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
● ND-Sen: Mason-Dixon has given us a rare poll of North Dakota's Senate race between Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, and their first survey here finds Cramer leading 48-44. This is the only poll we've seen since February, so it's difficult to get a sense of where things stand in a race that both parties are heavily contesting.
Meanwhile, Cramer's latest TV ad uses footage of Heitkamp praising Hillary Clinton to allege she's a "reliable vote" for supposedly "liberal ideas" like raising taxes, funding "sanctuary cities," and "permitting late-term abortions." Notably, Cramer doesn't even bother to cite a single Heitkamp vote in his ad.
Senate
● FL-Sen: Last week, the Democratic group Senate Majority PAC announced that they were reserving a total of $80 million in nine states. SMP didn't reveal how much they were investing in each race, but Politico reports that $23 million is going to Florida.
● IN-Sen: Senate Majority PAC has laid down another $450,000 for two new ads in the race between Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly and Republican Mike Braun. The first spot bemoans the "out-of-state billionaires" who are airing attacks against Donnelly that it calls "baloney," and it touts the senator's record on stopping jobs from being outsourced to overseas. The second ad hits Braun for trying to portray himself as just a blue-collar guy—literally by wearing a blue dress shirt all the time—when in reality he made $20 million over the last two years in a business that relies on outsourcing jobs to China.
● MN-Sen-B: Former Bush administration ethics lawyer Richard Painter's first Democratic primary ad, which is airing in Duluth, is just so on the nose that you simply have to watch it. The spot features an angry Painter grimacing and rigidly speaking while standing in front of a literal dumpster fire.
Painter berates those who just want to watch the spectacle of the "inferno raging in Washington" and claims Minnesotans in the Land of 10,000 Lakes "know how to put out a fire" as water is poured on the digital fire in the background. Of course, for a candidate who was an anti-Trump Republican until deciding to run and who has struggled to articulate why Democratic voters should ditch Sen. Tina Smith, the ad may be a more apt metaphor for Painter's campaign itself.
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: A new survey of the August Democratic primary from Let's Preserve the American Dream, a research and polling organization associated with the business lobbying group Associated Industries of Florida, gives former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine a 24-21 lead over former Rep. Gwen Graham. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum takes third with 11, while businessman Chris King and billionaire developer Jeff Greene take just 4 and 3, respectively.
While Greene, who only announced he was running last week, has barely registered in other recent polls, he's using his vast fortune to try and get his name out over the next two months. Greene has launched what the Palm Beach Post reports is a $2.9 million opening ad campaign, and his first two commercials are now online. Greene's minute-long ad touts his parent's humble origins and how the family struggled when his father lost his job and later died of a heart attack.
Greene's other commercial is a lot more attention grabbing. After praising Greene for standing up to Trump on TV and on gun safety, healthcare, and women's choice, the narrator declaring that he's "the only candidate in America who was willing to stand up to Trump in his own dining room." The ad then shows footage of Trump furiously gesturing at him, with the camera then panning to an angry Greene. The narrator goes on to extol the candidate for showing backbone, "but that's exactly what it's gonna take to stand up to him as governor of Florida, the timid need not apply." The spot never mentions that Greene was a Mar-a-Lago member.
The campaign says Greene was at the Trump International Golf Club in December of 2016 celebrating a friend's birthday when Trump noticed Greene and became angry with him for attacking him on TV. They add that the candidate's wife was "seated two tables away from the altercation in the crowded dining room and filmed this clip."
● MI-Gov: Attorney General Bill Schuette's newest TV ad portrays GOP primary foe Lt. Gov. Brian Calley as an out of touch Harvard egghead. The narrator declares that Barack Obama, former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and Calley are all pro-Obamacare politicians who also supported higher taxes and each graduated from Harvard." Schuette incidentally went to college at Georgetown and the University of San Francisco, which we all know are bastions of conservative populism.
The narrator goes on to say that Calley "went to Harvard on your dime and your time," and "pocketed his six-figure taxpayer-funded salary" only to skip a third of the session to "jet off to Boston to hobnob with Harvard professors." Calley, who attended once-a-week classes at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to earn his Master of Public Administration as lieutenant governor, says he paid for transportation and the program himself. The Associated Press says the spot is airing for nine days in Grand Rapids, Flint, and Traverse City.
● NM-Gov: Republican Steve Pearce is up with his opening general election TV spot, which the National Journal says is running as part of a six-figure buy. (Pearce ran a few ads ahead of his uncontested June primary.) The commercial begins with the sounds of gunfire and yelling before it transitions to a woman named Martha Dominguez, who tearfully tells the audience how she learned her son, Juan Dominguez, had been badly injured in Afghanistan. She describes how he lost both his legs and his right arm before she says that Pearce learned about them and "came as a human being to help." Dominguez goes on to praise Pearce for helping her son get his electrical wheelchair from the VA.
