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
● CO-Sen: On Monday—Women's Equality Day—six Democratic women who are running for Senate in Colorado co-signed a letter addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, asking the DSCC to rescind its endorsement of former Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Campaign Action
Late last week, the committee gave its backing to Hickenlooper in unusually tepid form, simply taking note of his candidacy in a cryptic tweet that HuffPost reporter Kevin Robillard had to confirm in fact actually constituted an endorsement. A DSCC spokesperson later insisted, apparently in response to the joint letter, "John Hickenlooper is far and away the strongest candidate to beat Cory Gardner, and we’re proud to support him in his run for Senate."
That's exactly what the signatories contest, though. The authors, who include two of the higher-profile candidates in the primary, former state House Majority Leader Alice Madden and state Sen. Angela Williams, observe that they've all "seen well-qualified women passed over for male candidates in the workplace time and again," and they note the important role women voters and politicians have played in turning Colorado blue over the last 15 years.
They also cite Hickenlooper's hostile rhetoric toward progressives, but most searingly, they point out, "Washington Democrats have recruited candidates with profiles similar to Governor Hickenlooper with much fanfare, only to see those candidates come up short in the general election," specifically highlighting failures in Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee.
All three of those states saw once-popular former governors—Ted Strickland, Evan Bayh, and Phil Bredesen—begin as highly touted Senate recruits in the last two cycles, only to watch them fall in the end to Republican opponents. Of course, all three of those states are red (and getting redder), while Colorado has trended in the opposite direction.
However, a poll last week for former state Sen. Mike Johnston (another Democrat who's shown no interest in leaving the race) suggests that Hickenlooper doesn't possesses any particular advantage other than name recognition: A generic Democrat sported the same 10-point lead as the ex-governor in matchups against Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, and Hickenlooper's favorability score was just 46-42
And that's at the core of the argument made by the letter's authors. They say that, by its actions, the DSCC "is implying that we should defer to a male candidate because you seem to believe he is 'more electable.'" Even if the committee were right that Hickenlooper really is the stronger bet, its involvement on his behalf still sends an unwelcome message to core Democratic constituencies.
But even the former governor's supporters are struggling to make that claim: A poll from 314 Action, a group backing Hickenlooper's candidacy, found him leading Gardner by 13 points, a margin not much better than what Johnston's internal showed, and with a favorability rating of 45-38—again, very similar numbers. If there's polling out there showing that Hickenlooper is a world-beating candidate no one can match, we haven't seen it. And even if there is, a lot can change between now and November of next year. Just ask Strickland, Bayh, and Bredesen.
Senate
● GA-Sen: Businesswoman Sarah Riggs Amico, who was Team Blue's 2018 nominee for lieutenant governor of Georgia, announced Tuesday that she would join the primary to take on GOP Sen. David Perdue. Amico, who is the executive chair of the logistics and trucking firm Jack Cooper, lost last November by a narrow 51.6-48.4 margin.
Amico used her campaign kickoff to address how Jack Cooper, which is owned by her family, recently filed for bankruptcy protection. Amico told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "The reality is what I've gone through with that business this year has profoundly shaped how I see the stakes in the election, and the urgency that I feel to fix some of these issues," and she added, "I no longer want to wait on the sidelines and wait for somebody else to fix it."
Unsurprisingly, Perdue's team immediately blamed Amico for Jack Cooper's difficulties. However, she in turn went after the senator over problems with his own trucking company. In 2015, the business started by Perdue and his cousin, former Gov. and current U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, failed and left unsecured creditors with millions in debts.
Amico asked, "Do you want the woman who acknowledged we've got to fix this, stayed and steered the ship through stormy seas?” She then added, "Or do you want the guy who sneaks out the back door with his bag of coins and pretends like he has nothing to do with it."
Amico will face former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry in the Democratic primary. Jon Ossoff, who was Team Blue's nominee in the ultra-expensive special election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District, is also considering.
Terry wasted no time going on the offensive with a tweet highlighting how Amico donated nearly $1,000 to Mitt Romney in 2012. Terry wrote, “I was proud to support Barack Obama when he ran for re-election, it's unfortunate that not all of my opponents feel the same way.”
