The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● KY-Gov: On Friday, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin finally announced that he would seek another term this year, putting to rest the question over whether the unpopular incumbent would call it quits with Tuesday's filing deadline quickly approaching. Two days later, Rep. James Comer announced that he would not challenge Bevin in the May primary, declaring that he had “zero desire to run against a multi-millionaire incumbent Governor in a Primary regardless of how unpopular he was.”
Campaign Action
Bevin and Comer’s decisions end a confusing month in Kentucky politics. The governor had said back in August that he was seeking re-election, but in December, his fellow Republicans began openly wondering if he wouldn’t pull the plug on his re-election campaign. Bevin had still not formed a fundraising committee months after he had announced he was running, and the governor didn’t sound particularly excited about another campaign last year. Comer, who lost the 2015 primary to Bevin by 83 votes, said several times in January that he would run if Bevin didn’t. The congressman even left the door open to running against the incumbent, saying a few weeks ago that he was in "worse shape than I realized."
However, on Friday, Bevin announced he was indeed seeking a second term, and he at last filed the paperwork that allows him to raise money for the 2019 campaign. Bevin also revealed that he was dropping Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton from his ticket in favor of adding state Sen. Ralph Alvarado. Kentucky requires gubernatorial candidates to have a number two selected when they file, and since Bevin doesn't seem to have settled on a running mate until recently, this likely explains why he'd been so tardy about getting his candidacy papers in. However, Bevin’s refusal to just outright say if this was why he was delaying raising money certainly caused plenty of confusion in state GOP circles over the last few weeks.
Bevin has been talking about getting rid of Hampton for a while, though he's never said why he's apparently so displeased with her. Even on Friday, Bevin declined to say why he was parting ways with his "dear and personal friend." As Hampton, she said earlier this month that she wanted to run with Bevin again, but she seemed to already know this was unlikely.
While Bevin has finally put the speculation about his plans to rest, he won’t have an easy path to a second term. Despite presiding over the first unified Republican government in state history, Bevin's approval rating has taken a beating over a series of unpopular moves like a set of state pension cuts that the state Supreme Court unanimously struck down last month. Those cuts prompted a teachers' strike last spring that successfully pressured legislative Republicans to appropriate new funding for education, and even his own party turned on Bevin and overrode his veto of that bill.
Bevin drew widespread bipartisan condemnation during that ordeal when he said amid the strike, "I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them. I guarantee you somewhere today a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn't have any money to take care of them." Despite that backlash, he offered a total non-apology to the "tremendous number of people [who] did not fully appreciate what I was communicating or what I was trying to say."
As a result of all this, the unpopular governor is already facing three high-profile Democratic opponents. Bevin will be able to breath easier in the primary now that Comer is out, but he already faced a challenge from state Rep. Robert Goforth. Goforth, who has only served in the legislature for about a year, doesn’t exactly look like a top-tier foe, but he could gain traction if enough GOP voters have simply had enough of the governor.
Senate
● GA-Sen: Few, if any, Georgia Democrats seem inclined to oppose 2018 gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams in a primary, and it's no surprise that Politico reports that the DSCC is also making a strong effort to convince her to challenge GOP incumbent David Perdue. Abrams has said that she'll decide in a Senate bid by the end of March.
The only other Peach State Democrats who appear to be laying the groundwork to run if Abrams doesn't get in are former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and Jon Ossoff, who was the 2017 nominee in Georgia's 6th District. Tomlinson, who left office this month, has expressed interest in entering the race, and she once again declined to say if she'd defer to Abrams. However, it doesn't sound like Tomlinson is particularly eager to take her on, since she called Abrams the "standard-bearer" for the party. Politico reports that Tomlinson has met with the DSCC and EMILY's List, though neither group is actively recruiting her right now.
Ossoff hasn't ruled out ruling for the Senate, and he raised eyebrows last month when he did a townhall event in in rural and deep red Habersham County. However, Ossoff has said that he wants to see Abrams run.
Politico also writes that the Rev. Raphael Warnock and state Rep. Scott Holcomb are also considering running should Abrams pass, though there's no quote from either of them. Warnock, who didn't rule anything out last month, is the pastor of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. once held the pulpit. Warnock, who is also a voting rights advocate, considered challenging GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson in the 2016 cycle, but ended up passing on what was very much a longshot race (Isakson ended up winning 55-41).
