The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
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Leading Off
● SC-01: Former state cabinet official Catherine Templeton kicked off a primary challenge against Republican Rep. Nancy Mace on Monday, citing the congresswoman's vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker as a sign of her lack of fitness for the job. Mace lashed back by calling Templeton "McCarthy's puppet," though both candidates are trying to position themselves as the true Donald Trump loyalist.
Templeton's pledge of allegiance to Trump—she tells the Post and Courier's Caitlin Byrd she'll vote for him in South Carolina's Feb. 24 presidential primary—is made slightly awkward by the fact that she was appointed to serve as director of the state's Department of Health and Environmental Control by none other than Nikki Haley, who is also running for the White House.
Trump's decision to tap Haley for the post of United Nations ambassador also derailed Templeton's own career plans. Templeton had planned to run for governor in 2018 after Haley was set to be termed out, but Haley's early departure led to Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster's elevation to the top job.
Templeton forged ahead with her bid anyway but fared poorly: McMaster, who had Trump's backing, defeated businessman John Warren 54-46 in a runoff, after Templeton finished a distant third in the primary.
Nothing, however, could be cringier than Mace's attempt to demonstrate her fealty to Trump in 2022, when she flew to New York City immediately after Trump endorsed her opponent in that year's primary, former state Rep. Katie Arrington. Standing in front of Trump Tower, Mace recorded a video of herself in which she nonetheless reaffirmed her devotion to Trump, who had just crapped all over her as "an absolutely terrible candidate."
Mace nonetheless turned back Arrington 53-45 in the primary, and she may survive once again even without Trump's support. But this time, she might also feel the wrath of McCarthy, who is reportedly embarking on a "revenge tour" with the aim of unseating the eight Republicans who voted to terminate his speakership.
As part of her launch, Templeton also announced an endorsement from Arrington, who had considered a second bid against Mace. But it's still possible we could see the field grow: The congresswoman's former chief of staff, Dan Hanlon, has filed paperwork ahead of a possible bid, while state Rep. Sylleste Davis hasn't ruled out running either.
If no candidate wins a majority in the June 11 primary, the top two vote-getters would face off in a runoff two weeks later.
Senate
● MT-Sen: Last Best Place, a Democratic-affiliated super PAC that has been spending heavily to boost far-right Rep. Matt Rosendale ahead of the GOP primary, has now reserved $5.8 million in TV time for the fall, per AdImpact. Last month, HuffPost's Liz Skalka reported that the group was funded by the Senate Majority PAC, the top Democratic super PAC involved in Senate races. SMP itself recently booked $27 million for the general election, while its Republican counterparts also announced major reservations.
Governors
● NC-Gov: A new poll from Meredith College finds Attorney General Josh Stein with a 31-5 lead over Tryon City Councilor Chrelle Booker in North Carolina's March 5 Democratic primary for governor, while former state Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan takes just 4% and half of all voters have yet to make up their minds.
On the GOP side, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson holds a 34-9 edge over wealthy businessman Bill Graham with 42% undecided. In a general election matchup, Stein leads Robinson 39-35 with a sample that favors Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a 44-39 margin.
● UT-Gov: The gubernatorial portion of Dan Jones & Associates' recent GOP primary poll for the Desert News and the University of Utah finds Gov. Spencer Cox with a wide 50-5 lead over little-known challenger Scott Robbins, while 37% are undecided.
House
● CA-47: Inside Politics' Jacob Rubashkin reports that the United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC, is spending $260,000 on cable TV advertising in California's 47th Congressional District. While a copy of the ad is not yet available, the PAC just reported spending $47,000 on direct mail targeting Democratic state Sen. Dave Min. UDP's entry follows a similar move by EMILY's List, which recently launched a $1 million campaign on behalf of attorney Joanna Weiss, Min's main intra-party rival.
● IN-05: A year and two days after her surprise retirement announcement—and with just five days to go before the candidate filing deadline—second-term Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz reversed herself and said she'd seek reelection after all. But Spartz, who first publicly began rethinking her decision in September after a public spat with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was not greeted warmly by the other Republicans who stepped up to run for her seat in the interim.
