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
● MS-Sen-B: Sen. Thad Cochran, a Republican who has served since 1978, has been in ill health for a while, and Mississippi and national Republicans have been speculating for months that he'd resign this year. On Monday, Cochran's office announced he would indeed step down on April 1. GOP Gov. Phil Bryant will appoint a successor, and that person will serve until a special election can be held.
Campaign Action
Mississippi has an unusual special election law. All the candidates will run on one officially nonpartisan ballot on Nov. 6, and if no one takes a majority, the two candidates with the most votes advance to a runoff at a later date. By contrast, in normal state elections, both parties hold primaries, and require a primary runoff if no one takes a majority, and the nominees compete in the general election with their party affiliation listed.
Mississippi is a very red state, but GOP leaders have fretted that state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a tea partier who almost beat Cochran in 2014, could emerge as their nominee and cost them the race. Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been talking to Bryant about whom he might appoint to the Senate to hold off McDaniel in a special, and they've even encouraged the governor to pick himself; Bryant reportedly isn't interested.
For his part, McDaniel announced at the end of February that he would challenge Sen. Roger Wicker, who is running for the normally scheduled six-year term. However, McDaniel didn't rule out switching races and running in a special if there was one, and now he'll have his chance. Democrats don't have a great bench in Mississippi, but they'll want to field a viable candidate in case the GOP picks a weak nominee like they did in neighboring Alabama.
P.S.: Because there are now two Senate contests in Mississippi, we'll be using the tag MS-Sen-A to discuss any developments in the race for Wicker's seat, and MS-Sen-B for the special election to replace Cochran.
Senate
● MO-Sen: Senate Majority PAC began airing an ad last month in support of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, and they're now taking aim at likely GOP nominee Josh Hawley, the state attorney general. SMP tells CNN that the initial overall ad buys were for $900,000, but that they recently added $500,000. The commercial ties Hawley to embattled Gov. Eric Greitens, arguing that both are contributing to a culture of corruption in the state. The narrator accuses Hawley of refusing to investigate a major donor who was accused of an illegal pay-to-play scheme.
● NE-Sen: Candidate filing closed last week for Nebraska's May 15 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here.
Last year, there were reports that Steve Bannon was searching for a credible candidate to challenge Sen. Deb Fischer in the GOP primary, but the effort seems to have gone nowhere. Four Republicans ended up filing to run, but they all look like Some Dudes. On the Democratic side, Lincoln City Councilor Jane Raybould is the most prominent candidate to file, but national Democrats haven't shown any obvious interest in this race.
● TN-Sen: Former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen is out with his first TV ad as part of a $250,000 buy. The segment features Bredesen talking to the camera to tout his bipartisan credentials from his time as governor. He highlights how he balanced eight budgets without an income tax while also fixing TennCare, the state's Medicaid program.
● VA-Sen: This seat has largely fallen off the radar for both parties, and a new poll from Christopher Newport University doesn't give the GOP any reason to hope that will change. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine takes the same 56 percent of the vote in all three hypothetical matches, while Del. Nick Freitas, minister E.W. Jackson, and Prince Williams County Supervisor Corey Stewart each take between 32 and 33 percent of the vote. In the June GOP primary, undecided leads the pack with 66 percent of the vote, while Stewart leads Jackson 16-7, with Freitas at 6.
National Republicans at least want a candidate who can avoid embarrassing the ticket and dragging down Republicans in competitive congressional races, but that effort hasn't gone well. Last year, NRSC chair Cory Gardner even reportedly met with former Gov. Jim Gilmore, who got destroyed 65-34 in his 2008 Senate bid against Democrat Mark Warner, but Gilmore said no a few months later.
Back in January, Rep. Scott Taylor ranted on Facebook that he was so frustrated with Senate Democrats that he was considering giving up his swingy 2nd District to run, but nothing seems to have come of that. Earlier this month, Taylor talked to The Virginia Pilot about his competitive re-election campaign, and he didn't mention the Senate or give any indication that he was considering doing anything but running for the House again.
So, how embarrassing is the current GOP Senate field? Freitas took to the floor of the state House of Delegates last week and speculated that "the abortion industry" may be linked to mass shootings. Freitas said afterwards that, while he wasn't actually implying that legalized abortions lead to mass killings, children being born out of wedlock leads to "far-reaching social ills." And Freitas may be the least toxic of the three candidates in the poll: Stewart is a Confederate fan boy, while Jackson's own long history of bizarre and offensive statements helped him lose the 2013 race for lieutenant governor 55-45.
