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.
● Illinois: Illinois held its primaries Tuesday, and you can find the results here. We'll have a comprehensive rundown in our next Digest.
Leading Off
● IL-Gov, IL-03: Two very different, but equally embattled, Illinois incumbents just barely survived close intra-party challenges on Tuesday night. In the GOP primary for governor, billionaire Gov. Bruce Rauner beat back state Rep. Jeanne Ives by just a 52-48 margin; Rauner will face a very uphill battle against venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker, who decisively won the Democratic nod. Meanwhile in the 3rd Congressional District, located in Chicago and its southern suburbs, Blue Dog Rep. Dan Lipinski fended off businesswoman Marie Newman 51-49 in the Democratic primary.
Rauner's always uneasy relationship with hardcore conservatives utterly fell apart last fall, when he signed into law a bill passed by the Democratic legislature that expanded public funding for abortion services. Almost immediately, critics on the governor's right flank started talking about ousting him in the primary, though given Rauner's immense wealth and universal name recognition, such an effort always seemed far-fetched.
State Rep. Jeanne Ives was undeterred, though, and she stepped forward to take on Rauner. Early polling showed her at a huge disadvantage, but she received a $2.5 million infusion from GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein earlier this year (Illinois has no campaign contribution limits) and used that cash to run nakedly racist and transphobic TV ads that appealed to the GOP id. Ives also got an unexpected last-second assist from the Democratic Governors Association, which ran ads in the final week pretending to call her out as "too conservative" in a barely disguised effort to boost her with, well, conservatives.
It was almost enough, but not quite: Rauner used his limitless war chest to pound Ives on the airwaves and just barely hung on. The Republican nomination might be quite the booby prize, though. In November, Rauner will face fellow billionaire J.B. Pritzker, who similarly spent his way to victory in the Democratic primary, taking 46 versus 26 for state Sen. Daniel Biss and 24 for businessman Chris Kennedy. While Pritzker has his flaws, Rauner is deeply unpopular after three-plus years in office, and polls show him getting crushed in this dark blue state. This will be an ugly, high-dollar slugfest right until the end, but Democrats hold the advantage.
Lipinski likewise had fallen out with the progressive base thanks to a career-long litany of sins that includes putting together an ardently anti-choice record (he's co-chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus), voting against the Affordable Care Act, and refusing to endorse Barack Obama's re-election campaign in 2012—despite the fact that his district is solidly blue. It had been a decade since Lipinski was last vigorously opposed in a primary, but with progressive energy at a new high thanks to Donald Trump, Newman, a political newcomer, took the plunge.
Newman earned an early endorsement from Daily Kos last June, followed by other progressive groups—most importantly NARAL—later in the year. A big turning-point came when two members of Illinois' congressional delegation, Reps. Jan Schakowski and Luis Gutierrez, went against tradition and endorsed Newman over their own colleague in January, sending an important message to donors and progressive organizations.
A super PAC funded by NARAL joined the fray down the stretch, ultimately spending over $1 million on Newman's behalf with ads that tied Lipinski to Trump. But Lipinski had some deep-pocketed allies of his own, in the form of a rival super PAC underwritten chiefly by billionaire Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, and No Labels, the single-mindedly centrist group that labeled Donald Trump a "Problem Solver" in 2016.
Lipinski also benefited from the fact that, during the last round of redistricting, his allies in the legislature gerrymandered his district to protect him from a progressive primary opponent: They made a point of moving the home of John Atkinson, who had been gearing up to run, out of the district, while also making it whiter. In addition, because of Illinois' system of open primaries, Republicans were able to cross over and vote for Lipinski, though it's not clear how many did. (Incidentally, the GOP nominated an outright Nazi, who ran unopposed.) It was all just enough for Lipinski to survive, though his narrow escape all but guarantees another challenge from the left in 2020.
Senate
● MO-Sen: Senate Majority PAC has laid down an additional $500,000 for another ad on behalf of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. The spot ties Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley to scandal-plagued GOP Gov. Eric Greitens, and it argues both are part of a culture of corruption in the state.
● MS-Sen-B: GOP state Agriculture Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith has looked like a probable appointee to fill the seat of ailing Republican Sen. Thad Cochran for a while, and anonymous insiders recently told the Brookhaven Daily Leader that GOP Gov. Phil Bryant will appoint her to the seat on Wednesday. Hyde-Smith would become the first woman to ever represent Mississippi in Congress if she becomes its next senator.
