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
● CA-48: The California House race where Democrats may be at the highest risk of a top-two lockout may be in the 48th District, where Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher faces a trio of Democratic opponents and, worryingly, one strong Republican challenger in former Orange County GOP chair Scott Baugh. To avoid such a debacle, the National Journal's Ally Mutnick reports that, according to unnamed "people involved in the race," the DCCC is trying to help real estate company owner Harley Rouda.
So far, there haven't been any overt signs of the D-Trip's involvement, though longtime California Rep. Zoe Lofgren endorsed Rouda's campaign this week, specifically citing the need to consolidate behind a single candidate, and other members of the state's congressional delegation are expected to follow soon.
But Rouda will need more than a few endorsements if he's to succeed in next month's primary, because his two intra-party rivals are showing no signs of letting up. Indeed, a group supporting cancer researcher Hans Keirstead released a poll the other day showing him in second place behind Rohrabacher—but just barely ahead of Baugh, highlighting the troubling nature of the problem Democrats face.
Senate
● WV-Sen: Oh, this unity breakfast is going to be awesome. After falling to state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in Tuesday's Republican primary, disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship is not taking his loss quietly. In a new interview, Blankenship's campaign manager suggested his boss might support a third-party candidate in the November general election, saying, "I think the one thing he is going to make sure doesn't happen is that Patrick Morrisey becomes a U.S. senator." Of course, if that's Blankenship's top priority, it can only redound to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's benefit. Fun times ahead!
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: It turns out The Collective PAC, a Democratic group that aims to elect black candidates, is spending $782,000 on broadcast and cable ads in support of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, which is considerably more than the $211,000 that was previously reported. (That turned out to only be the broadcast portion of the ad buy in the West Palm Beach market.) The spot attacks former Rep. Gwen Graham as a supposedly phony progressive who "trashed Obamacare," "voted with big banks," and "voted for the Keystone XL Pipeline."
● MD-Gov: Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, a Democrat who was competing in the June 26 primary, died on Thursday morning at the age of 60 of cardiac arrest. Kamenetz's death came as a complete surprise to everyone, and he had even attended a candidate forum just a few hours before his death.
Kamenetz was one of several Democrats who was competing to take on GOP Gov. Larry Hogan. Polls had consistently showed Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker in first place, while Kamenetz and former NAACP head Ben Jealous were in a tight race for second. Kamenetz had by far the largest war chest in the primary field at the end of 2017, and with a solid base of support in the Baltimore suburbs, he had a good chance to become the Democratic nominee.
State election law allows Kamenetz's running mate, former Montgomery County Councilor Valerie Ervin, to either take his place on the primary ballot and choose a new candidate for lieutenant governor, or to pick someone else to run at the top of the ticket while she stays in her current spot. Ervin has until five days after Kamenetz's death to make her decision, though it’s not clear whether state law refers to calendar days or business days.
● MI-Gov: On Wednesday, Michigan's Bureau of Elections turned back a challenge to Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's eligibility to appear on the August primary ballot that had been filed by fellow Democrat Shri Thanedar. Officials said that El-Sayed had been continuously registered to vote for four years before this fall's general election as required by the state constitution, though his registration had been placed on a "cancellation countdown" in 2013 after he obtained a driver's license in New York (where he had also registered to vote).
However, it doesn't appear that this ruling will be the final word on the matter. El-Sayed has separately filed a lawsuit asking a court to declare him eligible to run, and that case is still pending.
● OH-Gov: Fresh off of seeing his endorsed candidate, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, badly lose in Tuesday's Republican primary, Gov. John Kasich isn't backing GOP nominee Mike DeWine, at least not yet. During the primary, both DeWine and Taylor had avoided associating with Kasich like the plague over his unpopularity among the diehard conservative base, but his broad popularity with swing voters still makes this a notable snub. Kasich's spokesperson said the governor won't back DeWine unless he agrees to preserve Kasich's Medicaid expansion and JobsOhio program, both of which DeWine has said he wants to either alter or partly dismantle.
