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
● House: Daily Kos Elections has combined our calculations of the results of the presidential elections from 2008 to 2016 for every congressional district with our unique hexmap that renders each district the same size, and we’ve done so in a variety of ways. One of the most interesting results is shown in the map at the top of this post: No fewer than 60 Republican-held districts voted for the Democratic presidential candidate at least once during those three elections.
Consequently, if some of these districts revert to earlier patterns in the November midterms, Democrats should be able to capitalize. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results: A number of these seats are not part of the Democratic roadmap to a House majority. The flipside is also true, since there are some districts with a consistent pattern of voting Republican at the top of the ticket that nevertheless may be in play this year.
By contrast, only 13 Democrats sit in districts that have voted Republican for president one or more time—one small silver lining of being in the minority. And thanks to the favorable political environment this year, few of those seats look vulnerable, though Democrats still have to remain on guard. Click here for our visualization of this bloc of congressional districts, as well as several other maps that illustrate voting trends across the last presidential elections.
Senate
● IN-Sen: GOP nominee Mike Braun is up with his first TV spot for the general election. Braun talks about his business background, claiming that he's paid workers “nearly double[] the minimum wage."
● NV-Sen: The American Chemistry Council is spending at least $348,000 on a spot praising GOP Sen. Dean Heller. It's a pretty generic ad that commends Heller for voting for "middle class tax," cutting regulations, and helping veterans.
● VA-Sen: America's Liberty PAC, a group allied with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, is spending at least $225,000 on ads for Del. Nick Freitas ahead of next week's GOP primary (though for some reason, they misspelled his name as "Nick Freotas" on their FEC form).
● WI-Sen: Candidate filing recently closed for Wisconsin's Aug. 14 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here.
The group Wisconsin Next PAC, which is supporting state Sen. Leah Vukmir in the GOP primary over businessman and Marine veteran Kevin Nicholson, recently released the first poll we've seen showing Vukmir with the lead. This survey, which the Tarrance Group conducted over the last week, gives Vukmir a 36-29 edge against Nicholson in the race to take on Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Vukmir's campaign recently released their own poll from American Viewpoint that gave Nicholson a narrow 32-30 edge.
Nicholson's campaign previously released a number of polls giving him a clear edge, and the last one we saw was an early April survey finding him up 45-27. However, that poll was dropped just as Wisconsin Next PAC, which is funded by billionaire Diane Hendricks, was beginning their first ad campaign promoting Vukmir.
Until then, Nicholson's allies had had the airwaves to themselves, with a group funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein and the John Bolton Super PAC each spending millions on ads touting Nicholson. It's possible the pro-Vukmir commercials have helped her make up ground, but since we have no recent independent polls of this primary, we'll need to wait to get a better sense for where things stand.
What we do have is a good idea of how both Republicans will attack one another. Nicholson, who also has the support of the Club for Growth, is a first-time candidate who is pitching himself as a political outsider and arguing that Vukmir represents the dreaded establishment.
However, Nicholson has struggled to explain away his past as a Democrat, including his stint leading the College Democrats of America in 2000. While Nicholson claims that he realized right after he gave a speech in support of Al Gore at that year's Democratic National Convention that he wasn't really a Democrat, he turns out to have worked as a paid staffer for Minnesota Democrats in 2002, and to have voted in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
By contrast, there's no question about Vukmir's long GOP bona fides. She recently won the state party’s endorsement, and while Gov. Scott Walker has remained neutral, his wife and younger son are both supporting her. And though Baldwin won't learn who her GOP rival is for another two months, she's already facing an expensive campaign. Outside groups affiliated with the Koch brothers' network have already spent millions on ads attacking her while the senator and her allies at VoteVets have been airing their own commercials.
● WY-Sen: Candidate filing closed Friday for Wyoming's Aug. 14 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here.
While some wealthy Republicans made noises about challenging Sen. John Barrasso in the primary, nothing came of it. Even though Blackwater founder Erik Prince said as recently as January that he was interested, he didn’t end up filing. Meanwhile, conservative megadonor Foster Friess decided to run for governor after months of flirting with a Senate bid. Barrasso faces no serious primary opposition, and he should have little trouble in November against businessman Gary Trauner, who lost competitive races for the House in 2006 and 2008.
Gubernatorial
● AK-Gov: Candidate filing closed Friday for Alaska's Aug. 21 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here.
Former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich's last-minute campaign led independent Gov. Bill Walker to drop out of the Democratic primary and run purely as an independent. A three-way general election would almost certainly make it easier for the Republican nominee to win in this red state (Daily Kos Elections moved our rating from Tossup all the way to Likely Republican after Begich jumped in), but it's far from clear whom the GOP will nominate.
