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
● WI State Senate, WI State Assembly: In a victory for democracy, Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker finally agreed to call special elections on Thursday for two state legislative seats that have been vacant since December. Walker had tried leaving these seats empty until the regular November elections solely because Republicans were worried Democrats could win them. This would have meant these voters would have gone without representation for nearly a year. However, a state judge recently ordered Walker to call the special elections by Thursday as required by state law.
Campaign Action
Walker and Republicans didn't react well to the court's initial ruling. Instead of calling the elections, they decided to call a special legislative session to change the law governing special elections in order to nullify the court's order. However, Republicans have now dropped those plans, after both the circuit and appellate courts declined—in scathing terms—to extend Thursday's deadline and give Republicans more time to enact their nullification plans.
Consequently, the elections for these vacant state Senate and state Assembly seats will now proceed, with primaries on May 15 and general elections on June 12. Though both districts (SD-01 and AD-42) were carried by Trump, Democrats flipped a Senate seat that was just as red in January, so they have a real chance to flip two more.
Senate
● MS-Sen-B: State Sen. Chris McDaniel only filed paperwork to switch races from his primary challenge against Sen. Roger Wicker to the special election for Thad Cochran's soon-to-be vacant Senate seat on Wednesday, two weeks after saying he'd do so, but just before he did, Wicker got in a couple of last licks.
Wicker's campaign just put out two new TV ads, which the conservative website Y'all Politics says "are running statewide in heavy rotation" that both attack McDaniel as a phony. They both feature the same trio of local Republicans, including one former McDaniel county chair from his 2014 race against Cochran, slamming McDaniel as a "phony" who just likes to "run conservatives down" and won't support Trump. Since Wicker has plenty of money and, now, no primary opponent, he's probably airing these ads as a favor to the state GOP, which desperately wants to thwart McDaniel's candidacy lest he cost them Cochran's seat.
Meanwhile, former state Rep. Jamie Franks, who is now chair of the Lee County Democratic Party, says he's "seriously" considering running in the special election himself, adding, "I think Mississippi needs a senator who's going to be concerned about the working man, not one who's going to be a tin solider who marches to the drum of the Republican Party." However, Franks also said that he wouldn't run against Tupelo Mayor Jason Shelton, a fellow Democrat who is also weighing the contest. (Tupelo is the largest city in Lee County.)
Franks has sought statewide office once before, badly losing a 2007 bid for lieutenant governor to Republican Phil Bryant, who is now governor. He also lost a 2011 primary in an effort to regain his old seat in the state House.
● PA-Sen, PA-Gov: In a new poll, Franklin & Marshall finds Democratic Sen. Bob Casey up 42-25 on GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, his likely Republican opponent. F&M is notorious for the high number of undecided voters that feature in most of their polls, but Casey's margin is similar to what it was in a PPP survey from earlier this month that had him ahead 54-36.
While we can live with high undecideds (sort of), we can't say the same about small sample sizes. For inexplicable reasons, F&M decided to split its sample of 423 respondents into thirds and ask each subset about just one possible matchup between Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and his three potential opponents.
Normally, a pollster would simply ask all respondents about all three pairings, but by doing it this way, F&M yielded samples of only about 140 voters each—far too small to be relied on. (Our cutoff for inclusion in the Digest is 300.) Indeed, Wolf leads one matchup 51-22 but another 38-21. There's no likely explanation for such a variance except as a result of surveying too few people.
● WV-Sen: GOP Rep. Evan Jenkins may be seeking a seat in the Senate, but in his latest TV ad, he sure sounds like he's running against Hillary Clinton. The spot starts with a clip of Clinton saying that she won "the places that are optimistic, looking forward" while Donald Trump's "whole campaign was looking backward." Jenkins pops in to declare, "It's Hillary who's got it backwards"—and from there, it gets dark. "The big cities she won are the places flooding our state with heroin, " he claims, "where lawlessness, looting, and liberalism rule," as scary-looking shots of police raids, arrests, fires, and protests flash by, along with Clinton's percentage of the vote in various cities. "Chicago's the murder capital of America," Jenkins goes on, "yet they want to take our guns away? That's backwards!" Hoo boy.
Gubernatorial
● IA-Gov: Former Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, who just the other day suggested he didn't have the resources to pursue a legal challenge after getting knocked off the June GOP primary ballot, now says he will in fact pursue an appeal to resurrect his candidacy. Earlier this week, Corbett fell just eight signatures short after a supporter of Gov. Kim Reynolds succeeded in getting more than a hundred signatures invalidated.
Corbett hollered about a conspiracy of the "establishment" that has "been out to get me since I announced," but he actually did advance a specific argument as to why he should have his name restored to the ballot. His claim revolves around eight signatures that had been crossed out and were therefore not counted by the three-member State Objections Panel. However, that decision was a two-to-one vote: State Attorney General Tom Miller, the lone Democrat on the panel, said those crossed-out names should be considered valid.
But even if Corbett can turn his fate around, he'd still face an arduous fight against Reynolds, who holds sizable advantages in both money and endorsements. Democrats, though, would be delighted if Corbett could at least force Reynolds to spend down some of that cash in advance of the primary.
● NH-Gov: Save the Children Action Network, which we recently saw poll the governor's race in South Carolina, has now done the same in New Hampshire. As before, this poll was conducted by a pair of firms: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic shop, and TargetPoint Consulting, a Republican outfit. In the Democratic primary, the results show state Sen. Molly Kelly leading former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand 17-11; former state securities regulator Mark Connolly, who ran in 2016 but, says WMUR's John DiStaso, appears unlikely to do so again, takes 9 percent.
