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
● MS-Gov: On Friday, a federal district court declined to grant a preliminary injunction blocking a provision of Mississippi's 1890 Jim Crow constitution that could prevent Democratic state Attorney General Jim Hood from becoming governor even if he wins more votes than Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday. However, the judge hearing the case, Daniel Jordan, sent a strong signal that he would bar the law if it comes into play after the election.
Campaign Action
The provision in question requires candidates for statewide office to win both a majority of the popular vote and a majority of state House districts; if no one does, the Republican-controlled House would pick the winner. Because Republicans aggressively gerrymandered those districts to disfavor Democrats, Hood has little chance of carrying a majority of House seats. That would allow the House to install Reeves as governor even if Hood wins the most votes.
Jordan explained that he would not enjoin the law in advance of Election Day because no one has yet been irreparably harmed by it. In addition, with the election just days away, he said there's insufficient time for election officials to craft any sort of remedy on their own.
However, Jordan also concluded that the plaintiffs are "right" that requiring candidates to win a majority of state House districts violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of "one person, one vote." Therefore, if Hood wins a majority of the vote but fails to win enough House districts, there's a good chance that Jordan would step in to prevent Mississippi's constitutional provision from being enforced. It's not clear what the court would do, though, if Hood wins a plurality rather than a majority of the popular vote.
Election Night
● Election Night: Bluegrass and Babka: The big night is almost here, and we have a lot of exciting races in store on Tuesday. Democrats are hoping to flip the governorships in Kentucky and Mississippi, as well as both chambers of the Virginia state legislature.
But that's not all. Team Blue is also hoping to make historic gains in upstate New York and in the Philadelphia suburbs, as well as take back the mayor's office in Kansas' largest city in a race that has gotten incredibly nasty in the final days. We also have on tap a ballot measure to implement instant-runoff voting for New York City primary and special elections, as well as a high-profile four-way race for San Francisco district attorney. You can find all this, as well as a whole lot more, in our hour-by-hour guide to election night.
We're also pleased to announce that the annual Daily Kos Elections' prediction contest is back! Once again, the exceptional Green's Bakery is generously sponsoring our annual prediction contest, and they'll be sending our top four finishers an amazing prize: the lavish, 52-oz Executive Babka! For more details, including contest rules and our submission form, click here.
We'll be liveblogging Tuesday's election results at Daily Kos Elections starting at 6 PM ET, and tweeting as well. We hope to see you there!
Senate
● AZ-Sen: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been spending heavily on ads praising appointed GOP Sen. Martha McSally, and Politico reports that they've invested a grand total of $954,000 so far.
● WY-Sen: GOP Rep. Liz Cheney recently told the Washington Examiner that she would announce whether she'd run for the Senate "after the beginning" of 2020.
Gubernatorial
● KY-Gov: The United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters has launched an ad for Democrat Andy Beshear narrated by Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons (no, he's not doing it in character as J. Jonah Jameson). The group says the spot is airing in Eastern Kentucky for 1,012 gross ratings points (a term we explain here) and in Lexington for a small 101 GRPs.
● LA-Gov: Republican Eddie Rispone is airing positive TV spots for the first time in the runoff. Rispone's ads feature his wife and daughter praising him as a loving, hardworking, and religious man.
Rispone is also out with yet another commercial that accuses Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards of having "mismanaged state Medicaid expansion" by wasting $85 million on eligible recipients. This ad, like previous GOP spots on this topic, relies on a questionable study by the state's auditor. The commercial also again throws in some xenophobia by arguing that Edwards also "wasted" $16 million by providing welfare to undocumented immigrants.
House
● MA-06: On Friday, Salem City Councilor Lisa Peterson announced that she was ending her Democratic primary campaign against incumbent and erstwhile presidential candidate Seth Moulton. Peterson wrote, "When I got into this race there was an appetite for a competitive Congressional race, but that interest has subsided."
Indeed, while Moulton made plenty of enemies nationwide late last year with his failed campaign to keep Nancy Pelosi out of the speaker's chair, his intra-party opponents at home haven't benefited much so far. Peterson herself only raised $34,000 during the third quarter while women's health advocate Jamie Zahlaway Belsito, who is now Moulton's only primary foe, took in a mere $7,000 during that time.
Several other Democrats expressed interest in running for this seat during the first half of 2019 but we've heard very little from them since Moulton dropped out of the presidential primary in late August and reaffirmed that he was running for re-election. Attorney and gun safety activist Angus McQuilken said at the time that he was still thinking about taking on the incumbent and would decide after mid-October, but he doesn't appear to have said anything new over the following two months.
● MD-07: State Democratic Party chair Maya Rockeymoore Cummings said Thursday that she was considering entering the special election to succeed her late husband, Rep. Elijah Cummings, and would "make an announcement very soon." A number of other Democrats are taking a look at the February special primary for this safely blue Baltimore seat, but party operatives have suggested that a Rockeymoore Cummings campaign could deter many of them from running.
Former Rep. Kweisi Mfume also said Thursday that he would announce his plans on Monday. Mfume held a previous version of this seat back in 1986 and resigned from Congress in 1996 to lead the NAACP (Elijah Cummings was elected to succeed him). Mfume ran for an open Senate seat in 2006 but narrowly lost the primary to eventual winner Ben Cardin 44-41.
● NY-11: Republican Joe Caldarera recently resigned from his job as a prosecutor in Brooklyn to prepare for a bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Max Rose, and he announced he was in on Wednesday. Caldarera, who is 27 and appears to be a first-time candidate, will face Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who has the support of national GOP leaders, in the June primary for this 54-44 Trump seat.
Before he announced, Caldarera laid out the argument he'd use for why GOP primary voters should reject Malliotakis to the National Journal. Caldarera noted that Malliotakis had said during her unsuccessful 2017 bid against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that she wished she'd written in Marco Rubio's name the previous year rather than voting for Trump, and he argued, "Someone who when [she] was running for mayor against Bill de Blasio was a never-Trumper. And now when she's running for Congress on Staten Island, she supports Donald Trump and all of his policies. It's funny how things change over the course of a year."
● WI-05: Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has yet to attract a serious primary opponent in this safely red open seat, but two Republicans are still considering.
Developer Matt Neumann told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick Marley that, because of his business schedule, he expects to make up his mind next year and is "not in a big rush to make this decision." Neumann also said that he was prepared to self-fund "if necessary," though he declined to say how much he'd be willing to invest. Neumann is the son of former Rep. Mark Neumann, who represented a previous version of another district, Wisconsin's 1st, in the 1990s.
The younger Neumann added he was both talking to Fitzgerald and also wanted to see if state Sen. Chris Kapenga runs. Marley added that Kapenga has also said that he plans to decide in 2020 whether he'll get in, though there's no quote from Kapenga.
Fitzgerald very much looks like the frontrunner in next August's primary, but he still brought in just $23,000 during his first two weeks in the race. While Fitzgerald had only a little time to raise money between the time he announced and the end of the quarter, that's still a very unimpressive figure for such a well-connected and touted candidate.
