Daily Kos Elections Live Digest: 2/19

by Daily Kos Elections for Daily Kos Liveblogs

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Monday, Feb. 19, 2024 Monday, Feb. 19, 2024 at 5:59:15am PST

Welcome to the Daily Kos Elections Live Digest, your liveblog of all oftoday's campaign news. You can find our collection of public data at dailykosdata.com.

Please note: The Live Digest is a Democratic presidential primary-freespace. It’s also a place to discuss elections, not policy.

Subscribe to our podcast, TheDownballot! New episodes every Thursday morning.

Embedded Content

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 9:50:43 PM +00:00 · Jeff Singer

Ad Roundup:

CA-41: Will Rollins (D) - anti-Ken Calvert (R-inc)

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 9:49:21 PM +00:00 · Jeff Singer

• WI-08: Former Gov. Scott Walker on Friday endorsed former state Sen. Roger Roth ahead of the August GOP primary. Roth remains the only major candidate competing to replace retiring Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, though state Sen. Andre Jacque tells WBAY that he hopes to decide over what the station characterizes as "the next few weeks."

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 9:48:20 PM +00:00 · Jeff Singer

• NC-01: WUNC reports that the Congressional Leadership Fund has spent at least $200,000 on digital, radio, and mail advertising designed to help Army veteran Laurie Buckhout win the March 5 GOP primary to face freshman Democratic Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina's 1st District. CLF so far does not appear to have mentioned Buckhout's intraparty foe, two-time nominee Sandy Smith, though the conservative super PAC and Smith have an unhappy history.

Two years ago, CLF spent $600,000 in the primary in an attempt to stop Smith, who was accused of physical abuse by her daughter and not one but two ex-husbands. That intervention, though, didn't prevent Smith from securing the nomination 31-27 against her nearest opponent.

CLF and its allies at the NRCC each sat out the general election, while their Democratic counterparts focused on the allegations against Smith in a $4.7 million ad campaign that helped Davis prevail 52-48. Smith never seems to have stopped running, however, and she got some welcome news last year when Republicans passed a new gerrymander the following year that lowered Joe Biden's 2020 margin of victory from 53-46 to just 50-49.

Smith, whose own ads proclaim, "Sandy Smith says Trump won the 2020 election," quickly expressed her disgust with CLF's newest intervention. "If you see an ad sponsored by a PAC it means SWAMP," she tweeted. "Just beware and don't buy it."

• WA-05: Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner tells The Spokesman-Review that he's thinking of entering the August top-two primary to replace his fellow Republican, retiring Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. But another Republican, former state Rep. Kevin Parker, revealed on Instagram that he won't be running himself.

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 9:40:13 PM +00:00 · David Nir

Our biggest stories today at Daily Kos Elections:

• Wisconsin governor signs new maps, ending GOP gerrymanders

• It’s democracy vs. the Big Lie in the showdown for Arizona's largest county

• Why there's a problem with that new poll of the race to unseat Ted Cruz

• After Schiff boosts a Republican, Porter elevates a different one

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 9:32:11 PM +00:00 · Jeff Singer

• MO-Gov: The Republican firm Remington Research Group once again surveys the Aug. 6 GOP primary on behalf of the local tip-sheet Missouri Scout, and it shows Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft maintaining a 35-22 lead over Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe as state Sen. Bill Eigel secures 5% and a 38% plurality remain undecided. The firm found Ashcroft with a similar 34-20 edge against Kehoe one month ago, with Eigel at 4%.

• MO-03: Former Boone County Clerk Taylor Burks announced Monday that he was entering the August primary to replace his fellow Republican, retiring Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, in the safely red 3rd District.

Burks, who served with the Navy Reserve in Kuwait, so far has had little luck at the ballot box. After getting appointed in 2017 clerk for Boone County, which is home to the University of Missouri's flagship campus in Columbia, he lost the following year's general election to Democrat Brianna Lennon.

Burks, whose county is split by the current congressional map, then competed in the crowded 2022 nomination fight for the neighboring 4th District last cycle after GOP incumbent Vicky Hartzler left to wage a failed Senate bid. However, that effort didn't go well either: Former Kansas City TV anchor Mark Alford beat out his nearest foe, state Sen. Rick Brattin, 35-21, while Burks was a distant fourth with just 10%.

Burks this time joins a primary contest that includes state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman and former state Sen. Bob Onder, and it may be about to swell again. The Missouri Scout's Dave Drebes writes that former state Sen. Kurt Schaefer "is said to be prepping an announcement" for this week, adding that Schaefer only smiled when questioned.

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 7:54:57 PM +00:00 · Jeff Singer

• MD-Sen: Rep. Jamie Raskin, a prominent progressive who had at one point considered a Senate bid of his own, spent Sunday door-knocking with Angela Alsobrooks, one of the two leading Democrats seeking to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin. Raskin's name has yet to be listed on Alsobrooks' endorsement page, but canvassing in person speaks louder than any press release could. Alsobrooks, who is the county executive of populous Prince George's County, faces Rep. David Trone in the May 14 primary.

• CA-47: With two weeks to go before California's top-two primary, an internal poll from Republican Scott Baugh finds him advancing to the November general election along with Democratic state Sen. Dave Min, despite a heavy barrage of negative ads targeting Min in recent weeks.

The survey, from WPA Intelligence, finds Baugh leading Min 27-22 while another Democrat, attorney Joanna Weiss, is at 16%; a second Republican, businessman Max Ukropina, is a distant fourth with 9% in the contest to replace Democratic Senate candidate Katie Porter. An additional 9% say they prefer another candidate while 17% are undecided. The memo did not include numbers testing Baugh, who lost the 2022 general election to Porter, against Min or Weiss in hypothetical November matchups.

• NY-03, NY-Sen: Businessman Mike Sapraicone, whom local Republicans treated as a top potential nominee in the special election to replace George Santos, has announced that he'll challenge Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand rather than seek to oust newly elected Democrat Tom Suozzi in New York's 3rd District. Public chatter about possible GOP candidates interested in running for a full term in November has been virtually nil since Suozzi's 54-46 victory last week.

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 19, 2024 · 4:36:55 PM +00:00 · Stephen Wolf

WI Redistricting: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative districts into law on Monday to replace gerrymandered Republican maps that the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down in December. If the court signs off on the new maps, Wisconsin would finally get much fairer districts after more than a decade of tilted maps that have locked Democrats out of power in this longtime swing state.

Evers had recently proposed these maps to the court in the hopes that the justices would select them, but in a surprise, the Republican-run legislature passed them last week before the court could act. The court is still likely to review these new maps to ensure they comply with the criteria it laid down for any remedial plans, including that they be politically neutral.

As illustrated in this graphic, Joe Biden would have won an 18-15 majority of seats in the state Senate, while Donald Trump would have carried a 50-49 majority of state Assembly districts. (Click here and here for interactive versions with partisan and demographic data from Dave's Redistricting App.) The now-invalid Republican maps, by contrast, gave Trump an 22-11 edge in the Senate and a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly.

Because only half of the seats in the Senate will be up for election in November, Democrats would likely have to wait until the 2026 elections before they could flip the upper chamber. However, the new maps would give them a chance to take back the Assembly this fall.

Republicans may have opted for Evers' proposals because they are slightly more favorable to the GOP compared to other plans that were under consideration by the court. Nonetheless, Evers' maps are still much fairer than the current GOP gerrymanders, which let Republicans win a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in the Senate in 2022 and nearly hit that mark in the Assembly despite Democrats winning most statewide races that same year.