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
● NC Redistricting: Last month, Republican legislators passed new state legislative districts after their previous maps were struck down in state court for illegal gerrymandering, but their new districts are still highly problematic. Consequently, Daily Kos Elections' Stephen Wolf and North Carolina attorney J. Denton Adams filed an amicus brief with the court that objects to the GOP's new maps and proposes nonpartisan versions of our own.
Campaign Action
We explained the reasoning for these districts and why they better fulfill the court's nonpartisan criteria of improving compactness, reducing the number of divided voting precincts, reducing the number of divided municipalities, and other requirements of state and federal law. Although partisan data wasn't allowed in drawing the maps, it wasn't prohibited for evaluating them, and our analysis indicates our maps would lead to fairer elections than the GOP's remedial maps if ours are adopted.
Additionally, we've unveiled a huge trove of North Carolina political and demographic data, and we've explained how you can use it to create precinct-level maps or to calculate the results for hypothetical districts you've drawn in the free Dave's Redistricting App. The data set includes statewide elections from 2004 through 2018 calculated by 2010 census voting district, 2010 racial demographics, and 2016 primary turnout by race and party. These results aren't just useful for redistricting, they can also be used to create your very own maps of election results like the one at the top of this post (click here for a larger image).
Senate
● IA-Sen: Retired Navy Vice Adm. Michael Franken is going up with his first TV spot well ahead of the June Democratic primary. Iowa Starting Line says the ad will run on cable, but there is no word on the size of the buy.
Franken uses his commercial to unfavorably compare GOP Sen. Joni Ernst with the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, who famously called for Richard Nixon to resign during the Watergate scandal. Franken tells the audience, "As veterans, Joni and I both know that Trump's actions would merit a court martial, and Joni's indifference is a dereliction of duty." Franken faces a few intra-party rivals, including DSCC-endorsed businesswoman Theresa Greenfield.
● TN-Sen: Orthopedic surgeon Manny Sethi is going up with the first TV spot of the August GOP primary for this open seat, though there is no word on the size of the buy. Sethi's mother talks to the audience about immigrating from India, a process that took seven years. She then asks, "So why do others come here illegally, take all the benefits and then if you dare say that's wrong―you are called racist?"
The candidate then appears and declares, "We're gonna have an illegal immigrant invasion if Republicans don't win in 2020. Democrats are going to give this country away." Sethi concludes, "That's why I'm running. Let 'em try to call me a racist." Sethi faces a few other candidates in the primary including former Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, who has Donald Trump's endorsement.
Gubernatorial
● KY-Gov: Campaign finance reports are out covering the period of Sept. 7 to Oct. 6, and GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is keeping his financial edge over Democrat Andy Beshear thanks to more self-funding. Beshear actually outraised Bevin $771,000 to $673,000, but Bevin threw down another $900,000 of his own money and held a $1.58 million to $628,000 cash-on-hand lead.
Bevin's allies at the RGA group Putting Kentucky First are also out with another TV spot tying Beshear to the Democratic presidential field. The ad begins with a clip of presidential debate moderator Savannah Guthrie saying, "Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants," and the candidates are shown agreeing with that statement. Beshear, of course, is not on that debate stage, and the ad doesn't even actually accuse him of supporting this policy.
Instead, the commercial shows how the GOP will try to connect red state Democratic candidates to the party's White House field no matter what their actual positions on health care are. The RGA's narrator says, "Democrats running for president want to give taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants" and she transitions to attacking Beshear by declaring, "Andy Beshear is extreme on health care too."
The spot goes on to hit Beshear by arguing, "Just like national liberals, Beshear supported a government takeover of our health care," and, "Andy Beshear even opposes requiring able-bodied adults to work while receiving taxpayer funded healthcare benefits."
This spot, like a previous RGA ad, cites a March Associated Press article to make its case that Beshear "supported a government takeover of our health care." However, as we've previously explained, what that AP article actually said is that Beshear wanted the consumer protections from the Affordable Care Act added to state law so Kentuckians "aren't subject to political games" in D.C. Beshear has called for protecting the state's Medicaid expansion.
