The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast
Leading Off
● MO Ballot: A campaign to enshrine abortion rights in Missouri's constitution—and overturn the state's near-total ban on the procedure—kicked off a drive to the ballot on Thursday, but Republicans are prepared to do everything they can to prevent the amendment from becoming law. The good news for supporters of reproductive rights, however, is that the one group standing in the GOP's way is … the GOP.
Like their brethren in Ohio, Show Me State Republicans are planning to put their own measure on the ballot that would make it harder it for citizen-sponsored initiatives to pass. But a group of far-right dissidents—who've unsurprisingly labeled themselves the Freedom Caucus—has vowed to bring the legislature to a standstill if lawmakers don't adopt their preferred approach. Republican leaders are furious, but a similar rebellion doomed a previous effort last year.
Read more on this internecine battle at Daily Kos Elections, including details on exactly how the Freedom Caucus wants to undermine direct democracy.
4Q Fundraising
Senate
● MI-Sen: Former Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Libertarian, may have one more party switch in him: Amash unexpectedly announced Thursday that he was forming an exploratory committee as he considers entering the Aug. 6 GOP primary for Michigan's open Senate seat
Amash, who waged a brief 2020 bid for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination, characteristically made it clear exactly what he thought of his would-be rivals. He argued that his supporters "see what I see: contenders for the seat who are uninspired, unserious, and unprepared to tackle the chief impediment to liberty and economic prosperity—an overgrown and abusive government that strives to centralize power and snuff out individualism."
The Democratic field, meanwhile, shrunk that same day when former state Rep. Leslie Love announced she was suspending her campaign because she "simply could no longer compete financially." A pair of recent polls showed Love with no more than 3% of the vote as Rep. Elissa Slotkin decisively led her main remaining rival, actor Hill Harper.
● NJ-Sen: Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who has repeatedly made news for calling for the expulsion of indicted incumbent Robert Menendez, endorsed Rep. Andy Kim on Thursday. Fetterman is the first senator who has taken sides in the June 4 primary, a race that Menendez has not yet said if he'll compete in.
On the Republican side, Curtis Bashaw, who previously served as executive director of New Jersey's Casino Reinvestment Authority, has filed paperwork with the FEC. While Bashaw does not appear to have said anything publicly yet, the New Jersey Globe wrote Tuesday that he'd informed some GOP politicos that he plans to run.
Governors
● IN-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in for the second half of 2023, and the Indiana Capitol Chronicle has rounded up the totals for all the notable Republicans competing in the May 7 primary for the state's open governorship:
- Former state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers: $3.3 million raised, additional $5 million self-funded, $2.9 million cash on hand
- Sen. Mike Braun: $2.1 million raised, $4 million cash on hand
- Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch: $1.3 million raised, $3.8 million cash on hand
- Businessman Eric Doden: $398,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand
- Former Attorney General Curtis Hill: $374,000 raised, $123,000 cash on hand
Former state education superintendent Jennifer McCormick, a former Republican who has no serious opposition for the Democratic nomination, took in $150,000 and ended 2023 with $201,000 available.
● NC-Gov: Wealthy businessman Bill Graham is airing his first negative TV ads targeting Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson ahead of their March 5 Republican primary contest, with attacks on the frontrunner over his history of antisemitic social media posts.
One commercial begins with Graham pledging to stand with Israel before declaring, "Mark Robinson? He suggested the Holocaust wasn't real, downplayed the Nazis, and promoted Hitler propaganda." The other spot, which levels similar accusations, also features footage from last year when Robinson was asked if he'd apologize for his writings. "I apologize for the wording," said Robinson, "not necessarily for the content."
Robinson, as WFAE details, placed the words "six million Jews" in quotation marks when writing about the Holocaust in 2017. Jewish Insider also described another Robinson post from the years before his political career began in which he wrote, "It is EXTREMELY distressing that many well meaning and intelligent people are so focused on long dead Hitler while the living political descendants of Stalin are currently fighting to destroy our REPUBLIC."
Robinson's team responded to Graham's ads by saying he is "regurgitating the same dishonest lies the Democrats use because the Republican primary is over and he can’t handle it. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson stands with Israel and the Jewish people—and he’s never questioned the Holocaust."
House
● IN-01: Speaker Mike Johnson has endorsed Lake County Councilman Randy Niemeyer, who is the only Republican waging a serious campaign against Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan. Niemeyer, a trucking company owner who also leads the county GOP, is trying to flip a northwestern Indiana constituency that favored Joe Biden 53-45 in 2020. Republicans spent heavily to unseat Mrvan in 2022, but their candidate, Jennifer-Ruth Green, lost 53-47.
● IN-04: Republican Rep. Jim Baird has filed paperwork with the state to seek reelection, though it remains to be seen if this will finally end persistent chatter that he might bail after the primary so that local GOP leaders can replace him on the ballot with his son, state Rep. Beau Baird.
