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.
We'll have more coverage of Tuesday’s primaries in the next Digest. In the meantime, you can find results here.
Leading Off
● FL-Gov: In a major come-from-behind victory, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum edged his way past former Rep. Gwen Graham to capture the Democratic nomination in Florida's race for governor with a 34-31 victory. That sets up a matchup for this open seat with Rep. Ron DeSantis, who rode an endorsement from Donald Trump to a comfortable 56-37 win over state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
Campaign Action
Gillum had trailed in the polls throughout the contest, even until the very end, and his campaign was hampered by poor fundraising and a long-running FBI investigation into corruption in Tallahassee (Gillum maintained the bureau had told him he was "not the focus" of their inquiry). However, Gillum ran on the most aggressively liberal platform of all the main contenders, a field that included two wealthy self-funders from South Florida, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and businessman Jeff Greene, as well as Graham, who had been a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition in her lone term in Congress.
Gillum was also the only black candidate in the race, and he received millions in outside help late in the game from Collective PAC, a super PAC devoted to helping black candidates. He also got a financial boost from billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros, as well as an endorsement from Bernie Sanders. Much like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Gillum targeted young people and black voters, putting together a coalition that ultimately won the day. He will now seek to become Florida's first-ever black governor.
DeSantis won in very different fashion. Putnam had had the governorship in his sights for years, and as a longtime establishment favorite, the immense war chest he'd amassed made him look like the man to beat at the outset. But DeSantis, a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus who abandoned a Senate bid in 2016 when Marco Rubio unexpectedly decided to run for re-election, earned Trump's admiration by vocally defending him on Fox News, and that proved to be enough to shatter Putnam's advantages.
In the general election, we can expect both candidates to try to paint their opponents as ideologically extreme, though in a year that's favoring Democrats, DeSantis could pay the steeper price, particularly given his close association with Trump. Gillum, for his part, will have to step up his fundraising, because communicating with voters in the nation's third-largest state is an expensive prospect, though outside groups for both sides will assuredly flood the race. As befits the mother of all swing states, Daily Kos Elections rates this race a Tossup.
Senate
● FL-Sen: Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who has spent months enduring a $47 million ad barrage from wealthy Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his allies while conserving his own cash for the final months of the race, is launching his very first TV ad on Wednesday. Nelson's commercial begins by touting his military service and "when I flew in space" to argue he's spent his career serving the public rather than the special interests; the ad is also airing in Spanish. The Tampa Bay Times reports that this is the start of Nelson's $18 million ad buy, which will last to Election Day.
● NJ-Sen: The DSCC has made a coordinated TV ad buy with Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, although it's for a relatively small $117,000 on cable for two weeks starting on Monday.
● NV-Sen: EMILY's List has made a $1.5 million TV ad buy opposing Republican Sen. Dean Heller. There's no copy of any ad available yet.
● PA-Sen: Lou Barletta is emulating several fellow Republican Senate candidates and running a commercial that features clips of him rallying with Donald Trump. Barletta's only path to victory against Democratic incumbent Bob Casey probably relies on him turning out Trump fans in this swing state, which helps explain why he's hugging the White House as he badly trails in the polls.
Gubernatorial
● AK-Gov: The state AFL-CIO recently endorsed independent Gov. Bill Walker over Democrat Mark Begich, and they're out with a poll from Harstad Strategic Research to bolster their argument that Begich needs to drop out to stop Republican Mike Dunleavy. Their survey (which Harstad tells us was in the field Aug. 13-16) finds Dunleavy leading Walker 36-26, while Begich is just behind with 24. However, they give Walker a 47-43 lead over Dunleavy in a two-way contest; the AFL-CIO does not appear to have released numbers testing Begich against Dunleavy.
Harstad's late June poll for the union had Dunleavy at 32, while Begich and Walker each took 28. That survey found Walker leading Dunleavy 49-40, while Begich led the Republican 50-41. The deadline to get off the general election ballot is Sept. 4.
