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
● ME-Gov: Campaign finance reports are now available in Maine's gubernatorial contest for the entire race up through April 24, while the June 12 primaries are coming up soon. Maine is an unusual state with a relatively robust system of public financing for candidates under the Maine Clean Elections Act. Candidates who obtain at least 3,200 "qualifying contributions" of between $5 and $100 receive the first and largest tier of public funds, which includes $400,000 for primary candidates, $200,000 for independents in the pre-primary period, and $600,000 for independents or party nominees who make it to the general election.
Campaign Action
But unlike some states with public financing, Maine doesn't stop there. While participating candidates can't raise private funds aside from small-dollar qualifying contributions, they can qualify for up to four additional rounds of funding in the primary and eight extra rounds in the general election. In the primary, they get $150,000 for every 800 extra qualifying donations, while in the general it takes 1,200 small donations to get each additional $175,000.
Consequently, public funding can help give a leg up to candidates with grassroots support, and indeed, the lone Democrat to qualify for the initial $400,000 in public funds is longtime progressive activist Betsy Sweet. She raised $98,000 in small donations to unlock the initial round of public money, and she finished the period with $324,000 on-hand. However, all of her primary rivals are relying on private funding, and attorney Adam Cote led the field with $805,000 raised and $467,000 in the bank.
Cote is already putting his funds to use by launching his first TV ad. A retired major in the Maine national guard, Cote relays a harrowing experience where he survived a suicide bombing attack while serving in Iraq, which allowed him to come home, start a family, build a clean-energy business, and campaign for governor to make the economy work for everyone.
Two other Democrats both raised a decent amount of cash: State Attorney General Janet Mills brought in a sizable $572,000 and had $279,000 on hand, while former state House Speaker Mark Eves raised $305,000, although he had just $87,000 in his war chest. However, state Sen. Mark Dion raised a mere $33,000 over more than six months, although it's important to note that legislators are banned from raising money from lobbyists and their employers during the legislative session, which ran from Jan. 1 through April 18. Finally, former state Rep. Diane Russell did not file a report by the deadline.
On the Republican side, state Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason was the lone candidate to participate in public financing. He raised $37,000 to qualify for the $400,000 in public funds and finished with $210,000 in cash-on-hand. Businessman Shawn Moody led the fundraising chase with $575,000 from donors and another $300,000 from his own pocket, leaving him with a sizable $409,000 stockpiled for the last several weeks of the race.
Meanwhile, former state health commissioner Mary Mayhew raised $300,000, but that was over almost an entire year, leaving her with just $84,000 in the bank and suggesting she might have trouble raising money down the final stretch. Finally, state House Speaker Ken Fredette raised a mere $21,000 and looks unlikely to be much of a factor on the airwaves.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Maine gubernatorial election without a serious independent candidate, and this year's contest has two of them. State Treasurer Terry Hayes raised $98,000 to qualify for $200,000 in public funding, leaving her with $120,000 in the bank. But Hayes is already on the general election ballot, meaning she'll be guaranteed another $600,000 after the primary is over. Meanwhile, entrepreneur Alan Caron raised a $495,000 from donors and loaned himself a hefty $450,000, giving him $333,000 on-hand near the end of April.
Senate
● IN-Sen: A new report from The Associated Press paints a very different picture of wealthy businessman and former state Rep. Mike Braun than the image he has projected in his ads and campaign, and it doesn't portray the self-funding Republican in a positive light one week ahead of the May 8 primary. Braun has cast himself as a successful businessman and job-creator who will take on career politicians, those who outsource jobs, and businesses that rely on government subsidies. But The AP has found a litany of labor law violations, a business empire that relies on foreign goods, and subsidies worth millions that Braun has pursued.
Braun, who is worth between $37 million and $95 million, has heavily self-funded his campaign against Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita, leaning hard into the "run government like a business" angle. However, his trucking company was cited nearly 100 times since 2015 by the Transportation Department for unsafe driving violations, while his businesses have also faced and settled lawsuits over violating federal law to underpay employees and force truckers to drive too many hours per day.
