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 cover the results of Tuesday's primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington a future Digest. In the meantime, you can find the results here.
Leading Off
● OH-12: Republican Troy Balderson appears to have pulled off a tight 50-49 win (a margin of about 1,750 votes) over Democrat Danny O'Connor in the Tuesday special election for Ohio's 12th Congressional District. There are still about 8,500 provisional and absentee ballots left to count, but it's unlikely it will be enough to change the result. However, O'Connor announced Tuesday night he was not conceding yet. No matter what, Balderson and O'Connor will face off again in November for the full two-year term.
Campaign Action
A win is a win for Team Red, but this isn't a result that the GOP should be feeling good about three months ahead of the midterm elections. This central Ohio seat went for Trump 53-42 and Romney 55-44, and this area is ancestrally Republican. (Delaware County, which makes up about a quarter of this district, hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1916.) In other words, this is the type of district where the GOP shouldn't have to sweat even in tough years, but they struggled to hold on anyway.
There are also 71 districts GOP-held seats that backed Trump by a smaller margin than this seat did, so Republicans can't afford this kind of swing nationwide if they want to hold the lower chamber.
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Protect Freedom PAC has made a $200,000 ad buy on behalf of former state Sen. Kelli Ward ahead of the Aug. 28 Republican primary. The spots (here, here, and here) feature a fake evening talk show host bashing Republican Rep. Martha McSally as a flip-flopper whose conservative bona fides are insufficient on issues like supporting Trump and his border wall. The host touts Ward's conservative credentials and her endorsements from Sen. Rand Paul and right-wing media figures like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
● NM-Sen: Following recent news that former Gov. and presidential candidate Gary Johnson is considering accepting the Libertarian nomination for Senate this year, Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich's campaign has released an internal poll from GBA Strategies that shows him with a solid advantage regardless of whom he faces. The survey gives Heinrich a 47-29 lead over little-known GOP nominee Mick Rich, while Johnson takes 22 percent. Rich recently reiterated his commitment to his campaign, but if he were to reverse course and drop out if Johnson runs, Heinrich still holds a 50-38 lead over Johnson.
● NV-Sen: The NRSC has debuted a new ad that attacks Democrat Jacky Rosen for supposedly inflating her business résumé, contending instead that she never had a business license and never built a business. However, the Nevada Independent reported that state officials told them that Rosen would not have been required to obtain a state license for her one-person consulting firm. Officials with the city of Henderson said she would have needed a local license, but they didn't maintain archived records; Rosen said she believed she had filed the necessary paperwork but also didn't keep documents from more than a decade and a half ago.
● WI-Sen: Wisconsin Next PAC, which is funded by billionaire megadonor Diane Hendricks, has dropped another $200,000 on ads opposing businessman Kevin Nicholson ahead of next week's GOP primary. No copy of any new ad is available yet.
● WV-Sen: The NRSC has debuted its first attack ad against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Their spot accuses him of having abandoned West Virginia for Washington as it shows him pictured with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The narrator hits him for living on a "luxury" houseboat when staying in D.C., voting against Trump's tax cuts, and saying he wouldn't support a Mexico border wall.
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: Former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine is out with a PPP survey of the Aug. 28 Democratic primary that finds former Rep. Gwen Graham leading him 26-22; billionaire developer Jeff Greene is at 16, while Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and businessman Chris King take 13 and 4, respectively.
A May PPP survey for Levine gave him a 30-20 lead over Graham (Greene had not yet entered the race), and other polls have also found him losing support over the last few months. Recent surveys have consistently shown Graham in the lead and Greene and Levine fighting to be her main opponent, so Levine's campaign may be releasing this poll to argue that he's still in a place where he can win.
However, it's Greene and Graham who are slugging it out on TV. Greene recently went up with a negative spot against her that argued that she was hypocrite when it comes to protecting the environment because her family's company owns land near the Everglades that's being developed for a megamall. Graham is out with a response ad that features her telling the audience that she's being personally attacked by a billionaire opponent (she doesn't mention him by name) who is even "falsely attacking my dad, Bob Graham." (Greene's ad did not mention the former governor and senator.)
Graham then says she's been endorsed by environmental groups and declares that "after 20 years of Republican rule, false negative ads won't do anything" to fix the state's problems.
● RI-Gov: Fleming & Associates takes another look at the general election for Roger Williams University and WPRI. They give Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo a 39-37 lead against Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, the GOP frontrunner, while conservative independent Joe Trillo takes 6. The margin is identical to the 38-36 Raimondo lead Fleming found in March, even though she has spent $1 million on broadcast TV alone since the beginning of June.
Fleming takes a look at several other potential general election matchups, though there are so many undecideds in each of them (most of the contests have at least 30 percent undecided) that they're not very useful.
● TN-Gov: RGA is up with their first TV spot less than a week after Bill Lee won the GOP nomination. Their commercial stars termed-out Gov. Bill Haslam, who says how awesome his governorship has been and how Lee will "take Tennessee to the next level."