Three noteworthy Republicans ended up filing to run here. Former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy, who resigned from his seat in the Anchorage suburb of Wasilla (aka Sarah Palin's old stomping grounds) to concentrate on his campaign, was one of the more conservative members of the legislature. Last year, Dunleavy left the GOP caucus after he refused to support the state budget, which he said didn't contain enough cuts. He's also an ardent social conservative who has proposed unsuccessful constitutional amendments to secure state funding for religious schools. Dunleavy has been getting air support from a super PAC called Dunleavy for Alaska that's partially funded by his brother.
Businessman Scott Hawkins, whose company provides supply chain logistics to mining and energy concerns, has also been running for a while. Hawkins lost his only prior bid for elected office in 1996, but he's been very active in state GOP politics.
Hawkins notably has worked with a business-backed GOP super PAC called the Accountability Project, which just happened to be headquartered in the offices of his company. In 2016, the Accountability Project targeted two moderate Republican state House members in primaries, largely over their support for a tax credit that was anathema to the oil industry, and also to prevent them from joining a governing coalition with the Democratic state House minority. The group knocked off one incumbent, but the other survived and did indeed join a bipartisan alliance with two other Republicans, two independents, and the chamber's 17 Democrats.
Former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell launched a last-minute bid for the GOP nod on the final day of candidate filing; oddly, Treadwell continued with his planned speaking engagements on the East Coast immediately after filing, so he didn't exactly hit the ground running with so little time left before Election Day. Treadwell ran in the GOP primary for Senate in 2014, but his campaign never raised much money or attracted much big-name support. The Republican establishment ended up flocking to eventual winner Dan Sullivan, and Treadwell wound up a distant third primary with just 25 percent of the vote.
● CO-Gov: On behalf of an unnamed client, the GOP firm Magellan Strategies takes a look at the June 26 Democratic primary. They give Rep. Jared Polis a 31-18 lead over former state Treasurer Cary Kennedy, while state Sen. Mike Johnston and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne are at 9 and 3 percent, respectively. Magellan says their client was "not working for or with any candidates, individuals or independent expenditure committees with an interest in the 2018 Colorado Democrat primary for governor." Yes, they actually said “Democrat Party.”
This is the first poll we've seen of this primary since March, when Magellan found Polis leading Kennedy by a narrower 27-23 margin (that poll, claims the firm, was commissioned by Magellan itself). The only hint about other surveys came from Gov. John Hickenlooper last week, who complained that a pro-Kennedy ad hitting Polis and Johnston was unnecessary because "[m]ost polls I'd seen, it looked like Cary Kennedy was going to win anyway." As the famous saying goes, the only polls that matter are the ones John Hickenlooper vaguely alludes to.
● FL-Gov: On Thursday, 2016 Democratic Senate nominee Patrick Murphy announced he was endorsing fellow former Rep. Gwen Graham rather than running himself.
● GA-Gov: Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle is up with another negative TV ad attacking Secretary of State Brian Kemp ahead of the July 24 GOP primary runoff, this time focused on guns. This commercial argues that Kemp "doesn't think you have a constitutional right to defend your family," insisting he was one of just six Republicans to vote to "let the government ban the sale, dispensing, or transportation of firearms" during a state of emergency.
● MD-Gov: On Tuesday afternoon, former Gov. Martin O'Malley endorsed Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker in the race against his successor as governor, Republican Larry Hogan. It's the latest sign that Maryland's Democratic establishment is consolidating behind Baker: Previously, he'd earned the support of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. Steny Hoyer (the second-ranking Democrat in the House), and state Attorney General Brian Frosh. Baker has led most polls of the primary, though the race was scrambled last month when Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who'd generally been in second place, unexpectedly died.
Meanwhile, the candidate who's been near the back of the pack, state Sen. Rich Madaleno, is trying to generate some attention with a new TV ad that says it's the first of its kind. The spot is fairly conventional most of the way through, as Madaleno (backed up by some supporters) explains how he's "infuriated" Trump by standing up for Planned Parenthood, taking on the NRA, and opposing school vouchers. The twist comes at the end: Madaleno, seated on his front lawn with his husband and their two children, concludes, "And what's the number one way I piss off Donald Trump and the Republicans?" He answers by kissing his husband—the first time, the Madaleno campaign says, that a political ad has featured a kiss between a candidate and their same-sex spouse.
