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
● NE-Sen-A: Independent candidate Dan Osborn's hopes of pulling off an upset in Nebraska against Republican Sen. Deb Fischer, who has no Democratic opponent, got a major boost in late July after a third-party contender dropped out and endorsed him to avoid playing spoiler. That minor party, known as Legal Marijuana NOW, could still name a replacement, but it has already missed a self-imposed deadline to do so.
Polling sponsored by Osborn has shown him in a close battle against Fischer, but notably, his surveys did not include Kerry Eddy, the former Legal Marijuana NOW candidate.
An April poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling placed Fischer ahead by a small 37-33 margin in a two-way race. A subsequent poll jointly conducted last month by the GOP firm Red Wave Strategy Group and the Democratic pollster Impact Research, meanwhile, had the two candidates deadlocked at 42 apiece.
By contrast, a Torchlight Strategies survey for Fischer’s campaign taken at the same time as Osborn's most recent poll named all three candidates. It reached a very different conclusion, giving Fisher a wide 50-24 lead, with Eddy taking a sizable 9%.
Eddy now won't garner a single vote, but her departure was no surprise. In fact, it appears to have been the plan all along.
"I am running to support an independent candidate—Dan Osborn," Eddy explained on her website when she launched her campaign earlier this year. "I'll make sure that we all unite around whoever the strongest candidate is to defeat Deb Fischer in November."
Her bid prompted backlash from the Legal Marijuana NOW Party, as the Lincoln Journal Star's Andrew Wegley reported, but she nevertheless defeated Kenneth Peterson 71-29 in a tiny primary that saw just over a thousand voters participate. (Eddy, an artist and Air National Guard veteran, had derided Peterson as a "weed bro"; Peterson described himself to Wegley as "probably the poorest senatorial candidate probably in the country.")
Eddy, however, had some help in overcoming the hostility of the party she was nominally seeking to represent: A super PAC called Nebraska Railroaders For Public Safety spent about $35,000 on mailers and digital ads boosting her campaign. The PAC, whose biggest funder is Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, has also supported Osborn, who has said he's unsure which party he'd caucus with in the Senate should he win.
The Legal Marijuana NOW Party reacted angrily to Eddy's withdrawal, posting on Facebook late last month that Osborn had tried to "rig" their primary and claiming that it would "have a replacement candidate withing the week."
But the party, which has until Sept. 3 to make such a move, has yet to act. It apparently held an online convention on Aug. 4 but failed to advance an alternative, and the Nebraska secretary of state's office tells Daily Kos Elections that the party has not filed any paperwork naming a new nominee.
Even without a third-party rival on the ballot, Osborn faces difficult odds in his quest to unseat Fischer given Nebraska's strong conservative tilt. But independents in other red states and districts have had success in recent years in closing the gap against Republicans if not defeating them outright when Democrats have chosen not to field a candidate of their own—success that Osborn is hoping to replicate.
And one powerful Democratic group is a believer. The Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is one of the best-funded Democratic organizations in the country, is financing a super PAC called Retire Career Politicians. (It's also contributed to the Nebraska Railroaders PAC.)
According to AdImpact, Retire Career Politicians is spending at least $215,000 on an opening TV ad campaign that praises Osborn as an alternative to politicians who "couldn't be doing less" as "working families struggle to make ends meet." That statement is accompanied by a photo of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump to bolster the case that Osborn sits outside the two-party system.
The narrator continues by praising the candidate's service in the Army and Navy and calling him a "lifelong Nebraskan and a leader of his labor union." The spot then plays audio of Osborn declaring, "Only 2% of all of Congress come from the working class. There's nobody like me in the United States Senate."
Nebraska's other Senate seat is also on the ballot this year in a special election for the remaining two years of former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse's term. Sasse resigned at the end of the last Congress to become president of the University of Florida, a post he announced he was relinquishing last month because of his wife's health struggles. Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, whom Gov. Jim Pillen appointed to replace Sasse, does have a Democratic opponent, but his contest against Preston Love has attracted little attention.
election recaps
● HI State House: Former state Board of Education member Kim Coco Iwamoto denied renomination to state House Speaker Scott Saiki, who has spent close to eight years as one of Hawaii's most powerful politicians, 53-47 in Saturday's Democratic primary. Iwamoto, who is unopposed in the general election, is now set to become the first openly transgender member of the chamber.
Iwamoto's victory over Saiki, who narrowly fended her off in both 2020 and 2022, came after she argued that the speaker failed to address the rising cost of living in a Honolulu district where condo insurance costs have spiked. The impact of her victory, though, is already being felt well outside the boundaries of the 25th District.
"[I]t will be somewhat of a shock to the system at the Legislature if the speaker doesn’t prevail," Democratic Gov. Josh Green, who supported Saiki, told Hawaii News Now on election night. This jolt is fine with Iwamoto, who said that evening of her opponent, "I wasn’t just, you know, campaigning against him. I was campaigning against the entire Democratic establishment in some ways."
Governors
● DE-Gov: A new poll by Concord Public Opinion Partners on behalf of Education Reform Now Advocacy shows New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer with a 30-23 edge over Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, while National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O'Mara takes 8%.
Education Reform Now Advocacy is a nonprofit affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform, a PAC that supports charter schools. It is unclear whether the latter group has a rooting interest in this contest.
This is the first poll this year to show Meyer leading, but it's also the first that was conducted after state officials released a damaging report late last month concluding that Hall-Long's campaign had violated campaign finance laws. A mid-July survey from Public Policy Polling for Hall-Long's supporters at the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association found her leading Meyer 31-19. Meanwhile, an early-July poll from Slingshot Strategies for Citizens for a New Delaware Way, which opposes Hall-Long, found the race tied, at 27-27.
Mayors & County Leaders
● Sacramento, CA Mayor: Retiring Mayor Darrell Steinberg declared Tuesday that he was backing Assemblyman Kevin McCarty in the November nonpartisan election to replace him as leader of California's dark blue capital city.
The Sacramento Bee's Theresa Clift writes that Steinberg, who confirmed his "support" only after the paper learned he'd made a donation to McCarty back in March. Steinberg did not say he was endorsing the legislator, but as we've written before, this is a distinction without a difference.
McCarty—a Democrat whose social media profile declares, "* NOT Kevin McCartHy, Seriously!"—faces physician Flojaune Cofer, who is the endorsed candidate of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Cofer, who would be the first Black woman elected to lead Sacramento, led McCarty 29-22 in the March nonpartisan primary. Neither of the two candidates who finished just behind him, former state Sen. Richard Pan and City Councilman Steve Hansen, appear to have backed either McCarty or Cofer.
Poll Pile
- NC-Gov: Cygnal (R) for the Carolina Journal and the John Locke Foundation: Josh Stein (D): 43, Mark Robinson (R): 38, Mike Ross (L): 3, Wayne Turner (G): 1 (47-44 Trump with third-party candidates) (May: 39-39 gubernatorial tie)
- NC-AG: Cygnal (R): Dan Bishop (R): 42, Jeff Jackson (D): 38
- NC Supreme Court: Cygnal (R): Jefferson Griffin (R): 40, Allison Riggs (D-inc): 37
- San Francisco, CA Mayor: Sextant Strategies & Research (D) for the San Francisco Chronicle: London Breed (inc): 28, Mark Farrell: 20, Daniel Lurie: 17, Aaron Peskin: 12, Ahsha Safai: 5 (All candidates are Democrats.)
Ad Roundup
Campaign Action
