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
● MI-03: On July 4, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who has repeatedly called for Donald Trump’s impeachment, announced that he was leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent. Amash, who is now the only member of the House without a party label, quickly said that he’d filed for re-election to the 3rd Congressional District, a Grand Rapids-based seat that backed Trump 52-42. However, Amash also said that he wasn’t ruling out giving up his seat to challenge Trump as an independent or member of a third party.
Campaign Action
Amash was elected to Congress as a tea party ally in 2010, and he quickly made a name for himself by often voting against the leadership’s priorities on libertarian grounds. The Trump era only isolated him even more from his colleagues. In March, for instance, Amash was the one Republican in the House to vote to condemn Trump’s bogus emergency declaration. But Amash still went even further than usual in May when he took to social media and wrote that, after reading the Mueller Report, he believed that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct.”
The reaction to that pronouncement was swift, and Trump tweeted in response, “Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” and added, “Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!” Amash’s old allies in Michigan quickly abandoned him as well, but that didn’t stop Amash from continuing to oppose the administration in both word and deed. A number of Republicans also launched primary campaigns against Amash before he left the GOP.
Democrats haven’t seriously targeted this seat in a long time, but that began to change even before Amash became an independent. Attorney Nick Colvin, who served in the Obama administration, announced he would run in June, while fellow attorney Hillary Scholten reportedly plans to get in.
Despite Trump’s clear win here, this seat is hardly safely red. According to Bloomberg's Greg Giroux, the 3rd District backed 2018 GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Schuette by a very slim 48.6-48.2 margin, and GOP Senate nominee John James carried it by a modest 51-47. However, Amash’s decision to bolt his party introduces quite a lot of unpredictability to this race, especially since we don’t yet know what he’ll do in 2020.
2Q Fundraising
● AZ-Sen: Mark Kelly (D): $4.2 million raised, $6 million cash-on-hand
● FL-13: Amanda Makki (R): $220,000 raised (in four weeks)
● IA-01: Ashley Hinson (R): $335,000 raised (in six weeks)
● IA-03: David Young (R): $330,000 raised (in two months)
● MI-03: Nick Colvin (D): $118,000 raised (in 12 days)
● PA-18: Jerry Dickinson (D): $100,000 raised
● TX-07: Cindy Siegel (R): $108,000 raised, additional $150,000 self-loaned
● TX-22: Sri Preston Kulkarni (D): $420,000 raised
● TX-32: Colin Allred (D-inc): $575,000 raised, $950,000 cash-on-hand
Senate
● MN-Sen: On Tuesday, GOP state Sen. Karin Housley announced that she would run for re-election rather than seek a rematch against Democratic Sen. Tina Smith. Housley lost last year's special election 53-42.
Gubernatorial
● IN-Gov: Democratic state Sen. Eddie Melton is embarking on a listening tour as he considers a possible bid against GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb, and he's bringing along an unexpected guest: Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick. Melton told the Indianapolis Star that McCormick hasn't endorsed him, and he invited her because they share some education goals. McCormick, who is not seeking a second term next year, also accompanied Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly around the state last year during his unsuccessful 2018 re-election campaign, though she never backed him.
The state GOP is not at all happy with McCormick, and party chair Kyle Hupfer accused her of auditioning to become Melton's running mate. McCormick responded by declaring that the Indiana GOP has "been nonexistent in support for me. I'm not sure I owe them anything." McCormick didn't rule out eventually backing Melton, who has formed an exploratory committee but has not yet committed to running. McCormick also didn't shoot down the idea of eventually becoming Melton's candidate for lieutenant governor.
● MO-Gov: Democratic state Sen. Scott Sifton announced Tuesday that he will not run for governor and will instead support state Auditor Nicole Galloway. Galloway has not yet announced that she'll challenge GOP incumbent Mike Parson, though the state party's executive director said in late June that the auditor will get into the race.