Braun is also a hypocrite on the issue of trade, having cast himself as a protector of American jobs and manufacturing while voting against a bill to let local governments recoup financial incentives from companies that outsource jobs abroad. With just a week until Election Day, it might be too late for Messer and Rokita to gain traction by calling out Braun's hypocrisy, but if he ends up becoming the GOP nominee, Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly can assuredly try to use those same vulnerabilities against him.
Meanwhile, Rokita's latest ad imitates Trump live-tweeting Fox & Friends by calling the special counsel investigation into Trump a "witch hunt" orchestrated by Democrats, James Comey, and Robert Mueller. It then blasts Messer as a "Never-Trumper" and Braun as a "Democrat" who repeatedly voted for tax increases, while Rokita promises to deliver on Trump's immigration proposals.
● MN-Sen-B: Appointed Sen. Tina Smith drew her first notable Democratic primary challenger on Monday, but the man hoping to unseat her is anything but a conventional Democrat. Richard Painter, a longtime Republican who served as chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House, recently announced his intention to run for Smith's Senate seat.
Painter has been visible on cable news and social media as a prominent Republican critic of Trump, and he serves as the vice chairman of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. He claims he's running because Smith and Minnesota Democrats supposedly aren't doing enough to stand up to Trump, and he called for Trump's removal from office. However, he also described himself as "a centrist in many ways—right up the middle," which isn't likely to endear him to Democrats skeptical of his recent party switch.
Painter also demonstrated how out of step he is with the #MeToo movement that resulted in there even being a special election for this seat in the first place when he tweeted at the time of former Sen. Al Franken's groping scandal that the whole thing was a "set up job" by Fox News and notoriously shady GOP operative Roger Stone. When recently asked about those past statements, Painter continued to dodge the issue by saying it was the job of the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate allegations of sexual assault, not for public outcry to force resignations.
It's hard to see how Painter has much of a much of a chance at beating Smith in the Aug. 14 primary. The first-time candidate is challenging an incumbent who has the full support of state and national Democrats, and Smith has no obvious flaws that would give Democratic primary voters much reason to fire her.
● MT-Sen: America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, has dropped $344,000 for an ad attacking Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. The spot tries to hit Tester for his leading role in blocking Trump's effort to nominate Dr. Ronny Jackson, who serves as the official physician to the president, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jackson withdrew his nomination after reports came out alleging he drank on the job and over-prescribed medications like narcotics, but the ad claims those allegations are false and accuses Tester of trying to stand in the way of Trump.
Meanwhile, former Judge Russ Fagg is up with his first primary ad, which leans hard into what has become this cycle's standard GOP playbook of xenophobia. The spot claims "criminal illegal aliens threaten America" as ominous images of tattooed Latino gang members appear on screen, while Fagg advocates for Trump's "secure borders" and the death penalty.
● PA-Sen: Republican Rep. Lou Barletta has launched his first ad ahead of the May 15 primary, which the campaign says is a "six-figure" buy. It uses a lottery-drawing setup to criticize Democratic Sen. Bob Casey for allegedly collecting $3 million in salary over his career in public office. Barletta claims Casey has no accomplishments, while he points to his own efforts on "tough immigration reform" and fighting government spending. The congressman says he'll stand by Trump.
● WV-Sen: Rep. Evan Jenkins recently launched a 15-second ad for the May 8 GOP primary that attacks state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey for supposedly opposing Trump and backing Clinton, but the spot notably manipulates reality to try to make it look like Morrisey is shaking hands with a cackling Clinton. In truth, Jenkins' team photoshopped a picture of Morrisey shaking hands with Trump in the Oval Office, but one could easily be fooled into thinking he was getting chummy with Clinton when watching the footage.
Meanwhile, Morrisey's latest ad continues to hammer Jenkins for the latter's past as a Democrat. The commercial calls him a "liberal politician" who supposedly sided with unpopular national Democrats on issues like guns, coal, and Planned Parenthood. The second half of the ad touts Morrisey's record fighting the Obama administration and his "A+" rating from the NRA. However, Jenkins isn't the only one manipulating reality in his ads: Morrisey at one point presents a fake CNN quote that says "Morrisey stops Obama's illegal amnesty," but in reality, the article it references only talks about a Supreme Court case involving 26 GOP state attorneys general and doesn't mention Morrisey at all.