● OH-Sen: Baldwin Wallace University, a school that has only very infrequently published horse-race polls, is out with their first test of hypothetical general election matchups in Ohio's Senate race. Their survey finds Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leading GOP Rep. Jim Renacci by 41-29, while he bests investment banker Mike Gibbons by 41-31.
There has been almost no other publicly available polling of this race, so it's hard to get a sense of just how vulnerable Brown is in a state that flipped from 51-48 Obama to 51-43 Trump. However, both parties have so far been acting like Brown has a modest advantage to win a third term.
● WV-Sen: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin should be one of the GOP's top offensive targets in a state that voted 68-26 for Trump, but national Republicans are increasingly fretful that disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship could take a plurality in the May 8 GOP primary and blow one of their best chances to flip a seat. Independent public polling of the GOP primary with Blankenship, Rep. Evan Jenkins, and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has been nonexistent, so it's hard to say where things stand in this race. However, recent internal polls from both Jenkins and Morrisey have shown Blankenship in second place and within striking distance of first, meaning he very well may have a real shot at winning the nomination.
Democrats would undoubtedly prefer to face Blankenship thanks to his criminal conviction and recent year-long prison sentence over his company violating federal mine safety laws, which led to the deaths of 29 miners in a 2010 mine disaster. While his awful record should give Jenkins and Morrisey plenty of ammunition to attack him, Politico reports some senior Republicans are worried a barrage of negative ads could backfire and turn Blankenship into a martyr in the eyes of zealous Trump-supporters who dislike GOP congressional leadership, much like what happened with Roy Moore in Alabama.
Making matters even worse for national Republicans, Blankenship isn't just some perennial gadfly like Moore; he has donated heavily to West Virginia Republicans during the last two decades, including when the party was still very weak at the state level during the 2000s. Furthermore, with both Jenkins and Morrisey in the running, national Republicans reportedly want to remain neutral between the two, which limits their options for how to deal with Blankenship.
Meanwhile, Blankenship has been using his vast personal fortune to run ads claiming his whole prosecution was a witch hunt by the Obama administration to cover up their failure to protect the dead miners, even though there's utterly no truth to this wild accusation. However, Blankenship likely can only help bolster his support by attacking Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are incredibly unpopular in this ancestrally Democratic state that has zoomed rightward over the last two decades in reaction to the increasing cultural and environmental liberalism of national Democrats.
Morrisey and Jenkins have yet to run attack ads against Blankenship or even begin spending heavily on positive ads. However, with only seven weeks until the primary, they'll soon have to make a choice about the best strategy to thwart him from winning the nomination.
Gubernatorial
● CO-Gov: On Tuesday, businessman Noel Ginsburg dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination. Ginsburg's campaign never seemed to have much support, and he said he was leaving the race because he didn't think he had enough resources to be competitive.
● IA-Gov: Candidate filing closed on Friday for Iowa's June 5 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here. State law requires candidates to take at least 35 percent of the vote to win their party's nomination; in races where no one clears this bar, the parties will pick their nominees at a convention a few weeks later.
Republican Kim Reynolds was promoted from lieutenant governor to governor last year when Terry Branstad was confirmed as ambassador to China. Reynolds is seeking a full four-year term, and she has the support of most state and national Republicans. Reynolds' only primary foe is Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett. The governor held a considerable $4.1 million to $844,000 cash-on-hand edge at the end of 2017, and it's still not clear how Corbett intends to convince primary voters to fire Reynolds.
Six candidates are competing on the Democratic side, and there's a good chance this will need to be decided at a convention. Businessman Fred Hubbell, a prominent longtime Democratic donor who hails from an influential and long-established Des Moines family (the governor's residence, Terrace Hill, was the Hubbell family mansion until they donated it to the state in 1971) began airing TV ads all the way back in October. Hubbell had a $1.23 million war chest at the end of last year, by far the largest in the primary, and he raised most of it from donors.
State Sen. Nate Boulton was elected to the legislature in 2016, but he quickly established himself as a vocal labor ally. Boulton made his name by speaking out against the GOP legislature's moves to weaken unions, and he enjoys significant labor support. SEIU 199 leader Cathy Glasson, whose union represents University of Iowa nurses and healthcare professionals, has also benefited from financial support from the national SEIU.
