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
● WA-08: Yup, Jason Rittereiser is our new polling hero. Last week, one of Rittereiser's rivals for Washington's open 8th District, fellow Democrat Kim Schrier, released a poll—or really, "poll"—of the race that can only be described as totally misleading. Schrier's memo, authored by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, purported to show her with a huge lead in the Aug. 7 primary over the rest of the field, but it only counted self-identified Democrats.
Campaign Action
That's an enormous problem, because Washington, like California, uses a top-two system where all voters, regardless of party, participate in a single primary for each seat. Therefore, failing to include independents and Republicans yields completely useless numbers, like Dino Rossi, the well-known GOP frontrunner and the only Republican running, sitting at just 5 percent. Despite this, Schrier's own press release claimed her survey showed her "well-positioned to win Democratic primary"—even though there is no Democratic primary.
That cheesed us off, but it seriously—and rightly—miffed Rittereiser, who responded with the sort of candor you rarely see from politicians when it comes to polling. In a statement, Rittereiser acknowledged the truth: "[N]one of the Democratic candidates are known in the district," he wrote. "As expected, we all start in the low single digits." And indeed, he released his own month-old internal from Global Strategy Group showing just that, with Rossi way out in front at 43, Schrier a very distant second at 6 and himself at 4.
But what really sets Rittereiser apart is the way he shreds Schrier's use of informed ballot results, which she highlighted to make her "lead" look even larger. Rittereiser said he could do the exact same thing with his data, but added, "Using these results to claim that I have a 35-point lead in the polls would be dishonest." That it would be. Every other candidate in America should take heed.
Senate
● FL-Sen: Just three weeks into his campaign, GOP Gov. Rick Scott is already up with his second seven-figure ad buy. Scott's spot, in which he rambles about how Washington "would be going bankrupt" if it were a business, is airing "around the state" and is backed by a reported $2 million (the same amount he spent on a different ad last month). Scott also says he's already raised $3.2 million from donors since kicking off his bid.
● WV-Sen: It isn't every day you see one of those campaign ads that's in contention for one of the all-time weirdest, but the latest offering from disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship surely tries its best. On Monday evening, Blankenship published an apparent TV ad on his Facebook page that featured nothing but the candidate giving the camera a death stare while he monotonously rambled incoherently about the attacks against him before finishing by saying he'll replace "Cocaine Mitch" McConnell if elected.
On Tuesday, though, he deleted the original video and re-uploaded it along with one that has a more conventional ending. Was it too looney-tunes even for Blankenship? Unlikely. The original ad appears to have been designed to generate media attention for its wacky attack on McConnell, and indeed it did. Although the ad gave no explanation for "Cocaine Mitch," he later defended it thusly:
"Mitch McConnell and his family have extensive ties to China," the campaign said in a statement. "His father-in-law who founded and owns a large Chinese shipping company has given Mitch and his wife millions of dollars over the years. The company was implicated recently in smuggling cocaine from Colombia to Europe, hidden aboard a company ship carrying foreign coal was $7 million dollars of cocaine and that is why we've deemed him 'Cocaine Mitch.'"
This is just the latest in a line of nasty attacks Blankenship has made against McConnell using his wife, Elaine Chao, who serves as secretary of transportation and is Taiwanese-American. Indeed, in a recent radio appearance, Blankenship decided that the fact that her father, James Chao, has business interests in China was enough to claim that McConnell has conflicts of interest because his father-in-law is a "wealthy Chinaperson." For a candidate whose entire campaign could be charitably described as bizarre, the most surprising thing about Blankenship using a racial slur is that it's gender-neutral.
National Republicans are rightly worried that such a flawed candidate could win their primary and blow a competitive race, and Democrats are just as eager to make it happen. The Democratic super PAC Duty and Country has now spent $1.2 million attacking GOP Rep. Evan Jenkins in the primary, while they've only spent $47,000 to hit state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and, of course, nothing against Blankenship. While national Democrats obviously think Blankenship would be the easiest of the trio to defeat in the general election, it's notable that they're largely not targeting Morrisey in addition to Jenkins, which could mean they see Jenkins as clearly the strongest Republican contender.
