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
● NY-27: In a quick about-face, GOP Rep. Chris Collins announced on Saturday that he would not seek re-election to New York's 27th Congressional District this fall, even though he'd insisted he'd do so following his indictment on insider trading charges on Wednesday.
Campaign Action
But getting off the ballot in New York at this late date is no simple matter. Probably the only plausible route available to Collins involves getting nominated for another post, since candidates in New York may only run for one office at a time. Unnamed Republicans have floated the idea of putting Collins forward for a town clerkship or for a county clerkship elsewhere in the state, though residency requirements might make that latter option impossible.
It’s also conceivable that Collins could be removed from the ballot if he were judged to no longer be a resident of New York state; the chair of the Erie County GOP noted to Politico that Collins, who is extremely wealthy, also has homes in Florida and Washington, D.C. However, in litigation stemming from a 2008 election in the predecessor version of this very same district, Republicans argued to a federal judge that a candidate’s residency prior to Election Day is irrelevant for determining eligibility. While no written decision was ever issued, the court forbade the Working Families Party from removing Jon Powers from its ballot line (Powers had recently moved to D.C. for a new job after losing the Democratic primary).
There is one further option for Collins. One election law expert, Alan Goldston, wryly observed, “If he really wanted to get off the ballot he could just plead guilty,” because political parties are allowed to replace candidates who are convicted of crimes. Probably not gonna happen, we’re guessing. In any event, Republicans say they’ll meet Tuesday to figure out how they might ditch Collins, which would then enable local party leaders in the eight counties that make up the district to hand-pick a replacement.
Two Republicans have already said they'd like to be considered, and one is a well-known name: wealthy businessman Carl Paladino, who, like Collins, is a huge Trump supporter and who, like Trump, is notorious for the endless stream of offensive remarks that pours from his mouth. The other is Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw, who said he raised $100,000 in the day following Collins' announcement.
Others may yet get in, and handicapping back-room goings-on is near impossible, given that candidates' personal relationships with a handful of power-brokers rather than their popularity with voters is what matters here. But assuming the GOP can ditch Collins, whoever emerges will be the dominant general election favorite over Democrat Nate McMurray in this heavily conservative district.
Primary Day
● Primary Day: Happily Evers After?: We have another important primary night on Tuesday as voters go to the polls in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. As always, we have a preview of the races to watch.
Democrats have an unpredictable three-way race for governor of Minnesota, while Team Red has a crowded gubernatorial primary in Connecticut. Team Blue will also be sorting through a packed race to take on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, where the few polls we've seen have given state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers the lead. And of course, we'll have plenty of House action.
While the first polls close in Vermont at 7 PM ET, we'll begin our liveblog at Daily Kos Elections at 8 ET when Connecticut closes. You can also follow us on Twitter, where we'll be live-tweeting the results. And check out our calendar for a look at primary nights to come.
Race Ratings Changes
Daily Kos Elections is changing our ratings on nine races, with eight moves in Democrats' favor.
● MD-Gov (Lean R to Likely R): Maryland is a blue state, and 2018 continues to shape up as a good year for Democrats, but Ben Jealous is nevertheless struggling against Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who remains very popular. Hogan has already been using his huge financial advantage to go on the attack, while his allies at the Republican Governors Association have also been spending heavily on spots against Jealous. Outside Democratic groups don't appear to be countering, which gives the GOP free reign to portray Jealous the way they want to portray him. It doesn't help that a number of prominent local Democrats are openly siding with the incumbent.
Even Jealous' campaign agrees that Hogan has a wide advantage. Jealous recently released a mid-July poll that gave the incumbent a 49-40 lead, apparently in an effort to convince donors he still has a shot, though that survey concluded only as the RGA's barrage was just beginning. Hogan is still potentially vulnerable: He's only the second Republican elected to the governorship since Spiro Agnew moved on to greater things in 1969, and Trump could yet cause the incumbent some problems. However, the Jealous poll is just the latest sign that Hogan is in charge.