● MT-Gov: Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney announced Wednesday that he would seek the Democratic nomination to succeed his boss, termed-out Gov. Steve Bullock. Bullock praised Cooney in a statement released that day and said that his lieutenant governor had his support. Cooney joins state House Minority Leader Casey Schreiner and former state Rep. Reilly Neill in the primary.
Cooney has a long history in Montana politics, which includes three successful bids for secretary of state in the 1980s and 90s. During his time at that office in 1996, Cooney hired Bullock, who was working as a private attorney in New York City at the time, as his chief legal counsel. Cooney ran for governor in 2000, but he took a distant third place with just 16% of the vote.
That defeat was hardly the end of Cooney's career, though. He was elected to the state Senate two years later, and in 2007 Cooney succeeded none other than newly-elected U.S. Sen. Jon Tester as the chamber's president. Cooney was termed-out in early 2011, and in late 2015, Bullock appointed Cooney to the vacant post of lieutenant governor. Cooney served as Bullock's running mate the next year when the governor won re-election.
Democrats have controlled the governor's seat since the 2004 elections, but Team Blue will have a tough time extending that streak in this conservative state. However, Team Red has a competitive primary of their own between state Attorney General Tim Fox, Rep. Greg Gianforte, and a few other contenders. Gianforte, who lost to Bullock in 2016, is especially notorious for assaulting reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017 and then lying about it.
House
● CA-50: Former GOP Rep. Darrell Issa retired from Congress this year, but we may have him to kick around some more. On Monday, Issa confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that he was considering running for California's 50th District, a seat held by fellow GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter. The paper did not say whether Issa was open to challenging Hunter, who is scheduled to stand trial in September for allegedly spending campaign money for his own personal purchases, or if he was only willing to run if Hunter's not on the ballot next year.
This isn't the first time Issa has considered swapping seats. Issa survived a very close race in 2016 in his neighboring 49th District, and he decided not to seek re-election there last year. But in February of 2018, just weeks after he made his retirement announcement, Issa reportedly told his still-colleagues that he was thinking about making a switcharoo and running for the considerably more conservative 50th District just to the east of his current constituency.
Hunter, who was under investigation at the time but had not yet been indicted, was not at all inclined to go along with it, though, and Issa wasn't on the ballot anywhere last year. In September, Donald Trump nominated Issa to lead the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, but the Senate still has not confirmed him.
It seems that it isn't just the upper chamber of Congress that doesn't want to deal with Issa. Last month, when The Hill broke the news that he was once again mulling a run for the 50th District, they added that some GOP House members believed he had "rubbed colleagues the wrong way."
One unnamed member sounded pissed at Issa for wanting to come back to Congress after abandoning the 49th District, which Democrat Mike Levin flipped last year. This member declared, "Issa had his time here," and added, "[Y]eah, we know California is a challenging political environment, but I don't think there's been a lot of calls made to have him come back."
Hunter also sounded no happier with Issa succeeding him than he did last year when the idea was first raised. While Hunter said Issa had supported him in the past, he declared, "He is not in the district, nothing close to it. He probably doesn't know much about the district." Of course, if Hunter ends up needing to vacate this seat, he won't have much of a say in deciding who replaces him.
● FL-07: On Wednesday, businesswoman Jan Edwards dropped out of the GOP primary to take on Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy. Edwards was the only notable Republican seeking this 51-44 Clinton seat.
● MI-03: On Wednesday, one day before Rep. Justin Amash announced that he was leaving the GOP to become an independent, Army veteran Peter Meijer joined the GOP primary for this seat. Meijer's family, which is one of the richest in Michigan, owns an eponymous retail chain with almost 200 locations in the Midwest, and his father serves as its executive chairman. Meijer says that he has never had a role with the company other than stocking shelves as a teenager, though. Instead, Meijer served in the Army and deployed to Iraq. He later worked for veterans advocacy groups and on behalf of refugees in South Sudan.