Gubernatorial
● CT-Gov: Hedge fund founder David Stemerman has put $400,000 behind his first Republican primary ad. The segment features Stemerman talking about how he's an "outside the box" businessman who doesn't think like typical politicians and has an unspecified plan about how to save money for the state. Meanwhile on the Democratic side, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim has said he will gather signatures to get onto the August primary ballot instead of relying on this month's party convention.
● CO-Gov: Former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, who served as Obama's interior secretary, has endorsed former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy in the Democratic primary for governor.
● MI-Gov: Former Detroit Health Commissioner Abdul El-Sayed has faced serious questions for months regarding his eligibility to run for governor, and Democratic primary rival Shri Thanedar has now filed a formal challenge asking the state Bureau of Elections to resolve the issue. Thanedar is one of four citizens petitioning the bureau for a review, although the other three aren't candidates.
El-Sayed himself had previously asked a state court to declare whether he's eligible, but the court has yet to rule. Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson asked the court to dismiss El-Sayed's request, claiming there was no controversy because he hadn't actually been blocked from the ballot yet. Thanedar claims he's only asking for a ruling on El-Sayed's eligibility so that Johnson and the GOP can't wait to challenge it after the primary to get El-Sayed knocked off the ballot if he becomes the nominee.
However, Thanedar has repeatedly demonstrated his claims can't always be taken at face value. Indeed, he has given misleading responses to recent news reports that his lab-testing company abandoned more than 100 dogs and monkeys when it went bankrupt. Before that, Thanedar gave a dubious defense of an utterly clueless social media posting that was racially offensive, and before that—where it all seemed to start—it was reported that he'd looked into running as a Republican or independent and gave prospective consultants the sense his positions were very malleable.
Thanedar has been positioning himself as the true progressive stalwart in this race, as has El-Sayed, so he might stand more to gain from El-Sayed being knocked off the ballot than would fellow primary rival and erstwhile front-runner Gretchen Whitmer would. For her part, Whitmer denounced the earlier challenge from regular voters asking the state to rule on El-Sayed's eligibility and asked that it be withdrawn. And in an apparent response to Thanedar's petition, El-Sayed filed his own challenge to Thanedar's nominating petitions to try to block the latter from the ballot.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed is still campaigning full speed ahead for the August primary. He recently debuted his first TV ad, which he's spending $150,000 to air in the Detroit media market. The spot features El-Sayed giving a speech to a diverse crowd of supporters at a campaign rally, where he talks of standing up to big polluters so that kids can go to schools without lead contamination. El-Sayed says politicians in power only listen to big corporate interests instead of "people like you and me" and adds that Lansing needs "new blood."
● OH-Gov: Recent campaign finance reports showed Republican Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor loaned her campaign $3 million earlier in January, shortly thereafter repaid the loan to her husband, Donzell Taylor, then later loaned the same amount back to her campaign this spring, raising questions about why she was shuffling so much money back and forth. Now, state Rep. Mike Duffey, who is backing state Attorney General Mike DeWine in the GOP primary, has filed a complaint alleging she violated campaign finance laws that prevent donations in excess of $12,707 to a candidate.
Taylor has claimed the money came from jointly owned assets, which state law considers to be effectively the candidate's personal funds, on which there's no contribution limit. However, the Taylors filed their 2017 tax returns individually, and Mary Taylor only reported $1,152 in interest earnings, which doesn't suggest she had $3 million worth of assets lying around at the start of 2018 (although a tax return is primarily about earnings and doesn’t list someone’s net worth). Taylor's husband, on the other hand, is a very wealthy developer and builder. It's unclear whether Taylor is telling the truth or not, but the state Elections Commission likely won't resolve the issue until after the May 8 primary.
Meanwhile, DeWine's latest ad attacks Taylor for supporting Medicaid expansion in 2013 (on which she has since flip-flopped), backing a tax hike, and for never endorsing Trump. It closes by touting his endorsement from the state party.
