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.
● AZ-08: Arizona's 8th Congressional District held its primaries on Tuesday for the April 24 special election to fill the seat of disgraced former GOP Rep. Trent Franks. We'll talk about this contest in the next Digest, but here is a link to the results.
Leading Off
● TN-Sen: After two embarrassing weeks, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker's team confirmed that he would not run for re-election after all. Corker had announced back in September that he would retire, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn quickly emerged as the clear frontrunner in the GOP primary to succeed him. Corker took advantage of his retirement to get into fights with Donald Trump, though he still remained a loyal vote for him. Corker notably called the White House "an adult day care center" and suggested that Trump's recklessness could put the country "on the path to World War III," and Trump fired back by labeling the senator "Liddle Bob Corker."
Campaign Action
But tensions between the two reportedly eased, and that seems to have convinced Corker that he could actually run for re-election after all with Trump's support. However, Blackburn made it very clear that she would stay in the race no matter what, and her allies released poll after poll showing her destroying Corker in a hypothetical primary. Corker hoped that if he could grovel his way back into Trump's good graces, he'd be rewarded with an endorsement that could completely rehabilitate his standing with Tennessee Republicans.
However, Politico reports that the White House made it clear to Corker that Trump wouldn't get involved in a primary, and he eventually seems to have gotten the message. Corker's allies also suggested that he'd make a stronger general election opponent against former Gov. Phil Bredesen, but most prominent GOP establishment figures reportedly had no problem with having Blackburn as their nominee.
This whole episode leaves Blackburn in an even stronger position than she was in before. Polls showed Blackburn dominating former Rep. Stephen Fincher in a primary, but Fincher at least had the money to put up a fight. But Fincher dropped out a week ago and said he wanted Corker to run. The only other noteworthy Republican who is running is wealthy ophthalmologist Rolando Toyos, but he had a not-so-noteworthy $17,000 in the bank at the end of December. Tennessee's candidate filing deadline is April 5, but it looks unlikely that anyone will give Blackburn a formidable primary challenge at this point.
Senate
● FL-Sen, FL-Gov: In their first poll of a hypothetical race between Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and term-limited GOP Gov. Rick Scott, Quinnipiac finds the incumbent with a 46-42 lead over his would-be challenger. Nelson also posts a healthy 48-34 job approval rating, though Scott is also above water, with a 49-40 score. In fact, that's the highest-ever total (though not net) approval rating Quinnipiac has ever found for Scott.
In a way, though, that might actually be good news for Nelson, since Scott appears to be doing fairly well with voters but still trails in the horserace matchup. (Incidentally, following his disastrous CNN town hall on gun safety, Marco Rubio's job approval has reached its all-time low, a disastrous 38-53, so we know that Scott isn't simply benefiting from a lucky poll.) Meanwhile, Trump remains unpopular with a 42-54 rating.
One other interesting detail from this survey involves the gubernatorial race. Quinnipiac wisely didn't bother testing any head-to-heads between potential GOP and Democratic candidates, since all remain virtually unknown to most Floridians. However, in a generic matchup, Democrats hold a surprisingly large 45-37 lead. All the usual caveats about generic polling apply, as always, but that's still a hale sign for Team Blue.
Gubernatorial
● CO-Gov: Former state Sen. Mike Johnston is the first candidate from either party to advertise on TV ahead of the late June primary. The Denver Post says that the Johnston has "spent only a small amount to buy TV time on broadcast and cable stations for ad" and is mostly pushing it online. The commercial features Johnston, who is one of several Democrats running here, pledging to stand up to the NRA.
● FL-Gov: Businessman Chris King hasn't registered much in the early polls of the late August Democratic primary, but he got a stamp of labor approval this week when the American Federation of Government Employees, which has 20,000 members in Florida, endorsed him.
● MI-Gov: Wealthy businessman Shri Thanedar is out with a poll of the August Democratic primary from EPIC-MRA that shows former state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer leading him 34-24; former Detroit Health Commissioner Abdul El-Sayed takes 8, while unheralded businessman Bill Cobbs has 3. Thanedar, who has almost entirely self-funded his bid, has already spent $1.2 million on ads, and he's arguing his spots have helped the first time candidate gain support. We haven't seen any other primary polls in months.