Gubernatorial
● AL-Gov: On behalf of the Alabama Daily News, a pollster we've never seen before, Leverage Public Strategies, has released a survey of the June 5 GOP primary for governor. Their poll has Gov. Kay Ivey with a huge 47-11 lead over Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, while evangelical minister Scott Dawson takes 9 percent. That result would put Ivey very close to the outright majority needed to avoid a July 17 runoff entirely. Meanwhile, Battle is up with his first TV ad, which uses a "There's a battle brewing in Alabama. A battle for ...." framing ad nauseum to point to the things he's fighting for, like jobs and education.
● CA-Gov: Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, will be able to count on some especially well-funded proponents of charter schools to help him overcome Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's fundraising advantage. A super PAC called Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa has raised a huge $12.5 million in recent weeks, with large donations from wealthy supporters like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican. The group has reportedly booked $11 million in TV ad time from April 17 to May 21 ahead of the June 5 top-two primary.
Meanwhile, a super PAC called Restore Our Values is supporting wealthy businessman John Cox, a Republican, and it attempts to link both Newsom and Villaraigosa to the #MeToo movement over their old affairs. However, neither of the two Democrats were accused of sexual harassment or assault, which is very different than other politicians who have been brought down by revelations against them over the past several months. Consequently, California voters may take a far more forgiving view of their unseemly past behavior that was nevertheless consensual.
● CT-Gov: EMILY's List has endorsed former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz in her bid for governor. Bysiewicz is the only notable woman running in the Democratic primary, and EMILY, which often supports candidates it's backed in the past, had previously endorsed her unsuccessful 2012 Senate campaign.
● CO-Gov: Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne is spending $100,000 to debut her first TV ad ahead of the June 26 Democratic primary, and it features something very atypical for a political candidate. The segment shows Lynne getting a new tattoo with the words "Fight for Colorado" on her shoulder while she talks about the need to be bold in life. Lynne highlights her accomplishments and ties herself to Gov. John Hickenlooper on efforts to to improve health care.
● FL-Gov: The National Liberty Foundation, which is funded by the sugar industry, has bought $337,000 worth of TV ad time this week to attack Rep. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary. There's no copy of any new ad yet, but they have now spent $1.4 million against him.
● GA-Gov: Tech executive Clay Tippins' latest GOP primary ad bashes Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle for using taxpayer money to charter private jets. It shows a Cagle impersonator wearing a tuxedo throwing out money in stopped traffic while Tippins accuses him of raising taxes to fix Atlanta traffic even though the only one who is getting around easily seems to be Cagle. Tippins argues he's the only non-politician in the race, and he'll fix problems instead of "flying over" them.
● NH-Gov: On Wednesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen endorsed former state Sen. Molly Kelly in the Democratic primary for governor, a post Shaheen herself held from 1997 to 2003. Kelly faces former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand for the right to take on first-term GOP Gov. Chris Sununu in the fall.
● NM-Gov: Rep. Steve Pearce, the presumptive Republican nominee for New Mexico's open gubernatorial race, is hitting the airwaves for the first time. Pearce narrates the ad himself: Standing outside a dilapidated shack, Pearce explains it was his home for the first two years of his life—"no plumbing, no running water"—and says, "For too many in our state, things aren't much better." In the rest of the spot, he speaks in platitudes, saying he wants to "fix our schools, bring more jobs, stop the crime, and lift families from poverty." It's a far cry—and a telling one—from Pearce's usual ultra-conservative rhetoric. According to FCC filings, Pearce is spending $100,000 to run the ad.
