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
● PR-Gov: On Friday, Pedro Pierluisi was sworn in as governor of Puerto Rico after scandal-tarred Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, a fellow member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (NPP), resigned. However, there are serious questions about whether Pierluisi should be in charge because only one chamber of the commonwealth’s legislature, the House, has confirmed him to fill the vacant post of secretary of state, the job that is first in line for the governorship. And while Pierluisi said Friday that he’d resign as governor if the Senate voted down his nomination for secretary of state, he suggested Sunday that it might be up to the courts to decide if he can remain in charge.
Campaign Action
Pierluisi declared Sunday, “Since laws are presumed constitutional, even if there are scholars I respect that say otherwise, one assumes office and then the tribunals decide whether the oath of office is valid or not.” He also put out a statement late that day saying, “Due to the fact that I have been sworn in as Governor of Puerto Rico, there is no Secretary of State subject to the advice and consent of the Puerto Rican Senate.”
Pierluisi added that “the Senate has every right to express itself over my incumbency,” but he didn’t say what he’d do if they gave him a negative vote. As of Sunday night, the Senate is still scheduled to vote Monday whether Pierluisi should be confirmed as secretary of state.
The secretary of state’s post was vacant until last week because Luis Rivera Marín had already resigned as part of the same chat scandal that also ended Rosselló’s career. Rosselló nominated Pierluisi on Wednesday, and Pierluisi was sworn in as secretary of state that evening.
The Constitution of Puerto Rico requires the secretary of state to be confirmed by both chambers of the legislature. However, before he quit, Rosselló declared that a law that exempts the secretary of state from legislative confirmation means that Pierluisi has every right to be the governor now.
The New York Times writes that most legal experts believe that this statute, which was passed in 1952 and amended in 2005, is unconstitutional, but no one had challenged it in court before this week. That’s about to change, though. Two declared 2020 gubernatorial candidates, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of the Popular Democratic Party and Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz of the NPP, argued over the weekend that Pierluisi is not the legitimate governor because he was never confirmed as secretary of state, and that they’ll sue on Monday to have him removed.
There were already serious questions about whether Pierluisi could be confirmed by the Senate. The House had voted to make Pierluisi secretary of state on Friday, but only by a 26-21 margin. Many members of the legislature have come out in opposition to Pierluisi because of his connections to the federal oversight board that runs the island’s finances. His brother-in-law is the board’s chair, and Pierluisi also works for the law firm that represents the board (he took a leave of absence last week). Rivera Schatz publicly predicted last week that Pierluisi would be voted down in the Senate, and many of the demonstrators who pressured Rosselló to quit have now begun protesting Pierluisi.
If Pierluisi ends up leaving the governor’s office, the next person in the line of succession is Justice Minister Wanda Vázquez, who has plenty of detractors of her own. Vázquez says she doesn't want to be governor but would accept the job if necessary.
Senate
● KY-Sen: 2018 Democratic House candidate Amy McGrath is launching her first TV spot, and Politico says its part of a $450,000 TV and radio buy. The ad is a 60-second version of her launch video.
● ME-Sen: On Thursday, state House Speaker Sara Gideon's campaign announced that a PAC created by Gideon had broken campaign finance laws by reimbursing the candidate for donations made during the 2016 election cycle.
In 2015, Gideon donated $1,000 to Emily Cain, a fellow Democrat who was running for the House; a month later, the Gideon Leadership PAC gave Gideon that same amount as a "reimbursement for a federal contribution." The PAC also reimbursed Gideon another $1,750 for further donations to Cain and the state Democratic Party.
Reimbursements like these run afoul of federal and state laws that forbid making campaign contributions in another person's name. Such laws exist to prohibit so-called "straw donations," where an individual seeks to circumvent contribution limits by reimbursing others for their donations.
Gideon's campaign said that it had received "incorrect guidance on how to process" contributions, and one expert, former FEC official Erin Chlopak, noted that it was unlikely the effort was intentionally aimed at getting around campaign finance laws because the reimbursements were listed on the PAC's filings. "Typically, when people try to break the law," said Chlopak, "they try to be more discreet about it." Gideon's team added that the candidate had sent a $3,250 check to the U.S. Treasury to offset the reimbursements.
● NE-Sen: Sen. Ben Sasse has not yet announced if he'll run again, but he has a "special event" scheduled in Omaha on Monday night that will be attended by a number of prominent state Republicans. The only Republican who has shown much interest in challenging Sasse in a primary is businessman Matt Innis, a former chair of the Lancaster County Republican Party. Innis said in mid-July that he expected to decide in the next few weeks.
