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
● AK-Gov: On behalf of independent Gov. Bill Walker, Patinkin Research Strategies is out with a poll that gives former state Sen. and likely GOP nominee Mike Dunleavy a 36-28 lead over the incumbent, while former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich takes third with 22. The only other poll we've seen of this three-way race was from June Alaska Survey Research for the Alaska Correctional Officers Association that had Dunleavy leading Begich 38-33, while Walker was a distant third with 23.
Campaign Action
It's certainly rare for an incumbent to release a poll showing them down 8 points, but Walker is trying to argue that he, and not Begich, is the candidate that has the best chance to beat the GOP in this three-way race. However, while his poll's memo argues that Walker is "popular across the political spectrum" while both his opponents "garner favorable reviews mainly from their own partisan base," it doesn't actually provide the favorable or unfavorable numbers for any of the candidates.
By contrast, the Alaska Survey Research poll found that voters gave Walker just a 42-39 positive rating while Begich and Dunleavy posted much stronger 49-35 and 34-22 scores, respectively. Begich is likely hoping that Walker will eventually decide the race is unwinnable and drop out, but that could be a difficult argument to make if Walker believes he has a path to victory and that Begich is the one who should leave the contest.
Race Ratings Changes
We’re making the following changes to our race ratings. A summary is below, and explanations for these changes can be found in the body of the Digest. For all of our ratings, click here.
● OH-Gov: Lean Republican → Tossup
● VA-10: Tossup → Lean Democratic
2Q Fundraising
● MA-07: Mike Capuano (D-inc): $680,000 raised, $1.4 million cash-on-hand; Ayanna Pressley (D): $370,000 raised
Senate
● FL-Sen: Republican Gov. Rick Scott's latest ad accuses Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of "toe[ing] the party line" by voting with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the vast majority of the time. The ad claims he never voted against any judge that "Democrat [sic] presidents nominated" and opposes Trump's upcoming Supreme Court nominee. Of course, since Nelson has only been in the Senate since 2001, Obama is the only Democratic president whose nominees he's had the chance to vote on, and Scott's ad makes no mention that Nelson voted to confirm GOP-nominated Chief Justice John Roberts under George Bush.
● MO-Sen: Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley is set to air his first TV ad on Monday for a reported $500,000 buy on broadcast and cable ahead of the Aug. 7 primary. There's no copy available yet.
● MT-Sen: America's PAC has made a $330,000 ad buy on behalf of Republican nominee Matt Rosendale. There's no copy available yet.
● NV-Sen: Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen has released a Spanish-language ad that focuses on the Trump administration's awful treatment of asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants. The narrator details Rosen's trip to a border facility and tent camp in Texas, and audio from ProPublica plays featuring young children crying after being separated from their parents. The ad asserts, "This is a 'where were you' moment."
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: On behalf of the Tenth Amendment Project, a group that's been running ads for Rep. Ron DeSantis, Remington Research is out with a poll of the Aug. 28 GOP primary giving DeSantis a 43-26 lead over state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. Right now, these results just feel far too good to be true for DeSantis, who only began advertising at the end of June. A mid-June Marist poll for NBC found Putnam ahead 38-21, while a poll for Fox News from around the same time had the commissioner ahead by a similar 32-17 spread.
● KY-Gov: State Rep. Attica Scott is the latest Democrat to say she's considering running for governor next year against GOP incumbent Matt Bevin, indicating she's leaning toward a bid and would likely decide after this November's elections. Scott won her first term to the state House in 2016 by ousting a 32-year incumbent in the primary, which made her the first black woman elected to the state legislature in nearly two decades. If she were elected governor, she would become the first African-American in Kentucky's history to win a standalone statewide election.
● MN-Gov: We have our first poll of the Aug. 14 Democratic primary courtesy of Minnesota Victory PAC, a group backing Rep. Tim Walz. The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey gives Attorney General Lori Swanson, who jumped into the race just last month, a 37-29 lead over Walz, while state Rep. Erin Murphy takes 17. The memo includes respondents reactions to mostly favorable information about the congressman, so the PAC is likely releasing this otherwise unfavorable poll to signal to Walz's allies what messages they should be emphasizing about him over the next month.
