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
● CT-05: Late on Monday afternoon, Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty announced she would not seek a fourth term, just days after the Connecticut Post reported that she'd kept her chief of staff on board for three months after learning another former aide had been granted a restraining order after accusing him of physical violence and death threats. A number of Connecticut Democrats, including the leader of the state Senate, had called on Esty to resign, though it remains to be seen whether her retirement will placate them.
Campaign Action
Esty came to Congress in 2012, holding now-Sen. Chris Murphy's seat in the northwestern corner of the state in a tough 52-48 victory over Republican state Sen. Andrew Roraback. After that tight initial win, though, Republicans grew progressively less interested in trying to target her: She rolled to a comfortable 58-42 win last cycle, and she'd earned only meager opposition this cycle.
But Connecticut's 5th District, like most of the rest of the state, moved against Democrats in 2016: Voters there backed Barack Obama by a 54-45 margin in 2012, but four years later, they supported Hillary Clinton by a much narrower 50-46 spread. With Esty's departure depriving Democrats of the advantages of incumbency, her district jumps from the 23rd-most vulnerable Democratic-held seat all the way to ninth, according to our House Vulnerability Index.
And that doesn't even account for outgoing Democratic Gov. Dan Malloy's deep unpopularity. Indeed, Connecticut is the only state where we've regularly seen Democratic candidates in special elections in the Trump era underperform their party's presidential results. With this backdrop, we might ordinarily expect Republicans to have a strong shot at flipping this seat. Fortunately for Democrats, though, 2018 continues to shape up very strongly, and with the GOP playing defense from coast to coast, it's unlikely they'll have the resources to make this race competitive. Still, given the Nutmeg State's funkiness, we'll want to keep watch on this one.
1Q Fundraising
It's that time again! The deadline for House and Senate candidates to file their quarterly fundraising reports (covering the period from Jan. 1 through March. 31 of this year) is April 15, but it's common for campaigns to leak their numbers early to generate some press. (Deadlines vary by state for gubernatorial contenders and often aren't quarterly.) We'll be posting numbers as we get them; as always, we'll be releasing our House fundraising chart after the April 15 deadline.
And as we always urge campaigns every quarter, if you want to get attention for your most recent fundraising haul, issue a release now. Don't wait until the reporting deadline, when everyone's numbers come out at once.
● CO-01: Saira Rao (D): $250,000 raised, $170,000 cash-on-hand
● FL-27: David Richardson (D): $411,000 raised, $1.1 million cash-on-hand (Update: The campaign tells us there was no self-funding (something we incorrectly suggested might have been the case)
● MI-11: Haley Stevens (D): $194,000 raised, $560,000 cash-on-hand
● WA-05: Lisa Brown (D): $600,000 raised (Update: This item initially said Brown’s haul was $400,000)
● WI-01: Randy Bryce (D): $2.1 Million raised, $2.3 million cash-on-hand
Senate
● MO-Sen: Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill recently launched the first ad for her re-election campaign. The minute-long spot features the story of a World War II veteran, Pvt. Arla Harrell, who was subjected to chemical weapons testing that left him with a lifetime of health problems. Harrell and his family were unable to obtain their proper restitution from the government until McCaskill intervened, and the spot closes with those family members praising her work on behalf of veterans.
Gubernatorial
● CA-Gov: Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's latest ad showcases the diversity of California's population and how citizens in the state don't just tolerate it, but celebrate it.
● KS-Gov: State House Minority Leader Jim Ward has released an early March poll of the Democratic primary from Expedition Strategies. The survey gives state Sen. Laura Kelly the lead with 19 percent, while Ward takes 17 percent and former state Agriculture Secretary Josh Svaty earns 7 percent. The poll oddly did not include former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, who is also in the running. This is the first poll we've seen so far in the primary, and with such a sky-high share of undecideds, it suggests the race is still wide open.
Meanwhile, Svaty recently won the endorsement of former Gov. John Carlin, who served from 1979 to 1987. Former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius had previously endorsed Kelly last month.
● SC-Gov: Candidate filing closed last week for South Carolina's June 12 primary, and the state has a list of candidates available here. Note that there will be a June 26 runoff in primaries where no one takes a majority of the vote.
Several South Carolina Republicans were preparing for an open seat race to succeed termed-out Gov. Nikki Haley, but everything changed when Donald Trump picked her to serve as ambassador to the United Nations in late 2016. Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, a longtime GOP politician who had lost to Haley in the 2010 primary but was the first statewide-elected official to endorse Trump for the 2016 GOP nomination, was soon elevated to the governorship. He announced he would seek a full term.