● IN-08: Howey Politics reports that state Sen. Mark Messmer will soon join the GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. Larry Buchson while adding that another Republican, former Secretary of State Holli Sullivan, is also interested. Sullivan was appointed Indiana's top elections officer in 2021 to fill a vacancy, but election denier Diego Morales beat her 52-35 at the GOP convention the following year. Luckily for Sullivan, the nomination contest to succeed Bucshon will be a traditional primary.
The race for this safely red seat is still developing. The most notable Republican candidate so far is physician Richard Moss, but his biggest claim to fame may be his string of bad primary defeats against more prominent politicians. In 2014, he sought an open state House seat only to fall 67-33 to now-Sen. Mike Braun; the following two cycles, he challenged Buchson but lost 65-35 and 63-25, respectively.
● NJ-03: Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello said Thursday that she would not run to succeed Rep. Andy Kim, a fellow Democrat who is running for the Senate.
● OH-07: How can we miss Dennis Kucinich when he won't go away? The former Democratic congressman, who left his post as Robert F. Kennedy's campaign manager shortly after the conspiracy theorist announced he'd run for president as an independent, filed FEC paperwork this week to challenge GOP Rep. Max Miller as an independent. Kucinich has not yet said anything about his interest in this suburban Cleveland constituency, which favored Donald Trump 54-45 in 2020.
● SC-03: State Sen. Richard Cash tells South Carolina Public Radio that he's interested in running to succeed the man who narrowly beat him in the 2010 Republican primary runoff, retiring Rep. Jeff Duncan. But Cash was likely gearing up to appear on the ballot even if the scandal-ridden Duncan had not announced his departure on Wednesday: The state senator already had a Jan. 20 event scheduled, and he wouldn't confirm or deny that it was a kickoff for a new House campaign.
Another Republican legislator, state Rep. Stewart Jones, informs The State he's also considering. Jones belongs to the state's Freedom Caucus, a breakaway group modeled after its congressional counterpart that has accused GOP leaders of failing to pursue a sufficiently conservative agenda.
Ballot Measures
● KY Ballot: Kentucky's Republican-dominated state Senate has passed a constitutional amendment that would end the state's practice of electing its governor and other statewide officers in odd-numbered years. If approved by the GOP-run state House and in a voter referendum this fall, the winners of the next elections in 2027 would serve special five-year terms; subsequent elections starting in 2032 would coincide with races for president, Congress, and the state legislature.
The Senate passed a similar proposal in both 2019 and again in 2020 only to see their House counterparts not take it up either time. However, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's reelection victory last fall could prompt Republicans to pass it this time, even though he'll be term-limited in 2027. The Kentucky GOP has long dominated in federal elections, particularly since the state still has a straight-ticket voting option, so Republicans likely believe moving state races to presidential years would benefit them.
Nonetheless, it's a rare example of Republicans trying to gain an advantage by expanding the electorate instead of trying to suppress Democratic voters. That's because Kentucky's turnout in recent presidential elections has often been close to double the turnout for gubernatorial races. In addition, presidential-year turnout nationwide is almost always more representative of eligible voters overall by including a larger proportion of young voters, voters of color, and lower-income voters than in non-presidential elections.
Mayors & County Leaders
● New York City, NY Mayor: Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced Thursday that he was forming an exploratory committee to possibly challenge Mayor Eric Adams for the Democratic nomination, a move that comes almost a year and a half ahead of the city's June 2025 instant-runoff primaries.
Adams' many detractors are hoping that the incumbent is vulnerable, especially after the FBI seized his phone in November as part of a corruption investigation, but Stringer's last campaign may leave them looking for other options.
Stringer originally looked like a frontrunner in the 2021 primary Adams ultimately won, but that all changed when a woman named Jane Kim accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2001. A second woman, Teresa Logan, later said he'd sexually harassed her in 1992.
The comptroller, who denied the allegations, ended up taking a distant fifth in the primary and sued Kim (but not Logan) for defamation the next year. A judge rejected his suit last year because it was filed too late, but Stringer is appealing that decision.
But while Stringer will have a challenging contest ahead of him should he run, his exploratory committee may already be having some knock-on effects. The New York Times says that, with Stringer becoming the first potential challenger to begin raising money, other prospective candidates "may now face pressure to accelerate their plans."
The paper mentions a variety of possible alternatives, including 2021 runner-up Kathryn Garcia, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, and city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Politico also adds former state Assemblyman Michael Blake, City Councilman Justin Brannan, and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie to the list. Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been talked about as well, though two unnamed sources told Bloomberg in November he'd only be interested if Adams didn't seek reelection.
Ad Roundup
Campaign Action
