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
● IA-03, VA-02: Iowa Rep. David Young's newest ad epitomizes the kind of healthcare strategy we've seen from Republicans in battlegrounds across the nation. The narrator claims that the congressman is being smeared by false attacks and "has always fought for protect Iowans with pre-existing conditions." She doesn't go into any more detail and certainly doesn't mention that Young voted for the House's version of Trumpcare; she just moves on to claiming that Democrat Cindy Axne "and her liberal allies support government-run health care that experts say will cost $32 trillion." The narrator also charges that "their plan" ends "Medicare as we know it" for seniors.
Campaign Action
We've already explained that the $32 trillion price tag the GOP claims single-payer healthcare will cost comes from a Koch-funded study that also found that Americans would save $2 trillion over a decade because they would no longer have to pay private insurance premiums. However, the Washington Post's Dave Weigel points out that that Axne isn't even calling for single-payer, and instead is in favor a public option health care. Of course, as we've seen in many ads and will see again, the GOP is simply hoping that if they yell loudly enough that they want to protect coverage for pre-existing conditions while Democrats want to destroy Medicare, enough voters will eventually fall for it.
Over in Virginia, the NRCC tries a similar tactic against Democrat Elaine Luria, but they do a clumsy job at it. The spot just shows 30 seconds of a shark fin sticking out of the water as narrator declares that Luria is a "stealth candidate" who has "quietly promised something radical and dangerous." He goes on to insist that Luria "backs a gateway to a government takeover of health care." But for all this vivid imagery, the actual ad is pretty dull, especially since the shark never does rise beyond the water. (It's still better than some of the Jaws sequels, though.)
Like Axne, Luria supports a public option rather than Medicare for All. However, the GOP is hoping that they can just use the word "gateway" to convince voters that Luria will lead to the nightmarish future they claim is in store if Democrats are not stopped.
Senate
● FL-Sen: Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson's latest TV ad does what no other major federal candidate can do: Recount his experience going into space aboard a space shuttle. Nelson says that when he left Earth's atmosphere and looked back at the planet, he didn't see divisions, emphasizing that we're all in this together.
Meanwhile, Nelson and the Democratic group Majority Forward have both unveiled new ads attacking Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Nelson's spot repeatedly plays a clip of Scott saying, "The results speak for themselves," as the narrator blames Scott for the historic toxic algae crisis, 800,000 Floridians being denied health coverage, a $1.3 billion cut in education funding, his doling out contracts to donors, and his trying to hide that he has made more than $500 million during his time as governor.
Majority Forward's commercial focuses on an issue that hasn't seen as much attention compared to his 2010 campaign for governor, but their ad highlights how Scott's company was found guilty of "massive Medicare fraud, but Rick Scott walked away with millions." They use that as an opening to portray Scott as corrupt by also pointing to no-bid contracts given to friends and donors, his pushing through laws that benefited companies he owned part of, and how his income "soared by $83 million last year alone."
● IN-Sen: Despite a report last week that they had been sitting things out in this contest, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has gone up with a commercial hitting Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly for opposing Trump's tax cuts, trying to associate him with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the process.
● MT-Sen: Polling has been very infrequent in Montana's Senate race, but one revealing sign suggesting Republicans aren't too confident in Republican Matt Rosendale's chances against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is that the Senate Leadership Fund, the main GOP super PAC tied to Mitch McConnell, has acknowledged that they don't have any further ad reservations here despite Montana's relatively cheap airtime cost. National Republicans haven't given up, though, since the pro-Trump America First Policies is spending $1.5 million on recent and upcoming ads.
Meanwhile, the Democratic group Majority Forward continues Tester's recent line of attack against Rosendale over the latter's charade of pretending he's a rancher to come across as just an ordinary Montanan. Their latest ad highlights how he is a multimillionaire developer from Maryland who bought a "trophy ranch" in Montana yet "never owned any cattle" and "never actually ranched his land," according to a Talking Points Memo report. They contend he bought more land in Montana to turn it into housing developments.
● ND-Sen: Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer keeps finding new ways to offend in doubling down on his support for embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. On a Monday radio appearance, Cramer said of the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, "Even if it's all true, does it disqualify him? It certainly means that he did something really bad 36 years ago, but does it disqualify him from the Supreme Court?" When the radio host replied that if the allegation were true it would mean Kavanaugh had lied, Cramer agreed that lying was hypothetically disqualifying, but Cramer's response implied that it wouldn't be disqualifying if Kavanaugh merely didn't remember.
