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
● Special Elections: Tuesday brought us a split decision in a pair of special elections, but on balance, the news was good for Democrats, who hung on to a tricky seat in Iowa.
Campaign Action
IA-SD-30: Cedar Falls school board member Eric Giddens held Iowa's swingy 30th State Senate District for Democrats, beating Republican Walt Rogers, a former state representative, by a comfortable 57-42 margin. In an unusual turn of events for a legislative special election, Giddens received a big boost from 10 different presidential hopefuls, who stumped on his behalf and directed volunteers and donors his way.
The win comes as a relief to Iowa Democrats: While Senate Republicans still hold a wide 32-18 advantage following Tuesday's results, a flip would have left them just one seat shy of a supermajority in the chamber. In addition, Giddens outpaced Hillary Clinton's 48-45 margin in this district by 11 points, and beat Barack Obama's 53-46 margin by 7 points.
MN-HD-11B: Republican Nathan Nelson easily held this seat for the GOP, defeating Democrat Tim Burkhardt by a wide 68-32 margin. Though this district supported Mitt Romney by a relatively close 51-47 spread, like many areas in rural Minnesota, it moved sharply to Trump, giving him a 61-32 win.
As always, you can keep track of all special election results on our continually updated Google spreadsheet.
Senate
● CO-Sen: Though we concluded that Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter hadn't ruled out a Senate bid when he addressed the topic earlier this month, a number of media outlets did interpret his remarks that way. That apparently prompted Perlmutter's communications director to email Politico this week with a clarification, saying, "All options are on the table but that Perlmutter will not be making a decision anytime soon."
House
● NC-09: In a totally bizarre series of events over a three-hour period on Tuesday evening, former Rep. Rob Pittenger trashed, then un-trashed, state Sen. Dan Bishop in the special election to fill North Carolina's vacant 9th Congressional District, which Pittenger himself had held for six years until January.
It began with an email from Pittenger to supporters in which he gave his endorsement to former Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour, one of 10 Republicans running in the May 14 primary. In that message, Pittenger also slammed one of Ridenhour's rivals, state Sen. Dan Bishop, who's best known as the author of North Carolina's disastrous anti-LGBT "bathroom bill" that led to punishing boycotts of the state.
Pittenger dinged Bishop over the measure, saying he "poorly communicated" it, but most of his attacks were concentrated on his claim that Bishop had served as a "primary advisor" to Mark Harris, the pastor who narrowly defeated Pittenger in the 2018 primary. Pittenger asserted that Bishop had been "integrally involved" with Harris' "campaign strategy" and "clearly had knowledge" of the election fraud scheme perpetrated by McCrae Dowless, the Harris operative whose wrongdoing prompted officials to void last year's general election results and order a do-over.
Bishop responded with fury. In an email of his own, he accused Pittenger of acting out of bitterness over his loss, then charged that he'd published "multiple false statements of fact," calling all of Pittenger's claims about Bishop's involvement with and knowledge of the Harris campaign "malicious," "falsehoods," and "lies." Bishop threatened to sue Pittenger for defamation unless he issued a "complete retraction" within 30 minutes.
Amazingly enough, Pittenger complied. Not long thereafter (though perhaps not within that tight 30-minute deadline), Pittenger sent a statement to the media that read, simply, "The statements regarding Dan Bishop were false." That seemed to settle the matter: In response, Bishop tweeted, "I appreciate Robert Pittenger's prompt and unequivocal retraction."
While this whole incident is unlikely to play a bigger role in the upcoming election—beyond, perhaps, generating a measure of sympathy for Bishop, a man who deserves none—it did accomplish one thing: Pittenger managed to completely step on his own endorsement of Ridenhour. Perhaps Ridenhour would now prefer that Pittenger stop trying to "help."
● NJ-05: Wealthy investment banker Frank Pallotta, who'd previously said he was considering a bid against Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, has now announced he's formed "an exploratory committee of industry leaders and experts" to help him decide whether to run. However, Pallotta doesn't appear to have filed any paperwork with the FEC to create an actual campaign committee.
● TX-23: Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, who narrowly lost to GOP Rep. Will Hurd last year, has sounded likely to try again for some time. Now the Houston Chronicle's Bill Lambrecht reports that she's "expected to declare her plans for a rematch next month," though he doesn't cite any specific sources.
Mayoral
● Jacksonville, FL Mayor: On Tuesday night, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry defeated City Councilmember Anna Lopez Brosche by a dominant 58-24 margin, winning re-election and avoiding a runoff by securing a majority of the vote. Though the race was officially nonpartisan, both Curry and Brosche ran as Republicans, as did a third candidate, Jimmy Hill, who took 8 percent of the vote (the fourth, Omega Allen, identified as an independent and finished with 11 percent).
No Democrats ran, allowing Brosche, a self-described moderate who focused on attacking Curry over crime, to campaign for Democratic votes. However, thanks to heavy support from the city's business community, Curry vastly outspent his rivals to earn a second four-year term to lead Florida's largest city (by metropolitan area, though, Jacksonville ranks fourth).
