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
● IN-05: Tuesday's crowded GOP primary for Indiana's competitive 5th Congressional District has been a nasty affair for a while, but businesswoman Beth Henderson has dialed up the xenophobia, as well as the misogyny, in a commercial against her Ukrainian-born foe, state Sen. Victoria Spartz.
The ad begins with a clip of Spartz accompanied by the text "UNALTERED VIDEO." All the state senator actually says here is "congressional candidate Victoria Spartz," but Henderson's campaign almost certainly wants to ensure that the audience hears Spartz say her name in her thick Ukrainian accent.
Campaign Action
The narrator then declares, "Victoria Spartz pretends to be a conservative. But Victoria has a secret." That line is then accompanied by a picture of the dark outline of woman gazing at a large Soviet flag on a nearby building and the text "VICTORIA'S SECRET." Spartz herself has run commercials that talked about her emigration from "socialist-controlled Ukraine," so her national origins are hardly a "secret." And unsurprisingly, the actual allegations in Henderson's spot have absolutely nothing to do with Spartz being from the former Soviet Union.
The narrator instead says that Spartz took taxpayer-funded subsidies and later self-funded her congressional campaign and now "won't talk about it." The ad then goes back to the video of Spartz saying, "If you know as much as I know …" before the narrator cuts her off to say, "Victoria, we couldn't agree more."
The rest of the commercial goes on to promote Henderson and remind viewers that she has Sen. Mike Braun's support. Henderson then appears at the end and, after talking about her conservative credentials, concludes, "I was born in the USA and I'm running for Congress."
This ad is the latest indication that Henderson believes that Spartz, who has decisively outspent the rest of the field, is her main opponent on Tuesday. The only poll we've seen was a mid-May survey from Spartz's allies at the Club for Growth that showed her leading former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi 32-14, while Henderson took 13%.
The Club isn't acting like Spartz is safely ahead, though: Roll Call recently reported that the group has spent $400,000 on commercials arguing that Brizzi and Henderson have opposed Donald Trump in the past. Several other candidates are running, including physician Chuck Dietzen and state Treasurer Kelly Mitchell, but they haven't taken much fire from anyone.
This suburban Indianapolis seat was safely red turf until the Trump era, but whoever emerges from Tuesday's ugly primary will be in for a competitive race in the fall. This seat moved from 58-41 Romney to 53-41 Trump, and former Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly narrowly prevailed here 48.4-47.9 in 2018 even though he lost 51-45 statewide. National Democrats have consolidated behind former state Rep. Christina Hale, who doesn't face any serious opposition for the nomination.
Election Changes
Please bookmark our litigation tracker for a complete compilation of the latest developments in every lawsuit regarding changes to election and voting procedures.
● Indiana: Marion County Clerk Myla Eldridge, a Democrat, has asked Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson to extend the noon Tuesday deadline by which absentee ballots must be received for Indiana's June 2 primary to avoid disenfranchising thousands of voters who've experienced delays in receiving or returning their ballots. As of Friday afternoon, Lawson's office had not yet responded to Eldridge's request.
● Maine: Democratic Gov. Janet Mills says she does not plan to order that Maine's July 14 primary be conducted by mail. Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, who at one point supported an all-mail election but soon thereafter reversed himself, said that if Mills changes her mind, she'd have to issue an order by June 14, a month before the primary.
● Nevada: A federal judge has, for the second time, rejected a lawsuit by a conservative group seeking to block Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske from conducting Nevada's June 9 primary by mail. The plaintiffs had amended their case after U.S. District Judge Miranda Du concluded they'd fail to show they would be harmed by Cegavske's plan, but Du ruled that their latest attempt "glaringly repackages old arguments."
● New York: New York's Democratic-run state legislature has passed a bill to allow voters to request absentee ballots online for the November general election. The bill also extends the deadline to postmark ballots from the day before the election to Election Day itself. Ballots must still be received within seven days of the election. The measure now goes to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
● Pennsylvania: Voting rights advocates faced setbacks in two suits aimed at extending Pennsylvania's absentee ballot receipt deadline ahead of Tuesday's primary, while a second populous county in the Philadelphia suburbs brought its own lawsuit seeking to delay the deadline.
In one case, backed by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, an intermediate state appeals court ruled that it likely did not have jurisdiction over the plaintiffs' requests and therefore could not grant them. Instead, said the judge, only the Pennsylvania Supreme Court likely could decide the matter. Plaintiffs have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, asking the justices either to find that the appeals court does have jurisdiction or to grant them the relief they're seeking.