The poll didn't test any actual head-to-heads for the general election, though it did find Republicans leading a generic matchup for governor by just a 43-39 margin. However, relying on generic numbers is likely to be quite misleading in this race, because Republican Gov. Chris Sununu sports a monster 63-22 job approval rating—a daunting number for whichever Democrat emerges to take him on. In somewhat better news, Donald Trump is underwater with a 43-53 approval score, right around where his national numbers are.
● OH-Gov: Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, whose allied super PAC had already been airing ads attacking state Attorney General Mike DeWine, is now running her own negative spot against her GOP primary rival. The ad castigates DeWine as a career politician who's "been on the government payroll for the better part of 42 years" and, during his time in office, has supposedly "worked with liberal Democrats to block pro-life judges," added "trillions" to the debt, and supported "amnesty and taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants." The narrator concludes by calling DeWine a "liberal," which of course is beyond bonkers but is a very common line of attack in Republican ads. Taylor's spot is backed by over $500,000, according to the firm Medium Buying.
House
● CA-45: UC Irvine professor Dave Min, who last month won the official endorsement of the California Democratic Party, just announced that he's earned the backing of no fewer than seven different members of the state's congressional delegation, from all across the state: Linda Sanchez, Pete Aguilar, Tony Cardenas, Lou Correa, Grace Napolitano, Scott Peters, and Ami Bera. The first five are all members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, whose PAC also endorsed Min on Thursday.
● HI-01: Democratic state Rep. Beth Fukumoto, who'd been considering a bid for Hawaii's open 1st Congressional District since November, announced on Thursday that she'd join the race. Fukumoto faces some serious obstacles, though. For one, she was a Republican until just last year, when she was ousted as state House minority leader and left the party after speaking at the Women's March in Honolulu. So while she might be an elected official and even has a good story, she starts off with a minimal base among Democratic primary voters.
For another, in the many months that elapsed while Fukumoto was deliberating, a number of heavyweight candidates entered the race, began campaigning, and started raising money. The best-known among them is former state Attorney General Doug Chin, but the field also includes state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (who ran for this seat in 2014 and leads the field in fundraising so far), state Rep. Kaniela Ing, and Honolulu City Councilor Ernie Martin. Hawaii's filing deadline is not until June and its primary not until August, so there's still time for other candidates to enter, but like Fukumoto, they'd be playing catchup.
● MI-01: Journalism professor Dwight Brady dropped out of the race to take on GOP Rep. Jack Bergman this week, leaving just retired Marine Lt. Col. Matthew Morgan to seek the Democratic nod. Last year, former Rep. Bart Stupak, who used to represent this seat, claimed that 2016 nominee Lon Johnson was considering a rematch, but Johnson never appears to have taken any steps toward a second bid, or even said anything publicly. The filing deadline is April 24, so the field here is likely set.
● NJ-07: On Wednesday night, former State Department official Tom Malinowski secured the important "organization line" in Somerset County, the largest county in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District. That completes a sweep of all six counties in the district and ensures Malinowski will have a favorable place on every voters' June primary ballot, no matter where they live. Malinowski still faces attorney Goutam Jois and activist Peter Jacob for the right to take on GOP Rep. Leonard Lance, but he's the overwhelming favorite to earn the Democratic nod.
● NJ-11: David Wildstein, writing at his New Jersey Globe, reports that wealthy businessman Peter DeNeufville could make a last-minute entry into the GOP primary for New Jersey's open 11th District, just ahead of Monday's filing deadline. DeNeufville, a Navy veteran, could potentially self-fund, but his candidacy might also come with some serious baggage: He was a fundraiser for Chris Christie's failed presidential campaign, and according to Wildstein's unnamed sources, he may be looking at the race "with encouragement from the former governor."
Christie of course left office this year with a comically atrocious approval rating of 15 percent and 80 percent disapproval, according to Quinnipiac, and that included an abysmal 37 approval and 57 approval score even among Republicans. Christie's is obviously not the sort of support most politicians would be eager to tout, but for DeNeufville, the connection is inescapable. Still, he could have a shot in a primary whose contours are not yet clear. Four other Republicans are running, with the two most notable being investment banker Antony Ghee and Assemblyman Jay Webber.
● NY-23: Democrat Rick Gallant, a teacher and labor activist, has dropped his bid for New York’s 23rd Congressional District.
● PA-14: On Thursday, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey endorsed state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, who faces a primary with none other than Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania's new (and dark red) 14th District. Interestingly, Toomey doesn't appear to have offered any aid to Saccone in his special election bid, a tire-fire for the ages that the senator is surely glad to have steered away from. And if you click over to Saccone's endorsements page now, it just says, "Check back soon." We could be waiting a while.
Grab Bag
● Demographics: Pew Research is out with an interesting sidebar that adds some detail to their study on party identification that was released last week. They find that negative partisanship is one key difference between party members and independents who lean toward one party, the latter of whom are becoming a larger (and potentially decisive) share of the electorate.
In other words, they find that Democratic and Republican members support their party primarily because they think their party's policies are better for the country; independent leaners act primarily because the "other party's policies are bad for the country," more so than their preferred party being good for the country. This is also expressed in a slightly different way, which may have more to do with the way people perceive each party's demographics: Party members are likelier to say have they "a lot in common" with other members of the party, while independent leaners are much less likely to say that's a reason for which party they prefer.
● Statehouse Action: This Week in Statehouse Action: Bad Moon Rising edition features happy endings (for now) to GOP shenanigans in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Cambridge Analytica messing with Colorado Senate races, another likely GOP pedophile, and more great recruitment news for Democrats.
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