● OR-Gov: Tuesday's GOP primary to take on Democratic Gov. Kate Brown may be a bit more interesting than we thought it would be. The Democratic firm Global Strategy Group is out with a poll giving state Rep. Knute Buehler, the widely-acknowledged front-runner, just a 33-25 lead over businessman Sam Carpenter, while retired Navy pilot Greg Wooldridge grabs just 8. Carpenter himself released a poll at the end of April showing him trailing Buehler 39-24, which was a big drop from their 23-23 tie in March. But Buehler seems to be taking Carpenter seriously, and the Bend Bulletin reports that he's been airing ads against him.
If Buehler has problems next week, it certainly won't be because he didn't spend a lot of money. As of May 2, Buehler spent $2.88 million of the $3.5 million he'd raised; neither Carpenter nor Wooldridge had brought in more than $280,000 throughout the entire campaign. But Buehler is a self-proclaimed "pro-choice" Republican, a potential asset in the general but of course a major liability in the primary.
Carpenter was hoping to convince other anti-abortion candidates to drop out of the race and consolidate behind him, but Wooldridge declined to take him up on that. Democrats may have released this poll to encourage anti-Buehler primary voters to flock to Carpenter so he'll have a better chance of pulling off an upset on Tuesday.
● SC-Gov: In a very unexpected blast from the past, businessman Phil Noble announced on Thursday that his running mate in the June 12 Democratic primary would be none other than former Georgia state Rep. Gloria Tinubu. Noble, who is white, was likely looking to add a black woman to his ticket. But Tinubu has had an unusual political and professional record across three states, so it's pretty surprising that Noble is choosing her to be his candidate for lieutenant governor.
Tinubu was first elected to the Atlanta city council in 1993 but lost runs for mayor in 1997 and 2001. In 2004 she became president of Barber-Scotia College, a historically black college in North Carolina that had lost its accreditation a month before she officially took charge. Tinubu resigned after a year-and-a-half as the school prepared for a semester with no students. The college, which remains deeply in debt, has yet to regain its accreditation.
Tinubu ended up coming back to Georgia and winning a 2010 race for the state House. But after just a year, Tinubu resigned from office to run for Congress in her native South Carolina. She sought the newly-created 7th Congressional District, a coastal seat that was a long-shot Democratic target. Attorney Preston Brittain raised considerably more money than Tinubu, but the national party showed no interest in this race after she beat him 73-27 in the primary runoff. Tinubu predictably lost the general election to Republican Tom Rice 56-44 as Mitt Romney was carrying the seat 55-44, and she was defeated 60-40 in a 2014 rematch.
● TN-Gov: An internal poll released by U.S. Rep. Diane Black has her leading the field of Republicans running for the gubernatorial nomination. The Grassroots Targeting poll, which surveyed 800 registered Republicans between May 4 and May 6, has Black at 41 percent, 14 points ahead of her next-nearest rival. The poll has Randy Boyd at 26, Bill Lee at 11, and Beth Harwell at 6; 15 percent of respondents were undecided. Boyd’s campaign called the poll “bogus” but declined to explain why or offer alternative numbers.
House
● CA-04: National security strategist Jessica Morse, a Democrat, has debuted her first TV ad ahead of next month's top-two primary. The spot shows Morse backpacking through the district's portion of the Sierra Nevada mountain range while she tells the story of her ancestors who first came to the region five generations ago. She promises to work to protect local watersheds and to prevent wildfires by taking on tough challenges in Congress.
● CA-10: On behalf of venture capitalist Josh Harder, a Democrat, the Benenson Strategy Group has surveyed the June 5 top-two primary in California's 10th District. Benenson found Republican Rep. Jeff Denham leading with 42 percent, while Harder would snag the second general election slot by taking 13 percent. However, beekeeper Michael Eggman, who was Team Blue's candidate in 2014 and 2016, is close behind at 10 percent.
To argue he has momentum, Harder also issued a previously unreleased February survey where Denham held the same 42-point plurality, but Eggman had 19 percent and Harder earned just 3 percent. Still, there have been few other polls to compare with these.
