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
Our top two stories today at Daily Kos Elections:
Senate
● CA-Sen: Republican Steve Garvey has publicized an internal poll from WPA Intelligence that shows the former Major League Baseball player positioned to advance to a general election against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff—the very outcome that Schiff and his allies want. WPA finds the congressman taking first in the March 5 top-two primary with 27% as Garvey outpaces Democratic Rep. Katie Porter 24-15 for second place.
● MD-Sen: Rep. David Trone's new survey from Hickman Analytics has him defeating Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 49-32 in the May 14 Democratic primary, which is up from his 45-34 advantage in late January. Trone did not release general election numbers testing himself against former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, who unexpectedly entered the race in the time between those two polls.
● NY-Sen, NY-14: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ended whatever lingering speculation there was about a 2024 Senate run on Thursday by announcing she would seek a fourth term in her safely blue 14th Congressional District. Last spring, a spokesperson for AOC didn't quite rule out the idea that she'd challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in the Democratic primary, but no one appears to have seriously discussed the idea over the ensuing months.
Governors
● ND-Gov: Retiring Gov. Doug Burgum endorsed Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller on Wednesday in the June Republican primary to replace him. Miller previously served as Burgum's chief operating officer and was appointed lieutenant governor when the position became vacant just over a year ago.
House
● CA-47: Jewish Insider's Matthew Kassel flags that AIPAC has deployed an additional $931,000 against Democratic state Sen. Dave Min ahead of the March 5 top-two primary, which brings its investment up to $2.6 million. According to OpenSecrets, independent expenditure groups have spent a grand total of $3.6 million to attack Min or promote the other major Democrat, attorney Joanna Weiss. Min, by contrast, has only received $284,000 in outside aid.
● CO-03: The Denver Post reports that federal investigators are looking into state Board of Education member Stephen Varela, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Colorado's open 3rd District, for allegedly misspending his union's money. "He spent it like it was his personal slush fund," one source said of Varela, who led a chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees from 2016 to 2020. The candidate told the paper last month that he didn't know of any such probe and that the accusations against him were "fabricated."
● FL-27: Former Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey announced on Thursday that he would enter the August Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar in a Miami-area seat that Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2020.
Davey was first elected to Key Biscayne's Council in 2006 in a nonpartisan race but ran for a seat in the state House a decade later as a Republican, losing in the primary. Davey tells the Miami Herald he became independent following Trump's win and re-registered again as a Democrat in 2018, the same year he became mayor of his 14,000-person community on an island to the east of Miami.
Davey's congressional campaign launch comes about three months after Miami-Dade County School Board member Lucia Baez-Geller began her quest for the Democratic nomination. Salazar ended 2023 with a hefty $832,000 to $86,000 cash on hand advantage over Baez-Geller.
Florida's 27th District, which includes part of Miami and its southern suburbs, supported Trump by just a 49.9 to 49.6 margin in the last presidential election. According to analyst Matthew Isbell, though, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis took it 58-41 during his landslide reelection win in 2022, while Republican Sen. Marco Rubio won by a similar 57-42 spread.
● LA-05: Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow's bid for reelection on Wednesday, a move that makes it even more difficult for fellow Republican Rep. Garret Graves to run against her in the 5th District. Graves, whose 6th District is now far too blue for him to win, had indicated that he doesn't plan to retire but has downplayed the possibility of challenging Letlow. Instead, he's repeatedly expressed optimism that the courts will reject the new congressional map that turned his constituency into a Democratic-leaning seat.
● MD-02: Retiring Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger on Wednesday endorsed Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski ahead of the May 14 Democratic primary to replace him in the reliably blue 2nd District. Olszewski also announced the backing of 5th District Rep. Steny Hoyer, who spent 20 years as the number-two Democrat in the House. Olszewski faces five intraparty opponents, but only Del. Harry Bhandari has generated much attention so far.