While several would-be candidates ended up backing off, former Department of Health and Environmental Control chief Catherine Templeton, who made a name for herself as a prominent labor enemy, decided to go ahead with her planned bid. Kevin Bryant, who was picked by his colleagues in the state Senate to replace McMaster as lieutenant governor, also decided to run.
Wealthy businessman John Warren only launched his bid in February, but he's reportedly willing and able to self-fund millions. Yancey McGill, a former Democratic state senator who got to serve as lieutenant governor for seven months in 2014, is also seeking the GOP nod, but he's raised little money and earned few endorsements.
Perhaps the biggest question of the June primary is whether McMaster will take the majority he needs to win outright, or if he'll be dragged into a runoff two weeks later. The only poll we've seen this year was a late March survey for Save the Children Action Network, which has not taken sides in the race, that showed McMaster at just 41 percent but none of his opponents taking more than 10. Earlier polls also showed that none of the governor's opponents have much name recognition.
Some of them have the resources to get their names out, however. Templeton matched McMaster's fundraising throughout 2017, and she's getting some air support from the American Future Fund. The group recently increased their TV buy from $250,000 to $500,000, and they've been running spots praising her for standing up to labor and the Obama administration. Warren has not started airing ads yet, but it looks like he'll have the personal wealth to do so. But Bryant and especially McGill seem to have far fewer resources and outside support than Templeton and McMaster.
McMaster's intra-party foes have been watching to see if a long-running corruption investigation involving powerful political consultant and longtime McMaster ally Richard Quinn caused the governor any problems, but so far, he seems to be avoiding the worst of it. Former stat Rep. Rick Quinn, who is Richard Quinn's son and close confidant, pleaded guilty in December as part of a deal with prosecutors.
However, while their firm, Richard Quinn & Associates, also pleaded guilty to a separate count of failing to register as a lobbyist, the elder Quinn avoided any charges himself. McMaster has not directly implicated in anything, but Templeton especially has hoped to connect the governor to the "corrupt good ol' boy system."
But the scandal has largely been out of the news since then, and it may just not end up being the nightmare for McMaster his detractors hoped it would be. In February, a state judge sentenced Rick Quinn to just one year of probation, far less than what special prosecutor David Pascoe asked for. The judge proceeded to essentially argue that Pascoe had botched the case by accepting Quinn's plea agreement. We'll see if this story comes back to haunt McMaster, but if there aren't any more shoes to drop over the next three months, it may be tough for his primary rivals to successfully attack him over this.
Democrats haven't had much luck in this conservative state in years, but they're hoping 2018 will give them an opening. State and national leaders have largely consolidated behind state Rep. James Smith, an Army veteran who earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in Afghanistan. Businessman Phil Noble, who has the support of Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, and attorney Marguerite Willis, the wife of former Florence Mayor Frank Willis, are also seeking the Democratic nod. All the candidates likely start out with little name recognition, but Smith's connections could give him a big edge in June.
House
● CA-39: Rep. Judy Chu is the latest Democrat to endorse Navy veteran Gil Cisneros, who has received support from several other Los Angeles-area House Democrats in his bid for the open GOP-held 39th District.
● CA-48: Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar has endorsed businessman Harley Rouda ahead of the top-two primary against Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in this coastal Orange County seat.
● FL-23: Law professor Tim Canova announced on Monday that he was dropping his second Democratic primary bid against Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and would instead challenge her as an independent. This South Florida seat backed Clinton 62-36, and it's unlikely Canova will give Wasserman Schultz much to worry about in a general election.
Canova took on Wasserman Schultz back in 2016 in a primary held just weeks after she stepped down as head of the Democratic National Committee. Canova raised millions of dollars and appealed to Bernie Sanders backers who wanted to take their anger out on Wasserman Schultz over her perceived favoritism toward Hillary Clinton during the presidential primaries, and he earned an endorsement from Sanders himself. Canova lost 57-43 and quickly began gearing up for a rematch.
However, Canova's second primary campaign never seemed to go anywhere. He had just $5,000 in the bank at the end of December after months in the race, a small fraction of what he brought in a cycle ago. Canova also spent much of his time parroting conservatives like Sean Hannity and questioning if Wasserman Schultz had a role in the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich, even though the DC police and Rich's family say that Rich's death was the result of a botched robbery.
In June, as he kicked off his second campaign, Canova removed a video questioning the circumstances of Rich's death out of what he said was respect for Rich's family, but he then insisted that it was Wasserman Schultz who was bringing it up "apparently to try to score political points and in disregard of the wishes of his family." Unsurprisingly, Sanders didn't support him this time, and it seems that not many other people did either.
