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
● MN-Gov: Minnesota Public Radio's Brian Bakst reports that the Republican Governor's Association has canceled its TV reservations for Sept. 26 to Oct. 9, though it still has ad time on the books for the final weeks of the election. The RGA's move is a big vote of no confidence for GOP nominee Jeff Johnson, but it's not a complete surprise. The RGA reserved $2.3 million in fall TV time months ago, but an unnamed GOP operative told Buzzfeed back in June that it was "likely" they'd cancel it if their preferred candidate, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, lost the primary to Johnson.
Campaign Action
Johnson did indeed end up defeating Pawlenty last month, and there have been signs of tension between him and the RGA. Washington Post reporter James Hohman reported earlier this month that party strategists may urge groups like the RGA to leave Minnesota and redeploy their resources to more competitive races. When Johnson was asked about this, he told WCCO that "[f]rankly, if there are D.C. Republican strategists that don't have faith in the campaign, it doesn't bother me all that much because these are the same guys that said I'd lose the primary by 20 points," adding, "I don't think they have their finger on the pulse of Minnesota or Minnesota voters very well."
The RGA's reported cancelation came around the same time that SurveyUSA released a poll for the ABC affiliate KSTP that shows Democrat Tim Walz leading Johnson 47-40. The only other poll we've seen since the primary was a Suffolk survey taken days after Johnson's upset that gave Walz a similar 46-41 edge. While neither of those polls are good for Johnson, they also don't indicate that he's a massive longshot. However, the RGA's move indicates that either they're seeing much more pessimistic numbers or they don't have much faith that Johnson is doing what he needs to do to win.
SENATE
● MO-Sen: Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is out with a spot where she recounts her successful battle with breast cancer two years ago and tells the audience that "those who face cancer and many other illnesses have a pre-existing condition when it comes to health coverage." She then declares that Republican foe Josh Hawley filed a lawsuit to try and deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Democrats have gone after a number of Senate GOP candidates in red states with ads arguing that they want to take away this coverage, but Hawley is unusually vulnerable. That's because Hawley is one of a number of GOP state attorneys general who is part of a lawsuit that could end Obamacare and insurance protection for pre-existing conditions along with it.
In February, Hawley's office proudly declared he would "continue to fight to take health care choices out of the hands of bureaucrats and return them to the hands of Missourians and their physicians," but McClatchy notes that he's become a whole lot more quiet about his role in the lawsuit since then. Hawley and his top aides now refuse to say what his involvement is, and the candidate has made sure to pay lip-service to the importance of covering pre-existing conditions.
● ND-Sen: We haven't seen too many candidates try to make opposition to tariffs an issue in their races, but Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is out with an ad arguing that Republican Kevin Cramer supports a harmful trade war. The spot features a local farmer identified as Charles Linderman bemoaning that "China is canceling their contracts to buy soybeans," and it's costing North Dakota hundreds of millions.
Linderman then declares that Cramer criticizes farmers, and the spot plays a clip of the Republican saying, "I hear all kinds of hysteria," and, "There's a potential for short term pain … we don't have a very high pain threshold in the United States of America." Linderman concludes with him telling Cramer that the trade war "is costing my family a lot of money, and you don't seem to care." The commercial does not mention Donald Trump, which is unsurprising since North Dakota backed him 63-27.
● FEC: Finally! Twenty-three years after the House began requiring campaigns to file fundraising reports with the FEC electronically, the Senate will at long last follow suit. Absurdly, Senate candidates still file their reports on paper, requiring the FEC to manually scan in all filings. The process is not only expensive but time-consuming: While House reports show up online as soon as they're submitted, Senate reports can take up to 10 days to appear, and when they do, they're in a crummy, unsearchable format, like so.
Activists have pressured the Senate to change its way for a very long time: A campaign to bring the Senate into the 21st century was spearheaded by Daily Kos (and led by contributing editor Adam Bonin) starting in 2006. But senators resisted, for the terrible reason that they benefited from the lack of transparency, particularly because the delay put their final fundraising reports submitted just before an election essentially beyond scrutiny.
Now, they've relented, passing an appropriations bill that includes an amendment creating an "e-file" system for Senate candidates. The bill has also passed the House by an overwhelming margin, meaning it will soon become law. In a time when Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are shredding the very notion of transparency, this is an important victory for better government.
● Senate: We have the size-of-the-buys from some recent ads and new ads. VoteVets is spending $200,000 in the Arizona Senate race against Republican Martha McSally, while New Republican has thrown down another $1 million against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in Florida. Also for Team Red, the super PAC Texans Are (now that's a specific statement if we've ever heard one!) has deployed $605,000 against Democrat Beto O'Rourke.
Gubernatorial
● FL-Gov: Ron DeSantis and the state Republican Party are launching what DeSantis' campaign says is a $4 million buy that will last 10 days. The commercial, which is the first spot from DeSantis since the late August primary, features the candidate talking about how when he was 12, he and his baseball team in the St. Petersburg area went to the 1991 Little League World Series.