● PA-Gov: Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is up with his first TV spot, and he takes a page from his 2014 primary ads. Wolf is once again shown in a vest and hardhat as the narrator promotes how he "shared profits with his employees," and a woman responds, "That's different!" The commercial then highlights how as governor, Wolf banned members of the administration from taking gifts from lobbyist gifts, and other guy reacts, "That's different!" Also different are Wolf's decision to donate his salary to charity and continue to drive his jeep to work from the same house he lived in.
House
● FL-17: On Monday, state Sen. Greg Steube announced that he would run to succeed retiring Rep. Tom Rooney in this safely red seat. Steube, who served with the Army in Iraq before he was elected to the legislature in 2010, rolled out endorsements from the leaders of the state Senate and from several local county sheriffs.
Steube notably has pushed for loosening any restrictions on firearms, and Sarasota Magazine recently wrote that he's "so familiar with Florida's concealed-carry law that he often quotes it verbatim" and has "proposed allowing those with concealed carry permits to bring guns into airport passenger terminals, on college campuses and on the floor of the state legislature." However, his bills were too much even for the GOP-dominated legislature, and none of them have passed.
Steube is the first major Republican to enter the late August primary for this district, which includes part of the Sarasota area and several inland communities, but he's unlikely to be the last. A few other local politicians have made noises about running here, and the Herald-Tribune writes that state Rep. Julio Gonzalez is "expected" to jump in. However, while state Rep. Joe Gruters didn't rule out a bid, he said he was leaning towards running for Steube's state Senate seat instead.
● GA-06: With Jon Ossoff opting against a second congressional bid, some prominent Democrats are taking sides in the primary to determine who will face off against GOP Rep. Karen Handel this fall. Leading the way is former Sen. Max Cleland, who, along with several other notable Georgia politicians, just gave his support to former newscaster Bobby Kaple. Kaple faces businessman Kevin Abel in the June primary. Ossoff himself has yet to issue an endorsement.
● IL-03: Citizens for a Better Illinois, a NARAL-linked super PAC that's been backing Marie Newman in her challenge to Rep. Dan Lipinski in next month's Democratic primary, just threw down another $166,000 on more TV ads. It's not clear if they've added any new spots to their rotation, so this may just be a re-up of the two negative ads they're already running, hitting Lipinski on reproductive rights and LGBT equality. This brings the PAC's total outlay to a pretty hefty $587,000, with three weeks to go until the election.
● MN-08: Jeff Anderson, who serves as district director to retiring Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan, announced Monday that he has "decided that at this time," he won't run to succeed his boss. That's not quite a no, but Anderson also made it clear that he wants state Rep. Jason Metsa to be the one to run for this competitive open seat. Metsa, who is a Nolan ally, has expressed interest in running, but hasn't committed to it yet. A few other Democrats are also seeking this rural seat in the northeastern Iron Range region, which shifted from 52-46 Obama to 54-39 Trump.
● NH-01: Oh dear lord. Levi Sanders, the 48-year-old son of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, just kicked off a bid for New Hampshire's open 1st Congressional District, and in a word … nope. For starters, Sanders doesn't live anywhere near the 1st: He lives in the small city of Claremont, on the Vermont border, while the district he's hoping to represent occupies the eastern portion of the state. Sure, in some places, this kind of carpetbagging might get greeted with a yawn, but not so in the Granite State. As longtime New Hampshire political analyst Dean Barker observes, it would be "like running for NYC mayor from Buffalo."
If that were all, we'd hardly care. But it's not, by a long shot. Sanders' recent social media postings, very helpfully curated by Barker, are just downright disturbing. He favorably retweeted a video by NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch defending Donald Trump, calling it a "very sophisticated message which taps into the anger and frustration so many feel in working class America"; he declared that former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's order to remove the Confederate flag from state license plates "hurts peoples [sic] rights"; he linked to a piece headlined, "Let's Get Rid of the Term 'White Privilege'"; and he even declared, "There is nothing to say about Hillary except that she has no new ideas and is working closely with a spinster."
As for Sen. Sanders, well, he didn't exactly seem to endorse his child. The senator simply said, "Levi will be running his own campaign, in his own way, with his own ideas." Levi doesn't seem to agree that he's got his own ideas, though: He told Vice that, as between him and his pops, "The basic difference is that I'm a vegetarian and he's not." Well, there is one other distinction: Bernie Sanders has at least won elective office. Levi Sanders is not likely to join that club.