● ME-Gov: With just days to go ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary, EMILY's List has put $300,000 into a local PAC supporting state Attorney General Janet Mills, whose campaign EMILY endorsed earlier this year. The PAC, Maine Women Together, reports spending $200,000 so far, almost entirely on digital ads attacking attorney Adam Cote—a very large sum in a state as small as Maine. Mills evidently views as Cote as her main rival, and vice-versa: The two have been airing negative ads targeting one another while largely ignoring their other opponents.
● MN-Gov: On Thursday, EMILY's List threw its support behind state Rep. Erin Murphy, notably taking sides in the August Democratic primary even though Attorney General Lori Swanson, whom EMILY has endorsed in the past, is also running.
Candidate filing closed on Tuesday, and we'll run down the state of the race in the key contests in a future Digest. However, while Swanson's unexpected campaign shook up the Democratic primary when she jumped in on Monday, her candidacy was the only notable last-minute development on either side. The Democratic primary is a three-way race between Rep. Tim Walz, Murphy, and Swanson, with two minor candidates also on the ballot. The GOP primary pits former Gov. Tim Pawlenty against Hennepin County Commissioner and 2014 nominee Jeff Johnson, with one Some Dude Republican also filing.
● WI-Gov: GOP Gov. Scott Walker is seeking a third term, and there are no fewer than nine noteworthy candidates running to face him.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers is the only contender who has been elected statewide, and a few polls from a few months ago indicate he began the race with the most support. A March independent poll from Marquette University showed Evers leading 18 percent, while none of his rivals took more than 9. Madison Mayor Paul Soglin also released a poll in February showing Evers leading him 30-17.
Soglin was first elected as mayor of Wisconsin's second-largest city in 1973, and he's served as its chief executive for of 21 of the last 45 years. Soglin has a long had a reputation as something of a radical: Notably, he traveled to Cuba twice in the 1970s to meet with Fidel Castro, and he presented Castro with a key to his city.
Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell, who was the nominee for lieutenant governor during the unsuccessful 2012 recall campaign against Walker, would be the state's first black governor, and he's won several union endorsements. Businessman Andy Gronik, self-funded a considerable $450,000 during 2017 but spent most of it before the new year.
Attorney Matt Flynn, who served as state party chair in the 1980s, surprisingly had the largest war chest at the end of 2017, but he hasn't sought elected office since 2004. Campaign finance reform activist Mike McCabe probably won't have many resources, but he does have a passionate fan base that could make in impact in a very crowded primary like this.
Finally, there are three current or former state legislators. State Rep. Dana Wachs, who has done some self-funding, represents a very blue seat in Eau Claire, and he's argued he would be better able to connect with the outstate voters who have swung strongly against Democrats in recent years than another Madison- or Milwaukee-based nominee.
State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout holds a rural seat that swung to Trump, but her fundraising was weak last year, and she took just 4 percent in the 2012 primary for governor during the recall. Finally, there’s former state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, who badly lost a 2012 primary for the Madison-based 2nd Congressional District but earned national attention in March for a digital ad where she breastfed her newborn daughter. Either Vinehout or Roys would be the first woman to serve as governor of Wisconsin.
Since Walker won't know who his Democratic foe is for another two months, he's using his massive war chest to run positive ads. Wisconsin is a politically volatile state, and the governor could be in real trouble in a Democratic wave year. However, Walker has proven himself to be a very tough opponent, and he'll have the resources to immediately attack the Democratic nominee. Daily Kos Elections rates the general as Lean Republican.
● WY-Gov: GOP Gov. Matt Mead is termed out of office, and six Republicans are running to succeed him. The early frontrunner looks like state Treasurer Mark Gordon, who is the only elected official in the field. However, we have seen no polls or recent campaign finance data, so there’s quite a lot we don’t know about the state of the primary two months out.
Another candidate to watch is business executive Sam Galeotos, who has the support of former Rep. Cynthia Loomis and a former state party chair. Harriet Hageman, who proudly has a poor relationship with environmentalists, was the state's outside counsel early in the last decade in a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service; she later served as an advisor to now-Rep. Liz Cheney in her failed 2014 Senate campaign and successful 2016 House race.
The candidate with by far the most national name recognition is billionaire megadonor Foster Friess, who unexpectedly jumped in back in April and started airing ads last month. However, Friess reportedly has not been active in state politics before, and he didn't have much of a campaign put together when he announced. Friess also admitted at his launch that he didn't have a clear position on addressing the deficit that state public schools were facing, and he spent far more time talking about arming the Kurdish military force in Iraq—not exactly an issue that comes up in Wyoming politics much.
