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
● CA-45: One of the GOP's central lines of attack this year has been to charge that Democrats, if they win back Congress, would bankrupt and destroy Medicare. Donald Trump himself summed up the strategy at an Indiana campaign when he declared Democrats would "raid Medicare to pay for socialism," going so far as to say he doubted Hoosiers wanted their state to end up like "the next Venezuela." Democratic candidates are wisely fighting back, though, and not allowing Team Red to caricature them.
Campaign Action
Democrat Katie Porter, who is challenging GOP Rep. Mimi Walters in California's 45th Congressional District, is out with two new ads showcasing two different approaches. In one spot, Porter uses her own health scare to argue that everyone deserves quality care, while in the other, she takes her Republican foe to task for siding with Trump to weaken health care.
In her first commercial, Porter tells an audience that she "didn't expect to wind up in the emergency room while running for Congress," explaining that when her appendix burst last month, "quality healthcare literally saved my life." She then declares that every family in Orange County deserves access to health care. Porter's other ad hits Walters for voting to "gut protections for pre-existing conditions and allow insurance companies to gouge seniors." The narrator also adds that Walters and Trump want to defund Planned Parenthood, while Porter will "take on Trump and the insurance companies to protect health care."
Primary Day
● Primary Day: The state so nice, they have to vote twice: Thursday brings us our last primary night of the cycle (apart from Louisiana's Nov. 6 jungle primary), as New Yorkers go to the polls in contests for state and local office. The Empire State already held its congressional primary in late June, but the GOP-led state Senate has spent years blocking attempts to hold just one primary day like the other 49 states. As always, we have our preview of what to watch.
The main event is the Democratic primary for governor, where incumbent Andrew Cuomo is favored to fend off actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. We also have a competitive Democratic contest for attorney general between New York City Public Advocate Tish James, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, and law professor Zephyr Teachout. Additionally, the members of the former Independent Democratic Conference, a group of nominal Democrats who spent years in a coalition with the GOP to give them control of the state Senate, face primaries.
Polls close at 9 PM ET, and we'll begin our liveblog then at Daily Kos Elections. You can follow our coverage on Twitter as well.
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Two local Republican firms have given us our first polls of Arizona's Senate race between Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema and Republican Rep. Martha McSally since the Aug. 28 primary, but they disagree on who is ahead. On behalf of ABC15, OH Predictive Insights gives McSally a 49-46 lead, which is the first time she has led in a single poll so far; the firm's July survey had Sinema ahead 48-44. However, Data Orbital's first general election poll finds Sinema up 46-42, which is more consistent with pre-primary polling, though it's possible that McSally has indeed improved her standing by consolidating Republican voters after the primary.
Meanwhile, DefendArizona has dropped another $900,000 to attack Sinema on TV. Their latest ad dishonestly tries to portray Sinema as weak on human trafficking by claiming she wanted to protect men from additional charges for soliciting underage prostitutes. The ad plays a clip of Sinema speaking during 2007 legislative proceedings over a bill to impose strict liability on child prostitution and bar alleged offenders from using the defense that they didn't know the child was underage because they "looked older" than they were.
The spot focuses on Sinema's remarks in particular. "I don't think that's fair," she says at one point; at another, referencing her time as a social worker at an elementary school, she says, "There were children at my school who were 12, 13 years old, and some of these children looked older than me." The commercial claims Sinema's position "allowed men" to "beat the rap," eliding the fact that they still would have been charged with soliciting prostitution just as though the victim had been an adult.
Beyond that, the ad predictably takes Sinema's comments very much out of context. Sinema spoke out against child trafficking in that very same hearing, and she ultimately voted in favor of the bill after it was amended to allow a defense against child prostitution charges if the victim was 15 or older and the perpetrator "could not reasonably have known the age of the minor." Furthermore, all but one legislator on the panel voted for the bill, and Sinema has pointed to several other bills she had worked to pass to try to stop child trafficking.
