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
● 3Q Fundraising: The third fundraising quarter of 2020 came to an end on Wednesday evening, and campaign finance reports are due Oct. 15 for federal candidates. Several campaigns, almost all of them Democratic, have already released their numbers early, and we may be in for a fundraising quarter like we’ve never seen before:
● GA-Sen-B: Raphael Warnock (D): $12.8 million raised
● MI-Sen: Gary Peters (D-inc): $14 million raised
● NC-Sen: Cal Cunningham (D): $28.3 million raised
● CO-03: Diane Mitsch Bush (D): $2.5 million raised
● FL-26: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-inc): $2 million raised
● ME-02: Jared Golden (D-inc): $1.8 million raised
● MI-06: Jon Hoadley (D): $1.1 million raised
● MI-08: Elissa Slotkin (D-inc): $2.2 million raised, $3.4 million cash-on-hand
● NJ-02: Amy Kennedy (D): $2.24 million raised
● NJ-03: Andy Kim (D-inc): $2 million raised
● NY-01: Nancy Goroff (D): $2.75 million raised
● NY-11: Max Rose (D-inc): $2 million raised, $2 million cash-on-hand; Nicole Malliotakis (R): $1 million raised
● SC-01: Joe Cunningham (D-inc): $1.8 million raised
● TX-07: Wesley Hunt (R): $2.5 million raised
● TX-10: Mike Siegel (D): $1 million raised
North Carolina Democratic Cal Cunningham’s numbers are particularly jaw-dropping, especially since this very seat hosted what was at the time the most expensive Senate race in American history only six years ago. Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan raised a total of $25 million during that entire campaign while Republican challenger Thom Tillis, whom Cunningham is hoping to unseat now, took in $11 million.
Senate
● IA-Sen, ME-Sen: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced Wednesday that it would spend $1 million each to aid Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, but Senate Republicans reacted bitterly to this ostensibly good news. NRSC Executive Director Kevin McLaughlin complained to the Washington Post, “This is a day late and a lot of dollars short,” adding, “It is not a serious effort. It’s a public relations ploy, and it’s not even a good one.”
This griping comes in the midst of a chaotic year for the Chamber. The group was one of largest outside spenders for Republicans in primaries and general elections as recently as 2016, but the Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay wrote back in July that the Chamber’s uneasy relationship with the Trump administration, as well as the financial uncertainties of the pandemic, have dramatically reduced its influence since then. Last month, the Chamber also surprised plenty of observers by endorsing 23 freshmen Democrats, a decision that came after plenty of infighting.
The conflict intensified on Tuesday when the Chamber’s longtime political strategist, Scott Reed, parted ways with the group. Reed said he’d chosen to quit, saying, “I can no longer be part of this institution as it moves left.” A Chamber spokesman insisted, though, that Reed had actually been fired for having “repeatedly breached confidentiality, distorted facts for his own benefit, withheld information from Chamber leadership and leaked internal information to the press.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reacted to the news by saying, “Honestly at this point, I think they’re so confused about what they’re about that they probably don’t make much difference.”
● ME-Sen: Democrat Sara Gideon’s new commercial slams Republican incumbent Susan Collins for casting the deciding vote on several far-right or unqualified Trump judicial nominees. The narrator continues, “During the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Collins didn’t vote against a single one of Trump’s judicial nominees.”
The spot then shows a clip of Collins announcing she’d decided to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which is followed by footage of Trump exclaiming, “How good was Sen. Susan Collins yesterday, really?” The narrator jumps back in and says that Collins only took a position on the current Supreme Court vacancy once she realized her vote wouldn’t matter.
● NC-Sen: Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is up with a commercial focused on the Supreme Court days after a progressive group called Piedmont Rising launched a spot castigating him for rushing to confirm a Trump nominee who could “take away healthcare during the pandemic.” Tillis’ spot features a fake newscaster who takes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to task for opposing Amy Coney Barrett before he ties Democrat Cal Cunningham to Schumer. He argues, “A vote for Cal Cunningham is a vote for radically liberal government.”
● Ad Reservations: Republican outside groups have booked millions more in ad spending in four more Senate contests, including Michigan and South Carolina, two races that hadn't seen much spending from conservatives.
In Michigan, the Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $9 million to aid John James' bid against Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Senate Majority PAC has spent a total of $13 million here so far, but to James' consternation, major GOP groups had largely bypassed this contest in favor of other Senate contests until now; in August, James' campaign even released a poll showing him trailing 49-44 to argue that he could win "[w]ith the proper resources." Peters has led in almost every poll that's been released all year, though some recent surveys have shown a competitive race.
SLF has also booked $10 million in TV and radio ads in South Carolina, where polls have shown an unexpectedly tight race between Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democrat Jaime Harrison. The support will come as a relief to Graham, who went on Fox News last week and begged the audience to donate to him, pleading, "Help me. They're killing me, money-wise. Help me." Graham wasn't wrong: The State's Joseph Bustos reported on Thursday that Harrison has $11.1 million in ad time reserved for the rest of the campaign compared to the $1.5 million Graham has booked.