● FL-27: On Monday, Republican Bruno Barreiro resigned from the Miami-Dade County Commission, and he's not going to be the only officeholder to quit his job to run for this open seat. That's because last week, GOP Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that toughens Florida's resign-to-run law.
Because Barreiro's term as commissioner would overlap with the start of his term in Congress if he won, he was required to resign at least 10 days before he could qualify for his House bid. This new law also affects three Democrats: state Sen. Jose Javier Rodríguez, Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, and Miami Commissioner Ken Russell. It's worth noting that this law won't impact termed-out officials like Scott, who is all but certain to run against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
● MI-09: Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee has endorsed former state cabinet official Andy Levin in the Democratic primary to succeed the latter's father, Rep. Sandy Levin, in the Detroit-area 9th District. Seeing as Kildee himself succeeded his uncle, former Rep. Dale Kildee, in 2013, this dynastic endorsement is somehow fitting. Indeed, Sandy Levin first won his seat in 1982 after his brother, former Sen. Carl Levin, had won his own Senate seat four years earlier.
And of course, no discussion of Michigan Democratic dynasties would be complete without mention of Rep. Debbie Dingell, whose family has held her House seat since 1933 including her husband, former Rep. John Dingell Jr., and his father, John Dingell Sr. Debbie Dingell hasn't made her preference known in the 9th District, but Michigan could end up with more than 160 years of consecutive House service among just three families if the younger Levin prevails.
● NY-11: In a story published over the weekend, the always-exercise-extreme-caution-when-reading New York Post reported that an anonymous complaint had been filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics claiming that Republican Rep. Dan Donovan had intervened with police after his partner's son, Timothy O'Connell, was arrested for possession of heroin in 2015 to secure favorable treatment for him. Donovan denied the allegations and suggested that his GOP primary opponent, former Rep. Mike Grimm, was behind the story.
At issue is the fact that O'Connell received a so-called "desk appearance ticket," which is usually only used for minor crimes and allows defendants to appear in court on their own and avoid getting sent to jail before arraignment. Donovan, who was the district attorney for Staten Island before winning a 2015 special election to succeed Grimm, says he had no knowledge of the arrest until after O'Connell was released, and the Staten Island Advance says that O'Connell's arrest report shows he made no calls while he was in custody. Donovan also called on Grimm to denounce the accusations and to acknowledge whether he had any involvement in them. Grimm of course did neither. The primary is on June 26.
● NY-25: Democrat Sarah Clark, who serves as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's deputy state director, will reportedly collect signatures to get onto the ballot while she considers whether to run, although she has yet to publicly express her interest in the race. EMILY's List is actively trying to convince her to run for this open Rochester-based district.
● SC-01: Former Gov. and noted hiker Mark Sanford won this conservative coastal seat in a 2013 special election despite his many past issues, but he scored just a 56-44 win in the 2016 GOP primary against an underfunded state representative. This time, Sanford faces an intra-party challenge from state Rep. Katie Arrington. Dmitri Cherny, a 2014 and 2016 Democratic candidate, is also in, and while he's unlikely to get very far, he might be able to keep either Sanford or Arrington from winning a majority in the first round.
Though Sanford is mostly remembered for his 2009 sex scandal, his biggest problem may be his bad relationship with the Trump administration. While Sanford has voted with his party on major bills, he's criticized Trump for "fann[ing] the flames of intolerance, and he's called Stormy Daniels' accusations against him "deeply troubling." Trump hasn't rained down angry tweets against Sanford the way he has against other GOP critics, though that can always change. Unsurprisingly, Arrington is hugging Trump as closely as possible and argued that unlike the congressman, she won't "bash him to leftist cheerleaders."
Sanford also never had a good relationship with the GOP-led legislature as governor (he once brought two pigs onto the floor of the state House of Representatives to protest pork-barrel projects, and they proceeded to defecate onto the carpet), and unsurprisingly, state House Speaker Jay Lucas and House Majority Leader Gary Simrill are both backing Arrington.
The good news for Sanford is that Arrington had problems raising money during 2017, and he had a huge $1.57 million to $206,000 in cash-on-hand at the end of December. But Sanford is notoriously frugal, and there's no guarantee he'll make much use his financial edge. And even if he does, all the money in the world may not save him if enough voters have decided he's insufficiently loyal to Trump.
This seat moved from 58-40 Romney to 54-40 Trump, but it's still quite red. However, Democratic attorney Joe Cunningham may have the resources to make things interesting in a good year, especially if the GOP primary leaves some scars for Team Red.
● SC-04: GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy decided not to seek a fifth term in this 60-34 Trump seat, which includes Greenville and Spartanburg, and 13 Republicans are running to succeed him. There's little doubt that this contest will go to a runoff, but it's far from clear who the frontrunners are this early in the campaign.