● MD-Gov: Campaign finance reports are out covering the period from June 11 to Aug. 21 are out, and … let's just say GOP Gov. Larry Hogan isn't going to need to worry about getting outspent. Hogan outraised Democrat Ben Jealous $2.5 million to $1 million, and held a massive $9.4 million to $386,000 cash-on-hand lead. It doesn't help that Hogan's allies at the RGA have spent $2.2 million already on ads mostly attacking Jealous, while major outside Democratic groups have yet to enter the fray.
● MI-Gov: Democratic nominee Gretchen Whitmer stars in a new ad from A Stronger Michigan, a group affiliated with the DGA, and hits Republican Bill Schuette for wanting to cut the state's Medicaid expansion.
● NY-Gov: While Democrats are heavily favored to prevail in deep-blue New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn't taking any chances against likely Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, and he just made a six-figure buy to attack the likely Republican nominee on TV. The New York Daily News describes the spot as hitting Molinaro over "the worst of pay-to-play politics," blasting him for accepting a campaign donation from a construction company that had hired his wife and was given county contracts and hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax breaks. The commercial also dings Molinaro for not releasing his tax returns from when he served in the state Assembly.
● WI-Gov, WI-Sen: Suffolk has debuted their first statewide poll of Wisconsin this cycle, and they have good news for Democrats. In the gubernatorial race, Democrat Tony Evers leads Republican Gov. Scott Walker by 46-44. Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin holds a 50-42 lead over GOP state Sen. Leah Vukmir. Baldwin has led every poll this cycle, but surveys have pointed to a tighter race for governor.
House
● GA-07, ME-02, TX-23: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their state affiliates are launching a set of issue ads that thank various Republican House incumbents for their work. In Georgia's 7th District, they laud Republican Rep. Rob Woodall for supporting Trump's tax cuts. In Maine's 2nd District, they thank GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin for supposedly fighting Trump's tariffs and trade wars, although they don't mention that they're Trump's policies. In Texas' 23rd District, their ad praises GOP Rep. Will Hurd for "standing up against his own party" to defend DREAMers and protect the border.
● MD-06: Democratic nominee David Trone has announced that he has been getting treated for cancer and will have surgery to remove one of his kidneys, but he said that his doctors expect him to make a full recovery. Trone said he will continue his campaign for this safely blue open seat in western Maryland.
● NC Redistricting: On Monday, a federal district court once again struck down North Carolina's Republican-drawn congressional map as a partisan gerrymander in violation of the Constitution. This ruling reaffirmed the court's January decision, which the Supreme Court vacated and told the lower court to reconsider in June under a different legal theory of who has standing to sue. The Supreme Court, in adjudicating a separate redistricting suit out of Wisconsin, ruled that each disputed district in such a case would have to be challenged individually instead of on a statewide basis; the lower court held that Democratic plaintiffs in the North Carolina case had in fact satisfied that requirement.
Importantly, the lower court will soon decide whether to require new districts for the elections to be held this year. It also must weigh whether to give the GOP legislature a third shot at drawing a legal map this decade after their first one was struck down for undermining minority voting rights in 2016 and their second version over excessive partisanship earlier this year. That's important because Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper lacks the power to veto congressional redistricting, meaning a court-drawn map would likely be much fairer than whatever Republican legislators would come up with.
Indeed, a court-drawn map could help Democrats win anywhere from two to five more seats. By contrast, Democrats have almost no hope of winning a majority of seats this year under the existing gerrymander shown here, even though 2018 is shaping up to be a Democratic wave year and North Carolina is an evenly divided swing state.
However, it is far from guaranteed that this ruling will lead to new districts this year—or ever. For the moment, conservatives on the Supreme Court are unlikely to stay this ruling pending appeal if the liberal justices disagree, thanks to the temporary deadlock created by Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement. But if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to succeed Kennedy, the court would host a majority of hard-right justices who have no qualms about letting Republicans gerrymander freely, meaning North Carolina Republicans are ultimately likely to succeed in reversing this ruling when their appeal eventually reaches the high court some time in the next year.