Cramer also dug in on his previous comment that "nothing evidently happened," trying to explain it by saying, "[T]here was no type of intercourse or anything like that." This rhetoric of downplaying the very real trauma of sexual assaults that don't cross the line into the legal definition of rape, along with Cramer's previous belittling of the allegations against Kavanaugh by arguing he and his accuser, Christine Ford, were just teenagers, are part of a long line of derogatory comments Cramer has made regarding women.
● NJ-Sen: Patients for Affordable Drugs has upped their TV and digital ad buy against Republican Bob Hugin by $1.2 million, bringing their total spending in the race to $2.7 million. The super PAC says their spots will run through Election Day.
● TN-Sen: The Committee to Defend the President has announced they're jumping into Tennessee's open Senate race to support Republican Marsha Blackburn with $900,000 in spending on TV, digital ads, and canvassing.
● Polls:
- AZ-Sen: Marist for NBC: Kyrsten Sinema (D): 45, Martha McSally (R): 43, Angela Green (G): 6 (June: 49-38 Sinema)
- FL-Sen: Quinnipiac: Bill Nelson (D-inc): 53, Rick Scott (R): 46 (Early September: 49-49 tie)
This is Marist's first survey of Arizona since last month's primary, but it finds Sinema ahead just like almost every other pollster has this month. Notably, Marist is the first firm to include the name of Green Party candidate Angela Green, yet they still have Sinema with a narrow edge.
Meanwhile, Quinnipiac's Florida survey gives Nelson not only one of his few polling leads this month, but one of his best results since Scott joined the race earlier this year. It's possible that Nelson and Democrats finally going heavily onto TV since the late-August primary has produced a real shift since Quinnipiac found the rate tied earlier this month, but it's just as possible that this poll is too favorable to Democrats in a race that is widely regarded as being a close fight.
● Senate: Politico reports the conservative Senate Leadership Fund is spending another $7 million across five Senate battlegrounds: Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, Tennessee, and West Virginia. You can find each of their new ads over the state's name.
Gubernatorial
● OH-Gov: Republican Mike DeWine's latest TV ad blasts Democrat Richard Cordray for supporting a ballot measure called Issue 1, which would implement several criminal justice reforms. DeWine tries to portray Cordray as dangerous to Ohioans by supposedly favoring the early release of violent criminals, but he omits that Issue 1 would only grant sentence reductions of up to 25 percent to prisoners convicted of felonies if they participate in educational or rehabilitative programs. Furthermore, it excludes those convicted of more heinous crimes like murder and rape, along with those facing life without parole.
DeWine's commercial also attempts to associate Cordray's support for Issue 1 with the backlog of untested rape kits from when Cordray was state attorney general. However, we've previously noted that Cordray inherited an office that had no standard procedure for how local law enforcement agencies were supposed to handle testing the kits, and he had taken action to try to speed up the process during his time in office.
● WI-Gov: This is an actual ad from GOP Gov. Scott Walker. We're not going to try and describe it—you just need to watch. Maybe fans of the 1970s children's show The Electric Company will find it charming, but the rest of us are just bemused.
● Polls:
- AZ-Gov: Marist for NBC: Doug Ducey (R-inc): 49, David Garcia (D): 39
This poll is Marist's first of Arizona's general election for governor, and Ducey's 49-39 margin is more consistent with other independent polls showing a more comfortable advantage than recent Democratic surveys that had Garcia just barely behind.
House
● AZ-02: The NRCC must be extremely nostalgic for the 2010 cycle, since they're out with a spot that hits former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick for voting for the 2009 economic stimulus. The narrator charges that one of Kirkpatrick's first votes was "to spend over $800 billion of taxpayer money on a failed stimulus that created jobs in China and left American workers forgotten." The GOP spent years arguing that the stimulus, which actually raised the nation's economic output at a critical time, was a disaster, but it's still been years since we've seen a commercial like this.
● AZ-06: EMILY's List has endorsed Democrat Anita Malik, whose campaign against Republican Rep. David Schweikert in this historically red-leaning suburban district has so far attracted little attention from national Democrats and progressive groups.
● FL-16: Both major-party candidates are out with new spots focused on Florida's ongoing red tide toxic algae crisis. GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan went up with a commercial on Monday where the narrator praised him for "leading the fight against red tide and toxic algae." Democrat David Shapiro quickly launched a response ad where he declared that Buchanan "took over $100,000 from big sugar special interests and voted to weaken regulations that fight the pollution that make red tide worse."
