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
● LA-Gov: Two Louisiana Republicans, Rep. Ralph Abraham and wealthy businessman Eddie Rispone, are competing in this year's October all-party primary to face Democratic Gov. John Bel Edward, and Abraham began July with a massive financial disadvantage against both men. However, as we'll explain, while Rispone has far more money available than Abraham, the Republicans are about even in their competition to see who can emulate Donald Trump and be the most racist candidate.
Campaign Action
Abraham hauled in $800,000 during the period of April 6 through July 4, and he had $1.3 million in the bank. That's actually a considerably better fundraising quarter than Rispone, who only raised $277,000 from donors and did no notable self-funding this quarter. The congressman's problem is that Rispone loaned his campaign a massive $10 million in previous months, and he still had $9.8 million on-hand. State law prohibited Edwards from raising money during the legislative session, which lasted for most of this quarter, so he brought in just $33,000. However, the governor had $9.6 million left to spend.
Republicans began fretting about Abraham's meh fundraising as early as February, though not everyone's in love with the deep-pocketed Rispone. LAPolitics summed up the knocks against both Republicans at the time, writing that "Abraham has the personality but not the money to win" while Rispone's detractors say he "has the money but not the personality to shake trees and move rooms." After months of this griping, Abraham's campaign now says that they just hired a well-connected fundraising team, though we'll need to wait until September to see if they've finally turned things around for the congressman.
Abraham's people will have to work fast, though, since the all-party primary is Oct. 12; if no one takes a majority, the general election would take place Nov. 16. While Edwards has run TV spots and the RGA has aired commercials slamming the governor, neither Abraham nor Rispone have taken to the airwaves yet. It's not clear when either Republican will go on TV, though Rispone cryptically predicted last week that, when the Aug. 8 candidate filing deadline arrives, "[E]veryone will know who I am."
While Rispone has considerably more resources than Abraham, there's one other metric that has them deadlocked: They're tied to see who can be the most racist. On Monday, Abraham endorsed Donald Trump's tweet that four congresswomen of color should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" by offering to "pay for their tickets out of this country if they just tell me where they'd rather be." Rispone also tweeted out his support for Trump and declared that "if these America hating crazies in Washington don't like it, they should crawl back under the rock they came from."
Senate
● CO-Sen: On Monday, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold formed an exploratory committee for a possible bid against GOP Sen. Cory Gardner. Griswold's campaign consultant and brother, Chris Griswold, said that the secretary would decide quickly whether or not to join the crowded Democratic primary.
Before she sought office for the first time in 2018, Griswold worked for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, where she trained other attorneys and poll-watchers, and later as then-Gov. John Hickenlooper's liaison to the federal government. Last year, Griswold won the Democratic nod for secretary of state without any opposition and unseated Republican incumbent Wayne Williams 53-45 in the fall. Griswold's victory made her the first Democrat elected to this post since 1958, when Democrat George Baker won re-election.
If Griswold runs, she'll face a number of rivals for the party's nomination. The current field includes former diplomat Dan Baer, former state Sen. Mike Johnston, former state House Majority Leader Alice Madden, former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, former U.S. Attorney John Walsh, and state Sen. Angela Williams. However, not all these candidates may end up running in next year's primary because getting on the ballot in Colorado is a very challenging and often expensive task.
Candidates can try to reach the primary in one of two ways: either by winning the support of at least 30% of the delegates at their party's biennial convention (also known locally as an "assembly") or by collecting enough signatures to appear on the June ballot, regardless of what happens at the convention. (Typically, the conventions take place about two to three months before the primary.)
As we'll explain—and as some candidates learned the hard way last year—both approaches present risks even for serious contenders and introduce quite a lot of unpredictability into the entire process. Campaigns can opt to try both methods, but doing so still doesn't offer a guarantee: If a candidate takes less than 10% of the vote at the convention, then their campaign is over no matter how many signatures they turn in.
Candidates who want to successfully petition their way onto the ballot for U.S. Senate or governor must collect 1,500 valid signatures in each of Colorado's seven congressional districts from registered members of their political party. (Contenders for other statewide office, such as attorney general, need 1,000 per district.) That's a time-consuming undertaking that can become quite expensive: Last year, the Denver Post reported that such efforts can cost more than $200,000.