Amico is a self-described “recovering Republican” who said last cycle that she never felt completely comfortable with either party, but left the GOP for the Democrats when Team Red “started trying to take away folks’ health care and trying to restrict opportunity instead of expand it.” Amico donated more than $23,000 to Democratic groups and organizations from 2017 through 2018.
● KS-Sen, KS-02: On Monday, former Gov. Jeff Colyer announced that he would not seek the GOP nod for Kansas' open Senate seat, but that wasn't the last thing he had to say about this contest. The very next day, Colyer issued a statement where he called for state Treasurer Jake LaTurner to drop his own Senate campaign and run in the primary for the 2nd Congressional District, a seat that's already held by freshman Republican Rep. Steve Watkins. Colyer's team says he did not give LaTurner a heads-up before he published the statement, but the treasurer said later in the day that he would "take some time with my family to prayerfully consider his suggestion that I run for the 2nd Congressional District seat."
Last week, multiple media outlets reported that there was intense speculation in GOP circles that Watkins could resign, though there's still no word on why his own party wants him to quit. The congressman said Friday that he wasn't going anywhere, and his chief of staff argued that unspecified "absurd" rumors about Watkins' personal life had come from operatives in Kansas who wanted to hurt the congressman.
Colyer didn't mention Watkins by name in his statement, or drop any obvious clues about what the rumors dogging the congressman actually are. However, Colyer did note that Watkins had only won by a 48-47 margin last year in a seat that Donald Trump had carried 56-37. Colyer also wrote, "The first eight months of his time in Congress have seen poor fundraising and a lack of coalition building."
Colyer also said that LaTurner's departure from the Senate race could help "clear the logjam in the Senate race." That seems like the former governor's not-so-subtle way of arguing that, by switching races, LaTurner could make it harder for far-right former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to win another GOP primary. Kobach beat Colyer by 343 votes in last year's contest for governor, but he lost the general election to Democrat Laura Kelly 48-43. National Republicans have made it clear that they believe Kobach could cost the party this Senate seat if he's their nominee, and that they're willing to take action to stop him in the primary.
Gubernatorial
● KY-Gov: Democrat Andy Beshear is out with a poll from Garin-Hart-Yang that gives him a 48-39 lead over GOP Gov. Matt Bevin this November, while Libertarian John Hicks takes 6%. Last week, the Democratic Attorneys General Association released a survey from Clarity Campaign Labs that gave Beshear an identical 48-39 edge. We haven't seen any other polls here all year other than a June survey from the unreliable Gravis Marketing.
While Kentucky is a reliably red state in federal elections, Bevin has been unpopular for most of his tenure even with members of his own party. The incumbent only won renomination in May by beating state Rep. Robert Goforth 52-39, and in true Matt Bevin fashion, he's continuing to get into fights with his vanquished foe three months later. Both Bevin and Goforth attended the annual Kentucky State Fair Ham Breakfast on Thursday, and they had choice words for one another when WHAS reporter Chris Williams interviewed each of them.
Goforth first told Williams that he had not spoken to Bevin since the primary, and the governor "doesn't feel like he needs to" reach out. (The two were in the same room just a few feet apart from one another at the time.) While Goforth added that he'd be supporting the GOP this year, he didn't specifically commit to voting for Bevin. When Williams told Bevin about his old rival's lack of direct support, the governor merely said that Goforth was "a name so easily forgotten."
Goforth was not happy with Bevin's response, and he told the Associated Press' Bruce Schreiner, "He acted like he didn't know who I was," but, "There are over 101,000 people who knew who I was on May 21" when they voted for him over the governor. Goforth continued, "He has to have every one of them to win this election. Without them, I don't think he can win. And with an attitude like that, how can he expect anyone to support him?"
● LA-Gov: Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is up with another TV spot focusing on the people who have benefited from the Medicaid expansion he successfully pushed for.
House
● NM-02: Oil businesswoman Claire Chase announced on Tuesday that she would seek the GOP nod to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Xochitl Torres Small. State political writer Joe Monahan has written that Chase can reportedly self-fund.
Chase is married to the grandson of state oil and natural gas magnate Mack Chase. The elder Chase founded Mack Energy, where Claire Chase works as its director of government. She is also the past president of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, and Chase stepped down as chair of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association ahead of her campaign launch.