● OK-Gov: First-quarter campaign finance reports are now available in Oklahoma's gubernatorial election, where Republicans have a competitive June 26 primary contest:
Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb: $317,000 raised, $2.4 million cash-on-hand
Businessman Kevin Stitt: $400,000 raised, $400,000 self-loaned, $1.6 million cash-on-hand
Former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett: $431,000 raised, $798,000 cash-on-hand
Attorney Gary Richardson: $97,000 raised, $393,000 cash-on-hand
State Auditor Gary Jones: $44,000 cash-on-hand
Overall, several of the candidates look like they'll have the resources to get their messages out, and in the likely event that no one takes a majority, there will be an Aug. 28 runoff.
On the Democratic side, former state Attorney General Drew Edmondson raised $305,000 and had $326,000 in cash-on-hand. Former state Sen. Connie Johnson had less than $10,000 in the bank and will almost certainly not be a major factor in the primary.
● RI-Gov: Fundraising reports in Rhode Island's gubernatorial race are now out, and Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo continues to raise considerable money for such a small state. She brought in $1.3 million and finished March with $4.3 million on-hand. Former Secretary of State Matt Brown only recently announced his primary challenge to Raimondo, but he raised $57,000 during his exploratory phase and had $25,000 in the bank. It'll likely take a lot more than that to oust Raimondo, but the primary isn't until Sept. 12.
On the Republican side, Cranston Mayor and 2014 nominee Allan Fung led the pack by raising $192,000 and ending the quarter with a balance of $316,000. State House Minority Leader Patricia Morgan didn't do quite as well, bringing in only $76,000 and having $185,000 in the bank. The last Republican in the race, businessman Giovanni Feroce, said he wouldn't begin fundraising in earnest despite joining the race at the beginning of the year.
Finally, Republican state Rep. Joe Trillo is running as a conservative independent, and although he raised a mere $7,000, he claims he'll self-fund enough to be competitive. He had $123,000 in the bank, meaning he could indeed have the funds to get his message out in a state where a significant share of voters have backed independents in recent gubernatorial elections, but it would take a lot to go right for him to actually win.
● WI-Gov: GOP Gov. Scott Walker has just launched his first TV ad in support of his bid for a third term. The spot features a woman who says she was able to train to become a firefighter and paramedic thanks to Walker, who appears at the end of the ad to tout his "Wisconsin Fast Forward" program that provides skill-training grants. The campaign says the ad is running statewide but has refused to say what it's spending to air it.
House
● CA-45: EMILY's List and End Citizens United are teaming up to run a "six-figure" mail and digital ad program on behalf of law professor Katie Porter, one of several Democrats vying to oust GOP Rep. Mimi Walters. The primary is June 5, but mail ballots go out to voters starting May 7.
● CA-48: On Monday, Democrat Rachel Payne announced she was dropping out ahead of the top-two primary for California's 48th District. It's too late for her to take her name off the ballot, since Californians will soon begin voting by mail. However, she says she won't actively campaign in an attempt to ensure Democrats won't split the vote badly enough to allow both Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and former Orange County GOP chair Scott Baugh to advance to the November general election. Payne's decision leaves just three Democrats in the running: Real estate firm owner Harley Rouda, biologist Hans Keirstead, and attorney Omar Siddiqui.
● CO-05: Late on Tuesday afternoon, a federal district court judge ordered Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams to place GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn's name back on the June 26 primary ballot, ruling that the state's law banning non-residents from collecting petition signatures was unconstitutional. The decision was expected, since, as law student Ryan Partelow laid out in detail in a recent article, federal courts have generally stuck down such laws over the last few decades.
Nevertheless, the lawyers who brought the challenge to Lamborn's candidacy say they plan to appeal, and Williams' office said it would "evaluate the case." However, the same elections official noted that ballots must be printed and mailed to overseas voters by May 12, so a resolution is necessary soon.
● CT-05: New Britain Alderman Manny Sanchez has joined the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty. Despite being only 29 years old, Sanchez is actually serving his fourth term after being appointed to a council district in 2010 and getting elected at-large in 2017, meaning he already represents about one-tenth of the district. He also works at the University of Hartford and is the nephew of state Rep. Bobby Sanchez. Manny Sanchez joins a Democratic primary that includes Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman and Newtown Rabbi Shaul Praver.