Former state party chair Andy McGuire, who has worked as a physician and health management executive, is also in. McGuire is well-connected, but controversial in state Democratic circles. Before she was chair, McGuire was a prominent supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary. While McGuire pledged to stay neutral in 2016 after she was picked to serve as chair, many Bernie Sanders supporters argued that she still favored Clinton.
John Norris, who served as chief of staff to Tom Vilsack during his time as governor and as secretary of agriculture, rounds out the major candidates. The final contender is former Iowa City Mayor Ross Wilburn, who has been out of office for years and has little money.
Iowa made a hard turn toward Trump in 2016, but Democrats hope that it will shift back this year. A February poll from Selzer & Company gave them some reasons for optimism: While Reynolds led each Democrat, she didn't break 44 percent against any of them. However, voters still gave her a 48-32 favorability rating and 47-33 job approval score, so they don't seem to be in a hurry to dump her.
● MI-Gov: Former Detroit Health Commissioner Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat, has petitioned a state judge to issue a declaratory judgment on whether he is actually eligible to run for governor in 2018. El-Sayed's campaign has been in hot water since a January report indicated he may be ineligible to run because he was registered to vote in New York City as recently as March 2015. El-Sayed didn't re-register in his native state of Michigan until March 2016, and Michigan requires gubernatorial candidates to be registered voters for four years before an election.
While El-Sayed did stay on the voter Michigan voter rolls continuously since 2003, he had been placed on a cancellation list after surrendering his Michigan driver's license to obtain a New York one, and he would have had to verify his address to affirm his eligibility had he tried to vote during that period. While several election law experts have said his candidacy is in serious jeopardy, El-Sayed is hoping for a favorable outcome in court before the April 24 filing deadline passes.
● MO-Gov: Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who is under indictment for allegedly blackmailing a former mistress with a compromising photo, is now also being investigated as to whether his 2016 gubernatorial campaign improperly obtained a list of donors from The Mission Continues, a charity for veterans that Greitens founded and ran until stepping down the year before he began his run for governor. The Kansas City Star reports that the state attorney general, the prosecutor for the city of St. Louis, and a state House committee have all subpoenaed documents related to the matter.
At issue is the fact that charities may not give the names of their donors (which they are not obligated to disclose publicly) to political campaigns; they may only rent them at fair market value. But The Mission Continues insists it never provided any data to the Greitens campaign, and Greitens initially denied ever using a list from the charity—even though the Associated Press obtained a spreadsheet in 2016 listing over 500 high-dollar contributors to The Mission Continues that, according to its metadata, was last saved by a Greitens campaign staffer in 2015. Indeed, of the $525,000 Greitens raised in his first two months in the race, 85 percent of it came from people on that list.
After getting fined $1,000 last year by the state ethics commission for failing to disclose the receipt of the list, Greitens claimed that the list was an in-kind donation from his campaign manager, Daniel Laub. However, The Mission Continues maintains it doesn't know who Laub is. So either the charity is lying, or someone stole the list from them. Either way, one of these investigations is likely to find out.
● NM-Gov: Republican Rep. Steve Pearce, who is the presumptive GOP nominee for governor, has long been attracted to fringe right-wing ideas, but HuffPost recently obtained a video of Pearce in 2008 saying what can only be described as a word salad of homophobia:
"What's going on with gay marriage is ... the redefining of a social institution. And the redefinition has serious downside results," Pearce says in the video. "The next step then is polymorphism, where one marries many."
"Where this all gets headed is toward the access to benefits, and so you can imagine that a person would say, 'Oh all these people in California don't have access to AIDS treatments.' ... They might say this to themselves: 'I'm gonna marry everybody in California with AIDS,' and suddenly they've got access to the, maybe the benefit program, the health insurance that a single person has."
This isn't the first time Pearce has gone on the record espousing reactionary views. In his 2014 memoirs, he referenced the Bible when claiming, "The wife is to voluntarily submit, just as the husband is to lovingly lead and sacrifice." He simultaneously insisted that "submission is not a matter of superior versus inferior," but that's unlikely to mitigate his statement. Democrats are undoubtedly going to use Pearce's words against him. And in a state that backed Hillary Clinton 48-40, Pearce's extreme views are likely to be a liability.