The GOP did get a new candidate on Monday when retired Army Major Gen. Bert Mizusawa, who was a Trump advisor during the campaign and transition, announced he was in. Mizusawa has run for office once before, taking third place in a 2010 primary for the 2nd Congressional District with 17 percent of the vote. (The person who finished fourth with 8 percent was Scott Taylor, who won the current version of that seat six years later.) It's unclear if Mizusawa has the connections to run a serious race this close to the June primary, but if he can, he may be that unicorn candidate the GOP has been looking for who won't wreck the ticket.
● WV-Sen: Disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship is out with yet another crazy ad where he tries to turn his criminal conviction over deadly violations of federal mine safety laws into a witch hunt against him. He references Franklin Roosevelt by asking voters to "judge me by the enemies I have made." Blankenship then blames the Obama administration for his company's mine disaster that killed 29 workers, and he throws in Hillary Clinton supposedly persecuting him for good measure. Blankenship is competing in the May GOP primary.
Gubernatorial
● CO-Gov: The GOP firm Magellan Strategies, which is not working for any candidate or group involved in the race, is out with our first look at the June GOP primary since former Rep. Tom Tancredo dropped out. They give state Treasurer Walker Stapleton the lead with 26 percent, while state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is at 13. Investment banker Doug Robinson takes 8 and businessman Victor Mitchell, a former state representative, is at 5.
Stapleton's lead is hardly secure, but it may still be tough for anyone to beat the well-funded Bush cousin in June. Coffman's campaign hasn't gone very smoothly so far, and Robinson, a nephew of Mitt Romney, hasn't been an especially strong fundraiser. Mitchell has self-funded millions to his campaign, but Magellan notes that he spent $800,000 before Jan. 15 and still has little support.
● GA-Gov: Taking a page straight out of the Ed Gillespie playbook, Secretary of State Brian Kemp's first ad ahead of the May GOP primary goes straight for the xenophobia. Kemp's spot starts off showing pictures of several Americans who were killed by Latino "illegal immigrants." He then appears to scowl on camera while promising to "secure the border and end sanctuary cities," even though Georgia does not border Mexico.
The segment pivots to boast how Kemp "fought Obama twice and won" when it concerns his measures to supposedly prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. That's an ... interesting way of spinning how Kemp's office previously settled a lawsuit over a restrictive voter registration policy that disproportionately disenfranchised African Americans. Kemp's spot closes with promises to "track and immediately deport all criminal aliens," while images of Latino men appear in the background whom Kemp undoubtedly intends viewers to see as scary tattooed gang members.
● IL-Gov: It looks like state Rep. Jeanne Ives is out of gas with just two weeks to go before the GOP primary. While Ives has a new spot TV spot attacking Gov. Bruce Rauner, the Chicago Tribune's Rick Pearson writes that "[n]o new advertising contracts for Ives have been posted by Chicago TV stations or cable since last month." Close to 70 percent of the state's residents are in the expensive Chicago media market, so it's certainly not a good sign for Ives if she's going dark there so close to Election Day. Conservative mega donor Richard Uihlein donated $2.5 million to Ives at the beginning of the year, which accounts for the vast majority of the money she's brought in so far, but he hasn't reached into his wallet for her in a while.
Rauner definitely doesn't need to worry about money, and he still sees Ives as enough of a problem to keep attacking her. Rauner's newest spot argues that Ives won't stand up to Democratic state House Speaker Mike Madigan. On the Democratic side, state Sen. Daniel Biss once again says he'll stand up to billionaires while his wealthy primary foes won't.
● ME-Gov: Maine's June 12 gubernatorial primaries to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. Paul LePage underwent a major shakeup on Monday. State election officials certified a referendum for the primary ballot that would veto the legislature's effective repeal of an instant-runoff voting law that voters had passed via ballot initiative in 2016. That repeal law gets automatically suspended until the referendum takes place, meaning Maine will become the first state to use instant-runoff voting for all congressional and state-level primaries. This new system lets voters rank their top three candidate preferences. If no candidate takes a majority of first preferences, the last-place finisher gets eliminated and their votes get reassigned to their voters' second preferences. This process repeats until a candidate takes a majority.