● CA-22: Fresno County prosecutor and likely Democratic standard-bearer Andrew Janz has launched his first TV ad in the race against GOP Rep. Devin Nunes. The well-polished spot focuses on "criminal prosecutor Andrew Janz" and his work putting "violent criminals and gang members behind bars." The narrator argues Janz will take on politicians who abuse their power and end tax breaks for special interests that are paid for on the backs of the middle class.
● FL-06: Republican U.S. Rep. John Rutherford has endorsed businessman Michael Waltz in the three-way GOP primary in this district. Rutherford, who shares some consultants with the Waltz campaign, praised the retired Army lieutenant colonel for his military service.
● IN-04: State Rep. Jim Baird is the newly minted Republican nominee to succeed outgoing GOP Rep. Todd Rokita, but on Tuesday he weirdly refused to rule out dropping out of the race if Rokita decided to turn around and seek re-election after losing the GOP primary for Senate. But Beau Baird, who is Jim Baird's son and campaign manager and as well as the nominee to succeed the elder Baird in the state House, vociferously rejected that possibility on Wednesday. Beau Baird declared that his father "absolutely would not" have gone through a challenging primary race just to end up dropping out after winning it for this safely red seat. It's unclear if there's anything to this, or if the candidate was just caught off-guard by a reporter.
● KS-02: Lobbyist and former Kansas House Speaker Doug Mays is joining the crowded Republican primary for this open GOP-held seat. Mays, a former state securities commissioner who served in the state House from 1993 through 2006, left his lobbying firm to join six other Republicans vying for the nomination. It’s no secret that the GOP field has been quite underwhelming, and Team Red will certainly be hoping that Mays is an improvement.
● ME-02: In his first TV ad ahead of next month's Democratic primary, state Rep. Jared Golden revisits a notorious quote from outgoing GOP Gov. Paul LePage, who in 2015 declared that state legislators should be "rounded up and executed in the public square." Flashing a headline on the screen—"Gov. LeRage: Paul LePage says area lawmakers should be shot"—Golden tells the audience, "I've been shot at before … as a Marine in Afghanistan and Iraq." He goes on to say that as a leader in the legislature, he fought LePage's refusal to expand Medicaid and won't let "Trump's talk" get in his way.
Golden also just received the endorsement of the Maine AFL-CIO, which is a federation of 160 local unions that collectively have some 40,000 members.
● NJ-02: Chuckle. After going way, way off-script last month and lamenting that New Jersey's open 2nd Congressional District represented "a recruiting hole" for the GOP, NRCC chair Steve Stivers now says that Hirsh Singh is awesome! Backtracking from his prior remarks that he wished he "had a better recruit" running to protect this GOP-held seat, Stivers called Singh, a businessman and the apparent Republican frontrunner, an "impressive candidate" after meeting with him on Wednesday.
Stivers might wind up preferring his initial assessment. On Thursday, state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, the likely Democratic nominee, released an internal poll from TargetSmart showing him with a hefty 52-34 lead on Singh, even though Trump retains a positive 52-45 approval rating in the district. Given the expense of running a competitive campaign here (New Jersey's 2nd is located in the pricey Philadelphia media market), it's likely that Stivers won't wind up offering much help to his "impressive candidate."
● NM-02: CHC BOLD PAC, which is the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has made a $150,000 media ad buy on behalf of attorney Xochitl Torres Small ahead of the June 5 Democratic primary, where she also has the backing of the DCCC. There's no copy of the ad available yet.
● NV-04: UNITE Here, the umbrella organization under which Nevada’s powerful Culinary Union falls, has dropped two TV ads in support of Democrat Steven Horsford to the tune of almost $270,000. (The labor group is dropping an additional $61,000 on radio ads for the former congressman.) One of the 30-second TV spots reminds viewers of Horsford’s progressive record during his brief U.S. House tenure, while the other reminds viewers of Horsford’s 2014 defeat and the progressive values he stood for. The TV ads will be in rotation in the Las Vegas media market for a month; the primary is June 12.
