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.
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Leading Off
● Virginia: Last week, Virginia's Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin quietly revived a Jim Crow-era voting restriction by reversing his Democratic predecessor's policy of automatically restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions once they had served their prison sentences.
- Virginia now has the most restrictive felony disenfranchisement policy in the country. Everyone newly convicted of a felony or currently in prison will be banned from voting for life by default, and Youngkin will personally get to decide who, if anyone, has their rights restored in the future.
- And it's led to massive racial disparities. Before Youngkin's predecessors had greatly limited the scope of disenfranchisement over the past decade, Virginia's lifetime ban had stripped one in five Black citizens of their voting rights, four times the rate of whites.
- Straight out of Jim Crow: Virginia's current felony voter ban was put in place as part of a 1902 constitution whose framers explicitly promised that its voting restrictions would disenfranchise the vast majority of Black voters.
Read more about this restrictive regime—and how Democrats can fight back against it.
Senate
● MI-Sen: EMILY's List on Thursday issued an endorsement of Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is currently the only notable Democrat in the race.
● PA-Sen: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman's office says he'll return to work the week of April 17 about two months after he checked himself into Walter Reed Medical Center to seek treatment for depression.
Judges
● WI Supreme Court: Conservative groups have spent millions on ads ahead of Tuesday’s race arguing that progressive Janet Protasiewicz issued too light of a sentence in a rape trial, but the victim at the center of the case has responded by denouncing the commercials for retraumatizing her.
The woman, whom the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel only identified as “Emily,” told the paper that she was “100% satisfied” with the sentence of 2 1/2 years in prison and that same amount of time in extended supervision. Emily also faulted Protasiewicz's opponents for using a portion of her victim impact statement in their ads to suggest otherwise, saying, “They must have read criminal reports or court records to know identifiable information about me, and if they did, they would know I am just looking for peace of mind.” She added, “I wondered if there was any thought put into the human beings behind the cases.”
Emily’s criticisms did not, however, move the two super PACs behind these ads, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and Fair Courts America. The latter insisted, “Our ad is factual, accurate and necessary because Wisconsin so-called journalists refuse to do most stories that might hurt Democrats,” while WMC also defended its commercials.
The Journal Sentinel notes that a similar story played out in 2018, when WMC likewise ran ads attacking another progressive running for the state Supreme Court, Rebecca Dallet, over her sentencing in a sexual assault case. Then, the family involved responded by calling for the spot to be removed from the air. The powerful conservative group refused to heed those pleas, but Dallet ultimately won by a convincing 56-44 margin.
Mayors and County Leaders
● Allegheny County, PA Executive: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Adam Smeltz, citing data from AdImpact, reports that county Treasurer John Weinstein has had the airwaves almost to himself ahead of the six-way Democratic primary on May 16. Weinstein, relays Smeltz, deployed $385,000 on TV and radio through Monday, while he has $407,000 booked for the remainder of the race. His monopoly ended this week, though, when attorney Dave Fawcett, who is a former Republican member of the County Council, launched a $70,000 buy.
Weinstein has only run positive spots so far, but he's faced some tough scrutiny in the media. WESA's Chris Potter writes that his station and other local outlets "have raised questions about Weinstein's conduct, including alleged secret deals to be returned to the board of the county's sewer authority, and whether his support of a local judge produced jobs for people tied to Weinstein personally."
Both Fawcett and another primary rival, Pittsburgh Controller Michael Lamb, have held press conferences bashing Weinstein, while state Rep. Sara Innamorato has avoided explicitly going after the treasurer. Two other contenders are also running, though none of them have gotten much traction so far: A seventh, County Councilmember Liv Bennett, ended up withdrawing from the primary just ahead of the early March filing deadline.
● Philadelphia, PA Mayor: State Rep. Amen Brown on Tuesday survived an attempt to knock him off the packed May 16 Democratic primary ballot, though a judge used the hearing to blast him for failing to properly file his debt and financial interest disclosures. Judge Idee Fox, who noted he'd run into this same problem during his re-election campaign last year, ordered Brown to submit this paperwork by Friday, saying, "This is your second bite of the apple. There won't be a third one."