● OH-Gov: Onward Ohio, which is backing Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in her uphill GOP primary battle for governor against state Attorney General Mike Dewine, has launched a $670,000 TV ad buy attacking DeWine. The spot plays hard to the GOP base on cultural issues and bashes DeWine's past Senate voting record for supposedly favoring undocumented immigrants, backing trade deals with China, and supporting gun-safety measure opposed by the NRA.
● PA-Gov: The conservative group American Principles Project ran radio ads against state Sen. Scott Wagner last year, and they're out with a poll showing him not doing so hot in the May GOP primary. Revily gives Wagner just a 20-18 edge over wealthy businessman Paul Mango, with attorney Laura Ellsworth at 4. Wagner released an internal poll last fall showing him dominating Mango 45-16, but we don't have many other surveys to work with.
However, Wagner is certainly acting like he thinks Mango's a threat, since he's up with two more commercials (here and here) arguing that his primary foe is a liberal who is too much like Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. The spots portray Mango as an Obamacare-loving outsourcer.
House
● CA-04: Candidate filing closed earlier this month for California, and while the secretary of state won't have a certified list of candidates until the end of the month, California Target Book has published their list of contenders for statewide, federal, and legislative contests. We've been taking a look at who has filed for competitive congressional and statewide races in previous Digests, as well as any important last-minute developments: This Digest concludes our Golden State rundown. Once we have an official statewide list, we'll note any important changes.
After his narrow 2008 win, Republican Rep. Tom McClintock quickly became safe in this conservative seat, which stretches from the Sacramento suburbs into the Yosemite Valley. But while Trump carried the seat by a healthy 54-39 margin, two well-funded Democrats are competing in the June top-two primary to take McClintock on. National security strategist Jessica Morse had $489,000 in the bank at the end of 2017, which was a little more than the $462,000 that McClintock had to spend. Morse also recently won the endorsement of the California Democratic Party. Regina Bateson, a former State Department officer, had $276,000 in the bank.
However, this is a seat where Democrats need to be careful to avoid a top-two lockout. Two little-known Democrats are also in, and so is Republican accountant Mitchell White. It's completely plausible that McClintock and White could both advance to the general election while the four Democrats split the blue vote.
● CA-07: Democratic Rep. Ami Bera won his third narrow victory in a row last cycle even as his suburban Sacramento seat shifted from 51-47 Obama to 52-41 Clinton, but he may get a break this time. While two Republicans are running to face him, neither of them has exactly impressed with their fundraising. Businessman Andrew Grant, a retired Marine who looks the NRCC's favored candidate, had only $113,000 on-hand at the end of 2017 after six months in the race. Surgeon Yona Barash, who has done some self-funding, had just $79,000 to spend. By contrast, Bera had a strong $1 million in the bank.
There are other reasons this seat probably won't be the intense battleground it was for Bera's first three successful campaigns. With the GOP mostly on the defensive nationwide, a seat that backed Clinton by double digits is probably a bridge too far this year. Some of the problems that plagued Bera in 2016 also seem to be old news. It's unlikely Bera will take anything for granted this time, but he's looking considerably more secure than he ever has.
● CA-16: Democratic Rep. Jim Costa has struggled to win over the last two midterm cycles, but he's probably safe this time in this 58-36 Clinton seat.
● CA-22: This Central Valley seat moved from 57-42 Romney to 52-43 Trump, but GOP Rep. Devin Nunes will certainly be a tough target. Former Fresno County prosecutor Andrew Janz is the incumbent's most notable Democratic foe, and Janz is hoping that Nunes' scandalous handling of his lead role in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will give him an opening. Janz had just $85,000 on-hand at the end of the year, but he said his fundraising picked up in February after the release of the so-called Nunes memo.
● CA-24: Last cycle, Democrat Salud Carbajal defeated Republican businessman Justin Fareed 53-47 in an open seat contest for this Santa Barbara-area seat. That wasn't close, but it was well behind Clinton's 57-36 performance. Fareed is running again (it's unclear whether his horse will make an appearance this time), and he had just shy of $300,000 in the bank at the end of the year. However, Carbajal will be the incumbent this time, and it's going to be very tough to beat him in what's looking like a very rough year for Republicans. Carbajal also had a $1.27 million war chest.