Gubernatorial
● NH-Gov: GOP Gov. Chris Sununu won re-election last year 53-45 against former state Sen. Molly Kelly on an otherwise good night for New Hampshire Democrats, and he'll be up for another two-year term in 2020. Sununu hasn't committed to running again yet, though, and he insisted to the Concord Monitor that he had "no thoughts" about seeking re-election and that he was focusing on doing his job.
There are plenty of Granite State Democrats who might get in regardless of what Sununu does next year. Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky, who recently emailed supporters that he was "fairly likely" to run, is the only one who has said anything publicly yet. However, the paper writes that people close to former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand and former state Rep. Mindi Messmer say they're each considering. Marchand has run twice before, losing the 2016 primary to Colin Van Ostern 51-25 and losing to Kelly 66-34 last year. Messmer ran for the 1st Congressional District last year and took 10 percent of the vote in the primary.
The Monitor also writes that former Bureau of Securities Regulation director Mark Connolly is being urged by friends to run again. Connolly campaigned for this office in 2016 but took third place in the primary with 20 percent of the vote. The paper adds that Van Ostern, who went on to narrowly lose the general election to Sununu, "doesn't appear likely to make a second bid for governor," though they don't include any other information.
A few other Granite State Democrats are name-dropped in the article. The paper says that Kelly "hasn't ruled out another run," but there's also no quote from the 2018 nominee. Indeed, the New Hampshire Union Leader says that Kelly "has made few public statements since her defeat last November." The Monitor also adds that state Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes "may be mulling a run." Finally, they say that Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, who is up for re-election this year, has also been mentioned by numerous Democratic activists as a possible 2020 candidate.
House
● GA-06: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes that "more names are beginning to surface" as possible GOP candidates in this competitive seat, and they mention former state Sen. Judson Hill, Fulton County Commissioner Liz Hausmann, and Alpharetta City Councilman Ben Burnett.
There's no word from any of this trio yet about their interest in taking on freshman Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath. However, Hill did run in the 2017 special election for this seat and took fifth place in the all-party primary with just 9 percent of the vote. State Sen. Brandon Beach is currently the only declared Republican candidate, though former Rep. Karen Handel is considering another bid.
● NV-04: On Thursday, former GOP Assemblyman Jim Marchant filed with the FEC to raise money for a potential bid against Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, though he has not yet announced he's in. (Hat-tip: The Nevada Independent's Riley Snyder.)
This seat, which includes the northern Las Vegas area, backed Clinton 50-45, and Horsford won 52-44 last year. At the same time that Horsford was taking back the seat he'd lost in the 2014 GOP wave, Marchant lost his bid for a second term 50.2-49.9—a margin of 135 votes— in a district that Trump had carried 49-46.
Before Marchant was elected to his sole term in the legislature, he was part of a 2015 effort to recall GOP Speaker John Hambrick for supporting the tax increases pushed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval in order to fund education programs. The campaign organizers announced that, if the recall made it to the ballot, Marchant would be their candidate to take on Hambrick. However, the effort utterly collapsed, and recall organizers turned in just 270 signatures out of the 4,100 that they needed. Marchant was elected to a different seat the following year as the GOP was losing their legislative majorities, while Hambrick is still a member of the Assembly.
● NY-11: On Friday, GOP Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis formed a fundraising committee with the FEC for a potential bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Max Rose, but she didn't commit to running. While Malliotakis said she was "very encouraged" to get in after she spoke with Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, she added that she was going to raise money for both a congressional campaign and her re-election bid to the legislature. Malliotakis cannot run for both Congress and the Assembly at once, so it would make little sense for her to keep fundraising for a legislative campaign unless she was still keeping her options open.
Other Staten Island Republicans are also eyeing this 54-44 Trump seat. City Councilman Joe Borelli told the Staten Island Advance that he was considering running here, and that he was heading to D.C. to meet with GOP leadership about a possible bid.
Former Rep. Mike Grimm, who held this seat from 2011 until he resigned in 2015 ahead of a seven-month prison stint for tax evasion, has also been talking about another run since the very night that Rose unseated Republican incumbent Dan Donovan. On Thursday, Grimm posted a video where he declared, "It is comical to expect Republican voters will want someone as unprincipled, unaccomplished, and underwhelming as Nicole to share the ballot with President Trump in 2020." It's really subtle, but we get the sense Grimm doesn't like Malliotakis very much.