● NM-Gov: Newly available campaign finance reports show Republican Rep. Steve Pearce with a big cash-on-hand edge of $1.9 million compared to $873,000 for Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham at the end of June. However, only Lujan Grisham faced a contested primary last month and the need to spend big to win it. She has been a strong fundraiser so far, and she'll have time to replenish her coffers ahead of this November's general election, which Daily Kos Elections rates as Leans Democratic.
● OH-Gov: While Ohio's rightward shift in 2016 had us concerned about Democratic chances here in 2018, we've consistently seen the electorate snap back toward Democrats in special elections in white working-class districts with demographics similar to areas in the Buckeye State that swung to Trump two years ago. This trend is confirmed by a trio of polls last month from well-regarded independent outfits that all show a close race between Democrat Richard Cordray and Republican Mike DeWine (two had Cordray ahead, while the third put DeWine on top).
DeWine may yet have a slight edge, thanks in part to his stronger fundraising, but Cordray should have the resources to get his message out. We expect Ohio to once again be a major battleground, so we're moving this contest from Lean Republican to Tossup.
● SC-Gov: State Rep. James Smith won last month's Democratic primary by a landslide over two credible opponents, but his general election campaign against GOP Gov. Henry McMaster isn't proceeding as smoothly. The Post and Courier reports that Smith has spent the last two weeks without a campaign manager, leaving him to search for the fourth person to fill that position in just the last nine months. Smith also replaced his communications director, and the state party recently dismissed their top fundraiser after he was accused of creating a hostile work environment.
National Democrats have long been enthusiastic about Smith, but South Carolina has been an almost implacably red state for many years. Consequently, Smith will need just about everything to go right for him to pull off an upset in a contest that Daily Kos Elections rates as Likely Republican.
House
● AL-02: Rep. Martha Roby is taking aim straight at former Rep. Bobby Bright's Achilles Heel ahead of their July 17 GOP primary runoff. Roby's new TV ad argues that during his one term in Congress in 2009 and 2010 as a conservative Democrat, "Democrat Bobby Bright" voted with Nancy Pelosi 70 percent of the time. The narrator goes on to declare that Bright "voted to make Pelosi speaker. She forced Obamacare on us." The rest of the ad says that Roby has voted for "the conservative agenda she shares with the Trump administration" 97 percent of the time.
Roby outpaced Bright by an underwhelming 39-28 during the first round of the primary on June 5, but she's picked up Trump's endorsement since then. Roby has also been overwhelmingly outspending Bright, who has self-funded most of his campaign. From May 17 to June 27 (a period that includes the last weeks of the first round), Roby deployed $636,000 to Bright's $30,000, and she had a big $731,000 to $163,000 cash-on-hand lead for the final weeks of the contest.
Medium Buying also reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while ran ads for Roby in May, is also launching a new TV ad campaign on Monday, though we don't know how much they're putting behind it.
● NC-09: The Democratic opposition research group American Bridge has unearthed a 2013 sermon from Baptist pastor Mark Harris, the Republican nominee for North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, in which he questioned whether it's the "healthiest pursuit" for women to pursue careers instead of their biblical "core calling" of being mothers and wives first.
In another portion of the sermon, Harris declared that "only one title is given to a woman in all of scripture ... the title given to a woman is 'helper.'" He followed that line by quoting a part of the Bible admonishing "young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God not be blasphemed."
In a statement to ABC News, Harris' campaign said he "absolutely stands by his personal statements," reiterating that "there is no higher calling that a woman has than to be a helper to her husband and mother to her children." Unsurprisingly, Harris has a long history of socially conservative activism in keeping with these remarks.