● MI-Gov (Tossup to Lean D): It's a double-whammy for Republicans: Term-limited Gov. Rick Snyder is leaving office unpopular, and the GOP primary in the race to succeed him turned as toxic as month-old yogurt left on the radiator. Snyder has so far refused to endorse the Republican nominee, ultra-conservative state Attorney General Bill Schuette, and the guy he beat, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, says Schuette wouldn't even accept his support!
Democrats, meanwhile, nominated their strongest possible candidate in former state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, who has the full support of her defeated rivals and has led in every general election poll this year. Michigan is going to be a challenging hold for the GOP.
● CA-16 (Likely D to Safe D): Democratic Rep. Jim Costa's notorious laziness always gives us the hives: He barely eked out wins in the last two midterms (2010 and 2014), and the typical dropoff among Democratic-leaning groups in non-presidential elections had us worried we might see the something like that again this time. But the energy on the left this year ought to counterbalance any falloff, and if Republicans can actually afford to target any Democratic seats, it won't be one that Hillary Clinton carried 58-36.
● KS-03 (Lean R to Tossup): This well-educated and relatively affluent district in the Kansas City suburbs is like many others that reacted poorly to Donald Trump in 2016—and are now a key battleground in 2018. Operatives on both sides are treating this like a very competitive race, with outside groups from both parties making fall TV ad reservations.
Newly minted Democratic nominee Sharice Davids has looked impressive and sports a unique profile: She's a lesbian former mixed martial arts fighter, and is vying, along with New Mexico's Deb Haaland, to become the first Native American women to serve in Congress. GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder still has a large financial advantage, but the money should start pouring in for Davids now that she's won the primary.
● MI-08 (Lean R to Tossup): GOP Rep. Mike Bishop started off with a decided advantage in this gerrymandered district Trump won 51-44, but there are numerous signs that his position has deteriorated. Democrats have a top-tier candidate in former Defense Department official Elissa Slotkin, who has repeatedly dominated over Bishop in fundraising.
This Lansing-based seat also has a relatively large share of college-educated voters, the sort who look to be especially fired up about putting a check on the Trump administration. At the same time, special elections have shown Democrats rebounding with working-class white voters in the Midwest. Republicans like Bishop are getting squeezed at both ends, a combination that has produced a highly competitive race. Democrats have also nominated former Lansing-area state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer for governor, which could also give local Democrats a boost downballot.
● PA-17 (Tossup to Lean D): Thanks to redistricting, the race for Pennsylvania's 17th pits two sitting members of Congress, Republican Keith Rothfus and Democrat Conor Lamb, against one another, but while this new district is evenly divided, the two incumbents are not on equal footing. In his stunning special election victory earlier this year in a much redder seat, Lamb showed an impressive ability to reach a broad spectrum of voters.
Rothus, by contrast, has always represented conservative turf, so he's never needed to speak to anyone but Republicans. An independent poll last month gave Lamb a double-digit lead, even though Rothfus represents far more of the revamped district, and Republicans never responded with contrary numbers. In a year like 2018, Rothfus is going to be back on his heels.
● TX-07 (Lean R to Tossup): This highly educated suburban Houston district has long favored Republicans by safe margins, but college-educated voters' disgust with Trump caused it to move dramatically, from 60-39 Romney to 48-47 Clinton. Despite its longtime GOP lean, there are indicators that this hostility to Trump is filtering downballot, and Republicans haven't countered Democratic polls showing a close contest. Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher has been a phenomenal fundraiser, while national Republicans have openly worried that GOP Rep. John Culberson isn't taking this race seriously enough. Both national parties have reserved millions in TV ad time here.
● TX-32 (Lean R to Tossup): This suburban Dallas seat is another highly educated and diversifying district that long favored the GOP by a considerable margin until it flipped from 57-41 Romney to 49-47 Clinton, but Republican Rep. Pete Sessions has nevertheless found himself in the fight of his career. Democrat Colin Allred has a compelling biography as a former NFL player turned civil rights lawyer, and he has notched up impressive fundraising hauls.
Sessions, who hasn't faced a competitive race in decades, has meanwhile shown some signs he's running an undisciplined campaign, at one point bizarrely
blaming a woman for her own murder at the hands of her husband, saying it was because she was being "unfair." National Democrats have also made hefty ad reservations here, and Republican insiders have been telling the media that they're worried about suburban seats like this.
