The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Cara Zelaya, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast
Leading Off
● Primary Night: Don't Dream It's Over: Polls close Tuesday for the final primary night of 2022 as voters in Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island select their nominees for the November general election. (The only state that has yet to go to the polls this year is Louisiana, which will hold its all-party primary on Nov. 8—the day of the midterms.) And for one last time this year, we've put together our preview of the big contest to watch.
Both parties will be closely watching the GOP primary for New Hampshire's Senate seat, where a win for retired Army Brig. General Donald Bolduc could badly weaken the party's chances against Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Deep-pocketed Republicans launched a late effort to help state Senate President Chuck Morse get past Bolduc, whom Gov. Chris Sununu has slammed as a "conspiracy-theory extremist," while Democrats are spending to weaken Morse. A survey released Friday by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling showed Bolduc ahead 33-23, but with a hefty 25% undecided.
We also have a big Democratic primary for governor of Rhode Island as Dan McKee, who was elevated from the office of lieutenant governor to the top job in March of last year when Gina Raimondo resigned to become Joe Biden's commerce secretary, tries to keep his new job. McKee's main foe in this five-way race appears to be Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, though former CVS executive Helena Foulkes has used her connections and personal wealth to far outspend the rest of the field. The winner will go up against self-funding businessman Ashley Kalus, who faces no serious opposition of her own in the GOP primary.
If McKee loses, he'd be only the second Rhode Island governor to fall in a primary: The first was Bruce Sundlun, a fellow Democrat who lost his 1994 primary in a landslide. McKee is also trying to avoid joining the small group of six state governors who have lost their party's nomination during the 21st century:
- 2004: Utah Gov. Olene Walker (R)
- 2004: Missouri Gov. Bob Holden (D)
- 2006: Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R)
- 2010: Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R)
- 2014: Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D)
- 2018: Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer (R)
Two members of this group were, like McKee, running for the first time since they ascended from the lieutenant governor's office: Walker failed to advance out of her party's 2004 convention, while Colyer lost by 343 votes in his 2018 race against Trump-endorsed foe Kris Kobach. No matter what, though, McKee is very unlikely to come close to exceeding Abercrombie's record for the worst primary defeat for a sitting governor in American history.
We'll also be keeping a close eye on the GOP primaries back in New Hampshire to take on each of the state's Democratic House members, 1st District Rep. Chris Pappas and 2nd District Rep. Annie Kuster. Finally, Democrats have a crowded field of their own in Rhode Island's 2nd to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin. You can find out more about each of these contests in our preview.
The first polls close in parts of New Hampshire at 7 PM ET. Our live coverage will begin at 8 PM ET at Daily Kos Elections when polls close in the remainder of the state, as well as in all of Delaware and Rhode Island. You can also follow us on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates.
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Politico reports that Sentinel Action Fund, which is aligned with the conservative Heritage Foundation, has booked $3.5 million in TV time to aid Republican Blake Masters and will spend another $1.5 million on get-out-the-vote-efforts. The move comes days after Saving Arizona PAC launched its own $1.5 million buy to help Masters: These new arrivals, though, are still well short of making up for the $11.5 million worth of reservations that the NRSC and Senate Leadership Fund canceled last month.
● OH-Sen, OH-Gov: Suffolk University's new survey for USA Today gives Democrat Tim Ryan a narrow 47-46 edge over Republican J.D. Vance in Ohio's Senate race even as GOP Gov. Mike DeWine posts a 54-39 advantage over Democrat Nan Whaley. Suffolk's May poll showed Vance and DeWine up 42-39 and 45-30, respectively, and almost every Ohio survey we've seen in the intervening time has come from a partisan firm.
Governors
● NY-Gov: The Republican firm co/efficient shows Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul fending off Republican Lee Zeldin 49-43, which is very different from the 55-31 Hochul lead that SurveyUSA found a few weeks ago.
House
● AZ-04: Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton has unveiled a crossparty endorsement from Mesa Mayor John Giles, whose city is home to just under half of the new 4th District's denizens. Giles, who leads what the 2020 census also says is America's 36th-largest city (those numbers placed Mesa just ahead of Atlanta, Georgia in population), also backed Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in July.
A local Republican Party responded by censuring Giles and calling for party members to "cease recognition" of him, though the mayor was far from sorry. "I am an unapologetically Republican," he said, "(But) I'm going to vote for and support the best candidate regardless of party affiliation."
● MI-07, NM-Gov: Tom Barrett's latest commercial in Michigan's 7th District attacks Democratic incumbent Elissa Slotkin over inflation even though Republicans have largely moved on to other topics as the economy improves. Indeed, the Washington Post ran an article over the weekend quoting Donald Schneider, the GOP's chief economist on the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that while the GOP once saw the issue as "our big arrow in the quiver," now "it's a private concern among Republicans: 'Are we going to lose this thing, or are we okay?'"
The story also notes that talk about gas prices has largely faded from Team Red's campaign ads as costs have dramatically dropped since this spring's high. The Post writes, "About 1 in every 6 ads mentioned 'gas prices' in July, but only 1 percent of ads mentioned the words in early September, according to AdImpact data." Barrett's newest commercial doesn't directly mention gas prices either, though it opens with a woman refilling her car as she complains about inflation.
Unsurprisingly, the GOP has recalibrated by spreading fear about public safety. The Post says that "'crime' has become a central message of Republicans, with the word being used in 29 percent of ads, up from about 12 percent in July."