While SLF's upcoming ad blitz will help Team Red narrow their deficit, though, Harrison's side will likely retain a big financial advantage. SMP recently launched its own $6.5 million buy here to aid Harrison, while the DSCC announced last week that it was making a "seven-figure investment" in this race. By contrast, the only other major outside group helping Graham is Security is Strength, an Orwellian-named PAC that has $2.2 million booked through Election Day.
More importantly for Harrison, though, super PAC money doesn't buy as many ads as campaigns themselves. The reason is that super PACs need to spend far more money than campaigns to purchase ad time because FCC regulations give candidates—but not outside groups—discounted rates on TV and radio.
Super PACs also can't pay campaign staff salaries, and of course, they are ostensibly barred from coordinating with campaigns (though there are ways to get around these rules). This means that, unless Fox News viewers take Graham's pleading to heart and start donating in droves, Republican outside groups will need to throw down much more outside money to match Harrison on the airwaves.
Finally, Politico's James Arkin writes that SLF has booked an additional $4.7 million in Georgia, where both sides are spending millions in the contest between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. SLF's allies at American Crossroads have also reserved an extra $9.6 million in North Carolina, which is already the most expensive Senate race in the country by far.
● Polls:
- AZ-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Mark Kelly (D): 51, Martha McSally (R-inc): 42 (49-45 Biden) (late Sept.: 47-38 Kelly)
- IA-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Theresa Greenfield (D): 44, Joni Ernst (R-inc): 42, Rick Stewart (L): 1 Suzanne Herzog (I): 1 (47-44 Trump) (Aug.: 45-43 Greenfield)
- ME-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Sara Gideon (D): 46, Susan Collins (R-inc): 41, Lisa Savage (I): 3, Max Linn (I): 1 (53-39 Biden) (Aug.: 48-45 Gideon)
- MI-Sen: Trafalgar Group (R) for Restoration PAC: Gary Peters (D-inc): 48, John James (R): 47 (49-47 Biden) (late Sept.: 47-47 tie)
- NC-Sen: ALG Research (D) for Piedmont Rising: Cal Cunningham (D): 53, Thom Tillis (R-inc): 41 (50-47 Biden)
- NH-Sen: University of New Hampshire: Jeanne Shaheen (D-inc): 54, Corky Messner (R): 41 (53-44 Biden) (Sept.: 56-37 Shaheen)
- SC-Sen: Data for Progress (D) for Crooked Media and Indivisible: Lindsey Graham (R-inc): 45, Jaime Harrison (D): 44, Bill Bledsoe (C): 2 (47-43 Trump)
MI-Sen: Restoration PAC, a conservative group that has spent $2.3 million to aid Republican John James, had been releasing monthly polls from Hodas & Associates that always showed both James and Donald Trump well behind. However, the PAC announced last month that Trafalger would now do its surveys, tweeting that with its new pollster, "We'll find those hidden Trump voters!" Nate Silver responded, "Polling by partisan groups (whether liberal or conservative) needs to be taken with a grain of salt anyway, but it's particularly bad when the group declares what results it wants before even conducting the poll."
Restoration PAC very much seems to have gotten what it wanted, though, since it now finds Democratic Sen. Gary Peters and Joe Biden just narrowly ahead. The PAC's website even displays a chart that shows Biden's support dramatically collapsing in Michigan without any sort of note that it switched pollsters in the intervening time. (As any polling analyst will tell you, you should never try to draw a trendline between two polls from two entirely different pollsters.)
NC-Sen: Piedmont Rising, which sponsored this survey, recently launched a $2 million buy against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
SC-Sen: On Thursday, hours after this poll was released, Constitution Party nominee Bill Bledsoe announced he was dropping out and endorsing Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, though it's too late for Bledsoe to get off the ballot. Apart from a Libertarian waging a write-in campaign, there are no other candidates in the race now besides Graham and Democrat Jaime Harrison.
Data for Progress did offer a version of the survey that excluded Bledsoe, and it found Graham with the same 1-point lead over Harrison that he posted when Bledsoe was an option. However, Bledsoe's departure could still make a difference in what very much appears to be a close race if his supporters end up following his lead and going for Graham.
Gubernatorial
● VA-Gov: Republican Del. Kirk Cox filed paperwork Wednesday to set up a campaign account for a potential 2021 bid for governor, though the former speaker said he “will not make an announcement until after the November 2020 elections.”
● Polls:
House
● IN-05: Democrat Christina Hale’s new spot utilizes a clip of Republican Victoria Spartz saying that “health care, education, housing were never meant to be federal issues.” The narrator argues that Spartz “doesn’t believe federal programs like Medicare should exist.”