This whole ordeal was precipitated by the state Supreme Court's non-binding advisory opinion from last spring where they held that the new instant-runoff law violated the state constitution, but only for state-level general elections, not primaries or federal races. Many legislators from both parties already didn't like the new voting system, and nearly every Republican and a handful of Democrats passed a law last year that suspended the new voting system and would repeal it in 2021 if legislators didn't pass a constitutional amendment to enable it, which they of course likely have no intention of doing.
Regardless of whether voters decide to keep the new system in June, it will almost certainly scramble the very crowded primaries both parties have. It's too soon to say just who might benefit from this new system, but the Democratic field includes state Attorney General Janet Mills, former state House Speaker Mark Eves, state Sen. Mark Dion, former state Rep. Diane Russell, activist Betsy Sweet, and attorney Adam Cote. Meanwhile, the GOP primary is almost just as crowded, with state Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason, state House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, state Senate President Mike Thibodeau, businessman Shawn Moody, and former state health department chief Mary Mayhew all in the running.
Neither side has a clear front-runner, but candidates will no longer be able to win with pluralities just by coasting on name recognition or facing a divided field of opponents whose supporters would otherwise back one another over the front-runner. Furthermore, voters will have much less to fear about their first-choice candidate playing spoiler and preventing victory for a candidate they like the second or third most. And because voters' second and third primary election preferences matter, there could be a much bigger risk that running attack ads against an opponent will simply make the attacker look less appealing compared to one of several alternatives, meaning this new system might push candidates toward running more positive campaigns.
● NE-Gov: GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts is seeking re-election, and he's the heavy favorite to win. Last year, former Gov. Dave Heineman publicly searched for someone to challenge Ricketts in the primary, and he even seemed interested in running himself at one point. But that talk died down, and no serious primary candidate ended up filing against the governor.
Democrats aren't very optimistic that they'll be able to beat Ricketts, but they at least want a candidate strong enough to turn voters out for more competitive races. State Sen. Bob Krist left the GOP last year and spent months running as an independent, but state party leaders consolidated behind him when he announced he would run as a Democrat last month. Krist's most prominent foe is Omaha community activist Vanessa Ward.
● NY-Gov: Marc Molinaro, the executive of Archer County… sorry, Dutchess County, told state GOP leaders on Friday that he would challenge Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo after all. While Molinaro hasn't made his plans public, state and county party leaders rewarded him with a clear win in their non-binding straw poll over state Sen. John DeFrancisco and former state housing commissioner Joseph Holland.
GOP power players haven't done anything to hide how unenthusiastic they are about DeFrancisco, and Holland hasn't gained much traction. DeFrancisco also didn't hide how upset he was with the straw poll results: One county chair told the New York Daily News that his "message basically was 'shove your straw poll up your ass,'" and a DeFrancisco consultant said on the record, "I think that would be a fair assessment."
● WI-Gov: Marquette takes a look at the August Democratic primary to take on GOP Gov. Scott Walker and finds undecided far ahead with 44 percent. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers leads the corporeal candidates with 18 percent of the vote, while Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is in second with 9. None of the other candidates take more than 7 percent. The only other poll we've seen here was a PPP survey in January for Evers that gave him the lead with 29 percent, while state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout edged Soglin 11-10 for second. Marquette also looked at the GOP Senate primary, but that poll samples fewer than the 300-person minimum we require to make it into the Digest.
House
● CA-21, CA-10: On Sunday, attorney Emilio Huerta announced he was dropping his bid against GOP Rep. David Valadao in the 21st District, a Central Valley seat that stretches from outside of Fresno to Bakersfield. The Fresno Bee soon reported that engineer T.J. Cox would announce that he would drop his own bid against GOP Rep. Jeff Denham in the 10th District and would instead take on Valadao, though Cox has said nothing publicly yet. (The 10th is also in the Central Valley, but it does not border the 21st.) The filing deadline is on Friday.
Huerta, who is the son of legendary labor activist Dolores Huerta, was the Democratic nominee against Valadao on 2016. While Huerta had trouble raising money that cycle, national Democrats began airing ads for him in the final weeks of the contest. However, while Clinton carried the 21st District 55-40, Valadao defeated Huerta 57-43.