Also in the running are physician Taylor Haynes, who lost his 2014 primary bid against Mead 55-32 and would also be the state's first black governor, and businessman Bill Dahlin. Both of them look like longshots, but unexpected things can happen in a crowded primary in a small and inexpensive state.
Democrats have consolidated behind former state House Minority Leader Mary Throne, who faces one primary foe. Wyoming has a history of electing Democratic governors (Dave Freudenthal won re-election in a landslide in 2006), but it would take a whole hell of a lot to shake this one into the blue column. Daily Kos Elections rates the general as Safe Republican.
House
● AK-AL: GOP Rep. Don Young has represented the entire state since 1973, a longer stint than any other sitting member, and he's seeking yet another term. Young's only credible opponent looks like Anchorage schools advocate Alyse Galvin, an independent who is running in the Democratic primary. Galvin raised a credible $275,000 during her first months in the race, and Young’s cash-on-hand lead at the end of March was a modest $465,000 to $200,000.
Galvin is able to campaign for the Democratic nod while still remaining a registered independent because Democratic leaders recently won a lawsuit to allow independents to run in party primaries. However, this is the first cycle where this rule will be in place, and if Galvin or another independent claims the Democratic nomination, it's not yet clear how their name would appear on the general election ballot.
State Democratic executive director Jay Parmley recently said that an independent like Galvin would probably be listed as "undeclared" or "nonaffiliated," which could help win over voters skeptical of the Democratic Party. However, the ballot would also likely say somewhere that she’d run in the Democratic primary, Parmley says that the decision is up to the state's election officials. He also says that whoever wins the primary would get the party's support, even if they’re an independent.
No matter how Galvin is listed, beating Young will not be easy, especially since he’s made a career of winning federal dollars for a state that's very dependent on them. However, there are signs that a significant number of voters are tired of the congressman. While Young won by an easy 64-29 in 2012, he endangered his own re-election campaign two years later after he appeared at an assembly at Wasilla High School and made some exceptionally offensive comments about a local student's recent suicide. Young ended up beating his unheralded Democratic foe 51-41, and Democrats made a more serious effort to oust him in 2016. However, Young ended up winning 50-36.
One of Team Blue's big challenges has been that, while Young only took a bare majority in his last two contests, plenty of anti-Young votes have gone to independent candidates. And despite all his problems, Young's ability to secure needed appropriations has also given him a strong base of support in heavily Native American areas that usually vote for Democratic presidential candidates. Galvin will need a lot to go right if she wants to do what no one else has successfully done over the last several decades, but a good political climate and fatigue with Young could make things interesting.
● CA-39: Not only did Democrats overcome widespread fears and avoid top-two lockouts in every key House race following Tuesday's primaries in California, prophesies that these intra-party battles would spark bitter disunity that would bleed into the general election are proving false as well. In California's 39th District, where the contest briefly took a nasty turn, peace has broken out across the land: Following Navy veteran Gil Cisneros' victory, every other bona fide Democrat who also ran—six in total—immediately rallied around his bid to defeat former Republican Assemblywoman Young Kim and flip this seat from red to blue.
As far as we can tell, by the way, Kim's posse of rivals hasn’t done the same. Democrats, you might say, are in rather acceptable levels of array. Republicans? You'll have to check back in with them.
● FL-15: EMILY's List has endorsed attorney Kristen Carlson ahead of the August Democratic primary.
● OH-12: Politico reports that the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund will start a week-long $165,000 TV buy on Friday for the August special election. This is the first time an outside group has aired ads for the general, and you can bet there's a whole lot more spending to come.
● OK-02: Yeah Mr. Mullin! Yeah science! The American Chemistry Council is spending at least $147,000 on TV and digital ads praising Rep. Markwayne Mullin ahead of the June 26 GOP primary. Their spot commends Mullin for voting for the GOP's tax bill, and says he's also been great on reining in federal spending and fighting for veterans.
Mullin faces a primary challenge from Army veteran Jarrin Jackson, whom he beat 62-38 last cycle. Jackson is hoping that Mullin's decision to break his self-imposed term limits pledge will give him an opening, but the American Chemistry Council's investment doesn't necessarily mean that they think the congressman is in trouble. The group is also airing ads for Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, who are completely safe, as well as Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (see our NV-Sen item above).
● SC-01: State Rep. Katie Arrington is up with one more ad ahead of her GOP primary against Rep. Mark Sanford on Tuesday. Arrington speaks directly to the camera and implores voters to "turn the page on the Mark Sanford era" and back a "conservative who will work with President Trump, not against him."