The RGA also has already attacked Beshear for opposing work requirements for healthcare benefits. Bevin has pushed for a waiver that requires some Medicaid recipients to work, be in school, or do some sort of volunteering, a policy that would take 95,000 people off the state's rolls. A judge blocked the waiver earlier this year, and the issue is still in court. Beshear has denounced Bevin's plan and argued it would hurt rural health care, and the federal Government Accountability Office has estimated that the governor's proposed changes would cost the state $272 million.
● LA-Gov: Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is out with his first ad for the Nov. 16 runoff, and the GOP firm Medium Buying puts the size of the buy at $613,000. Edwards begins by reminding the audience how bad the state's economy was under former GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal by declaring, "Four years ago, you elected me to pull Louisiana out of the ditch. And by working with Republicans and Democrats, we turned a $2 billion deficit into a surplus, gave teachers a pay raise, and expanded healthcare for working families."
Edwards continues, "Now we have a choice to make: let Eddie Rispone drag us back to the deficits and cuts to health care and education of Bobby Jindal, or continue moving forward and investing in our future."
● MS-Gov: Republican Tate Reeves is out with a positive ad calling for increasing teacher pay, and it didn't take long for Democrat Jim Hood to release a response spot. The Hood commercial shows a clip from Reeves' spot where the Republican says of teachers, "We've got to pay them more." Hood's narrator then declares, "Tate Reeves has repeatedly killed teacher pay raises, fought against expanding pre-K, cut millions for community colleges and job training." An educator then tells the audience, "As a teacher, as a mom, as a professional, I feel like Jim Hood is going to put education as a top priority."
Reeves is also out with another spot where he calls for making career and technical education a top priority and pledges to support state community colleges. Reeves makes his argument by citing how his father went from growing up in a crowded household to becoming a respected air conditioning contractor, and the elder Reeves appears at the end of the commercial.
● OR-Gov: The effort to recall Democratic Gov. Kate Brown died on Monday after the deadline passed and two rival campaigns each failed to turn in enough signatures to move the process forward.
Organizers needed to turn in a total of 280,050 valid signatures to get a recall question on the ballot, which is an expensive and time consuming task. Just before the Monday deadline, Oregon Republican Party chair Bill Currier told a conservative radio host that the party-run campaign had fallen about 10% short of collecting the minimum number of signatures necessary, though he pledged to try again in the coming months.
At the same time that the state GOP was trying to recall Brown, a separate effort led by conservative activist Michael Cross was collecting petitions for its own recall campaign. Cross did turn in signatures on Monday, but state election officials quickly said that he didn't have enough petitions to require verification. It's not clear how many signatures, valid or otherwise, Cross turned in, and he even admitted just before the deadline that he didn't know.
Cross' recall effort barely raised any money, but Currier argued Monday that it had cost the state GOP their chance to recall Brown. Currier insisted that the party had identified "about 100,000" people who had signed one petition but not the other or had made a paperwork error that could have been corrected.
House
● KS-01: State Rep. Troy Waymaster, who works as a farmer, joined the GOP primary Tuesday for this safely red open seat in western Kansas. Waymaster is the chairman of the influential Kansas House Appropriations Committee and a bank executive, both of which could give him some useful financial connections. Finney County Commissioner Bill Clifford and former Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann are also competing in the August primary to succeed Senate candidate Roger Marshall.
● KS-02: Former Democratic legislative staffer Abbie Hodgson announced Tuesday that she was dropping out of the race. Hodgson, who had the primary to herself, said she was ending her campaign "to make room for a candidate who can raise the money necessary to flip the seat in 2020." This seat is held by GOP Rep. Steve Watkins, a freshman who is trying to fend off state Treasurer Jake LaTurner in next year's primary.
● OH-01: The Cincinnati Enquirer's Jason Williams wrote Tuesday that ESPN football analyst Rocky Boiman, who retired from the NFL in 2010, was giving "serious thought to primarying" GOP Rep. Steve Chabot. Boiman, who is also a former Green Township trustee, reportedly had been considering running if Chabot retired, but we hadn't heard about the possibility of a primary challenge until now. Ohio's filing deadline is in mid-December.
