Rep. Sean Maloney represents a Hudson Valley seat that swung from 51-47 Obama to 49-47 Trump, but he hasn't attracted any noteworthy GOP opposition yet. However, GOP Orange County Legislator James O'Donnell has scheduled a news conference next week, and the local media says he'll announce he'll challenge Maloney.
Orange County makes up about half of this seat, so it's not a bad perch from which to launch a campaign. Before he was in government, O'Donnell was chief of police for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which governs, among other things, the New York City subway), a post he held during the September 11 attacks. O'Donnell's background could help him stand out in a general election, but he'll need a lot to go right to win against the well-connected Maloney in what's shaping up to be a rough year for Team Red.
● NY-21: Oncologist David Mastrianni just joined the extremely crowded Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik in Upstate New York's vast 21st Congressional District, though so far, no candidates have particularly stood out from the rest of the field, which now numbers nine. We'll get something of a sense when quarterly fundraising reports are filed at the end of the month, though as ever, money only ever tells part of the story, at best.
● PA-07: According to the Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman, "senior Republicans are pressuring" GOP Rep. Pat Meehan to retire before Pennsylvania's candidate filing deadline, which is coming up pretty soon on March 6. But Meehan, whom we recently learned was accused of sexual harassment by a former staffer and spent thousands in taxpayer dollars to settle a complaint she brought, seems utterly delusional. Not only has he tried to defend his behavior by saying he believed the aide was his "soul mate" (gag), he's now painting himself as the victim.
Rather infamously, Meehan sent his aide a hand-written letter in which, among other things, he called her "a complete partner to me." But in a new interview with the New York Times that his staff inexplicably allowed him to conduct, Meehan declared that the staffer had "invited" his communications and added, "That I would find later that that was not something that she was comfortable with, really hurts me." Poor freaking guy! Gawd, what utterly clueless male behavior.
Even more astonishingly, it appears that Meehan's infatuation with this aide might have even swayed his votes as a lawmaker. As the Times notes, Meehan dated his letter the same day the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which Meehan voted against. In his note, Meehan wrote:
"As I walked this evening and glanced over at the White House I smiled at the irony that on a day that I had to say 'no' to the President and to the Speaker of the House, I got to say 'yes' to you. I hope that the former will be judged as a vote of conscience and the latter as an expression of care."
The Times says that an unnamed "[s]ome saw the former aide's influence in Mr. Meehan's decision to buck his party's leadership," though Meehan claims the "'yes' to you" was meant to signify his support for the aide's relationship with a new boyfriend—a development that had made him feel jealous, by his own admission. Good luck to any Republicans—senior, junior, sophomore, what have you—who try to get this deeply deranged man to do the right thing.
● PA-08: Wealthy attorney Scott Wallace, who had been considering a run against GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's swingy 8th Congressional District, officially kicked off his campaign on Wednesday. Fitzpatrick tried to ding Wallace as some sort of carpetbagger, snarking, "We welcome him to Pennsylvania and wish him well settling into his residence."
But it might be hard to make that charge stick: "I live in the very same house where I was born and raised and I'm proud of it," Wallace fired back. "My children's height marks are notched on the wall right next to the ones for myself and my siblings." Wallace will face Navy veteran Rachel Reddick and environmentalist Steve Bacher in the May 15 Democratic primary.
● TN-06: This week, a new candidate joined what had been a quiet GOP primary to succeed Rep. Diane Black, who is leaving to run for governor, in the safely red 6th Congressional District in Middle Tennessee. Former Chancery Court Judge Bob Corlew, who retired from the bench in 2014, announced he would run and planned to put seven figures of his own money into his bid. Corlew, who also served in the Army, is also a past president of the Lions Club International, the well-known service organization.
But Corlew is better known for his involvement in a 2010 lawsuit that generated international attention. When members of the local Muslim community sought to build a new Islamic center in the city of Murfreesboro (which is located in the neighboring 4th District), a group sued the Rutherford County planning commissioners who had approved it. The suit argued that those behind the center hadn't given the public enough notice before their plan was approved, but there was little question that those seeking to block the center were motivated by Islamophobia. Corlew accepted the argument of the center's opponents, but he was later overruled by higher state courts. The center ultimately did get built in 2012, though it was repeatedly the target of vandals and arsonists for years, from the moment ground was first broken.
While we don't know yet whether religious bigotry will feature in this year's primary, hostility to the center has played a role in this district's politics before. Notably, back when Murfreesboro was still in the 6th District, Black struggled in the 2010 Republican primary against former Rutherford County GOP chair Lou Ann Zelenik, who made opposition to the center, and to Islam in general, her signature issue. Black beat her by just 335 votes. Zelenik came back two years later, after redistricting had moved Murfreesboro into the 4th, but she once again tried to use opposition to the center against Black. Black brandished her anti-Islam credentials this time, noting she thought that "violent Jihadism" was "not the exception" in Islam anymore, and she won by a considerably stronger 69-30 margin.
Two other noteworthy Republicans are also seeking to succeed Black. John Rose, a businessman who briefly served as state agriculture commissioner, has been doing some self-funding for his campaign. State Rep. Judd Matheny, who infamously tried to ban the practice of Sharia law in Tennessee in 2011, is also in the hunt. Matheny, who also once smashed his car into a flower shop, had $104,000 in his campaign account at the end of September, far less than Rose's $468,000 war-chest. This seat, which includes Nashville's eastern suburbs as well as nearby rural areas, backed Trump 73-24.
