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
● Primary Night: The 2024 downballot primary season kicks off on March 5, and with the nation's two largest states on tap, this Super Tuesday will truly live up to its name. And because there's so much to watch, we're releasing our inaugural Daily Kos Elections primary preview a day early.
Jeff Singer takes a look at the crucial contests in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas—including not one but two different races where lottery winners are campaigning for the House and hoping to hit another jackpot.
Some of these primaries are in safe seats where the winner is all but assured victory in November, while others will determine the lineup for key fall battlegrounds. California's top-two primary also means that we might see some general elections featuring a pair of candidates from just one party, which is something that many campaigns and outside groups are desperately trying to avert.
We'll also be kicking off our first primary liveblog of the year at Daily Kos Elections when the first polls close at 7:30 PM ET in North Carolina and will continue deep into the night as the races unfold. You can also keep up with our blow-by-blow coverage on X. See you then!
Senate
● CA-Sen: UC Berkeley's new poll of Tuesday's top-two primary finds that Adam Schiff's efforts to boost Republican Steve Garvey have worked so well that Garvey is now in first place with 27% as Schiff outpaces fellow Democratic Rep. Katie Porter 25-19 for second. This is the first survey that anyone's released to place Garvey in the top spot.
The school also shows Schiff easily beating Garvey 53-38 in a hypothetical November general election, while the Schiff and Porter deadlock at 30 apiece. (Many Republican voters are understandably reluctant to name a preference in an all-Democratic race.) Respondents also back Porter 52-38 against Garvey, though it would be a true shock if such a lineup came to pass.
However, UC Berkeley does find it's possible that there could be a Garvey-Porter matchup in a November special election for the remaining months of the late Dianne Feinstein's term. Garvey takes 29% in the first round of the special, which is also taking place on Tuesday, while Schiff enjoys a smaller 23-20 advantage over Porter. Only seven candidates are running in the special, compared to 27 for the full six-year term.
● OH-Sen: An internal poll conducted by Fabrizio Lee for businessman Bernie Moreno finds him leading Secretary of State Frank LaRose 31-21 in Ohio's March 19 GOP primary for Senate, while state Sen. Matt Dolan is at 19 and 27% of voters are undecided. That's a jump from Moreno's last survey in early December, when he led LaRose by a much smaller 23-19 margin, a jump his pollster attributes to the endorsement Donald Trump issued just before Christmas. There have been no other recent polls.
Both Dolan's campaign and LaRose's allies at Leadership for Ohio Fund PAC, though, seem to agree that Moreno is the candidate who needs to be taken down during the time remaining. The PAC is taking advantage of what it tells Cleveland.com is a "seven-figure infusion" to air a new spot portraying Moreno as anti-gun.
Dolan's newest commercial, meanwhile, goes after Moreno for suggesting that the descendants of Union soldiers killed in the Civil War deserve reparations. Moreno made those comments to counter calls for reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black people, but Dolan's narrator argues the candidate was pushing for "slavery reparations."
House
● AL-01: A new poll from Auburn University at Montgomery just ahead of Tuesday's primaries finds Rep. Jerry Carl leading Rep. Barry Moore 43-35 while 22% of voters remain undecided. There's been no other usable polling released for this incumbent vs. incumbent battle for Alabama's conservative 1st District, including by either candidate or their allies.
● CA-31: Politico reports that former Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros has been sending out mailers to GOP voters ostensibly attacking one of the two Republicans competing in Tuesday's top-two primary, attorney Daniel Martinez, as "too close to Trump."
Politico argues that Cisneros is hoping to make it more difficult for one of this intra-party rivals in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Grace Napolitano, state Sen. Susan Rubio, to advance to the November general election. Rubio seems to agree she can't afford to allow Martinez to consolidate the conservative vote: She's responded by sending out text messages to boost the other Republican on the ballot, Pedro Casas.
● SC-04: Republican Rep. William Timmons, who faces a primary challenge from a far-right state lawmaker, just earned an endorsement from Donald Trump as he seeks a fourth term.
In November, state Rep. Adam Morgan launched a bid to wrest the GOP nomination away from Timmons, who has a very conservative record but has been attacked by extremists for supporting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Morgan, meanwhile, is a founder of his chamber's Freedom Caucus and claims Timmons is "controlled" by the "Uniparty."
While Morgan hasn't raised much for his campaign, neither has Timmons, who has reason to worry about his chances: Last year, he won his primary with just 53% of the vote while three little-known candidates split the remainder. Notably, Trump endorsed him before that race, too.
And not long after that election, Timmons appeared on several radio shows to address rumors that he'd used the powers of his office to conceal an extra-marital affair. While he denied that he'd abused his position, he didn't deny being unfaithful to his wife, who filed for divorce shortly after he won reelection that fall to South Carolina's conservative 4th District.
Correction: This story misidentified the Republican candidate that Democrat Susan Rubio was seeking to boost in the primary in California's 31st District. That candidate was Pedro Casas, not Benito Bernal.
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