DeSantis tells the audience that he and his teammates "learned to dream big, work hard and swing away," and transitions to talking about job creation, restoring water quality, and education with an "[a]nd that's my plan as governor." (We're not sure how you swing away at education.) There's also a Spanish version of the ad narrated by DeSantis.
● WI-Gov: The Associated Press reports that the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity has launched a new $1.3 million ad buy against Democrat Tony Evers. The group spent $1.8 million against Evers just after he won the primary last month.
● Polls:
- FL-Gov: Rasmussen: Andrew Gillum (D): 48, Ron DeSantis (R): 42
- IL-Gov: Research America for the Illinois Broadcasters Association: J.B. Pritzker (D): 44, Bruce Rauner (R-inc): 27, Sam McCann (C): 6, Kash Jackson (L): 4
- KS-Gov: PPP (D) for the Kansas Democratic Party: Kris Kobach (R): 39, Laura Kelly (D): 38, Greg Orman (I): 9, others 3
This Florida poll (their Senate numbers showed Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson up 45-44) is the first horse-race poll we've seen from Rasmussen Reports all year. Indeed, the once-prolific firm has been crowdfunding to raise money for more polls.
While Rasmussen has usually produced more favorable results for Republicans than most other firms have (they consistently give Donald Trump a far-better approval rating than anyone else), this poll isn't too different from the numbers we've been seeing for both races. In fact, this is the best result Gillum has ever posted in any poll.
PPP's last Kansas poll for the state NEA in late August gave all three candidates the exact same percentage of the vote that they have in this new mid-September survey. However, this poll also tests a two-way matchup without Orman and finds Kobach ahead 47-46, which indicates that the independent is drawing support about equally from both Kobach and Kelly. That would be a surprise since we assumed that Orman, who was the de facto Democratic Senate nominee in 2014, would disproportionately hurt Kelly.
It's worth noting, though, that two other candidates draw a collective 3 percent of the vote, and we don't know what the race would look like if Orman did decide to drop out but they stayed in. We haven't seen any other polls of this contest since before the August primary.
House
● AZ-01: The DCCC is continuing to spend heavily against Republican Wendy Rogers, who is trying to unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran. New FEC reports reveal that the D-Trip has spent another $336,000 on a recent ad buy, which brings their total spending since the late August primary up to $780,000. While the Democratic group House Majority PAC reserved $1.1 million in the Phoenix media market back in March, we weren't aware the DCCC had invested a sizable amount here as well. So far, major outside GOP groups don't appear to have spent anything on this contest.
While both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump narrowly won this seat, O'Halleran should be the clear favorite since the incumbent has both a favorable political climate and a pretty weak opponent (Rogers has unsuccessfully run for office each cycle beginning in 2010), and we currently rate it as Likely Democratic. However, the DCCC's spending may be a sign that this contest is a bit more competitive than we've thought.
● FL-16: The Washington Post reports that Democrat David Shapiro and the DCCC have launched a joint buy for $900,000 against GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan, though it's not clear how much each of them is spending. The narrator declares that Buchanan bought himself a $5 million yacht with a loan he'd received from a foreign bank "that was lobbying Republicans in Washington" the same day he voted for the tax bill that got him a tax break of up to $2 million.
● ME-02: Roll Call reports that the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund is now planning to spend $3.1 million here, which is a bit more than $2.8 million they announced they'd reserved back in June. They're also out with another spot hitting Democrat Jared Golden.
● MI-06: We haven't seen any major spending in this contest, but the progressive group Change Now has just dropped $469,000 on a TV buy against GOP Rep. Fred Upton.
● House: We have the size-of-the-buy for some recent and upcoming ads.
In addition to the $336,000 the DCCC has spent in Arizona's 1st District (see our AZ-01 item), they've also spent $336,000 in California's 48th and $88,000 in Illinois' 6th. Also on the blue side, Patriot Majority has deployed $210,000 on a buy in Maine's 2nd.
Meanwhile, the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund has some new spending as well:
● Polls:
- NJ-03: DCCC in-house: Andy Kim (D): 47, Tom MacArthur (R-inc): 45
- OH-12: GBA Strategies (D) for Danny O'Connor: Troy Balderson (R): 47, Danny O'Connor 46
- WI-01: Siena for the New York Times: Bryan Steil (R): 50, Randy Bryce (D): 44
The DCCC's NJ-03 poll is pretty similar to the 41-40 lead for MacArthur that Monmouth found in mid-August.
The GBA poll is the first survey we've seen of the November general election for Ohio's 12th. Balderson defeated O'Connor 50-49, which matches his margin here.
This is the first poll we've seen for the general election to succeed Speaker Paul Ryan since last month's primary. Siena gives Donald Trump a 47-47 approval rating in a seat he carried 53-42, but voters say they'd prefer a GOP-led House to a Democratic one by a wide 53-43 margin.
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