● TX-21: Former Bexar County GOP char Robert Stovall is up with what we believe is the first TV commercial ahead of the very crowded March 6 primary to succeed retiring Rep. Lamar Smith in this 52-42 Trump seat. And Stovall's spot has many of the tropes we've already come to expect from ads in the Trump-era, starting with the candidate standing in a swamp he says he wants to drain as he wears a "Make America Great Again" hat.
Stovall, who apparently exits the swamp and changes clothes, goes on to mention his business career as he's shown in what looks like a flower store talking to the woman behind the counter. No, this isn't a parody of The Room's infamous flower shop scene: Stovall actually owns a floral business. Stovall concludes by going back to the undrained swamp and cocking a rifle.
● TX-23: The Texas AFL-CIO, which recently held a convention and issued a series of endorsements for statewide candidates, also gave its backing to former federal prosecutor Jay Hulings, one of three notable Democrats seeking to take on GOP Rep. Will Hurd in Texas' swingy 23rd District. Also running are former USDA official Judy Canales and former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones, who is hoping to become the first Filipina-American in Congress. The primary is March 6, with a runoff on May 22 if no one clears 50 percent.
Legislative
● Special Elections: In the lone legislative special election on Tuesday night, for Pennsylvania's 35th State House District in the Pittsburgh area, Democrat Austin Davis absolutely crushed Republican Fawn Walker-Montgomery by a 74-26 margin. That's also an enormous 29-point over-performance compared to Hillary Clinton's 58-39 win here, and it also beat Barack Obama's 64-35 victory by 19 points. What's more, as Adam Bonin points out, the prior Democratic incumbent, Marc Gergely, "didn't pass away, or take some other job. He pleaded guilty to corruption charges for helping a guy nicknamed 'Porky' illegally place video poker machines in bars." Yet in spite of that, voters still went even more Democratic.
Mayoral
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: On Tuesday night, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors named termed-out Supervisor Mark Farrell as the city's interim mayor, following the death last year of Mayor Ed Lee. Farrell will serve until the June special election for the final year-and-a-half of Lee's term. Candidate filing for the special closed weeks ago, and Farrell is not running, which partly explains why he was chosen. The board first voted down Supervisor London Breed, who had been serving as acting mayor in the month since Lee's death, and unlike Farrell, is running for mayor. After the board then voted to install Farrell, a white venture capitalist who represents one of the city's most prosperous areas, over Breed, who was the first black woman to serve as the city's mayor and had grown up in public housing, there were cries of racism and sexism from the audience.
However, intra-city politics seemed to play the biggest role in what transpired. Elections in this very Democratic city often break down into battles between the moderates, who count both Breed and Farrell in their ranks, and progressives. Both factions would be considered hard-core liberals almost anywhere else in America, but there are real differences between them on the local level. As the San Francisco Chronicle's Rachel Swan recently explained, the two wings tend to be divided on the issues of land use, taxation, and regulation. "Progressives push for more affordable housing, tighter restrictions on tech companies, and higher taxes for corporations," explained Swan. "Moderates tend to be pro-development, pro-tech, and pro-business." Moderates have controlled City Hall since the early 1990s, and progressives very much want to change that in June.
Farrell had been planning to run in the regularly scheduled 2019 race to succeed the termed-out Lee, and under those circumstances, progressive politicians wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him. But in an odd twist, it was the progressive members of the board who voted to make Farrell the interim mayor in order to make sure that Breed didn't have the advantage of incumbency in June.
But the progressives knew how bad the optics were in swapping Breed out for Farrell, so they tried to argue that it was Breed's wealthy white allies that made her an unacceptable choice. Supervisor Hillary Ronen notably declared that the "same white men" who had created a city where poor people and people of color couldn't afford in the city "are enthusiastically supporting your candidacy, London Breed."
Ronen specifically called out tech billionaire Ron Conway, a prominent Lee supporter who is backing Breed. Conway, who has helped finance groups to support moderate candidates in local elections, is reviled by progressives, who say his policy preferences favor the tech industry at the expense of everyone else. There had also been reports that Conway was pressuring moderate supervisors to vote for Breed and even used Lee's funeral to stump for her, which only encouraged progressives to do whatever they could to stop her on Tuesday.
Now, though, it's on to the special election. Breed is one of few noteworthy candidates in the race, all of whom are Democrats. Former state Sen. Mark Leno, who represented the entire city in the legislature until he was termed-out in 2016, and Supervisor Jane Kim, who lost a tight all-Democratic general election to succeed Leno, appear to be Breed's two main rivals. Former Supervisor Angela Alioto, the daughter of a former mayor and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor herself in 1991 and 2003, is also running, but she looks like a longshot.
Both Leno and Kim are progressives, and under a traditional American electoral system, they could cost each other support and allow a moderate like Breed to win. (Alioto, somewhat confusingly, calls herself a "moderate liberal.") But San Francisco elects its mayors via instant-runoff voting, where voters are allowed to rank their choices. If no one takes a majority of first-place votes, then second and third choices are redistributed from the candidates with the fewest votes to those still remaining. That means even if Leno and Kim split the first-place vote, there's a good chance that one will pick up second-place votes from the other. How the final outcome will look, though, is hard to say, as we haven't yet seen any polls that try to mimic the instant-runoff process.
