Republican Lee Zeldin lost by 16 points when he first ran in 2008, but won by 10 this year
Leading Off:
• House: It's no secret that the DCCC is trying to convince several unseated incumbents and other unsuccessful candidates to run again in 2016. As those would-be contenders mull their plans, here's a statistic from Nathan Gonzales at Roll Call that should give them some hope: More than 40 percent of this year's House freshman class lost at least one race sometime in their careers.
There's a lot of interesting information in Gonzales' piece. For instance, Democratic Rep.-elect Brad Ashford ran for Nebraska's 2nd District all the way back in 1994 but lost the Republican primary. Republican Mike Bishop of MI-08 also lost his 2010 primary for attorney general and 2012 race for Oakland County prosecutor, but in 2014 he won the GOP primary and general without much trouble.
NY-01's incoming Republican representative Lee Zeldin is another one-time loser, unsuccessfully challenging Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop for this seat back in 2008. Back then Zeldin was pretty much a Some Dude and he predictably lost to Bishop 58-42 in the Democratic wave. However, Zeldin was elected to the state Senate two years later and emerged as a much more formidable contender in 2014. The district didn't change much in the intervening six years but a stronger campaign from Zeldin, the Republican wave, and Bishop's ethics problems led to a 10-point GOP victory this time.
Gonzales also takes a look at this year's crop of new governors and finds that four lost a race in the past. The most interesting is Republican Larry Hogan of Maryland, who lost the primary for a House race all the way back in 1981. The whole article is a good reminder that while a political loss can be embarrassing and demoralizing, good candidates can bounce back.
Senate:
• IL-Sen: Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth is reportedly interested in challenging Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, but one politician thinks she should hold off. That politician is... Kirk himself. In an interview with The Hill, Kirk declared that Duckworth should wait for the state's other Senate seat to become open in 2020 rather than run against him in 2016, for the good of his her career.
And because Kirk absolutely has Duckworth's best interests in mind he couldn't help but add, "To fight and lose a Senate race against Kirk is a terrible start to a career." Now there's a guy who obviously has a humble opinion of himself.
• LA-Sen: Both the DSCC and NRSC have pulled out of the state, but some right-wing groups are still advertising against Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. However, both American Crossroads and the Susan B. Anthony List are recycling spots they used in other contests this year.
JMC Analytics also has a new survey out, but there isn't much to see here. Republican Bill Cassidy leads Landrieu 55-40, making this the fifth straight poll to show Cassidy up by double-digits.
• NV-Sen: The NRSC will be working hard to unseat Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, and there's been some speculation that Reid will retire. Reid himself seems to be all in though, telling Politico's Manu Raju that he's running. Reid is also reportedly shopping for campaign managers, which is not something you usually do if you're planning to call it quits.
House:
• LA-06: JMC Analytics takes a look at the Dec. 6 runoff in this heavily red Baton Rouge-area seat, and finds about what you'd expect. Republican Garret Graves, a former Jindal Administration official, leads former Democratic Gov. and ex-con Edwin Edwards 61-35. In the November jungle primary the combined Republican candidates outpolled Edwards and a few minor Democrats 65-35, so these results are quite plausible.
This race was always the longest of longshots for Team Blue. Edwards has universal name recognition but at 66-32 Romney this seat wasn't going anywhere. The good news is, Edwards will soon have time to go back to donating blood to make Viagra.
Other Races:
• Indianapolis Mayor: Earlier this month Republican Mayor Greg Ballard announced he would not run for a third term, setting up a competitive open seat race for November 2015. Indiana does not have a strong Democratic bench, but a popular Democratic mayor would definitely be courted for higher office.
Plenty of candidates from both sides have declined to run, but the The Indianapolis Star gives us a good lowdown on who may still take the plunge. On the GOP side, City-County Councilman Scott Keller looks likely to enter. State Sen. Jim Merritt is still thinking it over and says he'll decide by Christmas. For Team Blue, former U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett and state Rep. Ed DeLaney are both in. Hogsett looks like the frontrunner against both DeLaney and whoever the Republicans field, though in low turnout races like this anything can happen.
Grab Bag:
• Demographics: To nobody's surprise, the GOP's House majority is built mostly on districts that are mostly white. But you would think that if the GOP expanded its House majority, it would have to be through districts that were somewhat less white. According to Dante Chinni of the American Communities Project, though, that still wasn't the case.
In their old majority, the median non-Hispanic white percentage of GOP-held districts was 75.35 percent; that's up to 76.05 percent in the new cycle. And the median Hispanic share among GOP districts was 7.45 percent, but it's down to 7.30 percent this cycle. (If you're wondering how that's possible, especially when the GOP picked up the Hispanic-majority TX-23 and FL-26, remember that they also picked up three of the whitest districts in the whole nation: ME-02, NY-21, and WV-03.
A deeper dive into the weeds in Minnesota's state legislature from the MinnPost reveals a similar pattern. While the GOP did manage to pick up control of the state House, they didn't do it via seats where their traditional strength has been, in the inner-ring suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul; they picked up only one of 11 targeted seats in these increasingly diverse and well-educated areas. Instead, all the other pickups came in rural parts of the state (although the article doesn't directly address the racial composition of these districts, it's pretty well known that rural Minnesota is about as uniformly white as any place).
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Taniel, and Dreaminonempty