Huerta decided to run again, but national Democrats wanted a different candidate. However, they didn't get anyone, and the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Dolores Huerta was discouraging anyone else from getting in (something she emphatically denied). But Emilio Huerta had just $97,000 in the bank at the end of 2017 and the Times wrote that he "essentially went silent for months" after jumping in, so Democrats will be relieved to have him out of the race.
Cox was one of several Democrats challenging Denham in the 10th, a district that both Clinton and Obama carried by about 3 points, so his reported departure shouldn't shake up that contest as dramatically. Cox ran for Congress in 2006 against GOP Rep. George Radanovich in the old and safely red 19th District in 2006, getting just 39 percent of the vote. Cox, whose group has invested in community clinics and alternative energy around the Central Valley, had been doing some self-funding for his bid against Denham, and he ended 2017 with $280,000 on-hand.
However, it's unclear if Cox will have the Democratic side to himself. At the end of December, the National Journal reported that the DCCC was talking to Steve Schilling, who served as CEO of Clinica Sierra Vista, a local chair of health clinics that serve low-income migrant communities. Schilling said nothing publicly about his plans, but he notably retired at the end of January. In any case, we'll have our answer at the end of the week.
● CA-49: State and national Democrats are afraid that two Republicans could make it to the general election and cost Team Blue a chance to flip this seat, and they've called for some Democrats to leave the race. Attorney and Air Force veteran Christina Prejean took one for the team on Friday when she announced that she was dropping out to try and stop the Democratic nightmare scenario from happening. The filing deadline is March 14, and there will be pressure on other candidates to follow Prejean's example.
● CA-50: While plenty of Republicans are nervous that Rep. Duncan Hunter's legal problems could cost them this 55-40 Trump seat, the state party endorsed him on Saturday. Hunter faces a challenge from fellow Republican William Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, in the June top-two primary. Conservative radio host Carl DeMaio is also considering getting in. Hunter and his rivals have until March 9 to file. If Hunter reverses course and decides not to seek re-election after all, the candidate-filing deadline would be extended to March 14.
● IL-07: Last month, after the conservative site Daily Caller quoted Democratic Rep. Danny Davis as calling Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic and anti-gay leader of the Nation of Islam, an "outstanding human being," the congressman insisted he'd been misquoted. However, Davis gave a jaw-dropping interview to the Daily Caller on Sunday where he more than doubled-down on his original statement. Davis told them he had "no problems" with Farrakhan, who has called Jews "the enemy of God" and said they were in the September 11 attacks, and who has denounced the LGBT community for years. And Davis excused his anti-Semitism by declaring:
"That's just one segment of what goes on in our world. The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth. For those heavy into it, that's their thing, but it ain't my thing."
The article was published on Sunday afternoon, and as of Monday evening, Davis' office hasn't suggested that he was misquoted in any way.
And this isn't even the first time Davis has associated himself with bigots. Chris Hayes, who is now at MSNBC, wrote all the way back in 2004 how Davis had allied himself with Sun Myung Moon, who also had a long and disturbing history.
Davis faces a primary on March 20 in this safely blue Chicago seat from teacher Anthony Clark, whose bid hasn't attracted much attention so far.
● IL-13: With two weeks to go before the primary to take on GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, former Navy intelligence officer Jonathan Ebel is out with a pair of 15-second ads (here and here).
● MN-07: This seat in rural Minnesota's western corner went from 54-44 Romney to 62-31 Trump, but the GOP has had a very tough time finding a viable opponent for longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. However, Roll Call reports that national Republicans are trying to recruit businessman Scott Van Binsbergen, and he told them on Friday that he expects to decide in the next two weeks. Van Binsbergen says that, while he knows this would be an expensive campaign, he doesn't expect to do much self-funding if he gets in. Van Binsbergen also considered for 2014 and 2016, but passed both times.
The GOP went years without fielding a serious opponent for Peterson until 2014, when they supported state Sen. Torrey Westrom. However, while that was an awful cycle for Democrats in conservative seats, Peterson won by a convincing 54-46. Two years later, national Republicans all but ignored Dave Hughes, who raised and spent almost nothing. But Trump's coattails gave Hughes a lift, and Peterson beat him by an unexpectedly close 52.5-47.5 margin. Hughes is running again, but he ended 2017 with just $29,000 in the bank, so it's no surprise the party is looking elsewhere.