● NY-Gov: Quinnipiac's first poll of the Democratic primary between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and activist Cynthia Nixon finds Cuomo ahead, but he's leading by just a 50-28 margin, which is the closest any pollster has seen the race in the six weeks Nixon's been in it. Here's another way of looking at it: In 2014, when Cuomo was on the receiving end of a challenge from little-known law professor Zephyr Teachout, his smallest lead in the polls was 58-26.
It was also his only lead in the polls, because Teachout's candidacy was given such short shrift that only PPP bothered to survey the race, and even then just once, a few days before the election. That August, Quinnipiac had declared that Teachout was "about as anonymous as a candidate can be" and never bothered polling her again. But she took 33 percent to Cuomo's 63, a fairly soft showing for an incumbent with all the money, power, and resources in the world versus a penniless opponent who couldn't even get pollsters to pay attention to her campaign.
Nixon, by contrast, has no problem earning attention—she knows how to use her celebrity status to ensure plenty of press coverage, and the polls show it's already paying off even though she has yet to spend a cent. It's also worth noting that Cuomo possesses a solid 71-21 favorability rating (and a similar job approval score) among Democrats, but only 50 percent of primary voters say they'll cast a ballot for him. Nixon's favorables, meanwhile, are at 35-15 with Democrats, so she has plenty of room for improvement with those who don't know her yet.
● OH-Gov: Ohio's supremely nasty GOP primary for governor is less than a week away, and the body language of the two rival camps may offer a clue as to which way the race is headed. In what's likely his final ad, state Attorney General Mike DeWine largely avoids hitting Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, beyond flashing a photo of her at the start as a narrator barks, "Some people talk. Others deliver." The rest of the ad, which is running for a reported $900,000, is devoted to talking up DeWine's conservative bona fides, like "stopping Obama's immigration plan" and "fighting for President Trump's travel ban."
Taylor, on the other hand, continues to hammer her opponent. In her newest ad, she complains that "D.C. DeWine" voted to give "amnesty" to "illegals and their drugs," and "allowed dangerous sanctuary cities." "Trump and Taylor," as the voiceover repeatedly intones, will stop all of these things. If Taylor feels the need to stay negative while DeWine goes, well, what passes for positive these days in a Republican primary, then that suggests both sides believe all the polls showing DeWine ahead.
House
● CT-05: On Wednesday, high school history teacher Jahana Hayes, who was named national teacher of the year in 2016, joined the race for Connecticut's open 5th District, making her the fourth notable Democrat to do so. Hayes has a remarkable story: Though she grew up in poverty and became pregnant as a teenager, she always "loved school," says the Washington Post, and with the encouragement of her teachers, ultimately graduated from college and achieved her dream of becoming a teacher herself.
After winning teacher of the year honors, she met with Barack Obama at the White House and traveled the country to promote education. Hayes would be the first black woman to represent Connecticut in Congress, and the Hartford Courant says Democrats are "buzzing" about her candidacy.
Meanwhile, Middletown Mayor Dan Drew, who briefly considered joining the Democratic primary himself, announced on Tuesday that he would not run.
● ME-02: A new group called the Maine Outdoor Alliance has paid for at least $149,000 in TV time over the next couple of weeks to air a new ad touting businessman Lucas St. Clair, one of the front-runners in the Democratic primary in the 2nd Congressional District. The minute-long spot features a woman praising St. Clair for helping to revitalize northern Maine through the work he's best known for: brokering a deal to establish the Katahdin National Monument, an 88,000-acre federally protected woodland.
As Michael Shepherd of the Bangor Daily News notes, this is nominally an "issue ad" that avoids FEC disclosure requirements by asking viewers at its conclusion to "[c]all the Trump administration and tell them to leave our Katahdin monument alone," rather than openly encouraging them to support St. Clair. It's not clear who's funding the effort, but Shepherd points out that the organization's only officer was the best man at St. Clair's wedding. St. Clair's campaign naturally says it "has not been involved with the group."
● NY-24: Democrat Juanita Perez Williams' petitions withstood scrutiny at a hearing before the state Board of Elections on Tuesday, as supporters of her primary rival, Dana Balter, failed to convince officials to invalidate enough signatures to knock her off the ballot. However, Diane Dwire, the leader of the challenge to Perez Williams' candidacy, suggested that she might continue to pursue the matter in court. If she's unsuccessful, Balter and Perez Williams will face off for the right to take on GOP Rep. John Katko on June 26.