● CA-25: This is at least one California seat where Team Blue doesn't need to worry about a top-two disaster. Five Democrats are challenging GOP Rep. Steve Knight in this north Los Angeles County seat, while no other Republicans are on the ballot.
Last cycle, Knight beat attorney Bryan Caforio 53-47 as this seat swung from 50-48 Romney to 50-44 Clinton. Caforio is running again, and his main primary foe looks like nonprofit head Katie Hill, who has the support of EMILY's List. The two Democrats each had close to the same amount of cash-on-hand at the end of 2017 (each had roughly $380,000), and Caforio released a poll giving him a 19-10 lead over Hill for the second spot in the general election. Volcanologist Jess Phoenix, who had $110,000 in the bank, is also in the mix, as are two Democrats without much money or outside support.
● CA-36: This Palm Springs-area seat was very swingy territory not long ago, but Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz decisively beat two GOP state legislators in his last two campaigns. Five Republicans, including two known from television, are challenging him, but this is unlikely to be a top-tier race.
Still, soap opera star Kimberlin Brown, a Trump surrogate who spoke at the Republican convention, did have a credible $147,000 in the bank at the end of December after three months in the race. By contrast, former local news anchor and Air Force vet Dan Ball had only $14,000 in the bank. Ruiz had close to $2.1 million, and national Republicans don't seem likely to target a seat that went from 51-48 Obama to 52-43 Clinton.
● CA-49: GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is retiring from this suburban San Diego seat, and both sides have crowded contests to succeed him. While Democrats haven't hidden how they're worried about a top-two disaster here, the math may be a bit better for them in this district than it is in a few nearby seats. Four Democrats ended up filing compared to eight Republicans, while four other candidates are also running.
Issa narrowly fended off retired Marine Col. Doug Applegate in 2016 as this district swung from 52-46 Romney to 51-43 Clinton, and Applegate wasted zero time announcing he would run again. A recent SurveyUSA poll showed Applegate taking first place in the top-two with 18 percent, while Assemblyman Rocky Chavez edged fellow Republican Diane Harkey, the chair of the state Board of Equalization, 17-10 for the second general election spot. An early March poll from Change Research for the Democratic group Fight Back CA also gave Applegate an early lead:
Retired Marine Col. Doug Applegate (D): 23
Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (R): 15
Environmental attorney Mike Levin (D): 11
Board of Equalization Chair Diane Harkey (R): 10
Former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign policy adviser Sara Jacobs (D): 7
San Diego County Supervisor Kristin Gaspar (R): 4
Note that this poll also included Democrat Christina Prejean, an attorney who has since dropped out of the race; Prejean took 3 percent.
However, Applegate may have a tough time holding onto a lead. Applegate had $249,000 on-hand at the end of December (Issa retired in January), considerably less than any of his Democratic foes. The rest of the field is also using their resources to get their names out. Kerr, who had $520,000 to spend, recently began airing his second commercial. Levin, who served as executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party a decade ago, had $486,000 in the bank.
Jacobs, who has the support of EMILY's List, has already done some considerable self-funding (Jabobs is the granddaughter of Irwin Jacobs, the co-founder of the telecommunications giant Qualcomm), and she had a $1.2 million war chest. However, Jacobs attracted some bad headlines last month when she reportedly responded to a question about how she'd connect with the district's large military population with, "It's true. I'm not a crusty old Marine," a remark that didn't go over well.
Things are also quite messy on the GOP side. Issa immediately endorsed Harkey, who is a former local legislator, on his way out. However, Harkey has some baggage. 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. Harkey has also faced questions from her time on California's tax board.
Both polls show Chavez, who represents about two-thirds of the seat in the Assembly, doing well. However, Chavez is a notoriously bad fundraiser, and he may not have much appeal to Trump-era Republicans. Chavez has the support of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is hated by both California conservatives and Donald Trump himself.
Gaspar, who was elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in 2016, hasn't registered much in the few polls we have, but she may have room to grow. Gaspar has an endorsement from San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who is one of the few big names in the state GOP. San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Brian Maryott is the remaining elected official on the GOP side.
● CA-52: Rep. Scott Peters is another Democrat who has had tough races in the past, but looks to be in much better shape this time around. Peters' San Diego-area seat went from 52-46 Obama to 58-36 Clinton, and the congressman has a strong $2.2 million war chest. The only Republican who had much money at the end of 2017 was former energy company executive Michael Allman, who had $267,000 on-hand after self-funding $300,000.