● WI-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in for all the candidates covering the period from July 1 to 30, which gives us a look at everyone's spending in the lead up to next week's crowded Democratic primary:
State Superintendent Tony Evers: $109,000 raised, $258,000 spent, $158,000 cash-on-hand
Attorney Matt Flynn: $34,000 raised, $280,000 spent, $157,000 cash-on-hand
Campaign finance reform activist Mike McCabe: $27,000 raised, $33,000 spent, $62,000 cash-on-hand
Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell: $117,000 raised, $244,000 spent, $241,000 cash-on-hand
Former state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys: $147,000 raised, $524,000 spent, $292,000 cash-on-hand
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin: $45,000 raised, $3,000 spent, $100,000 cash-on-hand
State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout: $2,000 raised, no spending reported, $26,000 cash-on-hand
GOP Gov. Scott Walker brought in a hefty $670,000 during this time and spent $1.7 million, leaving him with $4.9 million cash-on-hand.
House
● FL-17: The Club for Growth has launched a spot against state Rep. Julio Gonzalez ahead of the Aug. 28 GOP primary. The narrator takes snippets from Gonzalez's book to argue he wants to allow insurance companies to cut off treatment to people who are "no longer of value to society." The ad labels this a "death panel," which is not a term we've heard in a long time. A long time.
● FL-27: Retired journalist Matt Haggman is out with a poll from RABA Research of the Aug. 28 Democratic primary that finds former University of Miami president Donna Shalala leading him 26-16; state Rep. David Richardson is just behind at 15, while former Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez was at 11. (RABA tells us the sample size for this poll was 433.)
Pretty much everyone agrees that Shalala is the frontrunner, and while she has a clear lead in this poll, Haggman is trying to argue she's not invincible. However, this survey does underscore how tough it will be for him or Richardson to break away from the pack and emerge as Shalala's main rival over the next few weeks.
● NC-09: Republican nominee Mark Harris' hardline evangelical Christian views continue to make unflattering news reports about his candidacy, and the latest episode involves his position on homosexuality. Harris, who is a Baptist pastor, said in a 2013 interview prior to his 2014 Senate campaign that he thought homosexuality was a choice, something he stood by when recently asked about his comments.
Harris had helped lead the GOP-backed effort to ban same-sex marriage in North Carolina's constitution in 2012, and he had also supported the infamous "bathroom bill" that discriminated against LGBTQ people. However, it remains to be seen whether his right-wing social views will damage his campaign among educated suburban voters who typically lean Republican in key battleground areas of the district like Charlotte.
● SD-AL: Republican Dusty Johnson has released an internal poll from Public Opinion Strategies that shows him with a wide 54-33 lead over Democrat Tim Bjorkman. This is the first publicly available poll of the general election for this open-seat contest.
● VA-02: Last week, the local public radio affiliate WHRV broke the story that Republican Rep. Taylor's campaign staffers had collected signatures to get perennial candidate and 2016 Democratic nominee Shaun Brown on this year's ballot as an independent to split the Democratic vote with Team Blue's nominee Elaine Luria. Days later, a new report disclosed that one of those signatures was signed on behalf of dead voter, likely making it fraudulent. At least another four voters who are still alive said they never signed the petitions submitted with their names on them. On Tuesday, Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Colin Stolle's request for a special prosecutor to look into the allegations was quickly granted.
Taylor also announced on Tuesday that he'd fired his campaign manager, though he claimed he'd made the decision before learning about the alleged fraud. Last week, when the news broke that Taylor's staff had helped Brown collect petitions but before there were any allegations of fraud, Taylor's spokesman said "of course" the congressman knew that his team was turning in signatures for Brown.
Grab Bag
● Deaths: Nevada Republican Paul Laxalt, a close friend of Ronald Reagan who served as the state's governor and senator as well as chair of the Republican National Committee, died Monday at the age of 96.
Laxalt, who had served as district attorney for small rural Ormsby County, was elected lieutenant governor in 1962 and challenged Democratic Sen. Howard Cannon two years later. Laxalt, who was a strong supporter of Barry Goldwater, lost the race by just 48 votes even as Lyndon Johnson was carrying Nevada 59-41. He sought the governorship in 1966 against Democratic incumbent Grant Sawyer, and the two came into conflict over the federal government's involvement in gambling operations. Laxalt supported the government cooperating with the state to regulate gambling, while Sawyer opposed it; Laxalt ended up winning 52-48.
Laxalt was credited with stabilizing the gambling industry, and he became close to California Gov. Ronald Reagan. He decided not to seek re-election and opened a hotel and casino in Carson City. However, Laxalt decided to seek an open Senate seat in 1974 and took on Democratic Lt. Gov. Harry Reid in the general election. It was another razor-thin race in a strong Democratic year, but this time, Laxalt won by 624 votes.
Laxalt soon was asked by his friend Reagan to head his primary campaign against President Gerald Ford. Four years later, he was credited with helping turn Reagan's campaign around after losing the Iowa caucus to George H.W. Bush, with him reportedly telling told the defeated candidate, "You were sitting on your ass in Iowa and you have to get off it and work." Reagan went on to win the nomination and considered making Laxalt his running mate, but he realized there wasn't much value to the ticket in choosing someone so similar as him. Reagan also took his advice to debate incumbent Jimmy Carter.
The two Republicans remained close, and Laxalt most notably told U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos to leave office in 1986 rather than fight a civil war against pro-democratic forces. Laxalt decided not to seek re-election in 1986 and this time, Harry Reid won his seat. Laxalt launched a brief presidential campaign in 1988 that went nowhere and never again sought elected office, though he advised Bush's successful 1988 run and Bob Dole's unsuccessful 1996 campaign. Laxalt's grandson, Attorney General Adam Laxalt, is currently the GOP nominee for governor.
Ad Roundup