● IL-13: The DCCC has launched their first spot against GOP Rep. Rodney Davis in a race where we didn't know they had any TV time reserved.
The narrator argues that Davis is in the pocket of corporate interests, and goes after his vote "for the partisan health care bill that allows insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions," and also would "charge older Americans five times more than younger people." The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund recently announced they'd reserved $1 million to aid Davis against Democrat Betsy Dirksen Londrigan.
● MI-08: Earlier this month, the family of the late Sen. John McCain expressed their displeasure with NRCC for running ads featuring footage of McCain criticizing Democratic candidates, but the NRCC is very much not stopping. They're out with a second spot that shows 2014 footage of McCain criticizing Democrat Elissa Slotkin while she was testifying before the Senate, with the narrator faulting the former Defense Department official for supporting the Obama administration's nuclear agreement with Iran.
The pro-Trump America First Action is also launching what Roll Call reports is an $854,000 buy here, and their ad criticizes Slotkin, who served in the Defense Department, for having "lived and worked in Washington for years." They also go after Slotkin over the Iran deal.
Slotkin's allies at VoteVets are also up with a commercial, which Politico says is running for $171,000. The commercial stars former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who praises Slotkin's three tours in Iraq and work in the CIA, and says he counted on her at the Pentagon.
● NJ-03: Politico reports that the political arms of the several environmental groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and Environmental Defense Fund, are launching a joint $1 million buy against GOP Rep. Tom MacArthur. Their first spot is here.
● House: The firm Medium Buying reports that the DCCC is going up on TV for the first time against Republican Rep. Mike Kelly in Pennsylvania's red-leaning 16th District, which hasn't yet seen a ton of interest from national party groups but did become several points bluer thanks to court-ordered redistricting earlier this year. Furthermore, the DCCC has also increased its spending in two other GOP-held seats: $59,000 in California's 48th District and $79,000 in Michigan's 8th District.
Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety, which is largely financed by billionaire Mike Bloomberg, has made a $5 million digital ad buy across 15 suburban congressional districts as part of the former New York City mayor's effort to help Democrats retake the House. The full list of targeted Republicans includes seven unnamed open seat candidates along with the following eight incumbents:
- CA-48: Dana Rohrabacher
- CO-06: Mike Coffman
- GA-06: Karen Handel
- KS-03: Kevin Yoder
- MI-08: Mike Bishop
- MN-03: Erik Paulsen
- NJ-03: Tom MacArthur
- VA-10: Barbara Comstock
● Polls:
- KY-06: Pulse Opinion Research for U.S. Term Limits: Andy Barr (R-inc): 47, Amy McGrath (D): 47
- PA-11: PPP (D) for Jess King: Lloyd Smucker (R-inc): 44, Jess King (D): 35
- TX-07: PPP (D) for Protect Our Care: Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D): 47, John Culberson (R-inc): 45
- TX-32: Siena for the New York Times: Pete Sessions (R-inc): 48, Colin Allred (D): 47
- TX-32: PPP (D) for Protect Our Care: Allred (D): 47, Sessions (R-inc): 42
- VA-07: Monmouth: Dave Brat (R-inc): 47, Abigail Spanberger (D): 47
This is the first horse race survey we've seen in years from Pulse Opinion Research, which started as Rasmussen Report's pollster-for-hire operation and still does the fieldwork for Rasmussen's regular polls. Recent polls from Siena and the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund have also found a tight race in Kentucky. U.S. Term Limits does not appear to have endorsed either candidate, though only McGrath has signed their pledge to support a constitutional amendment to institute congressional term limits.
This is the first survey we've seen out of Pennsylvania's 11th, a 61-35 Trump seat we rate as Safe Republican. So far, major outside groups also haven't committed any money here. A King win would be historic, since no Democrat has ever won a House seat based in Lancaster County.
PPP's numbers in Texas' 7th are better for Team Blue than the 48-45 Culberson lead that Siena recently found, though both polls point to a tight race.
Before these two polls of Texas' 32nd, the only poll we'd seen of this contest was an early August Allred internal that gave Sessions a 47-45 lead.
The only other poll of Virginia's 7th we've seen was a Siena poll from earlier this month that showed Brat ahead 47-43.
Ad Roundup