● FL-Sen: SurveyUSA has released their first poll of the general election in Florida, and it finds Republican Gov. Rick Scott holding a 46-44 lead over Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Polls have consistently pointed to a tight race, and a recent Quinnipiac survey had the contest tied 49-49.
● NV-Sen: Republicans have been consistently attacking Democrat Jacky Rosen for supposedly being bad for veterans, and GOP Sen. Dean Heller's latest ads offer more of the same (here and here). The first commercial features Heller touting his efforts to pass legislation helping veterans avoid waiting times to get health care, and the second one hits Rosen for skipping a vote to help Vietnam veterans and allegedly voting against holding the VA accountable. Like another recent Republican ad, this spot also dusts off the 1972 playbook to tar Rosen for attending a "Hollywood fundraiser with Jane Fonda."
However, Rosen is out with a response ad that features veterans calling Heller's ads "lies. They note a Reno News & Review article graded Heller as the "worst" in Nevada on veterans' issues. One veteran praises the way Rosen "broke with Pelosi to bring some accountability to the VA," and several of them in sequence call Heller "Senator Spineless" at the end of the spot.
● OH-Sen, OH-Gov: On behalf of Politico and the AARP, Morning Consult has polled Ohio's top statewide races. For Senate, they give Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown a wide 47-31 edge over Republican Rep. Jim Renacci, and Republican Mike DeWine holds a 39-38 lead over Democrat Richard Cordray in the race for governor. Brown has led in every poll so far, usually by a comfortable margin, and polling since the May primaries has consistently pointed to a close gubernatorial election.
● TX-Sen, TX-Gov: A Texas-based firm called Crosswind Media & Public Relations has released a poll of Texas' top statewide races, and they give Republican Sen. Ted Cruz just a 47-44 lead over Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke. Cruz has led in every poll to date, but this result is consistent with other polls this summer that had him only holding a modest advantage. Despite the close Senate result, Crosswind finds Republican Gov. Greg Abbott cruising to a 52-39 edge over Democrat Lupe Valdez, whom polls have persistently found faring much worse than O'Rourke.
On behalf of CBS11, Dixie Strategies has also polled Texas for the first time in the general election, and they find similar results: For Senate, Cruz leads just 46-42, but Abbott enjoys a huge 53-34 advantage for governor.
Meanwhile, Cruz's latest ad goes after O'Rourke over his recent viral NFL protests speech. The spot plays a short segment of O'Rourke's speech to imply he's unpatriotically disrespecting the military by supporting players kneeling during the national anthem, but as the full context shows, O'Rourke was of course defending the quintessential American rights to freedom of speech and peaceful protests against police brutality:
"And so non-violently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem to ensure that we fix it. That is why they're doing it, and I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights–anytime, anywhere, any place."
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: SurveyUSA also polled the gubernatorial race, and their first results have Democrat Andrew Gillum holding a 47-43 lead over Republican Ron DeSantis. These numbers are identical to his 47-43 edge in a new poll from Cherry Communications on behalf of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and Gillum has narrowly led in every single poll since the Aug. 28 primary.
Both national parties will likely spend big here, and the DGA just gave Gillum another $1 million. Meanwhile, the RGA has launched their first TV ad attacking Gillum, contending he's so far out that he's "on another planet." They hit him for backing a supposed "government takeover of health care" with his support of Medicare for all (which they don't mention by name), for wanting to increase taxes, and for favoring shutting down ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
● MI-Gov: While the RGA cut $1.5 million in planned TV spending here last week, unnamed GOP sources tell Politico that they're putting $1 million back in the state.
● NV-Gov: Democrats are continuing to argue that Adam Laxalt is a threat to the legacy of popular termed-out governor and fellow Republican Brian Sandoval. The DGA-backed group Nevada Families First's new TV ad hits Laxalt for opposing Sandoval's Medicaid expansion, with the narrator declaring that, if Laxalt had his way, "200,000 Nevadans would have no health care, and there'd be no protections for pre-existing conditions."