Brown himself argued that grocer Jeff Brown, who is not related to his rival but is located immediately below him on the ballot, was behind the challenge. Jeff Brown's team did not confirm or deny this, though the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that a lawyer working for his campaign argued against the state representative in court. However, while Amen Brown's continued presence in the race could end up drawing some votes from the other Brown, he's raised very little money and has yet to benefit from any of the $5 million in super PAC support that a prominent developer reportedly predicted would come his way.
So far most of the $8.3 million in TV spending has come from three entities: former City Councilmember Alan Domb, whom the Inquirer said Thursday has spent $4.8 million; Jeff Brown; and Brown's allied super PAC. Brown earlier in March went negative for the first time with a spot showing images of Domb as well as fellow former councilors Derek Green, Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker, and Maria Quiñones Sánchez, arguing, "We've all seen how crime got worse while these candidates sat in City Hall."
But Domb last week debuted a commercial focused on attacking just Brown over old ads that seemed to imply Michelle Obama was backing him. "Bless his heart," says Domb's narrator, "Jeff Brown thought he could fool us into believing Michelle Obama was supporting his campaign."
Meanwhile, outside groups backing two other candidates recently began their own ads. Fighting Together for Philadelphia PAC last week began a $400,000 buy praising Gym for getting "the city to start sending mental health first responders on some 911 calls," and pledging she'll "put an end to the senseless violence and lawlessness that threatens our families and our future."
Philadelphians for our Future PAC additionally went on to drop $230,000 on ads declaring, "Cherelle Parker knows that making Philly safer should be our next mayor's top priority." Parker, who began airing her own ads three weeks ago, also recently earned the backing of the Eastern Atlantic States Council of Carpenters, a well-funded labor group that helped termed-out incumbent Jim Kenney in his 2015 win.
Two more contenders also recently debuted their first spots. Former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart's commercial touts her support from Philly's last two mayors, John Street and Michael Nutter, who allude to their famous clashes by telling the audience that one thing they "agree vociferously" on is whom to vote for. Green, finally, is deploying at least $63,000 on his own buy: One ad has him explaining that he fears his autistic son could get harmed even by well-meaning police due to a miscommunication, while the other calls for "real consequences for using illegal guns."
All of this comes at a time when there's little polling data to indicate who has the edge in a primary where it takes just a plurality to win. The only recent numbers that have surfaced came from a mid-March FM3 survey for Jeff Brown's allies at For a Better Philadelphia that gave him the lead with 24%: Gym and Domb took 15% each to Rhynhart's 12%, with Parker and Quinones-Sanchez at 7% apiece and no one else breaking 2%. A January internal we hadn't previously seen had Brown edging out Gym 20-15.
Obituaries
● Nick Galifianakis: Former North Carolina Rep. Nick Galifianakis, a three-term Democrat who lost an ugly 1972 Senate race to ultraconservative segregationist Jesse Helms, died Monday at the age of 94. Galifianakis, who is the uncle of comedian Zach Galifianakis and cartoonist Nick Galifianakis, had an eventful career during his time in office:
- “I'm all for Nick, but who's this 'Anakis' person?” Galifianakis famously took advantage of his long name by famously spreading it across two side-by-side buttons, a tactic he’d repeat even though it reportedly confused at least one voter.
- A changing state. Galifianakis beat 75-year-old Sen. B. Everett Jordan in the primary, which would have once been tantamount to election in North Carolina. That win, though, came as conservative white Democrats, furious at their party’s support for civil rights, were increasingly flocking to the GOP.
- “Jesse Helms: He’s one of us.” Helms overcame his deficit with a dog whistle campaign against his Greek American rival.
Read more about Galifianakis, as well as how his famous nephew got a small measure of revenge against Helms, in our obituary.