● FL-09, FL-15: Of course he had to let this unfold in the most obnoxious way possible. On Monday, representatives for Alan Grayson told local reporter Noah Pransky that the former Democratic congressman would seek a comeback in Florida's newly open 15th District. But later that same day, Grayson's spokesperson said he wasn't running in the 15th but would instead run for some other seat, which only Grayson himself would reveal the following day.
And the answer turns out to be: Grayson's running for his old seat! That'd be the Orlando-based 9th District, but the well-document problem is, well, that this seat is already occupied by Democratic Rep. Darren Soto, who took over from Grayson when the latter made a very unsuccessful bid for Senate in 2016.
Just how unsuccessful is important: Grayson only carried the 9th by a 39-36 margin over then-Rep. Patrick Murphy, a rather abysmal showing for Grayson on what was his home turf … though not entirely. The 9th's boundaries were altered due to court-ordered redistricting ahead of the 2016 elections (around 72 percent of the new 9th was made up of the old 9th), so Grayson never actually ran in a sizable chunk of the current district.
And while Grayson's extensive catalog of burned bridges will forever leach smoldering fumes, Soto hasn't done anything to piss anyone off in his year-plus on the job. What's more, he was the first Puerto Rican ever elected to Congress in Florida, and his district's large (and growing) Puerto Rican population is unlikely to want to give him the boot.
But never tell Alan Grayson the odds—he just wants to cause trouble. Grayson says that he plans to run on impeaching Trump, even though this tactic can only motivate apathetic Republicans, seeing as Democrats are already raring to vote. Like any reasonable lawmaker, Soto says, "Mueller must finish his investigation before we can properly vote on impeachment." Grayson, of course, is not like any reasonable lawmaker, so you can bet he has a problem with Soto's views. Let's just hope voters have a big enough problem with Grayson.
● ME-02: Businessman Jonathan Fulford unexpectedly dropped out of the Democratic primary in Maine's 2nd Congressional District, saying only that the "pressures of a campaign on myself and the family have been substantial." Fulford's fundraising, by contrast, had been pretty insubstantial: He only raised $61,000 in the last quarter and had just $85,000 on-hand.
That was far less than the two frontrunners, businessman Lucas St. Clair and state Rep. Jared Golden. Golden led the way with $268,000 raised and $308,000 banked, while St. Clair brought in $217,000 and had $196,000 left over. But the man they're both trying to beat, GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, continues to be a fundraising machine. He raised $440,000 and has a monster $2.2 million in his campaign account.
● MI-01: Oof. Retired Marine Lt. Col. Matt Morgan, the only Democrat seeking to challenge freshman GOP Rep. Jack Bergman in Michigan's 1st District, may get booted off the Aug. 7 primary ballot because of a very ticky-tack problem with his nominating petitions. Though there doesn't seem to be any question about the validity of the signatures he submitted, Morgan's petitions listed a P.O. box rather than his home address at the top of the petitions themselves, which the state's Bureau of Elections says renders them unacceptable.
A final determination will be made by the Board of State Canvassers, but if they rule against Morgan, he's promised to pursue "all legal means necessary" to continue his campaign. The most straightforward, though, might actually be a write-in bid in the primary, which Morgan said he'd wage if he has to—much like the late Ohio Rep. Charlie Wilson was famously forced to do after he muffed his petitions in his first campaign for Congress in 2006 (complete with country jingle: "Oh George Bush will feel the pain / when you write in Charlie's name").
That would still be an expensive and potentially fraught endeavor, but at least Morgan wouldn't have to worry about another candidate beating him in the primary—something Wilson had to contend with, since Republicans sought to prop up his Some Dude opponent. It didn't work, fortunately, and if anything, the effort got Wilson's campaign in gear much earlier than it otherwise would have. The DCCC didn't appreciate having to spend money to correct a blunder like Wilson's, and they won't like it much if they have to bail out Morgan, too, but at least this is a mistake that can be remedied.