● NJ-02: The GOP has struggled mightily to find a viable candidate for this open 51-45 Trump seat, but they at least now have someone who seems to have access to money. Software engineer Hirsh Singh announced on Tuesday that he was dropping his longshot bid for the Senate and would campaign here instead. Singh took in $1 million during his 2017 campaign for governor, but $950,000 of that was from a loan from his father (Singh was allowed to accept a loan that large because the two shared an address), and he took just 10 percent of the vote. David Wildstein (yes, of Bridgegate infamy) wrote that local party leaders have promised Singh their county organization lines, and that he'd pledged to put in $2 million into his campaign.
Singh doesn't seem like the most impressive of candidates, but no one with much name recognition or connections has stepped up yet. Last week, a local GOP leader said that former Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi, who lost re-election in 2015, was considering, but we've heard nothing since then. And if GOP leaders really are consolidating behind Singh, it would seem that they've decided he'll be their standard bearer. Local and national Democratic leaders are supporting state Sen. Jeff Van Drew.
● NJ-07: GOP Rep. Leonard Lance has a tough general election ahead of him in a seat that Clinton narrowly carried, but he may have to worry about the June primary first. Lance only took 54 percent of the vote in his last two primaries, and businessman Craig Heard recently formed an exploratory committee for another possible bid against him. The filing deadline is in early April, so Heard has little time to decide what to do. Heard ran in 2016 and took just 13 percent in a three-way primary, but if he's the congressman's only opponent this time, the anti-Lance vote may be large enough for him to cause some damage.
● NY-25: While Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter will turn 89 before Election Day, she's shown no interest in retiring. And sure enough, Slaughter confirmed on Saturday that she'd seek a 17th term in this Rochester-based seat. Clinton won 56-39 here, and while Slaughter had a shockingly close call during the 2014 GOP wave, she should be fine in a year where Team Red is mostly on the defensive.
● PA-08: Redistricting moved wealthy former JP Morgan managing director John Chrin's home from Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright's old 17th District to the new and open 7th District in the Lehigh Valley. However, Chrin announced this week that he'd continue his bid against Cartwright anyway in the new 8th District, arguing that "[d]istrict lines may change but people don't." (Worst fortune cookie message ever.)
The 8th District, which includes Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, swung from 55-43 Obama to 53-44 Trump, and Cartwright could be vulnerable. However, Chrin may not be the most appealing candidate for a seat with a large working-class population. The Republican candidate infamously kicked off his bid against Cartwright last year while still living in the extremely wealthy community of Short Hills, which just so happens to be in New Jersey. The good news for Chrin is that he does have family roots in Pennsylvania: He grew up in Northampton County, and his step-grandfather's company, Charles Chrin Co., owns a landfill and several real estate holdings there. The bad news for Chrin is that all of Northampton is now in the new 7th District.
Chrin does have plenty of resources to make his case against Cartwright. At the end of December, Chrin had $915,000 in the bank, though most of that was from his own wallet. However, Cartwright had $1.47 million to spend, and he has plenty of material if he wants to portray Chrin as a wealthy interloper who has few connections to the community he wants to represent.
● PA-10: Redistricting shifted Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries' entire county from the open old 15th District to the new 10th District, where Rep. and fellow Republican Scott Perry is running. This week, Pries announced he would end his campaign for Congress rather than take on Perry.
● WA-05: EMILY's List has endorsed Lisa Brown, a former state senator and former Washington State University Spokane chancellor. Brown is challenging GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers for a seat that Trump carried 52-39, and she's unlikely to face any serious opposition from a fellow Democrat in the August top-two primary.
Grab Bag
● Pres-by-CD: Our project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide has temporarily reactivated, and we've out with the results for the 2012 and 2016 presidential election for Pennsylvania's new congressional districts. Our numbers make use of the "textual descriptions" of each district, which describe exactly which counties, municipalities, precincts—and, in cases where those entities are split between districts, which parts thereof —are in which district, which gives us the most precision possible. (As a result, you might encounter small differences between our numbers and those of other analysts.)
Our numbers also break the results down by county, which gives us a better idea of each party's strengths throughout the district. For instance, the new 17th District, where GOP Rep. Keith Rothfus will run, backed Trump just 49-47, after supporting Romney by a stronger 52-47 margin, and county-level results give us an idea of what happened. The Beaver County portion of the seat moved to the right, going from 53-46 Romney all the way to 58-39 Trump. But the part of Allegheny County in the new 17th, which makes up a considerably larger share of the vote, moved from 51-48 Romney to 49-47 Clinton. Butler County, which is partially located in this seat, also moved from 65-34 Romney to a smaller 58-38 Trump. We have a whole lot more data available here.