House
● CA-39, CA-48: The California Republican Party has endorsed 2018 GOP nominee Young Kim's second bid for the 39th District as well as Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel in the 48th District. Neither Kim nor Steel faces any serious intra-party opposition.
● IN-05: Former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard said on Thursday that he would not seek the GOP nomination for this open seat.
● TX-04: GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe withdrew his nomination to become director of national intelligence on Friday after less than a week. Donald Trump, who made the announcement over Twitter, added that Ratcliffe would remain in Congress.
Trump picked Ratcliffe on Sunday to succeed Dan Coats, and it almost immediately became clear that there wasn't much enthusiasm among Senate Republicans for the three-term congressman. Ratcliffe's situation deteriorated over the following days as he was found to have dramatically inflated his resume as U.S. attorney.
However, we probably shouldn't expect any of this to damage Ratcliffe in a primary in this safely red northeastern Texas seat. After Trump tweeted that Ratcliffe was withdrawing his nomination he added that the congressman was "being treated very unfairly by the LameStream media," and, "Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people ..."
● TX-11: Midland City Councilman J.Ross Lacy told the Texas Tribune on Thursday that he was considering seeking the GOP nod for this safely red seat, and that he would have an announcement in the week of Aug. 5.
● TX-23: GOP Rep. Will Hurd's Thursday announcement that he would become the third Texas Republican to retire this cycle (a phenomena the DCCC has aptly nicknamed the Texodus) caught just about everyone by surprise, but it didn't take long for Roll Call to mention a few Republicans who could try to hold this 50-46 Clinton seat.
One possible candidate is state Sen. Pete Flores, who pulled off a 2018 special election upset for the 19th State Senate District, a seat that takes up just over half of Hurd's seat. Flores will be up for a full term next year in a 54-42 Clinton seat, so a congressional campaign may be a better bet for him. Roll Call also mentions former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, who was appointed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in early 2017 and resigned late last year. (In Texas, the secretary of state is not an elected official.)
On the Democratic side, 2018 nominee Gina Ortiz Jones, who only narrowly lost to Hurd, has been running for months and ended June with just shy of $600,000 cash-on-hand. There was no word about any other serious Democratic candidates running before Hurd retired, though Roll Call name-dropped state Reps. Poncho Nevárez and César Blanco on Friday. Nevárez represents about a quarter of the 23rd District, but very little of Blanco's seat is here. Last cycle, Blanco considered running against both Hurd or for the safely blue 16th District, which contains almost all of his state House seat, but he passed on both races.
Hurd's decision to leave is certainly a big blow for Republicans looking to hold his seat, but Team Red still has a real chance to hold on here. That's due in large part to the fact that Republican mapmakers drew up this district to disadvantage Latino voters. The GOP deviously added low-turnout Latino populations to the district so that it has a large Latino majority population, yet Latinos make up less than a majority of the electorate itself. Those tactics very likely made all the difference for Hurd, who pulled off three very tight victories here.
Still, Republicans will need to look hard to find a candidate as formidable as Hurd, a former CIA officer who won this district during the 2014 GOP wave on his second attempt. Hurd first sought to challenge Democratic incumbent Ciro Rodriguez in 2010 in the previous version of the 23rd District, but he lost the GOP primary runoff to Quico Canseco 52.6-47.4. Canseco beat Rodriguez in November, but he lost re-election two years later to Democrat Pete Gallego.
Both Hurd and Canseco decided to take on Gallego in 2014, and the pair once again advanced to a runoff. This time, though, Hurd was the one who prevailed 59-41. Both parties targeted this seat in the fall, and Hurd pulled off a close 50-48 win.
National Democrats immediately called for Gallego to run again, and he soon obliged. However, while Team Blue hoped that stronger presidential-year turnout among Latino voters would reverse the 2014 result, Hurd proved to be a very strong fundraiser and campaigner. Democrats tried to tie Hurd to Donald Trump, but while the seat did swing from 51-48 Romney to 50-46 Clinton, Hurd held on 48-47.
Gallego considered running again but ultimately decided to sit the race out. That left a wide-open battle for the Democratic nomination that was won by Ortiz Jones, a retired Air Force intelligence officer who would be Texas' first gay member of Congress as well as the body's first ever Filipina-American.