● WI-05: Kevin Nicholson, who was the runner-up in last year's GOP Senate primary, announced Tuesday that he would back state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald rather than run for this open seat. Fitzgerald is still the only notable Republican who has entered the race for this reliably red suburban Milwaukee district.
Legislative
● LA State House: Even if Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards wins his runoff next month, there's a strong chance he'd spend a second term opposed by a Republican-dominated legislature able to override his vetoes thanks in part to districts that the GOP gerrymandered after 2010.
The GOP has in fact already secured the necessary two-thirds supermajority in the state Senate as a result of Saturday's primaries, with Republicans guaranteed to hold 26 seats in the 39-member chamber to just 12 for Democrats. (They're also likely to win a runoff against a Democrat in the conservative 16th District, though at the moment there's a tie for the second slot between the two Republican contenders. That would set up an extremely rare three-way second round, where a plurality would be sufficient for victory.)
The 105-member state House, meanwhile, is hanging by a very slender thread. Republicans have secured 63 seats versus 33 for Democrats and would need 70 for a supermajority (one seat is held by an independent). Eight districts will host runoffs on Nov. 16, including five that feature Republican-vs.-Democrat matchups and two that will pit Republicans against independents. (In one matchup, a Democrat is running against an independent.)
Republicans therefore need to win all seven of the races where they're fielding candidates, and they're in a position to run the table since they took a majority of the vote in each of these contests in the first round. It's not a foregone conclusion, though, as Louisiana Democrats tend to perform better in runoffs. Voting is also less polarized in the Pelican State than in most other places, so there's a higher than normal chance of a second-round surge for Team Blue.
But even if Republicans don't reach the 70-seat mark, they may be able to entice independents or conservative Democrats to side with them on key votes, or even lure some Democrats in red seats to switch parties—the flipside of Louisiana's more fluid relationship with partisanship.
This cuts both ways, though, as Edwards has successfully worked with GOP lawmakers over the years to expand Medicaid, increase tax revenues, and even adopt criminal justice reforms that reduced lengthy prison sentences. So even Republican supermajorities would not necessarily mean that Edwards, should he be re-elected, would get steamrolled, though Louisiana Democrats would prefer not to give the GOP the opportunity, especially since the incoming legislature will decide redistricting after the 2020 census.
Other Races
● San Diego County, CA: The long dominant San Diego County Republican Party got more bad news on Friday when District Attorney Summer Stephan announced that she was leaving the party and becoming an independent.
Stephan, who is up for re-election in 2022, is the third high-profile local Republican to shed her party affiliation this year. State Assemblyman Brian Maienschein became a Democrat months after narrowly winning re-election, while San Diego City Councilman Mark Kersey, who was a potential Republican candidate for mayor in 2020, also became an independent.
The county GOP has even further to fall next year. Republicans have controlled the San Diego mayor's office almost nonstop since 1992, but the party still hasn't managed to land a credible contender to succeed termed-out Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
Last month the head of the county GOP said he was encouraging City Councilman Scott Sherman to run, and Sherman confirmed he was interested. However, Sherman doesn't have much longer to decide before the Dec. 5 filing deadline, and he'd be entering the race well after his would-be Democratic rivals, Assemblyman Todd Gloria and City Councilwoman Barbara Bry. The nonpartisan primary will take place in March on the same day as California's presidential primary, and there would be a runoff in November if no one takes a majority of the vote.
Team Red still enjoys a 4-1 majority on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors (the one Democratic member is Nathan Fletcher, who himself left the GOP in 2012 to become an independent and joined Team Blue the following year), but they could also lose control in next year's officially nonpartisan races.
Republicans will be defending District 1, an open seat in the South Bay that backed Hillary Clinton 68-27 and supported Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom 64-36 last year. GOP District 3 Supervisor Kristin Gaspar, who unsuccessfully ran for the 49th Congressional District last year, will also be running for re-election in a coastal seat that supported Clinton and Newsom 57-37 and 57-43, respectively.
Democrats may have an outside shot at the open District 2 as well, an inland seat that favored Donald Trump and GOP gubernatorial nominee John Cox 49-45 and 54-46, respectively. If Democrats flip two of these three districts (the remaining two seats aren't up until 2022), they'll control the Board of Supervisors for the first time in more than 30 years.