● WA-03 (Likely R to Lean R): While a few votes remain to be tallied, the topline results of Washington's top-two primary were pretty stunning: Republican candidates, including GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, combined for just 51 percent of the vote, while Democrats, led by Carolyn Long, took 49 percent. For comparison, the spread was 55-42 in 2016 and 61-38 in 2014. The top-two format serves as almost a giant poll of the electorate, and one that historically has closely predicted November's outcomes. The GOP's small edge in the vote suggests Herrera Beutler still has an advantage, but Long is about to give the congresswoman her first competitive race since redistricting made this seat redder after the 2010 elections.
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Red and Gold, which is supporting Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, has dropped another $815,000 to air TV ads opposing GOP primary frontrunner Martha McSally. We don't have a copy of any new ads yet, but that brings their total spending to a sizable $1.6 million in recent weeks.
● MO-Sen: We have a new poll of the Senate race that was graciously provided to us by Dave Drebes of the Missouri Scout, a local political newsletter. The Scout's survey, which was done by the Democratic firm TJP Strategies, has a 47-47 tie between Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley. The last poll we saw was an early July survey from the GOP firm Remington that had Hawley up 48-46.
● TX-Sen: Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke is going up with his first TV spot, and it will air in all 20 media markets across the Lone Star State. O'Rourke says the buy will be for the same $1.27 million that his campaign raised in a weekend after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz launched his first negative ads in early August. There's no copy of O'Rourke's positive ad available yet, but it will begin airing on Wednesday.
● WV-Sen: The anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony List is going up with a $600,000 TV ad buy against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia, and they're also spending $185,000 on radio ads. Their TV spot hits Manchin for voting against defunding Planned Parenthood, calling it "the largest abortion business in the country," but of course they don't mention that abortion is far from a majority of the healthcare services it provides.
Gubernatorial
● NM-Gov: Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham won the June Democratic primary by a 66-22 landslide over former Univision executive Jeff Apodaca, but Apodaca and his father, former Democratic Gov. Jerry Apodaca, aren't too eager to support Team Blue's nominee. Indeed, the elder Apodaca outright endorsed Republican Rep. Steve Pearce, and Jeff Apodaca recently appeared at a Pearce campaign event. Jerry Apodaca even praised Pearce for supposedly being "the only candidate willing to reach out across party lines," which is ironic for a Republican who is a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, to say the least.
● OK-Gov: Businessman Kevin Stitt's latest GOP primary runoff ad attacks former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett for refusing to endorse Trump during the 2016 election, and it accuses Cornett of supporting so-called "sanctuary cities" and opposing Trump's Mexico border wall. Meanwhile, the pro-Cornett group Oklahoma Values has debuted their own commercial, which blasts Stitt for misleading voters about his business background. They contend his company had "the worst loan default rates nationwide" and had lost its licenses and paid major fines in other states.
House
● CA-45: Democrat Katie Porter has released an internal poll from Global Strategy Group, which shows her trailing by just 45-44 against Republican Rep. Mimi Walters. This is the first poll we've seen since the June top-two primary, where Walters had just a 52-46 edge over the combined Democratic field.
● CT-05: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed former Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman just one day ahead of her Democratic primary with former teacher Jahana Hayes. Politico says this endorsement, belated as it may be, is the first time the Chamber has taken sides in a Democratic primary since they supported incumbent Blanche Lincoln in the 2010 race for Arkansas Senate.
● FL-05: We have our first poll of the Aug. 28 primary for this safely blue seat from St. Pete Polls on behalf of Florida Politics, and they give Rep. Al Lawson a 50-28 lead over former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown.
● FL-06: St. Pete Polls' new survey for Florida Politics finds businessman and retired Green Beret Michael Waltz opening up a clear lead with just two weeks to go before the GOP primary. They give Waltz, who also worked as a foreign policy advisor for Dick Cheney, a 40-21 lead over businessman and Navy veteran John Ward, while former state Rep. Fred Costello takes 16. St. Pete Polls' July survey had Costello and Ward tied 21-21, with Waltz just behind with 20. It's not clear what happened over the last month that could have caused such a dramatic shift in the contest in Waltz's favor, especially since we don't have any other polling numbers here.