● PA-12: On Wednesday, former GOP Rep. Lou Barletta acknowledged that he was considering running in the May special election for this reliably red central Pennsylvania seat. Barletta, who lost last year's Senate race to Democratic incumbent Bob Casey 56-43, said he was interested, though he added that "at this time I'm spending time with my family as you know my grandson who is dealing with an illness. I'm focusing on this." The GOP nod will be decided at a party convention rather than through a primary.
Mayoral
● Chicago, IL Mayor: On behalf of the Chicago Sun-Times, the conservative firm We Ask America is out with the first media poll of the year for the very crowded Feb. 26 nonpartisan primary. Note that, in the very likely event that no one takes a majority next month, there would be a runoff April 2.
- Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle: 13
- Former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley: 12
- Former Chicago Board of Education president Gery Chico: 9
- Businessman Willie Wilson: 9
- State Comptroller Susana Mendoza: 9
- Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown: 5
Quite a bit happened while this poll was in the field Monday through Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Chicago Board of Elections ruled that Brown did not have enough signatures to make the ballot, and she announced she would not appeal. (Nine candidates took less support than Brown in this poll.)
On Wednesday, two other big stories broke involving powerful Alderman Ed Burke, who was indicted this month for attempted extortion. The public learned that Alderman Danny Solis, an ally of Mendoza, had secretly recorded more than a dozen conversations with Burke to help federal investigators build the case against his colleague, and that the feds had previously been looking into Solis. It also emerged that Preckwinkle had hired Burke's son for a nearly $100,000 per year post at a time when the younger Burke was facing two internal investigations by his previous employer.
It's worth highlighting that this is the latest poll to find Wilson unexpectedly close to making the runoff. We saw a survey a few days ago from David Binder Research on behalf of the charter school advocacy group INCS Action, which is not affiliated with any of the candidates, that had Preckwinkle at 15, Mendoza and Daley each at 9, and Wilson at 6. A PPP survey for Preckwinkle's allies at the SEIU Illinois Local 1 had her at 15, Daley 12, Chico 11, Wilson at 10, and Mendoza and former Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas each at 9.
Wilson has been involved in politics for a few years, and he's never come across as a very serious candidate. He ran for mayor in 2015 and took a distant third-place with 11 percent of the vote, but Wilson was not deterred by that poor performance. He soon launched a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but to the surprise of no one who wasn't named Willie Wilson, his campaign attracted almost zero attention or votes.
Last year, Wilson threw in his lot with GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and his decidedly underdog re-election campaign. Actually, he did more than just support Rauner. In July, Wilson and Rauner both addressed a church in Chicago's South Side, and Wilson stood in the building afterwards holding stacks of cash and giving out bills to passersby. Wilson handed out a total of $300,000 from his charitable foundation, including $100,000 that had been donated by Rauner himself.
Politico wrote at the time that election experts said Rauner likely didn't break the law, since he wasn't actually present when Wilson dispensed the cash. An analyst with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan group that monitors state campaign finance activity, also said that there wasn't anything illegal about Wilson giving out money to help people even if there were "ethical questions that need to be asked."
Rauner argued the event was to help people pay their property taxes instead of a campaign event and that he didn't know Wilson would hand out cash, and the governor condemned Wilson for doing so. In any case, Rauner went on to lose 54-39 for a multitude of reasons that had nothing to do with Wilson.
While it feels like this incident alone should be disqualifying for Wilson, no one seems to be bringing it up much on the campaign trail at the moment. And in a primary this crowded, it's very possible that Wilson, who has already invested about $1 million of his own money into his bid, can advance through a runoff, especially since no one's devoting much time to attacking him. It's a lot harder to see Wilson winning in a one-on-one runoff against pretty much anyone, though as we've seen this month, Chicago politics is nothing if not unpredictable.
The We Ask America poll also takes a look at a few potential runoff matchups, though none of them involve Wilson. They find Mendoza defeating Preckwinkle 44-35, while Daley holds a narrow 40-38 edge against Preckwinkle. They also test Mendoza against former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy (who took just 4 percent in the primary portion of the poll), and finds her ahead by a wide 54-24 margin.