And it's particularly difficult for Democrats, who need to gather signatures in rural (and heavily Republican) districts where dense urban clusters of Democratic voters are few in number. To make things even more complicated, voters can only sign one petition for each race. If a voter signs petitions for multiple contenders, it only counts in favor of the first candidate to turn in their signatures, so there's a rush for everyone to submit—which introduces even more problems.
Even top-tier candidates have had trouble getting enough valid petitions. Last year, Secretary of State Wayne Williams (the Republican whom Griswold would go on to unseat) initially announced that Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Robinson had failed to turn in enough signatures to qualify. However, Robinson went to court and ended up making the ballot. Another gubernatorial hopeful, Democrat Donna Lynne, also came close to getting bounced: Williams' office ruled that she'd collected just 56 more valid signatures out of the conservative 4th District than the bare minimum she needed.
Walker Stapleton, who was the frontrunner in last year's GOP primary for governor, also had a stressful path to the ballot. Stapleton had planned to turn in petitions but instead, he ended up taking the unusual step of asking Williams to toss the signatures his campaign had collected, saying that the company he'd hired had engaged in fraud. (The pressure to gather petitions and turn them in quickly seems to regularly lead to misconduct in Colorado: Jon Keyser, a Republican candidate for Senate in 2016, turned in a number of signatures that had been forged—including at least one from a dead voter—but still made the ballot.)
To keep his campaign going, Stapleton had to pursue the second route to getting on the primary ballot by competing at the state party convention. Stapleton ended up winning the backing of 43% of delegates, which was more than the 30% he needed to keep his campaign afloat, and because he earned more support than any other candidate, he earned his party's official endorsement, which gave him the top slot on the primary ballot.
However, while Stapleton's victory on the convention floor wasn't a massive shock, there were some surprises for the GOP that day. Former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, who had been running a nondescript campaign, took second place with 32% of the vote thanks to a strong speech that impressed delegates, some of whom admitted to knowing nothing about him when the day began.
Attorney General Cynthia Coffman wasn't so lucky, though. Coffman had planned to petition her way on, but thanks to poor fundraising (in part due to Colorado's strict donation limits for state candidates), she simply couldn't afford to and had no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of convention-goers. But despite holding statewide office, she took just 6% of the delegates, which ended her campaign right on the spot. Stapleton wound up winning the GOP primary a few months later before getting crushed in November by Democrat Jared Polis.
As candidates found out last year, either path to the ballot can be uncertain and fraught with peril. However, while every Democrat seeking to challenge Gardner has plenty of time to decide which route they'll pursue, they'll all need to decide how they want to get there.
● GA-Sen: Sarah Riggs Amico, who was Team Blue's 2018 nominee for lieutenant governor, set up a fundraising committee on Monday. Amico has not yet announced that she's running, though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently wrote that she'd make her decision in the next few weeks.
● IL-Sen: On Monday, state Rep. Anne Stava-Murray terminated her fundraising committee for her very longshot Democratic primary bid against Sen. Dick Durbin.
● ME-Sen: Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jonathan Treacy said this week that he was opening up a fundraising committee and "going forward" with a bid for the Democratic nomination. It's not clear how definitive Treacy's decision is, since he added that he still has "a lot of homework to do" before he makes a formal announcement. If Treacy challenges GOP Sen. Susan Collins he'll first need to face state House Speaker Sara Gideon, who has the DSCC's endorsement, as well as a few other candidates in the Democratic primary.
Treacy spent 34 years in the Air Force, and he served as a flight supervisor at an Air National Guard base on Sept. 11. Treacy recounts that early in the day, when it was unclear just how many planes were being flown by terrorists, he addressed a group of pilots who were preparing to intercept what they feared was another hijacked craft. Treacy says he asked for volunteers who were willing to, "if necessary, shoot that airliner down," and, "Not one of them declined."
Treacy, who does not appear to have sought office before, said last month that he used to admire Collins, but all of that changed during the Trump administration. Treacy declared that Collins' vote for the GOP's 2017 tax bill was "absolutely staggering irresponsibility," and that her support for Brett Kavanaugh laid bare her "rationalization and empty gestures and abdication."
● TN-Sen: Donald Trump tweeted Friday that Bill Hagerty would resign as ambassador to Japan and run for the Senate with the White House's endorsement, and the U.S. embassy in Tokyo confirmed this week that Hagerty "is in the process of resigning." The Tennessee Journal also reports that retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander and freshman Sen. Marsha Blackburn are both making calls on Hagerty's behalf and will endorse him once he officially enters the GOP primary.