Ortiz Jones was an even better fundraiser than Hurd, but this race looked like an uphill climb for her. Hurd proved to be very good at generating positive media attention with activities like his bipartisan road trip with Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke (O'Rourke, who represented the neighboring 16th District, remained neutral in this race). Hurd was also smart about breaking with Trump on key issues like immigration, a very important topic in a district that stretches across much of the border with Mexico, while still backing most of his agenda.
Several polls showed Hurd well ahead, and Democrats also got more ominous news in September when Gallego lost the aforementioned state Senate special election to Flores, a sign that Team Blue would again struggle to turn out Latino voters in a midterm election. National Democratic groups were initially reluctant to spend much money on what looked like a very uphill race, and the NRCC even canceled its final 3 1/2 weeks' worth of ad reservations in early October in a big sign of confidence in Hurd.
However, the DCCC and House Majority PAC ended up spending a total of around $840,000, and the NRCC went back on the air in the final week of the race with a $554,000 buy, both of which indicated that this race was getting closer late in the game. Still, it was a big surprise when Hurd won just 49.2-48.7, a margin of only 926 votes.
Ortiz Jones soon made it clear that she planned to run again, and this time, both parties seemed to quickly recognize that this would be a competitive race. Now that Hurd is retiring, though, the onus is on the GOP to find a strong candidate to hold a seat where Trump is unlikely to be anything other than a liability.
● TX-24: In some potentially big news, multiple media sources reported Sunday night that GOP Rep. Kenny Marchant will retire from Texas’ 24th District, a suburban Dallas seat that moved from 60-38 Romney to just 51-45 Trump. This one safely red district continued to move away from the GOP last year: Beto O’Rourke beat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz 51-48 here, and Marchant won re-election by a shockingly-tight 51-48 margin against Jan McDowell, a Democrat who raised barely more than $100,000 during her entire campaign.
● WA-06: Bainbridge Island City Councilman Matthew Tirman announced Thursday that he would not challenge Rep. Derek Kilmer, a fellow Democrat.
Mayoral
● Nashville, TN Mayor: Nashville held its nonpartisan mayoral primary on Thursday, and not only did Democratic Mayor David Briley take a distant second place, he came close to missing the Sept. 12 runoff. Metro Councilor John Cooper, the brother of local Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper, took first with 35% of the vote, while Briley edged out conservative Carol Swain 25-22 for the second runoff spot. Democratic state Rep. John Ray Clemmons finished fourth with 16%.
No mayor has lost re-election since before 1962, the year that the current form of government (known as Metro) was created by consolidating Nashville with the rest of Davidson County. Briley is going to need a lot to go right to avoid making the wrong kind of history next month, especially since he's already achieved one ominous milestone: Thursday was the first time that a sitting Metro mayor failed to take first place in the primary. Indeed, the only other incumbent to even be forced into a mayoral runoff in the last 50 years was Beverly Briley, the Metro's first leader and current mayor's grandfather.
However, no other mayor has ever needed to run for re-election after having served such a short time in office. David Briley only became mayor in March of 2018 after incumbent Megan Barry resigned due to a scandal, and he won a special election that May by beating Swain 54-23.
Briley has been arguing over the last year the city has stabilized its finances since he took over, and he's touted the arrival of companies like Amazon, which is setting up an operations hub. On election night, Briley also declared that Cooper would take the city "backwards" and said that his rival is part of a "national trend" towards divisive politics.
Cooper has portrayed things differently, saying that the city's policy of using incentives to attract businesses is a "trickle-down approach" that isn't helping neighborhoods other than downtown. Cooper, who has opposed a number of Barry and Briley's proposed projects, has worked as a real estate developer, but he's also argued that the incumbent is too focused on development. And while Cooper hails from a prominent Democratic family, he's sought to win over fiscal conservative voters as he's insisted that under Briley, billions in public money is going "[c]arefully unaudited."
Cooper only entered the contest in April after initially saying that he wouldn't run, and Briley outraised him $1.18 million to $312,000. However, Cooper self-funded another $1.5 million of his own money and decisively outspent the rest of the field during the final weeks, and it's probably too much for the incumbent to hope that Cooper won't throw down more of his own cash.
So far, neither Swain or Clemmons have endorsed either runoff candidate. Swain, who was the most conservative in the primary, said just after the first round that she wasn't sure if she'd back anyone, but that she "certainly [is] not going to support Briley." Clemmons, who appealed to progressives, says he won't be endorsing either Briley or Cooper.