Before she departed, though, Chase served as master of ceremonies for an event earlier this month that featured Mike Pence. Pence didn't mention her upcoming campaign, but he did seem to allude to it when he told the audience, "Would you join me in thanking her for her leadership past, present and future?"
Chase joins 2018 nominee Yvette Herrell and businessman Chris Mathys in the primary for this 50-40 Trump seat in southern New Mexico. Torres Small upset Herrell 51-49 last year, and so far, GOP donors don't seem to be flocking to Herrell's second bid. Herrell raised just $101,000 for the second quarter of 2019, though she had a stronger $307,000 to spend at the end of June. Mathys took in almost nothing from donors but self-funded $100,000, and he had $160,000 in the bank. Torres Small raised a hefty $621,000 for the quarter and had just over $1 million available to defend this seat.
● TX-22: This week, Texas Republican Party fundraiser Kathaleen Wall announced that she would run for the 22nd Congressional District, a competitive open seat in the southern Houston suburbs. Wall joins Greg Hill, a former judge in Brazoria County, in the GOP primary, though other Republicans are also considering running to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Pete Olson.
Wall ran last year in the nearby 2nd District, but while she looked like the clear frontrunner for most of the campaign, she unexpectedly ended up narrowly missing the primary runoff. Wall, who still lives in the 2nd District, poured $6.2 million of her own money into that campaign, which the Houston Chronicle writes was the most any self-funding House candidate in Texas has deployed in the last 20 years.
This spending spree allowed her to decisively outspend all of her many primary foes and dominate the airwaves: A Texas Tribune story from last year even wrote that she might have been one of the most famous people in Houston at the time thanks to her many ads. Wall also had some big names in her corner, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, and the Tribune suggested there was a chance that she could win a majority of the vote and avoid a primary runoff.
However, there were signs that Wall wasn't the strong candidate she was cracked up to be, especially because of her own performance on the campaign trail. The Houston Chronicle wrote that at events "she struggled to remember talking points during forums. Her campaign also avoided interviews with the media, turning down repeated interview requests with the Houston Chronicle." And after watching this cringe-inducing video of a time Wall did speak and badly garbled her talking points multiple times, we can see why.
There were also other indications that Wall's campaign didn't really have their finger on the pulse of the GOP electorate. Abbott appeared in an ad for her late in the race calling Wall "a behind the scenes mover and shaker in Houston politics for years." In an era where almost every candidate is tripping over each other to portray themselves as the real enemy of the establishment whether they actually are or not, it was quite jarring to hear someone embracing a label like that.
Still, it was a surprise when Wall took just third place in the primary. State Rep. Kevin Roberts took first with 33% while Navy SEAL veteran Daniel Crenshaw edged Wall 27.4-27.1 for the second runoff spot; Crenshaw ended up winning the runoff and the general election. After that performance, Republicans probably shouldn't feel too good about having her as their nominee in Texas' 22nd District, a seat that's been trending away from the party during the Trump era, no matter how big of a check she's willing to write this time.
● UT-01: This week, Kaysville Mayor Katie Witt announced that she would seek the GOP nod for this safely red open seat in northern Utah. Witt spent several years living in Colorado, where she ran Mitt Romney's successful 2008 state caucus campaign and served on the Longmont City Council. Witt relocated back to Utah in 2014, and after an unsuccessful bid for a council seat in Kaysville, she was elected mayor of this 30,000-person community in 2017.
● WI-07: Former GOP state Rep. Adam Jarchow told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would be "100% behind" state Sen. Tom Tiffany if he runs in the upcoming special election to succeed Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, who will resign near the end of September. However, Jarchow said that he'd be interested in running himself if Tiffany sits out the race and "it's a field (of) just squishes."
Jarchow, though, looks pretty squishy himself after his last election. Jarchow was the GOP nominee for an early 2018 special election for the 10th State Senate District, a seat that Donald Trump carried by a 55-38 margin. However, Democrat Patty Schachtner defeated Jarchow by a wide 55-44 margin to win the nearly three remaining years of the term. Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District backed Trump 58-37, so it's a bit more conservative than the seat Jarchow lost last year. However, Jarchow could still lose it if he again runs far behind Trump.