● CO-06: Attorney David Aarestad dropped out of the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Mike Coffman on Tuesday and endorsed retired Army Ranger Jason Crow. Crow's main opponent in the June primary is clean energy expert Levi Tillemann, though Crow held a large $590,000 to $133,000 cash-on-hand edge at the end of 2017.
● FL-18: Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel, who represents a nearby seat, has endorsed former State Department official Lauren Baer's bid against GOP Rep. Brian Mast.
● IA-01: Republican Rep. Rod Blum won this eastern Iowa seat in a 2014 surprise, and he held it 54-46 as this district was swinging from 56-43 Obama to 49-45 Clinton. But Democrats hope that the political climate, as well as Blum's own behavior, will give them a better opening. The DCCC and EMILY's List are supporting state Rep. Abby Finkenauer, and her only well-funded primary foe is former Labor Department official Thomas Heckroth.
● IA-02: Republicans showed some interest in going after Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack after his eastern Iowa seat swung from 56-43 Obama to 49-45 Trump, but he's hardly a top-tier target in a year where the GOP is largely on the defensive. Loebsack has picked up two GOP foes: businesswoman and evangelical activist Ginny Caligiuri, and physician Christopher Peters. Caligiuri is an untested candidate, while Peters lost to Loebsack 54-46 in 2016 and remains a lousily fundraiser.
● IA-03: We're going to hold off doing a rundown of the state of play in this competitive seat until we know if real estate company president Theresa Greenfield will be on the Democratic primary ballot, but we may have that answer before too long. Greenfield said Monday night, hours after the secretary of state ruled that she hadn't collected enough signatures, that she wants to see if Iowa election law allows the district Democratic Party to vote to put her on the ballot. Greenfield said on Friday that her now-former campaign manager admitted on Thursday evening to forging some of the petitions she had handed in, and she decided to try to collect 1,790 signatures again on the final day of qualifying.
State law does have a provision that lets the party central committee place someone on the ballot if another primary candidate has died or withdrawn, but it's not clear if this applies to Greenfield's situation. While state Attorney General Tom Miller said that both his team and the secretary of state's office were taking a look at the law to see what's allowed, his office said on Tuesday that it would not weigh in. It's not clear at the moment what Greenfield's further legal options, if any, may be. The 3rd District Democratic Party announced that they'd tentatively scheduled a meeting on Monday while they awaited an option from Miller, but it's also not clear how they'll respond to his Tuesday announcement.
Meanwhile, one of Greenfield's would-be rivals recently released a poll of the June primary. Business consultant Cindy Axne's survey from ALG Research, which was taken March 12-14, gives her a 14-12 edge over insurance company owner Eddie Mauro, with Greenfield in third with 10. Longtime Iowa Democratic operative Pete D'Alessandro, who has Bernie Sanders' support, took 6, while two candidates who have since dropped out took a combined 4 percent.
● IA-04: Progressives everywhere always hunger to go after GOP Rep. Steve King, who still stands out for his loud and proud racism even in the Trump era. However, King holds an eastern Iowa seat that went from 53-45 Romney to 61-34 Trump, and he's turned back several well-funded Democratic foes before with ease. Three Democrats have climbed into the ring with him this year, and the one who has attracted the most outside attention is paralegal J.D. Scholten, who played baseball at the local Morningside College and for the semi-pro Sioux City Explorers.
Scholten had $134,000 in the bank at the end of 2017. Despite his national notoriety, King has been a sluggish fundraiser for years, and he only had $52,000 on-hand. However, he may not need much to win: King is a very well-known commodity here, and he's never come close to losing re-election. Still, it's always good to field credible candidates for tough races, and if lightning is ever going to strike against King, it will probably be in 2018.
● ND-AL: It looks like Democrats won't have a seriously contested primary as they attempt to flip this red seat. Former state Rep. Ben Hanson endorsed former state Senate Minority Leader Mac Schneider this week, a move that came days after Schneider defeated him at a convention to win the state party endorsement; state Sen. John Grabinger had already dropped out and backed Schneider. And while there were some reports a few weeks ago that unnamed Democrats were trying to recruit former state Sen. Aaron Krauter, he was the one who officially nominated Schneider at the convention.