● FL-15: St. Pete Polls finds a shift in the GOP primary with two weeks to go. Their survey for Florida Politics gives former state Rep. Neil Combee a 36-30 lead over state Rep. Ross Spano, with no one else clearing 5 percent; their July poll had Spano ahead 32-20. A recent poll from Strategic Government Consulting for an unidentified client found Combee leading 31-17, though a late July SurveyUSA gave Spano a 26-20 edge. Combee began running TV ads in the middle of July while Spano only went up with his debut spot days ago, so it's possible that Combee's weeks of dominating the airwaves allowed him to pull ahead.
● FL-18: Former State Department official Lauren Baer has unveiled endorsements from the SEIU, AFSCME, and several other labor groups two weeks ahead of her Democratic primary with Navy veteran Pam Keith.
● KS-03: We now have the size of the buy for the DCCC's TV ad that went up last week to attack Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder: $70,000.
● MT-AL: Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte's first TV goes on the offensive against Democrat Kathleen Williams. His spot tries to tie her to Nancy Pelosi, calling her an extremist allied with those who want to abolish ICE. It also revives one of the GOP's favorite attacks from last cycle and blasts her for supporting Obama's Iran nuclear deal, insinuating that the U.S. government "gave billions" to Iran, but the multi-billion dollar amount they rely on actually just came from unfreezing existing Iranian assets as part of the agreement.
● VA-02: The state Democratic primary has filed their lawsuit to get independent Shaun Brown off the ballot because of allegedly fraudulent signatures gathered for her by staffers for GOP Rep. Scott Taylor.
● WA-05: Equity Forward Action is making a "six-figure" TV ad buy against Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Their ad details the cruelty of the Trump administration's family separation policies against immigrants and asylum-seekers, and it blasts the incumbent for failing to stand up to Trump.
Other Races
● MN-AG: Austin Monahan, the adult son of Rep. Keith Ellison's former girlfriend Karen Monahan, published a Facebook post on Saturday evening saying that he'd seen a video of the congressman physically abusing his mother last year. In his post, which came mere days before Tuesday's Democratic primary for state attorney general, Monahan said that in the recording, Ellison swore at his mother while trying to drag her off a bed.
Karen Monahan subsequently told CNN that Ellison had been emotionally abusive towards her, and that she had discretely recorded the incident her son had described. However, Monahan said over the weekend that she had misplaced the flash drive that contained the video while moving, and said on Monday that she couldn't access it because it was in storage.
Monahan added that she wouldn't want to show the video in any event, saying, "It's not on me to show embarrassing and traumatizing video that impacts both families." On Monday, she also published a long Facebook post including further details about the alleged incident, which she said happened in 2016. (Her son also said he did not have a copy of the video.)
Ellison put out a statement denying the story, saying that the video did not exist because the incident never happened. Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel also tweeted that some news outlets had delved into the story prior to Austin Monahan's post but concluded that it did not “h[o]ld up under media scrutiny.” However, three unnamed friends of Monahan told CNN that she'd confided to them about the alleged episode some months after she had stopped living with Ellison.
Minnesota Public Radio reviewed over 100 text and Twitter messages exchanged between Ellison and Monahan dating from the time after their breakup and reported that there was no mention of physical abuse. However, Monahan also shared screenshots of texts and direct messages with CNN that she said exchanged with Ellison. One message said "Keith, We never discussed—the video I have of you trying to drag me off the bed, yelling get the f*** out now, calling me a bitch and saying I hate you bitch." Follow-up texts from Ellison, viewed by CNN, did not address the accusation of abuse.
Grab Bag
● Media Markets: Daily Kos Elections has added a new companion spreadsheet to go with its popular media-markets-to-congressional-districts (and states) conversion spreadsheet. We've calculated presidential election results by media market, not just for the 2016 election, but for the last 10 elections (going back to 1980). Unlike CDs, media markets have the advantage of not changing boundaries from decade to decade, so they're a way to watch changing political terrain as a time-series at a level that's more detailed than states but less granular than counties.
Ad Roundup