Meijer joins state Reps. Lynn Afendoulis and Jim Lower, as well as Afghanistan veteran Tom Norton, in the GOP primary. While some of the other candidates, most notably Lower, are running as proud Trump allies, Meijer didn’t even mention Trump or Amash in his campaign kickoff. Instead, Meijer argued he was running “because our politicians spend their time trashing each other online, coming up with excuses and pointing fingers. We should expect more from people who represent us.”
That’s not a message we hear from many Republicans in the Trump era, where most conservatives seem quite delighted to have a politician who spends his time trashing other people online. Meijer’s team did say that their candidate “definitely doesn't agree with Amash's push for impeachment,” though that’s also hardly a vigorous anti-Amash or pro-Trump message.
Meijer’s primary opponents may be able to score some points by also portraying him as anti-Trump. In 2016, Meijer donated $250 to a group called Common Defense/Beyond the Choir Action Fund, a group started by veterans who said they believed Trump was a “real threat.” This month, Meijer said he’d made this contribution because the organization said they were “defending veterans,” and he argued, “They lied to me. I never gave them another penny after the agenda became clear.”
Some of Meijer’s allies could also prove to be a double-edged sword for him in the primary. Last cycle he joined the advisory group of With Honor Fund, a super PAC that spent $10 million on independent expenditures to aid veterans from both parties; Meijer says he’s since left the board. Meijer’s time at With Honor could help him make some useful political contacts, but his ties to the group could also open him up to more attacks in the primary: While With Honor aided Republicans in primaries and several competitive general elections, they also spent serious money on behalf of several Democrats who flipped GOP-held House seats last year.
● NM-03: Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya announced Tuesday that she was joining the crowded Democratic primary for this open northern New Mexico seat. Montoya's Sandoval County constituency makes up 16% of the 3rd District, though it cast only 13% of the vote in the 2016 Democratic primary.
● NY-27: Attorney and Fox News contributor Beth Parlato told The Buffalo News on Tuesday that she was considering challenging indicted Rep. Chris Collins in the GOP primary, and that she expected to decide in two to three weeks. Parlato is also a leader in the national social conservative organizations Moms for America and Concerned Women for America, and she argued that these connections will help her raise money.
A number of other Republicans are considering challenging Collins, who is scheduled to stand trial in February on insider trading charges, and one of those would-be contenders has seen his profile rise quite a bit in recent weeks. In late June, Donald Trump awarded Army veteran David Bellavia the Medal of Honor, which made Bellavia the first living American to receive the military's highest combat decoration for service in Iraq.
Bellavia, who works as a local conservative radio host, said back in May that he was considering another bid against Collins, who beat him 60-40 in a 2012 primary for the right to take on Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul (Collins narrowly defeated Hochul in the general election). While Bellavia doesn't appear to have said anything new since then, there's plenty of speculation among local politicos about his plans. Erie County Conservative Chairman Ralph Lorigo, whose party often allies with the GOP, said this month, "If Bellavia gets in, he trumps everyone." Parlato also acknowledged that Bellavia would be formidable, though she didn't say if she'd be willing to defer to him.
Collins has said that he'll decide whether to run again before the end of the year. State Sen. Chris Jacobs is already seeking the Republican nomination, and other potential candidates are also considering running against Collins.
Mayoral
● Houston, TX Mayor: Former Houston City Councilor Sue Lovell announced Monday that she was joining this fall's race to take on Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner. Lovell has sided with the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association in their long-running dispute with Turner, though the union is already supporting another candidate, City Councilor Dwight Boykins (more on him below).
Lovell has been involved in local LGBTQ causes for decades going back to 1979, when she was part of the leadership of the Houston Gay Political Caucus when it helped defeat a city councilor who loudly opposed LGBTQ rights. Lovell was later president of the group during the 1985 mayoral election when former Mayor Louie Welch, who infamously declared that one way to stop the spread of AIDS was to "shoot the queers," unsuccessfully ran to reclaim his old office as an ally of the "Straight Slate."