Sandoval, who has refused to endorse Laxalt, doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to stop Democrats from using his name in their own commercials. When Democrat Steve Sisolak took Laxalt to task for opposing the governor's school funding law, Sandoval's office responded by saying that “[f]or Gov. Sandoval, it's not about Republican or Democrat, it's about education."
● OK-Gov: The local firm SoonerPoll is out with the first general election survey, and they give Republican Kevin Stitt a narrow 47-44 edge over Democrat Drew Edmondson. Their mid-July poll, which was taken before Stitt won the GOP nod, gave Edmondson a 40-39 lead. Termed-out GOP Gov. Mary Fallin continues to be horrifically unpopular, with a 22-69 approval rating.
● WI-Gov: Republican Gov. Scott Walker's latest ad escalates the GOP’s attempt to paint Democrat Tony Evers as a threat to public safety. The spot starts with the discredited claim that Evers refused to remove abusive teachers from the classroom, then argues he's dangerous because he wants to cut the state's prison population in half, which the narrator claims would mean people who had committed violent felonies would be let loose on the state.
However, thanks to a law Walker authored when he was a state legislator that barred the early release of even nonviolent prisoners, Wisconsin has an overcrowding problem that has prompted some legislators to debate spending money to build a new prison. During a primary debate, Evers called cutting the prison population by 50 percent a "goal worth accomplishing" to end mass incarceration, but he pointedly supported early release and eliminating certain prison sentences only for nonviolent offenders.
It's true that just one-third of inmates are currently incarcerated for a nonviolent offense, meaning Evers' policy proposal couldn't actually reach 50 percent, but it could still cut in half the number of new prison admissions each year. Even more important, it's patently false that his plan would put violent felony offenders back on the streets.
House
● CO-06: The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund has been running ads for weeks arguing that Democrat Jason Crow failed to protect his fellow veterans while serving on the all-volunteer state board of veterans affairs, and Crow is pushing back with his own spot. The ad features news clips of reporters calling the attacks false (wisely, the commercial does not repeat the attacks) and noting that Crow earned a Bronze Star, before the narrator declares that GOP Rep. Mike Coffman has sided with Trump 96 percent of the time and is "attacking a decorated veteran.”
● FL-26: The NRCC's newest ad attacks Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for supposedly being a front for a Ukrainian businessman and militia leader named Ihor Kolomoisky. The spot claims her family "got rich" doing business with Kolomoisky and contends her campaign "received thousands from Kolomoisky's associates."
However, Mucarsel-Powell's husband, Robert Powell, previously worked just as the general counsel representing companies that Kolomoisky was an investor in, and Powell argues his work had nothing to do with particular shareholders like Kolomoisky. Furthermore, federal law bans foreign nationals from contributing to candidates, which is what this ad implies happened, and Florida Politics reports the "thousands" in donations from supposed "Kolomoisky associates" was actually just a total of $2,500 from two Americans and $2,700 from none other than Robert Powell. Republicans are essentially implying Mucarsel-Powell is in the pocket of Big Her Husband.
● MI-08, MI-07: The DCCC has cancelled its ad reservation for the last two weeks before Election Day in the Lansing media market. It's unclear if this reservation was intended for the 8th District, where very well-funded Democrat Elissa Slotkin is locked in a tight battle with Republican Rep. Mike Bishop, or if it was for the 7th District, where Democrat Gretchen Driskell faces a more uphill challenge against Republican Rep. Tim Walberg in a redder seat. The Lansing market makes up just 40 percent of the 8th District, and Detroit covers the other 60 percent, but Lansing is a 45 percent plurality of the 7th.
● MN-01: Politico reports that VoteVets has launched a four-week $662,000 buy for Democrat Dan Feehan. Their spot says that Republican Jim Hagedorn supported a healthcare plan the AARP labeled "an age tax," and that it would hurt seniors and endanger coverage for pre-existing conditions.