● OH-12: Liberty Township Trustee Melanie Leneghan is up with her first ad ahead of the May GOP primary, where she talks about what an awesome Trump conservative she is.
● PA-01: EMILY's List has endorsed former JAG attorney Rachel Reddick in the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
● PA-02: Philadelphia School Reform Commissioner Bill Green announced on Monday that he was pulling the plug on his Democratic primary bid against Rep. Brendan Boyle in this safely blue seat. Green, a former city councilor and the son of a former mayor, had only switched his party registration from independent back to Democratic just days before he launched his bid. Green also had alienated plenty of power players during his time as head of the commission.
● PA-05: Wealthy energy executive Paul Addis, who has remained a vocal Trump critic, recently dropped his extremely uphill campaign for the GOP Senate nomination, but he parachuted into the race for this new suburban Philadelphia seat on the final day of qualifying. Addis had $1.3 million, almost all of it self-funded, in his Senate campaign account at the end of December. However, even if he manages to get through the GOP primary, all the money in the world may not be enough to win him a general election in this 63-34 Clinton district.
● PA-07: EMILY's List has endorsed former Allentown Solicitor Susan Wild in the Democratic primary for this open swing seat in the Lehigh Valley.
● PA-13: Physician John Joyce, who operates a dermatology clinic in the Altoona area and has served on local medicine-related boards, announced on Monday that he would seek the GOP nomination for this open and safely red rural seat.
● PA-15: We will have to make it through this cycle without the wit and wisdom of state House Majority Leader Dave Reed, who has announced that he will not run for Congress. Reed was originally planning to run for the old 9th District, but redistricting moved his state House seat into the new 15th District, where Rep. and fellow Republican Glenn Thompson is running; until now, Reed had not announced what he would do. The filing deadline to run for the legislature passed earlier this month, so Reed will lose his prominent post in state government.
● VA-10: State Sen. Jennifer Wexton is out with a poll from Garin-Hart-Yang of the June Democratic primary, and it gives her a big lead over her many rivals. Wexton takes 31 percent of the vote, while former State Department official Alison Friedman is a distant second with 5. However, many of the candidates have plenty of money, and no one has spent much on advertising yet.
Other Races
● CA-AG: Gov. Jerry Brown surprised political observers in 2016 when he picked Los Angeles-area Rep. Xavier Becerra to serve as state attorney general after Kamala Harris was elected to the Senate. Becerra has made a name for himself in the last year for repeatedly suing the Trump administration, and he's seeking a full term. Becerra's main opponent is Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, a fellow Democrat who has had his eye on this office for years.
Jones won the support of 56 percent of delegates at the state Democratic convention in February, while Becerra took 42 percent. Jones did fall short of the 60 percent needed for the party endorsement, but his strong showing with party activists against the incumbent was noteworthy. Jones has argued that Becerra hasn't done enough to stop drug deaths and confiscate guns from potentially dangerous people. Becerra has questioned if Jones would shrink from carrying out the death penalty, declaring that he'd "pick and choose which laws he'll enforce." Two little-known Republicans are also on the June top-two ballot.
Grab Bag
● Demographics: Pew Research is out with an apparently first-of-a-kind survey: they surveyed people who say they have a Hispanic or Latino ancestry, but at the same time don't consider themselves Hispanic or Latino. What they find isn't exactly surprising, but it's very interesting to see it quantified: Hispanic identity drops off with each successive generation away from the generation that immigrated. For example, among foreign-born persons with Hispanic ancestry, 97 percent consider themselves Hispanic and 3 percent don't. Among the second generation, the ratio is 92 to 8 percent; among the third generation, the ratio is 77 to 23 percent. And among the fourth and higher generations, the ratio is down to 50/50.
Pew also inquired as to the reasons for doing so, and the most frequent responses were "mixed background" (i.e. because of intermarriage in previous generations, having both Hispanic and non-Hispanic ancestry) and "Hispanic ancestry too far back." Again, while it's not unusual that Hispanics are following very similar patterns of assimilation as previous waves of immigrant nationalities, this has some interesting implications for future population counts: that there will be fewer Hispanics in the U.S. in future decades than a simple projection based on immigration rates, and birth and death rates, would indicate, because a number of the descendants of today's Hispanic community likely won't be self-identifying as Hispanic.