Lovell won a citywide council seat herself in 2003. However, while she won re-election three times, Texas political writer Charles Kuffner notes that she didn't perform especially well in her final campaigns. Kuffner writes that Lovell took just 53% of the vote in her 2007 race against a perennial candidate and that two years later, another perennial candidate forced Lovell into a runoff that she only won 54-46.
Meanwhile, Boykins generated some bad headlines in late June when he addressed a youth summit and was filmed advising teenage girls to "close their legs" so that their future partners wouldn't see them as "tainted." Boykins is seen declaring, "In that man's eye, because you did something as a child in the freshman year of college, that's going to taint you," and, "He finds out, he ain't going to want to marry her. Date her, but not marry her."
In another recording from the summit, a student confronted Boykins and told him, "You've made some comments that have made me a little bit uncomfortable. You've joked about dating some of us." Boykins responded, "Not dating you. I mean, that was an example." The student continued, "You've pulled and singled out a few of the girls, you've told us to keep our legs closed." Boykins said that he wanted to tell anyone he made uncomfortable that he "apologized for the comment" and insisted, "That's really important for me to know that you understand, it wasn't personal." He then added, "It was trying to warn you guys what's out there."
Boykins responded a few days later with a non-apology where he wrote, "My words were met to inspire and I deeply regret the extent to which they caused anyone hurt or discomfort. That was never my intention, and to anyone who may have taken offense by what I said, I apologize." He added, "(It) was never my intention to cause anyone discomfort but to speak frankly about the pitfalls which I have seen derail the future of many of our youth, including teen pregnancy … an issue I have firsthand experience with in my own family."
The other candidates challenging Turner are wealthy attorney Tony Buzbee, and businessman Bill King, a conservative independent who narrowly lost to Turner in 2015. All the contenders will compete on one ballot on Nov. 5, and if no one takes a majority, there would be a runoff Dec. 14. Houston's candidate filing deadline isn't until late August, so there's still time for more candidates to get in.
Other Races
● Queens County, NY District Attorney: Queens counted over 3,000 absentee ballots on Wednesday from the June 25 Democratic primary for district attorney, and in a massive surprise, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz now holds a 16-vote lead over public defender Tiffany Cabán.
Cabán held a 1,090-vote lead over Katz on election night in the seven-way primary, and it looked incredibly unlikely that the borough president could win enough absentee ballots to pull ahead. But Katz, who had considerably more money than Cabán as well as the support of the party establishment, got the strong performance that she needed to close the gap. Katz’s lead stood at 20 votes on Wednesday night, but two days later, Cabán’s team successfully got another six previously-invalidated votes counted.
Katz declared victory on Wednesday, but the contest isn’t decided yet. The New York City Board of Elections will begin preparations for a mandatory manual recount on Tuesday, though they say the actual counting won’t happen until later in the week.
The New York Times in describing the recount process writes that “elections officials will find a place to put 18 tables—one for each Assembly district in Queens—where two staffers, one Democratic and one Republican, will tally each and every ballot that was cast: absentee, affidavit or regular.” The paper adds, “That process could turn up untold numbers of new votes. The city’s ballot machines count only ballots with perfectly filled-in bubbles, but in a manual recount, ballots that were improperly filled out—a check mark next to a candidate’s name, for example, or a circle around it—can be counted.”
Cabán team will also go to state court in Queens on Tuesday to argue that an additional 114 ballots, which the New York City Board of Elections deemed invalid because voters had not listed their party affiliation on the ballot, should be counted. There are just over 2,300 more uncounted affidavit ballots that officials have ruled as invalid. The Times writes, “Affidavit ballots can be invalidated for many reasons, including a voter registering too late or leaving part of the affidavit blank.”
Whoever emerges with the Democratic nod should have little trouble prevailing in the general election in this overwhelmingly Democratic borough.