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
● UT-Gov: Businessman Josh Romney said Tuesday that he was still talking to his family about a possible bid for the GOP nod for governor of Utah, but hours later, the most prominent member of his family laughed the idea off. As in, literally laughed to a reporter—well, if you can call the noises that come out of Mitt Romney’s central face orifice "laughter."
Campaign Action
The National Journal's Zach Cohen reports that Sen. Romney said that his son had "absolutely" told him that he wouldn't seek the governorship, but the elder Romney didn't stop there. Mitt dismissed the idea of Josh, the middle-most of his five sons, running next year by saying, "Oh, that's not gonna happen, hahaha. No no no, he's not running for governor of Utah, that's for sure." As of Wednesday afternoon, neither Romney has said anything new about what Josh Romney is or isn't doing next year.
Perhaps the senator found the idea of his son running for governor so hilarious because he's aware of Josh Romney's perennial flirtations with campaigns for high office. Back in 2008, he considered running against then-Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson but passed. In 2009, he was in talks to become Gov. Gary Herbert's lieutenant governor, and later that year, there were rumors that Romney would serve as the running mate on a rival Republican candidate's ticket, but he ultimately never appeared on the ballot in 2010. In 2015, Romney was mentioned for months as a possible primary candidate against Sen. Mike Lee, but again, he never went for it.
Romney began talking about a 2020 run for governor all the way back in January of 2016, and he's periodically said he was still considering over the years. He still hasn't jumped in, though, and if his father is right, this will just be yet another Josh Romney non-campaign. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Senate
● MA-Sen: Business executive Steve Pemberton has formed an exploratory to challenge Sen. Ed Markey in next year's Democratic primary. The son of a black father and a white mother who both abandoned him at a young age, Pemberton grew up in foster care in the 1970s and 1980s and wrote a best-selling memoir about the struggles and abuse that it entailed. Pemberton's later success in life and the story his book told about it were eventually turned into a movie in 2017, but this would be his first run for office if he joins the race. Pemberton cited income and healthcare inequalities as things he wants to remedy, but he gave little reason for why he thought voters should oust Markey.
● ME-Sen: The Bangor Daily News brings us the names of a few Democrats who are considering whether to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins next year. Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says a bid is "a tremendous gift" that he's considering but also "a hell of an ordeal."
Dunlap lost the 2012 Senate primary and has never won statewide office before, since Maine's legislature elects its secretary of state, meaning he'd likely start with limited name recognition. However, he might be a little more familiar with voters after serving on Trump's bogus voter fraud commission and filing a lawsuit against it that ultimately led to Trump shutting it down in 2017 in a failed attempt to avoid handing over incriminating documents to Dunlap and Democrats.
Another potential candidate is progressive activist and lobbyist Betsy Sweet, who came in third in the 2018 primary for governor, a primary in which she was the only candidate relying on public campaign funding. Sweet said that her decision would have to come "relatively soon" and that there are "compelling reasons" both for and against running. Lastly, developer Rosa Scarcelli, who finished third in the 2010 gubernatorial primary, said she was considering running and would likely decide by late fall.
Gubernatorial
● MS-Gov: Bill Waller Jr., the former chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, is up with his first TV spot ahead of the August GOP primary. There is no word on the size of the buy.
The commercial begins with Waller explaining that the "Bill Waller" so many things in the state are named for was his father, former Gov. Bill Waller Sr., and the ad pans to a photo of the elder Waller with then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan. The candidate goes on to say that he learned from his dad "about taking on tough challenges to find solutions." Waller talks up his work on the bench and as a brigadier general in the National Guard and concludes, "At critical points in Mississippi's history, leadership matters. The same is true now."
House
● GA-07: Real estate investment firm founder and Air Force veteran Ben Bullock announced this week that he was joining the GOP primary for this competitive open seat. Bullock pitched himself as a firm Donald Trump ally in his announcement video, which is a risky bet in a suburban seat that dramatically swung to the left from 2012 to 2016 and where the GOP struggled last year.
● IL-03: Despite facing a Democratic primary challenge in large part over his vociferous opposition to abortion rights, socially conservative Rep. Dan Lipinski shows no signs of moderating even though he barely defeated businesswoman Marie Newman by 51-49 in last year's primary. Indeed, Lipinski attended a fundraiser for the Susan B. Anthony List, a right-wing group that opposes abortion rights. The group spent to re-elect Lipinski last year, but his reciprocal support for them is an example of Lipinski putting his anti-abortion zealotry above mainstream Democratic policies he might supposedly back on other issues, since they near-exclusively try to elect Republicans who would oppose all of those policies.