In a separate suit, supported by the Public Interest Law Center, the state Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs had failed to bring their case within a 180-day period specified by a new law passed last year that, for the first time, allowed any voter to request an absentee ballot without an excuse.
The PILC had previously filed a lawsuit addressing the same issue that the Supreme Court rejected earlier this month, with one justice explaining in a concurring opinion that worries about disruptions in mail service were too speculative at the time. In its new case, the PILC argued that such disruptions had in fact become very real but could not persuade the justices that the 180-day deadline, which recently passed, did not apply to them.
Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the case now belongs in the same intermediate appeals court, known as the Commonwealth Court, that just said it could not hear the Priorities USA case—the exact reverse situation.
Finally, officials in Bucks County, the fourth-largest county in the state, have asked a lower state court to allow them to count ballots so long as they are postmarked by the day before the primary and received by a later date of the court's choosing. Under Pennsylvania law, ballots must be received by Election Day in order to be counted, but officials say that due to the surge in requests for absentee ballots, they've been unable to send them out with enough time for voters to return them. A similar request made by officials in Montgomery County was recently rejected.
● Texas: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he will extend the early voting period for the November general election in Texas, but in remarks on Thursday, he did not specify how long such an extension might be. In May, Abbott doubled the length of early voting for the state's July 14 runoffs from one week to two.
Gubernatorial
● VT-Gov: Candidate filing closed Thursday for Vermont's Aug. 11 primaries, and the state has a list of contenders available here.
GOP Gov. Phil Scott is seeking a third two-year term, and three notable candidates are running for the Democratic nomination to face him. Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman has won two terms as the nominee of both Team Blue and the Vermont Progressive Party, a third party that often allies with the Democrats, though he still identifies as a Progressive. (Vermont allows candidates to claim multiple party nominations.) Former state Education Secretary Rebecca Holcombe entered the race months before Zuckerman, while self-funding attorney Patrick Winburn ran some ads when he launched his campaign in March.
While Vermont is solidly Democratic at the federal level, voters in the Green Mountain State have long backed moderate Republicans like Scott for governor. Scott won re-election 55-40 during the 2018 Democratic wave, and polls have given him strong approval ratings since then. Daily Kos Elections rates this contest as Likely Republican.
House
● GA-09: Gun store owner Andrew Clyde ties himself to Rep. Doug Collins, who is leaving to run for the Senate, in his new ad for the June 9 GOP primary.
The commercial begins with footage of Collins telling the House, "In 2013, a fellow northeast Georgian, Andrew Clyde, experienced IRS abuse in the form of civil asset forfeiture first-hand." The commercial then shows Clyde at his store holding and stocking rifles. Clyde tells the audience in a voiceover that Collins helped him beat the IRS and that Trump later signed their bill "ensuring the corrupt IRS never did this to another American again."
● TX-04: Atlanta Mayor Travis Ransom announced Thursday that he would seek the GOP nod at the Aug. 8 party meeting.
● TX-13: Lobbyist Josh Winegarner picked up an endorsement on Thursday from freshman Rep. Lance Gooden in the July 14 GOP primary runoff.
Ballot Measures
● CA Ballot: California election officials confirmed on Friday that the so-called "split roll" initiative has made the November ballot. If passed, this measure would scale back a significant part of Proposition 13, the notorious 1978 ballot question that has undermined everyone who's tried to govern the nation's largest state over the last 42 years. As David Jarman explained back in April, the split-roll would dramatically alter California's property tax landscape and lead to a massive increase in tax revenue.
Prop. 13, as it's commonly known, was one of the first and best-known examples of taxpayer revolts using the initiative system. The measure limits the annual property tax on a particular property to no more than 1% of its assessed value and, most importantly, limits the increase in a property's assessed value to no more than 2% per year—even if its actual market value has soared. This has resulted in municipalities and school districts taking in revenues far smaller than they ought to be.
However, voters finally have their chance this fall to modify the system Prop. 13 set up. This measure would essentially split the "roll" of properties every municipality maintains by requiring commercial and industrial properties to be reassessed at actual market value while keeping residential and agricultural properties under Prop. 13's rules.
As Jarman explained, though, this will be an expensive battle. Supporters of the split-roll initiative, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the California Teachers Association, have raised over $14 million to pass the measure. However, the state's deep-pocketed commercial landowners are also prepared to do what it takes to preserve the status quo.