● WI-01: Speaker Paul Ryan announced he would retire in April, and the local GOP establishment quickly coalesced around University of Wisconsin Regent Bryan Steil, a corporate attorney and longtime Ryan friend. A few other Republicans are running, but none of them look like they can wage a credible campaign. That includes Paul Nehlen, who lost the 2016 primary to Ryan 84-16 and has since gotten kicked off Twitter for anti-Semitic posts.
This southern Wisconsin seat went from 52-47 Romney (whose running-mate that year was, of course, Ryan) to 53-42 Trump, but Democrats are hoping to put it in play. Iron worker Randy Bryce and Janesville School Board member Cathy Myers both entered the race months before Ryan retired, and no other notable candidates have jumped in since then. The DCCC and Bernie Sanders both are supporting Bryce, as are several unions; Myers hasn't gotten the same type of reception from major local or national groups.
At the end of March, Bryce had a $2.3 million to $177,000 cash-on-hand lead over Myers. However, Myers may have an opening in a year where Democratic primary voters have been eager to nominate women. Bryce also has some potential liabilities that could come up on the campaign trail.
● WI-03: While there was some talk that Republicans might target Democratic Rep. Ron Kind after his seat swung from 55-44 Obama to 49-45 Trump, things never seemed to come together for Team Red. The only Republican who has even opened a campaign account with the FEC is Army veteran Steve Toft, who had only $103,000 in the bank at the end of March after about five months in the race; Kind had just shy of $3 million. Kind may have more to worry about in the future, but it seems unlikely he'll have any trouble this time.
● WI-06: GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman's seat, which includes Fond du Lac and Sheboygan, went from 53-46 Romney to 56-39 Trump, but he's in for a real fight. Democrat Dan Kohl, a former Milwaukee Bucks assistant general manager and a nephew of former Sen. Herb Kohl, has been a very strong fundraiser, and Republicans have worried that Grothman isn't taking his race seriously enough. And indeed, at the end of March, Kohl held an $842,000 to $702,000 cash-on-hand edge over the incumbent.
But as we've written before, it's not just his weak fundraising that makes Grothman a potentially big liability for Team Red: Grothman has stated that he doesn't believe there is a wage gap between men and women, called Kwanzaa a fake holiday promoted by "white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people's throats in an effort to divide Americans," and authored a bill to declare single parenthood a factor in child abuse … and that's just all the stuff he said before he was in Congress. But while Grothman only narrowly prevailed in his 2014 primary, the GOP wave helped propel him to a 57-41 win, and he had no trouble in 2016.
Grothman hasn't changed in Washington. In 2017 alone, the congressman told a town hall that Planned Parenthood isn’t necessary because women can just get birth control from grocery stores, and right after Montana Republican Greg Gianforte assaulted a journalist, Grothman told the Washington Post that his future colleague seemed "like a good guy."
● WI-08: While Democrats are targeting plenty of seats that shifted hard to Trump, Wisconsin’s 8th District doesn't look like it will be one of them. The only Democrat who has reported raising any money against freshman GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher is Brown County prosecutor Beau Liegeois, and he had just $32,000 on-hand at the end March. Both parties spent heavily here in 2016, but Gallagher decisively won as the district moved from 51-48 Romney to 56-39 Trump.
Legislative
● Special Elections: We've been closely following special elections for more than a year now. In this final analysis post, we summarize why it's valid to pay attention to special elections in the first place, address common objections to this practice, and provide links to all our special elections resources. The most obvious reason why special elections are important, of course, is because they're correlated with November House election results. More specifically, including all state legislative special elections gives a much better correlation than just looking at congressional special elections.
In a supporting post, we share some lessons we've learned after digging deep in the data. Statewide elections and special elections all behave in a consistent manner and are telling us the same story. We're seeing shifts towards Democrats concentrated in districts that shifted red in 2016 and are in red states. Where we've seen smaller shifts towards Democrats, or even shifts toward Republicans, it is not increased turnout that is the cause. And the magnitude of the shift—overall, nationwide—has not changed over the past year. Check out both posts for more.
Grab Bag
● Statehouse Action: This Week in Statehouse Action: Sore Eagle edition is your bird-themed happy place, full of special election and primary wins and updates on the record-breaking number of women running for state legislative office.
Okay, it has bad things, too, like North Carolina Republicans moving on a new voter suppression scheme and a super racist state representative in South Dakota.
But it has action, which is what you come for.
Would you rather the action come to you? Sign up here to get This Week in Statehouse Action delivered hot and fresh to your inbox each Thursday!