At least one of these spots, however, has generated the wrong type of attention for the Republican airing it. Mark Ronchetti, who is trying to unseat Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico, last week ran a commercial where his wife talks about calling 911 during what she thought was a home invasion before the candidate insists the incumbent is making the state less safe. However, the local media quickly reported that the incident occurred in 2012 when Republican Susana Martinez was in the early years of her governorship.
While Democrats were quick to blast Ronchetti for focusing on something that happened over six years before Lujan Grisham took office, some of the harshest criticism also came from a fellow Republican. "Whoever put this home invasion ad out should have done just a little bit of homework" said Sandoval County Commissioner Jay Block, who badly lost the June primary for this post. "Mistakes like this make it easy for MLG to make our side look like idiots."
● NY-19: Democrat Josh Riley has publicized an internal from Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group that shows him edging out Republican Marc Molinaro 47-44, which makes this the first poll we've seen of this contest. Molinaro last month lost the special election in the old boundaries of the 19th District in a 51-49 upset against Democrat Pat Ryan, and the redrawn version of this seat could be even tougher for the Dutchess County executive to flip.
Biden, according to new calculations from Daily Kos Elections, would have taken the new seat 51-47, while he won the old constituency only 50-48. Only 43% of the residents of the new 19th also live in the seat that Molinaro just lost, and none of them are his current Dutchess County constituents. (Most of that county is located in the new 18th, where Ryan is seeking re-election, while the balance is in the 17th.)
● TX-34: House Majority PAC is tying Republican Rep. Mayra Flores to the attack on the Capital in a commercial that faults her for supporting "conspiracy theories that resulted in the armed attack on Jan. 6, leaving 150 police officers beaten and five dead." CNN reported just after Flores' June special election victory that, while she later denied having anything to do with QAnon, she repeatedly used its hashtag in 2020.
Flores also spent the weeks after that election denying Trump lost, including on Jan. 6 itself when she tweeted, "If we allow the Democrats to steal THIS election, they will steal EVERY election moving forward!" She wrote later that day that the riot "surely was caused by infiltrators" and falsely insisted that one rioter was a Black Lives Matter member.
HMP's commercial also faults Flores for having "sponsored an extreme abortion law that prohibits access to abortion in case of rape and incest, or even when an innocent mother's life is at risk." The congresswoman faces her fellow incumbent, Democratic Rep. Vicente González, in a constituency in the eastern Rio Grande Valley that would have supported Biden 57-42.
● Independent Expenditures: Daily Kos Elections is pleased to bring you the second installment of our spreadsheet tracking spending by the "Big Four" House groups—the DCCC, House Majority PAC, NRCC, and Congressional Leadership Fund—which we're updating weekly from now through Election Day.
Since our chart first went live just after Labor Day, the playing field as these organizations see it has almost doubled, with spending showing up in 19 new districts, on top of the 20 in our initial update. The new districts are highlighted in bold and include battlegrounds across the country, from Arizona's 2nd (where the NRCC just dumped in $900,000 to oust Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran) to Wisconsin's 3rd (where the CLF has now deployed $130,000 to flip this Democratic-held open seat).
This week's edition also breaks out spending in two ways: everything that's been spent on the general election to date this cycle (which began in earnest on Aug. 17 with a CLF TV ad in Maine's 2nd targeting Democratic Rep. Jared Golden), and the money that's been spent in just the last week. You can expect the list to grow as we approach the election: In 2020, the Big Four got involved in 71 races, and in 2018, that figure got all the way up to 85.
Ballot Measures
● MA Ballot: This week saw the escalation of what will be an expensive ad war in Massachusetts ahead of this November's vote over the "millionaires tax" or "Fair Share Amendment." Should a majority of voters support Question 1, an extra 4% would be added to personal income taxes over $1 million in order to fund education and transportation projects. The local NBC affiliate explains, "For example, if you had personal income of $1.5 million, the first million would be taxed at the current rate of 5.5%, or $55,000. The extra $500,000 would be taxed at 9% or $45,000. You would pay $17,500 more."
An August MassInc poll found a 57-37 majority in support, but Question 1's foes are now going up with their first TV spot to try to change public opinion. The Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike Amendment, whose major donors include New England Patriots' owner Robert Kraft and New Balance chairman Jim Davis, castigated the effort as a tax increase on "tens of thousands of small business owners, family farmers, and homeowners."
The ad came a month after Fair Share Massachusetts, which is largely funded by unions, launched its own inaugural commercial bemoaning how "[w]orking people pay a higher share of taxes than the wealthiest 1%" and arguing that Question 1 would mean that millionaires would "pay their fair share." The narrator also declared that "99% of us won't pay a penny more" if the amendment passed, while $2 billion would be raised for "public schools, colleges, and roads and bridges."
Both sides have plenty of money to make their case. Commonwealth Magazine writes that Fair Share Massachusetts has raised $11.4 million this year compared to $9.1 million for their opponents.
Judges
● MI Supreme Court: Chief Justice Bridget McCormack unexpectedly announced Monday that she would resign on or after Nov. 22 with six years left on the eight-year term the Democrat won in 2020. Her replacement will be chosen by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer even if the governor loses re-election this fall. McCormack's departure won't have any impact on this year's battle to control the state Supreme Court, where Democrats are defending a 4-3 majority, but McCormack's successor will be on the ballot in 2024.
Ad Roundup