● PA-01: The NRCC uses a Fox News article to argue in a new ad that Democrat Scott Wallace supports taxing people who have more than two children, because his foundation gave money to "population control" groups whose members expressed support for such a policy. However, while Wallace strongly supports reducing population growth to mitigate climate change and geopolitical instability, there's no direct evidence that he supports a tax on larger families. Indeed, the focus of his efforts has been on educating girls and women about family planning and making contraception and abortion readily available.
● NJ-07: Democrat Tom Malinowski's new ad begins with footage of the late GOP Sen. John McCain praising him at Malinowski’s Senate confirmation hearing for a State Department post, for his contribution in the fight to end torture; McCain adds he's "forever grateful." Malinowski then declares his job was to defend the country and American values, and says he doesn't "think it's a big leap from standing up to the likes of Putin and Kim Jong-un" to standing up for the district.
● TX-07, NM-02, VA-07, VA-02: We have some ads from outside groups in races where we didn't know they'd reserved any airtime. The Texas Tribune reports that the DCCC has invested $2 million in Texas' 7th Congressional District, where they're hoping to oust longtime GOP Rep. John Culberson (you can find their spots here and here).
The D-Trip is also out with their first ad in New Mexico's 2nd District, an open seat that backed Donald Trump 50-40. Their allies at House Majority PAC are also going on the air with a spot against GOP Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th. On the other side, the NRCC is going after Democrat Elaine Luria in Virginia's 2nd. We don't have the size of the buy for any of these ad campaigns.
● VA-07: Democrat Abigail Spanberger is out with another ad in response to the GOP's attempts to link the former CIA officer to terrorism through an ill-gotten copy of her federal security clearance application.
The narrator declares that GOP Rep. Dave Brat and his allies "will do anything to keep power," including smearing Spanberger, "a CIA officer who risked her life fighting terrorists." The spot then cites the Washington Post calling the ads "outrageous and worrisome," national security officials calling the leak "'political retribution' that 'violated the trust of one among our ranks'," and a Republican strategist saying the attacks "crossed the line."
● VA-10: While GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock and her allies have reportedly been very worried that the NRCC will redirect the money they'd reserved to help her to more winnable races, the Republican campaign committee is still going ahead with its plans to run commercials for her. The NRCC debuted their first ad this week, and Advertising Analytics tells NBC it is part of a $4.8 million reservation.
The DCCC isn't writing Comstock off as dead, either. The committee also launched their first spot around the same time as part of an overall $2.3 million reservation. The DCCC's allies at House Majority PAC have invested $1.9 million here, though they haven't aired their first spot. While a July Monmouth poll found Comstock losing to Democrat Jennifer Wexton 49-39 in a seat Hillary Clinton carried 52-42, the incumbent has a reputation as a formidable campaigner, and neither side seems to think she's doomed yet.
● Polls: We've reached the point in the election cycle where new polls of individual races are dropping regularly, so from here on out, we'll generally be rounding them up and offering comments on notable results. We start with four separate surveys of competitive House races:
- NC-02: SurveyUSA for Civitas: Linda Coleman (D): 44, George Holding (R-inc): 43, Jeff Matemu (L): 2
- NY-19: Monmouth: Antonio Delgado (D): 48, John Faso (R-inc): 45
- TX-23: Siena for the New York Times: Will Hurd (R-inc): 51, Gina Ortiz Jones (D): 43
- UT-04: Y2 Analytics for Mia Love: Mia Love (R-inc): 51, Ben McAdams (D): 42
Civitas is a conservative think tank, so it's quite interesting that their poll matches a recent Coleman internal that had her up 45-44. SurveyUSA also finds Trump with a lousy 40-54 approval rating. That's considerably worse than his 53-44 margin of victory in this district, but if it's accurate, that's a major anvil around Holding's neck.
Monmouth's numbers differ from a Siena poll taken late last month that had Faso ahead 45-40. Interestingly, Trump sports a 48-47 approval score (very similar to the 45-47 rating Siena gave him), so it's hard to argue Monmouth's sample was too blue. (Trump carried this district 51-44.) Also note that while Monmouth offers three models that reflect different turnout scenarios, we're relying on their "historical midterm turnout" model from this point forward. This appears to be the closest they offer to a likely-voter model, and we're close enough to Election Day that it makes sense to look at what likely voters, rather than just registered voters, have to say.