One of them so happens to be a former McCarthy aide, Max Engling, who slammed Spartz for her "well-documented history of waffling on the issues" and said her about-face "makes me more committed than ever to stay in this race."
Similarly, state Rep. Chuck Goodrich attacked Spartz for "flip-flopping and putting America last" and rolled out endorsements from two mayors in Indiana's 5th District, a conservative seat in the Indianapolis suburbs. And a third candidate, businessman Raju Chinthala, also reportedly pledged to stay put after launching his first TV ad the same day as Spartz's announcement.
Spartz also faces a serious financial deficit. She raised not a penny during the fourth quarter of 2023 and entered the new year with just $313,000 in her coffers. Goodrich, by contrast, has self-funded $1 million and had $699,0000 in the bank ahead of the May 7 primary.
● NC-13: While 14 Republicans are running to succeed Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel after the GOP's recent gerrymander of North Carolina's 13 District, WRAL's Paul Specht reports that party strategists say only four of them "have a realistic shot" at victory.
According to the half dozen operatives Specht spoke with, the names to watch belong to businessman DeVan Barbour, wealthy attorney Kelly Daughtry, businessman Fred Von Canon, and former federal prosecutor Brad Knott. Barbour and Daughtry finished second and third, respectively, in last cycle's primary for the previous version of this seat, which was won by Bo Hines. (Hines ultimately lost to Nickel and is now running in the 6th District, another target of the GOP's new gerrymander.)
Daughtry self-funded heavily last time and will likely do so again, suggests Specht. Von Canon, meanwhile, has already fueled his campaign with more than $700,000 of his own money after losing bids for the state House in both 2020 and 2022. As for Knott, he's a first-time office-seeker and doesn't live in the district, but his family is funding a super PAC on his behalf that has spent almost $800,000 so far.
That PAC, known as the American Foundations Committee, just started airing a new TV ad touting Knott's stance on immigration, with a narrator promising the candidate will "make our border tight as a … knot."
One possible wildcard emerged on Monday, though, thanks to a rather unexpected development. The North State Journal's A.P. Dillon reports that physician and Air Force veteran Josh McConkey just won the state lottery, earning a prize of $757,777. McConkey didn't say whether he'd spend the proceeds on his campaign, but he previously self-funded $250,000.
"We are focused on doing everything we can to get out the vote ahead of the March 5th primary and hoping lightning strikes twice!" he told Dillon.
● NY-03: The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC announced on Monday that it's putting another $1.25 million onto the airwaves ahead of the Feb. 13 special election in New York's 3rd Congressional District and will start airing three new ads. One spot highlights Republican Mazi Pilip's repeated attempts to evade reporters' questions, the second focuses on her views on abortion, and a third attempts to shore up Democrat Tom Suozzi on immigration.
Republicans have sought to make that issue the central theme of their campaign, and Pilip herself just launched a new ad hitting Suozzi on the topic.
● TX-26: The radical anti-tax Club for Growth has endorsed conservative media figure Brandon Gill in the GOP primary for Texas' open 26th Congressional District. Gil is the son-in-law of Dinesh D'Souza, another conservative media presence who in 2018 was pardoned by Donald Trump four years after pleading guilty to a felony charge for making an illegal straw donation to a federal candidate.
Attorneys General
● PA-AG: Peter Hall of the Pennsylvania Capital Star has rounded up new fundraising numbers for candidates in both parties running for Pennsylvania's open attorney general's post and finds Democrats have vastly outraised their Republican counterparts.
However, even though the leading GOP candidate, York County District Attorney Dave Sunday, had just $51,000 on hand, he can count on support from the Republican Attorneys General Association and the state Republican Party, both of which have endorsed him over state Rep. Craig Williams, who reported just $42,000 in the bank.
The five Democratic contenders, meanwhile, are all sitting on much more cash, led by state Rep. Jared Solomon with $1 million in the bank. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party and the Democratic Attorneys General Association have not taken sides in the primary, which is on April 23.
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