● NV-Gov: The Nevada Conservation League has launched the first ad in what the Nevada Independent says is a planned $1.15 million buy against Republican Adam Laxalt. Their spot declares that, instead of protecting Nevadans from polluters, Laxalt "attended a California retreat hosted by the oil billionaire Koch brothers. And Laxalt got millions in support from a group backed by Big Oil."
● SC-Gov: Wealthy businessman John Warren is up with his first new spot ahead of next week's GOP primary runoff with Gov. Henry McMaster. Warren doesn't mention the incumbent and instead talks about his vision to "protect the Second Amendment and every unborn child," as well as "pass term limits and end corruption." Warren ends by pledging to continue the work that former Gov. Nikki Haley started.
● TN-Gov: State House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh is airing his first TV ad ahead of the early August primary, which the campaign says is part of a $150,000 buy. Fitzhugh appears on the football field of his West Tennessee high school, where he says he played on "one of the first integrated teams in the South." Fitzhugh says he learned some valuable lessons about teamwork there, and he pledges to expand pre-K programs and "tak[ing] back healthcare tax dollars that we send to Washington." Primary foe and former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean began running TV ads a month ago.
● WI-Gov: GOP Gov. Scott Walker is continuing his ad campaign with a spot where he labels himself an "education governor." This commercial is part of what the progressive advocacy group One Wisconsin Now reports is a $1.3 million advertising campaign that began at the start of May and concludes July 8.
House
● CA-39, NM-02: The DCCC recently released a memo touting several House polls from various Democratic pollsters and campaigns. Most of them are surveys we've written about over the last few months or are several months old, but two June polls from the DCCC's in-house polling arm in open GOP-held seats are new to us. In California's 39th District, they find Republican Young Kim with a 45-43 lead over Democrat Gil Cisneros. Over in New Mexico's 2nd District, they give Republican Yvette Herrell an identical 45-43 lead over Democrat Xochitl Torres Small.
New Mexico's 2nd is the considerably more conservative of the two seats; the 2nd went from 52-45 Romney to 50-40 Trump, while the 39th went from 51-47 Romney to 51-43 Clinton. Both polls were done days after both primaries were held on June 5. The California poll sampled 536 likely voters, while the New Mexico survey sampled 456 likely voters.
● FL-27: Former journalist Matt Haggman is out with what we believe is his first TV spot ahead of the late August Democratic primary, which his campaign says is part of a "six-figure ad campaign." Haggman pledges to close ICE down, declaring, "We can protect our borders without being cruel to kids." Haggman then says that frontrunner Donna Shalala has "had her chance. It's time for a new day."
● MI-09: Attorney Andy Levin is out with his first TV spot ahead of the early August Democratic primary, which Politico reports is an $80,000 buy over two weeks. Levin and his wife say that two of their children have Crohn's disease, "a chronic condition that's manageable, but the medicine costs a fortune." Levin says that while they have good health insurance, others don't. The candidate pledges to fight for Medicare for all and to cut prescription drug costs.
● NJ-05: This week, Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino endorsed Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer over his former right-hand man John McCann. McCann was not happy with Saudino, who left the GOP to seek re-election as a Democrat, and put out a statement saying his old boss was "doing what he has to do to survive, placing partisan politics above friendship."
● NY-19: Gareth Rhodes, a former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is out with a TV spot ahead of next week's very crowded and expensive Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. John Faso. The spot features a local high school student named Althea telling the audience how she led a walk out for gun reform.
Althea says that school shootings have become a reality rather than an anomaly, but Faso "told me that I was wasting valuable academic time." Althea then says that Rhodes actually listened to her, and she concludes by asking, "I'm 16 and I can't vote yet, but I'm asking you to vote for Gareth Rhodes for me, because our lives are at stake."
We're expecting a competitive general election for this upstate seat, but it's anyone's guess who will emerge with the Democratic nomination on Tuesday. The top spender from April 1 to June 6 (which the FEC defines as the pre-primary period) was former Army intelligence officer Pat Ryan, who outspent attorney Antonio Delgado $774,000 to $744,000; just behind them was businessman Brian Flynn, who deployed $714,000.
Rhodes himself spent a smaller $287,000 during this time, while attorney and deacon David Clegg expended $114,000. Former diplomat Jeff Beals spent $77,000 while U.S. Agency for International Development official Erin Collier dropped just $71,000; however, Collier may benefit from being the only woman in this seven-person field.
● NY-21: Businesswoman Katie Wilson is out with a TV spot ahead of next week's Democratic primary declaring that nothing will change "if we continue to elect the same people with the same pedigrees" and touting her rural roots.
Wilson is one of several Democrats competing to take on GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, and while there's no clear frontrunner, one candidate has a considerable financial edge. Businesswoman Tedra Cobb outspent former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan $141,000 to $106,000 from April 1 through June 6, and she had a $125,000 to $60,000 cash-on-hand edge for the final weeks of the campaign. Wilson, who has the support of the Working Families Party, deployed $98,000 during this time and had $47,000 left over. Professor Emily Martz spent $51,000 and had $49,000 left, while activist Patrick Nelson has brought in very little cash.