● ND-AL: Another Democrat may enter the race for this open seat before too long. Former state Senate Minority Leader Mac Schneider says he's been calling delegates ahead of the April state party convention, though he said on Saturday he didn't "have anything official to announce today." An unnamed source also told conservative blogger Rob Port that Schneider planned to make an announcement Tuesday. Schneider lost re-election in 2016 52-47 as Trump was carrying his seat, which is based around the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, 50-40.
● NE-02: Last cycle, Republican Don Bacon unseated freshman Democrat Brad Ashford 49-48 as Trump was taking this Omaha-area seat 49-47. Ashford is back for a rematch, and the DCCC is supporting him. Ashford's primary foe is Kara Eastman, a nonprofit head and member of the Metropolitan Community College Board. Eastman had just $72,000 in the bank at the end of 2017 to Ashford's $210,000, but she has the support of some local Democrats, including Omaha City Council President Ben Gray and Douglas County party chair Crystal Rhoades. For his part, Bacon had $616,000 on-hand.
There's one other important thing to note about this seat. If you sort all 435 congressional districts in the nation, including Pennsylvania's newly-drawn seats, by Clinton's margin of victory over Trump, this seat falls right in the middle. Democrats don't need to win this seat to take the House, but this is exactly the type of district where Team Blue needs to put up a strong fight.
● NH-01: Air Force veteran Matt Mayberry, a former state GOP vice chair, began talking about running here back in May, but he finally announced on Monday that he'd stay out. This open seat narrowly backed both Obama and Trump, but Republicans have had a tough finding a viable candidate. Former state Liquor Commission official Eddie Edwards and state Sen. Andy Sanborn are both in, but they've had problems raising money. If Team Red wants an alternative candidate, the filing deadline isn't until June 15.
● PA-02: While Philadelphia City Councilor Maria Quinones-Sanchez reportedly considered joining the Democratic primary against Rep. Brendan Boyle in this redrawn and safely blue seat, she told the Philadelphia Inquirer she'd stay out. The filing deadline is March 20, and candidates are already circulating petitions to get on the ballot.
● PA-18 (special): With just a week to go before the special election, VoteVets has launched a $350,000 buy for Democrat Conor Lamb. The spot argues that Republican Rick Saccone took $435,000 in taxpayer-funded perks, while praising Lamb's career as a federal prosecutor. Meanwhile, Lamb has a 60-second closing ad where he tells an audience how, while he was a Marine, people in airports would thank him for his service. But Lamb says it always bothered him that his brother and sister, who are teachers, don't get that kind of recognition, and he declares, "What's missing in our society is that same thank you to the people who serve every day in our schools, in our hospitals, on our streets, and in our construction sites."
● WI-01: Randy Bryce kicked off his Democratic primary bid against Speaker Paul Ryan with an attention-grabbing web video, and he's spending $100,000 on a TV commercial that uses portions of that spot. Bryce tells the audience that he's worked as an ironworker for 20 years "and I earn every penny that I make so that me and my son have insurance." He then pledges to "do so much more" by "taking our voice and what we need" to Washington; the ad does not mention Ryan.
Legislative
● Special Elections: Via Johnny Longtorso:
Oklahoma HD-51: This is an open Republican seat stretching south from the southern edge of Oklahoma City area. The previous officeholder was Scott Biggs, who resigned upon taking a federal government job. The Democratic nominee is Charles Murdock, a retired teacher, while the Republican nominee is Brad Boles, the mayor of Marlow. This seat went 80-15 for Donald Trump in 2016 and 78-22 for Mitt Romney in 2012.
Grab Bag
● Texas: Tuesday brings us our first primary night of the cycle, and it's a big one. Democrats are seriously targeting Texas GOP Reps. John Culberson, Will Hurd, and Pete Sessions, and Team Blue has competitive primaries in each of those seats. Eight members of the House delegation (two Democrats and six Republicans) are also leaving the House, and we have competitive primaries to succeed most of them. Candidates in both parties need to take a majority on Tuesday to win their party's nomination outright, otherwise runoffs between the top two vote-getters will be held on May 22. We've put together a primary preview of what to watch on Tuesday.
Polls close at 8 PM ET in most of the state, with a small portion of the state in the Mountain Time Zone around El Paso staying open until 9 PM. We hope you'll join us at Daily Kos Elections for our liveblog of all of the races on the docket. You can also follow us on Twitter, where we'll be live-tweeting the results. And check out our calendar for a look at primary nights to come.