● NH-01: Tech executive Bruce Crochetiere, who'd been considering a bid for New Hampshire's open 1st District for some time, officially joined the GOP primary on Tuesday. Republicans have hoped that Crochetiere could self-fund, and WMUR's John DiStaso says he's "expected" to seed his campaign with "at least $500,000," but Crochetiere himself hasn't confirmed any such thing.
Republicans could probably stand to see someone with more access to money in the race, though, since their two main candidates, state Sen. Andy Sanborn and former state Liquor Commission official Eddie Edwards, haven't raised much. Thanks to a quarter million in self-funding, though, Sanborn now has $496,000 in his campaign account.
The top Democratic fundraiser, meanwhile, has lapped the field: Former Department of Veterans Affairs official Maura Sullivan once again had a big quarter (this time bringing in a hefty $480,000) and had $697,000 on-hand. The best-known candidate (and probable front-runner), Executive Councilor Chris Pappas, raised $204,000 during the same timeframe—twice what either Republican took in—and had $339,000 left to spend. The only other Democrat with six figures in the bank is state Rep. Mark MacKenzie, who raised just $27,000 but loaned himself $100,000 and has $115,000 remaining.
● NM-01: VoteVets has dropped a 30-second TV spot with a $40,000 buy in support of veteran and Democrat Damon Martinez in the June 5 primary. The ad riffs on Trump's tenure as host of "The Apprentice," highlighting the fact that Trump "fired" Martinez from his post as a U.S. Attorney. The spot claims Trump did so because of Martinez's successful prosecutions of polluting corporations and his crackdown on domestic and gun violence.
● NY-22: House Majority PAC has dropped another a 30-second TV ad against GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney. The spot hits her for her vote on GOP healthcare legislation, denouncing her support of the bill as tantamount to imposing an "age tax." Versions of the ad are also running on digital platforms, but there's no word yet on the size of this particular buy.
● OH-16: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is up with its first ad supporting Republican Anthony Gonzalez, a 30-second spot with a $300,000 buy that riffs on his time as an NFL player. The ad casts Nancy Pelosi as the villain as it highlights Gonzalez's support for the GOP tax plan that passed late last year and his opposition to "harmful regulations costing Ohio jobs."
● PA-05: The Rich Lazer-supporting Middle Class PAC has dropped its second TV spot supporting the Democrat in the primary, a 30-second ad with a $300,000 buy. The spot touts his progressive and gun safety bona fides while emphasizing his youth.
● PA-07: Welp, we seem headed for exactly the sort of divide that will allow Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, a conservative, anti-immigrant Trump supporter, to win the May 15 Democratic primary. That's because Morganelli faces two main opponents to his left: Pastor Greg Edwards, who was just endorsed by Bernie Sanders and is campaigning with him this weekend, and former Allentown solicitor Susan Wild, for whom EMILY's List plans to run ads in the final week of the race.
And despite his past attempts to suck up to Trump, Morganelli is also canny enough to say what he needs to do to appeal to primary voters. In his first TV ad of the race, narrators say he'll "take on the NRA to ban assault weapons" and "fight to stop Donald Trump's plan to cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare." It's a dispiriting state of affairs, because the Lehigh Valley-based 7th District voted for both Obama and Clinton, and in a year like 2018, it could and should elect a more progressive choice.
● PA-11: Republican Chet Beiler is up with a 30-second TV spot ahead of the May 15 primary that blames "career politicians" for "runaway spending" and "record debt" while showing images of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Beiler then goes on to assure the viewer that he wants to "restore fiscal sanity" and "enact term limits." No word yet on the size of the buy.
● PA-16: Democrat Ron DiNicola is up with his first TV ad, a 30-second spot that touts his military background and his work to expand early education. The ad goes on to talk about the things he's protect and stand up to: Social Security and "big drug companies," respectively. There's no word yet on the size of the buy.
● TX-05: The Our Conservative Texas Future super PAC has made a $245,000 ad buy on behalf of state Rep. Lance Gooden in the Republican runoff. The ad itself has yet to surface.