In 2012, Harris helped lead the successful GOP-backed effort to ban same-sex marriage in the North Carolina constitution, and he wants the Supreme Court to overturn both Roe v. Wade and the 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationally. He was also a major supporter of the infamous "bathroom bill" that discriminated against LGBTQ people and sparked a major backlash from businesses and voters against then-Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, helping lead to his loss to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
But will Harris pay a similar price? Though Republicans carefully gerrymandered this district, which stretches from suburban Charlotte to the Fayetteville area, it contains an above-average share of college-educated voters, and Harris faces a serious challenge from Democratic businessman Dan McCready. While North Carolina is relatively religious on the whole, Republican-leaning swing voters here may not be as amenable to Harris' hardline beliefs and support for state-sanctioned discrimination as in other parts of the state.
● NY-24: GOP Rep. John Katko is up with his first TV ad for the general election, where he argues he's "continually named one of the most bipartisan and independent members in all of Congress."
● TN-02: Businessman Jason Emert is up with a new TV spot ahead of the Aug. 2 primary for this safely red seat, and it features him demonstrating his fealty to Trump's longed-for border wall by building a brick wall in front of his house.
After the candidate muses about how a solid foundation will make sure "it'll take care of itself many years to come," Emert's wife rhetorically asks him if he's really going to help Trump build the wall. Emert enthusiastically exclaims he will: Presumably he means by voting for the wall in Congress rather than actually constructing it with his own two hands, but this is left open to interpretation. Emert continues by reassuring the audience that, unlike former University of Tennessee football coach Butch Jones (who was fired last year in the midst of a bad season), "when I say I'm gonna do something, I'm going to actually do it."
● VA-10: It's now been well over a week and GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock still has no answer to a recent independent poll from Monmouth University that showed her losing by an ugly 49-39 margin to her Democratic opponent, state Sen. Jennifer Wexton. Those numbers underscore a tough reality for Comstock: Despite her efforts to distance herself from the national GOP brand, she's still seeking re-election in a well-educated, well-off suburban district that went for Hillary Clinton 52-42.
Republicans haven't given up on Comstock just yet—they still have millions of dollars in TV time reserved to help her this fall. But when the New York Times recently asked the NRCC whether it would "continue to put in money" into this race, a spokeswoman would only say, "Right now, we have nothing to announce either way."
If that "either way" was merely an awkward slip and not a telling hint that Comstock could get triaged, the committee doesn't seem to have offered any further clarification. Republicans aren't defending many seats as challenging as this one, but with this contest looking rough for the GOP, we're moving our rating from Tossup to Lean Democratic.
● WI-01: Ironworker Randy Bryce is up with another spot ahead of the Aug. 7 Democratic primary. Bryce touts his local roots and blue-collar background, and declares he earns "every penny that I make so that me and my son have insurance."
● House: American Action Network, a nonprofit that's close to Speaker Paul Ryan, is spending a total of $2.5 million on TV ads in 10 House seats thanking members for their efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Seven of those members are Republicans in competitive turf, but there's something a little different about the other three:
CA-11: Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
CO-06: GOP Rep. Mike Coffman
IL-06: GOP Rep. Peter Roskam
KY-06: GOP Rep. Andy Barr
MA-05: Democratic Rep. Katherine Clark
ME-02: GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin
NY-22: GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney
OH-01: GOP Rep. Steve Chabot
OR-02: GOP Rep. Greg Walden
PA-01: GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick
Republican Rep. Greg Walden doesn't face a competitive contest in his 57-36 Trump seat in Oregon, so it's odd he's on the list.
However, it's even stranger that AAN is also running those ads in support of two Democratic members, Katherine Clark and Mark DeSaulnier of California. Both members are in safely blue seats, but it's still weird that AAN is spending even a token amount across the aisle. However, one possible explanation is that DeSaulnier's unheralded Republican opponent, John Fitzgerald, is an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier, and AAN’s founder, former Sen. Norm Coleman, is a prominent Jewish Republican (hat tip to fierylib87).