Lipinski's hostility to reproductive rights has not gone unnoticed by national progressives, and on Wednesday, Bernie Sanders became the latest 2020 Democratic presidential primary contender to endorse Newman in her second attempt to take out the incumbent (New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee had previously done so). Sanders' endorsement comes even though two other candidates, attorney Abe Matthew and activist Rush Darwish, are also challenging Lipinski this time around, and it may be a sign that national progressives are more than willing to coalesce around Newman lest Lipinski skate away with a plurality in the primary.
● NY-15: State Sen. Gustavo Rivera set up a fundraising committee with the FEC this week, but he says he's still considering whether to run for this safely blue open seat in the Bronx. Rivera, whose seat includes about a quarter of the 15th Congressional District, said he was "putting the pieces together in case I do indeed decide to go ahead and do it." However, he added that he wasn't sure if he wanted to leave the Senate now that Democrats are in the majority for the first time in his five terms in office.
Rivera held a prominent post in 1199 SEIU, which is one of the four major unions in New York City politics, during the 2008 election, and he ran for office himself two years later in the primary against state Sen. Pedro Espada. Espada and another Democrat, Hiram Monserrate, had caucused with the GOP minority the previous summer, a move that temporarily put Republicans back in control of the chamber with Espada as Senate president. Espada came back to the Democratic caucus after weeks of chaos, but Rivera beat him 63-33.
Norwood News writes that Rivera has been a staunch progressive and an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. However, they add that he doesn't have a great relationship with the Bronx Democratic Party.
● TX-24: Democrat Richard Fleming, a former Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board trustee, filed paperwork with the FEC to challenge GOP Rep. Kenny Marchant, but he hasn't said anything publicly yet.
Legislative
● Special Elections: Here's a recap of Tuesday's two special elections in California.
CA-SD-01: Brian Dahle will represent this sprawling Northern California district after turning back fellow Republican Kevin Kiley 53-47. This intraparty contest became mired in controversy after anonymous letters were sent out threatening to expose residents of the district who did not vote in the election. Additionally, Dahle's campaign created mailers that falsely claimed Kiley was a former staffer of California Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The mailer also featured an edited picture of Kiley standing with Harris.
Dahle and Kiley are both members of the California Assembly, and there will be a special election to fill Dahle's seat on a date that has not been determined.
CA-SD-33: Democrat Lena Gonzalez defeated Republican Jack Guerrero, albeit in a less impressive fashion than Democrats are accustomed to in this Long Beach-area district. Gonzalez won by a sizable 69-31 spread, but this lagged well behind the 78-20 margin Democratic candidates won over Republicans in the packed all-party primary. Gonzalez also underperformed the presidential margins of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which were 79-15 and 79-19, respectively.
The California Senate's Democratic supermajority returns to a 29-11 edge with these two vacancies filled.
Mayoral
● Denver, CO Mayor: Mayor Michael Hancock won a third term on Tuesday by defeating urban planner and fellow Democrat Jamie Giellis 56-44. Term limits will prevent Hancock from running again in 2023.
Hancock was forced into the general election after he failed to take a majority in the May nonpartisan primary. He led Giellis 39-26, and she quickly earned endorsements from the other two major primary candidates. Hancock argued that Denver had made great strides under his eight years in office, while Giellis pledged to stop "runaway development."
The general election got quite nasty very quickly. First, Giellis attracted bad headlines when she couldn't remember what the acronym NAACP stood for, as well as over a 2009 tweet in which she wondered why "so many cities feel it necessary to have a 'Chinatown'?" Both stories made their way into ads from Hancock, who maintained a large financial advantage over the challenger throughout both rounds of the race.
In the final week of the race, Hancock earned renewed attention for a 2012 scandal involving sexually explicit texts he sent to Denver police detective Leslie Branch-Wise, who was a member of his security detail. Hancock said at a debate that he disagreed with Branch-Wise when she said she felt she was sexually harassed, arguing that the released texts didn't include Branch-Wise's own messages. Hancock quickly put out a statement saying he'd "misspoke," but that didn't stop Branch-Wise from endorsing Giellis. However, the story wasn't enough to stop Hancock from winning on Tuesday.