● PA-07 (old): As expected, Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered the special election for the final two months of former Rep. Pat Meehan's term to take place on Nov. 6, concurrently with Pennsylvania's regularly scheduled general elections. That means there will be simultaneous elections in the old 7th District and its successor, the new 5th. But because the 7th was so infamously gerrymandered, this actually means that voters in six different new districts (including the 5th) will see the special election for the old 7th on their ballots.
Strange as this scenario may seem, we've seen situations like this play out before: In the redistricting year of 2012, it happened in four separate districts. But there's still a question of who's going to run in this race. Pennsylvania doesn't conduct primaries for special elections, so it's likely that party leaders will name the winners of the May 15 primary for the 5th as the nominees for the 7th. However, it's always possible that things could unfold differently, and sometimes, nominees for the regular elections don't want to run in the corresponding special.
That's what went down in Michigan's 11th District six years ago, when GOP Rep. Thad McCotter resigned in humiliating fashion after failing to submit enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Democrat Syed Taj, who went on to win the nomination for the regular election, declined to run in the special, saying he wanted to focus his efforts on the main race.
Democrats instead put up union leader David Curson for the special, and in an interesting twist, he actually beat Republican Kerry Bentivolio, who'd notoriously lucked into the GOP nomination after McCotter's debacle. Curson went on to spend seven weeks in Congress and even managed to earn some favorable attention from Nancy Pelosi during his brief tenure, after which he retired from politics altogether.
On the very same day Curson won, though, Taj lost to Bentivolio, though it's important to note that the new version of the 11th in which Taj ran was considerably redder than the old one where Curson ran. (Taj, a Muslim immigrant from India, may also have been a victim of racism and religious bigotry: Republicans ran foul attack ads that all but insinuated he was in league with terrorists.)
In Pennsylvania, the script is flipped: The old district is more Republican than the new one, and it's also much more spread out. It's therefore possible that the winner of the Democratic primary for the 5th simply won't want the distraction of also being on the ballot in the 7th. On the other hand, if the same person wins both races, he or she would have a small leg up in seniority among the freshman class in the 116th Congress. In any event, we'll know who's running soon enough.
● TX-06: A WPA Intelligence poll of the May 22 GOP runoff in Texas' 6th Congressional District conducted for the campaign of former Tarrant County Tax Assessor Ron Wright finds him leading Navy veteran Jake Ellzey by a wide 47-24 margin. That's pretty similar to the 45-22 advantage Wright secured in the March primary. Both candidates, however, had very little money left at the end of the first quarter: Ellzey had just $25,000 on-hand and Wright a mere $9,000.
Legislative
● Special Elections: Johnny Longtorso has the Tuesday recap:
Florida HD-39: Republicans held this seat, with Josie Tomkow defeating Democrat Ricky Shirah by a 60-40 margin.
Florida HD-114: And the Democrats held this one. Javier Fernandez defeated Republican Andrew Vargas by a 51-47 margin. Independent Liz de las Cuevas took the remaining 2 percent.
The Democratic victory in the 114th District was a bigger deal than it might look like. Democrats just barely won it, 51-49, as an open seat in 2016, after the GOP had held it for two terms since it was redrawn in 2012. This part of Miami-Dade County is also historically Republican downballot, and Vargas outspent Fernandez by a wide margin. Amusingly, prominent anti-Trump Republican Ana Navarro lives in the district and declared of the results, "If u think Trump isn't dragging folks down, I want some of what ur smoking." Puff puff pass, Ana!
Daily Kos Elections is hiring! We're looking for an Elections Research Coordinator to join our small and nimble team. This is an entry-level position and no prior experience is required. The person who fills this role will assist our department in almost every area of our work and will have the chance to make a mark on the 2018 midterms—and elections for years to come. If you're interested, or know someone who might be, click here for full details, including instructions on how to apply.