Consequently, with Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings scheduled to begin Sept. 4, there's a very short window of time the lower court has to order the use of new districts and ensure that its ruling can actually survive. Mitch McConnell says he expects Kavanaugh to be confirmed by Oct. 1, the day the Supreme Court begins its new term. If the district court orders a new map during this window, by the time Kavanaugh in all likelihood joins the bench, it might be too late for the Supreme Court to interfere.
● NJ-03: The Democratic group House Majority PAC is out with two ads targeting Rep. Tom MacArthur for his support for Donald Trump's two most high-profile bills. Their first spot hits MacArthur as the "chief architect behind jeopardizing health coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions," a reference to his role in temporarily giving Trumpcare a new lease on life.
Their other commercial goes after that MacArthur for being the one New Jersey congressman to vote for the GOP's tax plan, which the narrator says will prevent his constituents from deducting all of their state, local, and property taxes.
● NY-19: The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund has launched an ad against lawyer Antonio Delgado, a Democrat, that uses a racist dog-whistle to portray him as an "other" in this heavily white district. Indeed, they blast him for formerly being a rapper, insinuating that he would bring profanity and misogyny to Congress (wait until they find out who the president is). However, the actual values from his rap lyrics that Delgado claimed he would bring to Congress were those pertaining to social justice, not the GOP's out-of-context portrayal of him as anti-American.
● NY-22: Both the Congressional Leadership PAC and the NRCC are using their new ads to tie Democrat Anthony Brindisi to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The NRCC ad uses a recent clip of Cuomo declaring, "We're not going to make America great again … it was never that great," which they seem to hope will cause Brindisi problems in this 55-39 Trump seat. Until now, the GOP had spent most of its time connecting Brindisi to Nancy Pelosi and former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was recently sentenced to seven years in jail on corruption charges.
● NY-24: Siena is out with the first independent poll we've seen of this contest, and they give GOP Rep. John Katko a hefty 54-39 lead over Democrat Dana Balter. The only other survey we've seen of this Syracuse-area seat was a late July PPP survey for the progressive group Speak Out Central New York that had Balter ahead 47-43. Republicans notably did not release their own numbers in response to that poll, but we still have yet to see any major outside groups on either side run TV ads or reserve airtime.
It's quite difficult to reconcile the two polls, especially since they seem to have very different approval ratings. In PPP's survey, Donald Trump posts an awful 42-55 approval rating, while Siena gives him a less-bad 45-49 score. Trump lost this seat 49-45, and given how unpopular Trump is nationally (HuffPost Pollster's average gives him a 43-52 disapproval rating), it would be a surprise if his standing here remained about where it was in 2016.
The two polls also dramatically disagree on how respondents view Katko. PPP gave him a 39-49 disapproval rating, but Siena found him with a strong 53-36 favorable score. (Favorable ratings and job approval ratings aren't the same thing, so this isn't quite an apples-to-apples comparison.) Katko won re-election 61-39 even as Trump was narrowly losing the seat, so it would make sense for him to begin the campaign with strong personal numbers, especially before many commercials have been run against him.
● TX-07: "Where did you dig up that old fossil?" is a question that Republican Rep. John Culberson probably wishes he weren't getting asked in regard to a new report that his campaign has spent $50,000 since 2004 on coins, books, Civil War memorabilia, and other collectibles—including $309 on a fossil from the Black Hills Institute, an archeological organization.
Culberson maintains that the items were supposedly research materials—his staff amusingly claims the old bones were supposed to help the congressman learn about climate change, which would make him perhaps the only Republican in Congress to care about the issue—or "gifts" to donors and campaign volunteers. Whatever the excuse, the expenditures raise the question of whether Culberson was improperly using campaign funds for personal expenses, just a week after fellow GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter was indicted for that very crime. There's no allegation yet that Culberson broke the law, but the FEC and Office of Congressional Ethics have received complaints asking them investigate the matter.
● WV-03: Sorry, southern West Virginia, you're not special. The secretary of state's office has announced that there will not be a special election to replace GOP Rep. Evan Jenkins, who will resign to take a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court, and that the seat will be vacant until the new Congress convenes in January. Democrat Richard Ojeda and Republican Carol Miller are competing in the regular November election to succeed Jenkins, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate earlier this year.
Ad Roundup