Gubernatorial
● MS-Gov: While state Rep. Robert Foster is a distant third in both fundraising and polling ahead of next month's primary for governor in Mississippi, one of his rivals is actually trying to catch up to him on a metric of great importance to Republican voters: Who can be the most misogynistic? Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller now says that he, too, won't meet with women alone, parroting the doctrine espoused by Foster just last week.
There's no word yet whether the GOP frontrunner, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, also follows what's become known as the "Billy Graham" or the "I'm A Jackass" rule. However, the likely Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Jim Hood, called the whole thing "ridiculous" and said he'd pass an equal pay law and fight domestic violence "while meeting with women—alone if necessary."
● OR-Gov: On Monday, the Oregon Republican Party announced that they would initiate a recall campaign against Democratic Gov. Kate Brown in response to the progressive legislation she supported this year, but it's going to be very tough for them to get on the ballot.
The Oregonian's Hillary Borrud reports that, as of Monday, recall organizers have 90 days to collect 280,050 valid signatures, which will be an expensive and time-consuming task. Borrud adds that "it's not unusual for campaigns to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars collecting signatures to qualify initiatives for the ballot, even though recent initiatives have needed just over 100,000 signatures to qualify." If Brown's detractors did manage to meet the October deadline, the recall election would occur before the end of the year.
● VT-Gov: On Tuesday, former Vermont Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe became the first notable Democrat to kick off a campaign against Republican Gov. Phil Scott. Holcombe was appointed education secretary in 2014 by Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, and she stayed at the post through Scott's first year as governor after his 2016 election. However, Holcombe suddenly resigned in 2018, and all she would publicly say was that it was "a personal decision" that wasn't prompted by policy differences between her and Scott.
However, Vermont Board of Education chair Krista Huling said at the time that there were indeed big policy disputes involved, and that Holcombe was particularly unhappy with the administration when they called for school districts to reduce their spending after voters had already approved new budgets. Huling also said that Holcombe believed that Scott's own policies had led to the situation, and Holcombe's kickoff statement on Tuesday indeed blasted Scott for "pushing for a statewide voucher program that would take millions from our public schools and funnel it to private schools that mostly serve privileged families."
Holcombe has never run for public office before, but VTDigger writes that she is well-known and well-regarded among educators. However, she could end up facing a Democratic primary against Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman or state Attorney General T.J. Donovan, both of whom have previously said they're considering the race, but national groups such as EMILY's List could end up endorsing her and providing key resources. Even if she does win the nomination, though, Holcombe will be going up against a popular governor who easily turned back a challenger even in last year's Democratic wave.
House
● AK-AL: 2018 Democratic nominee Alyse Galvin announced that she is seeking a rematch against Republican Rep. Don Young. Galvin is registered as unaffiliated with either party but ran in the 2018 Democratic primary, and she gave Young his closest race in a decade last November, losing by just a modest 53-47 in a state that had backed Trump by 53-38 two years earlier. Galvin's press release said she’d remain unaffiliated and did not say whether or not she'd run for the Democratic nomination again. Galvin, whose background is in education advocacy, was a strong fundraiser last cycle, but she'll nevertheless be facing a formidable challenge against the longest-serving House Republican in such a red state.
● AZ-06: Burn, baby, burn: Scandal-tarred Republican Rep. David Schweikert, who is highly vulnerable next year, raised just $181,000 in the second quarter of 2019, but his real problem is that more money's going out than in—and for the worst of all reasons.
Schweikert spent $308,000 from April through June, but little of that went toward his re-election efforts. Rather, some $244,000 paid for lawyers who are dealing with the multiple ethics investigations into the congressman and his office. Interestingly, most of those funds were collected by a Virginia law firm run by state Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, who was the GOP's unsuccessful nominee for lieutenant governor in 2017.
Schweikert's scalding burn rate has left his campaign with just $170,000 on hand, far less than his leading Democratic opponent, physician Hiral Tipirneni, who raised $437,000 during the quarter and has $445,000 in the bank. A Schweikert spokesperson insisted on Tuesday that there's nothing to worry about, though: "It's a one-off situation. It's not going to continue," he said. Then, because there's definitely nothing to worry about, he repeated, "We're quite confident this is a one-off situation."
Well, those dual ethics inquiries are still ongoing, so we'll check back in on ya in three months!