● NY-19: Former Army intelligence officer Pat Ryan has released a new poll from PPP showing him with a 44-41 lead on freshman GOP Rep. John Faso, while attorney Antonio Delgado, one of Ryan's many rivals in the Democratic primary, ties Faso at 42 apiece.
● PA-05: With days before Tuesday's very crowded Democratic primary for this suburban Philadelphia seat, attorney Mary Gay Scanlon is out with a poll from Chism Strategies giving her a 22-17 lead over state Rep. Greg Vitali; they show former federal prosecutor Ashley Lunkenheimer at 11, while former Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Rich Lazer takes 7.
Two polls from late April also showed Scanlon ahead. A new survey from the Democratic firm Independence Communications and Consulting for an unnamed client showed Scanlon with a 17-13 edge over Vitali, while financial advisor Lindy Li took 12, Lunkenheimer was at 10, and Lazer and bioengineer Molly Sheehan had 7 each. An earlier PPP survey for Vitali found Scanlon edging him just 18-17, while it was entrepreneur Theresa Wright who took third place with 8 percent.
● PA-08: Somehow, former federal prosecutor Joe Peters has scraped together enough money to air a TV ad ahead of Tuesday's GOP primary to face Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright. We'd summarize it, but we're not convinced all that many voters will see it. Peters had raised all of $27,000 by April 25, though he loaned himself another $40,000 a few days later. Peters' primary foe is former JP Morgan managing director John Chrin, who has poured over $1 million of his own money into his campaign, but has weak ties to this Scranton-area seat.
● PA-14: A conservative group called Conservatives for PA has been spending on TV, radio, and direct mail in support of state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler in next week’s GOP primary against state Rep. Rick Saccone. And it turns out that $200,000 of the $241,000 in donations they’ve received is from the campaign account of none other than … disgraced former U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy!
Murphy, of course, was that anti-abortion congressman who resigned last year after the news broke that he’d pressured the woman he was having an affair with to have an abortion when he thought she was carrying his child, and after an unrelated report also emerged about how he’d bullied his staff. Murphy’s departure triggered a special election for Pennsylvania’s old 18th District that was lost by none other than Saccone.
● VA-07: Former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger has released her first TV ad in advance of Virginia's June 12 Democratic primary. The commercial shows Spanberger helping out at a food bank while she narrates and also speaks to the camera to talk about the importance of serving others, which she says is why she joined the CIA to protect American lives. Spanberger promises to put people first and refuse money from corporate PACs.
Grab Bag
● Deaths: George Deukmejian, a Republican who served as governor of California from 1983 to 1991, died Tuesday at the age of 89. Deukmejian may be best known nationally for defying expectations as state attorney general and defeating Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who would have been the first African-American elected governor of any state, in a tight 1982 race. This contest popularized the term "The Bradley Effect," which theorized that white voters would lie to pollsters and say they were undecided or supporting a black candidate in order to present themselves in a good light before they backed the white candidate in the privacy of the voting booth.
Bradley was already being talked about as a 1984 vice presidential candidate, and the respected Field Poll showed Bradley ahead by 7 points late in the race: It also didn't help that Deukmejian's campaign manager had resigned three weeks before Election Day. Exit polls also projected Bradley would win, so the political world was caught by surprise when it was Deukmejian who emerged with a 49-48 lead when all the votes were in. Speculation quickly began that many white voters who said they were backing Bradley or were undecided ended up flocking to Deukmejian.
However, Deukmejian strategist Ken Khachigian wrote in 2008 that their own internal polls showed the Republican picking up support in the final weeks of the campaign as they ran ads portraying Bradley as weak on crime and taking advantage of anti-Los Angeles sentiment in the state, and that their numbers showed Deukmejian within 1 point of Bradley on election eve.
Khachigian argued that the highly-publicized Field Poll had some problems with its methodology that had nothing to do with voters being dishonest, and that the exit polls had not properly factored in early voters, who were disproportionately conservative. But the term "Bradley Effect" entered the political lexicon, and it was used to explain why other black candidates seemed to underperform the polls; the Bradley Effect largely stopped being a topic of discussion after the 2008 general election polls correctly predicted Barack Obama's win.