● ME-02: Democratic Rep. Jared Golden has a commercial featuring William Cohen, who served as Maine’s Republican senator from 1979 through 1997 before becoming Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense. Cohen praises Golden’s work for his constituents before endorsing him.
● MN-01: Democrat Dan Feehan’s new spot declares that Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn’s “office steered nearly a half million of our money to shady companies owned by his staff and their families, who billed taxpayers for false expenses.”
Back in August, the Minnesota Reformer reported that Hagedorn used $110,000 in taxpayer money to pay a company owned by one of his staffers to print constituent mailers, and that his office had also given $340,000 to another firm called Abernathy West for a similar job. Hagedorn had fired his chief of staff, Peter Su, back in June, though he’s continued to remain vague on why. The public, though, learned after the Reformer’s first report that Su’s brother owned Abernathy West.
Su did not go quietly, though, and he produced a recording taken in early August—six weeks after his sacking—where Hagedorn was heard to say, “If your brother was doing the work, and he and I did not have a personal relationship and all that stuff going in, I don’t believe there’s any problem there either.” Hagedorn’s team didn’t dispute the authenticity but insisted, “[T]here is nothing in [the recording] to suggest that Congressman Hagedorn had knowledge of the hiring of the vendors, that he approved of them or that anyone other than Mr. Su was the one who selected them.”
● TX-22: Republican Troy Nehls’ first general election ad argues “organizations that want to defund the police” are funding Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni’s campaign, though unsurprisingly, it doesn’t go into any sort of detail.
● Polls:
NC-11: This poll, which did not include presidential numbers, is the first survey we've seen in nearly two months. In early August, DCCC Analytics found Republican Madison Cawthorn leading Democrat Moe Davis 46-41 in a western North Carolina seat that Donald Trump took 57-40 four years ago. This district looked like it would be an easy hold for Team Red as recently as July but, not only have Republicans declined to release contradictory polling, the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund booked $850,000 last week to aid Cawthorn.
NH-02: UNH finds a surprisingly close contest here, but there's good reason to be skeptical. Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster defeated Republican Steve Negron 56-42 last cycle, and neither party has acted like their rematch will be at all competitive. UNH also has a long history of finding wild, unexplained swings in its polling, and this could be another one.
PA-07: This is the first survey we've seen of the contest for this Lehigh Valley seat, which narrowly backed Hillary Clinton 49-48. National Republicans last year touted Lisa Scheller as a prized recruit who could take back a seat the party lost in the 2018 wave, but so far, there has been almost no outside spending on either side.
Other Races
● Calendar: We've just updated our 2020 downballot election calendar to include a bevy of local races, including several additional ones that we'll be covering this fall. No election is too far down the ballot for Daily Kos Elections and our new additions include races from large areas like Oakland County, Michigan to smaller jurisdictions like the judicial district that contains Jackson and Larimer Counties, Colorado.
While some races (such as the district attorney race in Fulton County, Georgia) have uncontested general elections where the primary was tantamount to election, there is still plenty of intrigue to be had in local races on Nov. 3, much of it focused in Arizona. A top swing state at the top of the ballot, Arizona's largest county, Maricopa, will also be home to competitive races for sheriff and county attorney. Additionally, three of the five seats are up on Arizona's Corporation Commission, an important body that's been called Arizona's "fourth branch of government" that Republicans control 4-1.
There are a ton of other races we're tracking so be sure to bookmark our calendar.
Data
● Governor-by-LD, Senate-by-LD: Daily Kos Elections is out with new data for Ohio, which was crunched for us by elections analyst Bill Coningsby, of the 2018 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial results by state Senate, state House, and congressional district.
While Democrats are hoping that Joe Biden will be able to defeat Donald Trump in a state that swung hard to the right in 2016, the Republican gerrymander will make it extremely difficult for Team Blue to flip either chamber of the legislature.
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won re-election by a convincing 52-46 margin against Republican Jim Renacci, but Brown only took 50 of the 99 state House seats and 17 of the 33 state Senate districts—the barest majorities possible. Republicans currently enjoy a 61-38 edge in the House, just narrowly more than the three-fifths needed to override vetoes, and a massive 24-9 supermajority in the Senate, where half the chamber is up every two years.
We'll also take a quick look at the state's 16 congressional districts. While Hillary Clinton and gubernatorial nominee Richard Cordray took the same four U.S. House seats that Democrats currently hold, Brown carried an additional five districts.
Brown won the 1st District in the Cincinnati area, where Republican Rep. Steve Chabot is currently facing a tough challenge from Democrat Kate Schroder, as well as the Dayton-based 10th District, where veteran Republican Rep. Mike Turner is trying to fend off Democrat Desiree Tims. Brown also won the 12th, 14th, and 15th Districts, though those haven't attracted much attention this cycle.
P.S. You can find our master list of statewide election results by congressional and legislative district here, which we'll be updating as we add new states. Additionally, you can find all our data from 2018 and past cycles here.
Ad Roundup