● FL-19: We don't know if sophomore GOP Rep. Francis Rooney is thinking about retiring, but he's certainly fundraising like it. Rooney raised all of $800 from donors during the second quarter of 2019, and he received only an additional $4,500 from his Rooney Victory PAC. By contrast, Rooney raised $90,000 at this point two years ago.
Rooney, who still has a respectable $622,000 war chest, demonstrated in 2016 that he's willing and able to self-fund, so he certainly can defend himself if he ends up attracting a serious primary in this safely red southwestern Florida seat. However, Florida Politics' Jacob Ogleso writes that local party leaders believe that Rooney, unlike so many of his other House GOP colleagues, means what he says when he advocates term limits for members of Congress, and that he'll leave office no later than early 2021.
● IA-03: GOP state Sen. Zach Nunn, who spent months flirting with a bid and previously said that he'd take a "very aggressive lean forward" in July, decided to instead take a very aggressive lean backward and not run. Nunn's decision means that, at least for now, former Rep. David Young has no serious primary opposition as he tries to reclaim this swing seat from freshman Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne.
Axne dramatically outraised Young during the 2018 cycle, and she once again had a very strong fundraising quarter. Axne outraised Young, who entered the race in May, $603,000 to $360,000 during the second quarter, and she ended June with an $841,000 to $342,000 cash-on-hand lead. The other declared GOP candidates are Ankeny School Board Member Brad Huss, retired Army Col. Bill Schafer, and marketing professional Joshua Schoenblatt, but none of them have reported raising any money through June.
● IL-06: Greg Hinz of Crain's Chicago Business wrote Monday that there was "chatter" that former state Rep. Jeanne Ives, a far-right social conservative who came close to winning last year's GOP primary for governor, is "planning to enter the race, perhaps as soon as this weekend." The only notable GOP candidate currently challenging freshman Democratic Rep. Sean Casten is former Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, but her weak opening fundraising quarter shouldn't give Team Red much reason for optimism about her prospects.
There hasn't been much talk about former Rep. Peter Roskam, who lost this seat to Casten last year in an expensive race, coming back to rescue his party, and we can strike him from the list altogether now that he's taken a job at the prominent lobbying firm Sidley Austin. While the group is headquartered in Chicago, Roskam will remain in Washington.
● IN-05: GOP state Treasurer Kelly Mitchell hasn't publicly expressed interest in running for this open seat yet, but Indy Politics writes that they've been told by unnamed sources that she's "very likely to get in." Meanwhile, Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said that, despite rumors to the contrary, he was not considering this contest.
● MA-01: Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse acknowledged on Monday that he is indeed considering a Democratic primary challenge from the left against longtime Rep. Richie Neal, who has drawn criticism in progressive circles for allegedly slow-walking the investigation into Trump's tax returns as chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Morse said he'll decide whether or not to run relatively soon and that he's been "very encouraged" by what he's heard so far from potential supporters.
● NC-09: Second quarter fundraising numbers are now available for the upcoming Sept. 10 special election, and Democrat Dan McCready continues to wallop Republican Dan Bishop. McCready raised a huge $1.75 million over the last three months compared to Bishop's $780,000, but more notably, McCready has a lopsided $1.8 million-to-$344,000 advantage in cash-on-hand. Bishop still has some time to turn things around, but at the rate things have been going, Republicans may end up becoming reliant on outside groups parachuting in to save Bishop from getting badly outspent on the airwaves.
● SC-01: Former GOP Rep. Mark Sanford has decided that a comeback bid for South Carolina's 1st District isn't the hike he wants to take in 2020. Sanford told The Post and Courier on Tuesday that he would decide over the next month whether he'd challenge his longtime nemesis Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary, and that he was not interested in trying to return to the House (again).
● TX-22: On Monday, Pearland City Councilman Derrick Reed announced that he was joining the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Pete Olson. Reed, who is black, made history in 2015 when he became the first person of color to ever serve on the Pearland City Council. Pearland makes up about 13% of the population of this 52-44 Trump seat.
Olson was accustomed to easy re-elections in this suburban Houston district until last year, when Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni held him to a surprisingly close 51-46 victory. Kulkarni didn't receive much outside help during that campaign, but his second bid is attracting considerably more attention. Kulkarni outraised Olson $421,000 to $378,000 during the second quarter, and the incumbent held only a modest $483,000 to $345,000 cash-on-hand edge at the end of June. Another Democrat, former TV political commentator Nyanza Moore, took in just $25,000 during this time (she self-funded an additional $5,000), and she had less than $6,000 left to spend.