● MD-03: Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin highlights that retired Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn raised a massive $2.75 million on ActBlue during his first three weeks in the Democratic primary, a haul that does not include any funds he may have brought in last month from other sources, such as checks. Dunn is one of 22 candidates competing in the May nomination contest to replace retiring Rep. John Sarbanes, a field that includes five members of the state legislature.
● NY-01: Attorney Craig Herskowitz announced Wednesday that he was dropping out of the June Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. Nick LaLota and would instead campaign for a seat in the state Senate. Herskowitz also endorsed Nancy Goroff, who was the party's 2020 nominee for a previous version of the 1st Congressional District, as his choice to take on the first-term incumbent.
● OH-09: The Congressional Leadership Fund has launched an ad campaign to help state Rep. Derek Merrin win the March 19 Republican primary to take on Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. AdImpact tweeted on Thursday morning that CLF has booked $497,000 so far, though the super PAC is capable of spending much more.
CLF's opening commercial touts Merrin as an ardent conservative who wants to "finish Trump's wall―immediately." The ad does not mention either disastrous 2022 nominee J.R. Majewski or former state Rep. Craig Riedel, who are Merrin's main opponents next month.
● PA-01: EMILY's List has endorsed 2022 Democratic nominee Ashley Ehasz's second campaign against Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who beat her 55-45 in a suburban Philadelphia seat that Joe Biden carried 52-47 two years before.
Ehasz has no intra-party opposition in the April 23 primary, while Fitzpatrick faces a challenge from the right from anti-abortion activist Mark Houck. Houck, however, ended 2023 with a mere $8,000 in the bank, while the incumbent had $3.8 million available. Ehasz, for her part, had $333,000 on hand.
● TN-07: Two Republicans announced this week that they would stay out of the August primary to replace retiring GOP Rep. Mark Green: businesswoman Alice Rolli, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Nashville last year, and state Sen. Bill Powers. The Tennessee Journal recently reported that state Sen. Kerry Roberts was interested in running if Powers, his colleague in the legislature, decided not to go for it.
● TX-18, TX-07: The University of Houston has released the first and possibly last poll we'll see of the March 5 Democratic primary for Texas' dark blue 18th District, and it shows longtime Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee leading former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards by a small 43-38 margin. A third candidate, restauranter Rob Slater, takes just 3%, but his presence could prevent either frontrunner from taking the majority they'd need to avert a May 28 runoff.
UH also is out with our first look at the Democratic nomination contest in the neighboring 7th District, but it finds Rep. Lizzie Fletcher with nothing to worry about. She posts a gigantic 78-11 advantage against challenger Pervez Agwan, a renewable energy developer whose campaign has been overshadowed by sexual misconduct allegations leveled by former staffers. Fletcher's constituency is also safely Democratic turf.
● VA-10: State Sen. Jennifer Boysko received an endorsement this week from Rep. Jennifer McClellan for her campaign to succeed their fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton, in the 10th District. The Hill's Julia Manchester notes that McClellan, who represents the Richmond-area 4th District, is the first member of Virginia's Democratic delegation to take sides in the packed contest for Wexton's seat in Northern Virginia.
Mayors & County Leaders
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: The San Francisco Chronicle has released the first poll we've seen since former Supervisor Mark Farrell became the latest candidate to challenge Mayor London Breed last week, and it shows the incumbent in bad shape ahead of the Nov. 5 instant-runoff contest.
The survey, which was conducted by Sextant Strategies, shows Farrell edging out Breed 20-18 among respondents' first-choice preferences. Another 16% goes to nonprofit founder Daniel Lurie, with Supervisor Ahsha Safaí at 8%.
The poll did not attempt to simulate the ranked-choice process, but it did find Breed struggling to pick up more support. Only 10% said they'd select the incumbent as their second choice, while Lurie and Farrell, respectively, are the second pick of 24% and 17% of respondents. Breed also posts a disastrous 28-71 approval rating. The candidate filing deadline isn't until June 11, so the final roster may not be set yet.
Ad Roundup
Campaign Action