The Siena/New York Times poll of Texas' 23rd is our first of the race. Republican operatives have insisted for months that Hurd is in better shape than some other Texas GOP incumbents in historically redder districts (particularly Pete Sessions and John Culberson), and this poll would seem to back up that claim. However, very unusually, Trump's approvals stand at 48-47. That would represent an improvement compared to his 2016 vote share (Hillary Clinton actually won this district 50-46), which is something we've almost never seen this cycle.
Finally, Utah's 4th is the rare district that has seen a cornucopia of polls—probably more than any other House race, for whatever reason—but almost every survey to date has shown a low-to-mid-single digits edge for Love. While Y2 says it released its entire poll, it does not appear to have asked about Trump's standing.
Mayoral
● Chicago, IL Mayor: On Wednesday, retiring Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez announced that he would not run for mayor of Chicago next year, but he said he very much hoped that Cook County Commissioner Chuy García did. García, who lost the 2015 race to retiring Mayor Rahm Emanuel 56-44, soon confirmed he was thinking about it.
García decisively won the March Democratic primary to succeed Gutiérrez (who had immediately endorsed him as he announced he was retiring), and he's in no danger of losing the November general election in his safely blue seat. However, because the filing deadline is Nov. 26, García would need to announce a mayoral bid well before he can be sworn into Congress in January. The first round of the nonpartisan primary is Feb. 26, followed by an April 2 runoff if no one takes a majority of the vote, so if García runs, he'll have spent only a few months in his new post in D.C.
A number of other Chicago politicians are considering, and Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas formed a fundraising committee for a potential run this week. All the credible current and potential candidates in this very blue city identify as Democrats, but one of them isn't shy about aiding state Republicans. Former Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy, a self-described conservative Democrat who entered the race before Emanuel decided to retire, attended a major Republican fundraiser on Tuesday for state House GOP leader Jim Durkin, an event keynoted by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and also attended by Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Primary Recap
● NH-Gov: Former state Sen. Molly Kelly, who had the backing of the state Democratic establishment, beat former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand 66-34 in Tuesday's primary for the right to take on GOP Gov. Chris Sununu.
While Sununu won his first term just 49-47 in 2016 (New Hampshire and Vermont are the only two states that elect their governors to two-year terms), the few polls we've seen have given him strong approval ratings. The Granite State has also been reluctant to oust first-term governors: Since the 1920s, the only governor to be denied a second term is Republican Craig Benson, who narrowly lost in 2004. However, New Hampshire is notoriously prone to wild swings, and with the wind in Team Red's face nationally, Sununu can't take re-election for granted. Daily Kos Elections rates this contest as Likely Republican.
● NH-01: State Executive Councilor Chris Pappas, who had the support of much of the state Democratic establishment, defeated Iraq War Marine veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official Maura Sullivan by a 42-30 margin in the primary to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter; none of the other nine (!) candidates took more than 10 percent of the vote. On the GOP side, former state liquor commission official Eddie Edwards defeated state Sen. Andy Sanborn 48-42. Pappas would be New Hampshire's first gay member of Congress, while Edwards would be the state's first black member.
This seat, which includes Manchester, very narrowly backed both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and it changed party control in five of the last six elections. However, while neither party can take this race for granted, there's good reason to think that Team Blue has the advantage. This area has been so competitive in large part to New Hampshire's unusually high proportion of swing voters, which makes it more susceptible than most places to the national political climate. This year, that climate favors Democrats, and we rate this as Lean Democratic.
It's also not clear how much Team Red plans to spend in the expensive Boston media market when it’s on the defensive in so many races. The Democratic groups DCCC and House Majority PAC reserved a total of $1.35 million here earlier this year, and we don't know of any major GOP reservations.
Ad Roundup