The only two current elected officials in the race are state Rep. Dan Hamilton and state Sen. William Timmons, who each represent part of Greenville. Timmons says he plans to spend $500,000 of his own money on his campaign, which could give him an edge in the crowded race. Also in the running are attorney Stephen Brown, the former chairman of the Greenville County GOP, and former Spartanburg County party chair Josh Kimbrell, a former religious radio station talk show host and investment group founder. (Greenville and Spartanburg are the only two counties in the seat.)
Former state Sen. Lee Bright is also in, and he has his fans on the far-right. Bright once proposed that South Carolina should get its own currency and also ardently defended keeping the Confederate flag flying on the grounds of the statehouse; he also tried to pass a state version of North Carolina's notorious bathroom bill. However, his recent electoral history has been bad. Bright challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham in the 2014 primary and lost 56-15, and he narrowly lost renomination two years later after he was targeted by the state Chamber of Commerce and the state Conservation Voters.
We also have Mark Burns, a televangelist and 2016 Trump surrogate. Burns, who has been a frequent pro-Trump TV presence since the campaign, has also served on his Faith Advisory Council, and he reportedly met with donors and conservative groups at Mar-a-Lago before jumping in. And of course, he has his share of Trumpesque stories. Burns, who is black, apologized after retweeting a fake picture of Hillary Clinton in blackface, saying he didn't "have the correct information" to know it wasn't genuine. He showed his contrition for the incident by soon posting a cartoon arguing the media was using the controversy to distract people from Clinton scandals.
Seven other Republicans are also in, and it's always possible one of them could gain enough support to make it to the runoff, or perhaps even win the GOP nomination.
● SC-05: Back in June, Republican Ralph Norman pulled off a shockingly close 51-48 victory against Democrat Archie Parnell in a special election for this 57-39 Trump seat. Parnell, a former Goldman Sachs adviser, is seeking a rematch. It will be very tough for him to topple Norman now that he's the incumbent in a seat this red, but after what happened in June, both parties will likely be keeping a closer eye on this contest.
Legislative
● Special Elections: This week's agenda, from Johnny Longtorso:
Massachusetts House, Second Bristol: This is an open Democratic seat in Attleboro, located just northeast of Providence, Rhode Island. It was vacated by Paul Heroux, who was elected Mayor of Attleboro. The Democratic nominee is Jim Hawkins, a former teacher, while the Republican nominee is Julie Hall, a member of the Attleboro City Council. This seat went 51-42 for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 54-44 for Barack Obama in 2012.
Rhode Island SD-8: This is an open Democratic seat in Pawtucket, just across the state line from Tuesday's other special election. The seat was vacated by Jamie Doyle due to health reasons. The Democrats have nominated Pawtucket City Councilor Sandra Cano, while the Republicans have nominated Nathan Luciano, a mortgage loan originator. This seat went 63-32 for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 73-26 for Barack Obama in 2012.
Other Races
● WI Supreme Court: On Tuesday, Wisconsinites will vote in an election for an open seat on the state Supreme Court that offers progressives an excellent chance to flip a seat held by a retiring conservative justice—and would shrink the right-wing majority on the high court to just one. Though the race is officially nonpartisan, the battle lines are clear: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Rebecca Dallet, who has the endorsements of Sen. Tammy Baldwin and former Vice President Joe Biden, is the progressive choice, while Sauk County Circuit Judge Michael Screnock is an arch-conservative who was first appointed to his current position by none other than Scott Walker.
Conservatives hold a five-to-two edge on the Supreme Court, but a Dallet victory would narrow that to just four-to-three, and she stands a good chance of making that happen: In the February primary, she and another liberal candidate, Tim Burns, took a combined 54 percent of the vote, compared to 46 percent for Screnock, and Burns soon thereafter endorsed Dallet. If Dallet can prevail on Tuesday, it would put progressives in a strong position to take an outright majority on the bench in the next few years, which could prove critical to fighting future GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Grab Bag
● Where Are They Now?, TX State Senate: Former Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego decided last year not to challenge GOP Rep. Will Hurd, who narrowly unseated him in 2014 and won a close 2016 rematch, but he's hoping to be on the ballot this cycle anyway. On Monday, Gallego confirmed that he would run in a special election to succeed Democratic state Sen. Carlos Uresti, who was recently convicted for money laundering and fraud.
However, there isn't a special election scheduled yet. Uresti, who won a four-year term in 2016, has not yet resigned from the legislature, and he says he'll appeal his conviction. Other Democrats are also eyeing this San Antonio-area seat, so Gallego may not have the field to himself. SD-19 backed Clinton 54-42 and favored Obama by a similar margin.