Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer is contemplating a Senate campaign
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• CA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's Thursday retirement left us with more than our share of potential Senate candidates. Over the last few days, several of them have made their interest (or lack of interest) in the seat clear. We've created a list of who is considering a bid and who has ruled one out as of Sunday evening, and we'll be updating it as needed throughout Monday.
Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer has said little publicly, but he's taking a very serious look at running. Politico's Andrew Restuccia reports that Steyer began making calls to his political contacts almost as soon as Boxer announced her departure and has begun reviewing polling data. However, Steyer may end up holding his fire until 2018, when Gov. Jerry Brown is termed out and Sen. Dianne Feinstein is likely to retire. In any case it doesn't look like we'll be waiting on Steyer for long: The Los Angeles Times told us on Saturday that Steyer is just days away from a decision.
Steyer bankrolled NextGen Climate Action, which was one of the major national Democratic outside groups in 2014, and he has plenty of ties with environmentalists. Running for statewide office in California is an extremely expensive affair but Steyer has already proven he's willing to spend whatever it takes to get his message out. But as 1998 Democratic gubernatorial primary contender Al Checchi and 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman (among others) have proven, massive spending doesn't guarantee victory at all.
Steyer is far from the only California Democrat gearing up for a run. Head below the fold for more.
Two of the state Democratic Party's biggest heavyweights, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris, have said little about their intentions. However, it's a very good bet that only one of them will run this cycle. As the Washington Post has noted, Newsom and Harris are close politically and friendly to one another, and one of them will likely decide to wait until 2018 rather than run against the other. But Buzzfeed's Ruby Cramer reports that neither San Franciscan is sure what to do, and the two have not even spoken directly to one another since Boxer's announcement. Cramer also tells us that both camps agree that a decision will need to be made within the week, but it's anyone's guess what will happen.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has made it no secret over the last few years that he's planning to run for statewide office, and on Saturday he announced that he will "seriously consider looking at running for California's open Senate seat." Only a few weeks ago Villaraigosa indicated that he was much more likely to run for governor in 2018, but he looks ready to shift gears.
On Thursday, Rep. John Garamendi also confirmed his interest in running. Garamendi has won statewide before, serving twice as insurance commissioner and being elected lieutenant governor in 2006. However, his planned 2010 gubernatorial bid never went anywhere, and he chose to run for the House in a 2009 special election instead. If he does seek the Senate seat he may start with more statewide name recognition than the average California House member, but it's a lot to ask voters outside his district to remember someone who left the lieutenant governorship almost seven years before the June primary. Obama won his East Bay 3rd District 54-43, and Democrats should be able to keep it with presidential turnout.
Around the Capitol gives us some new details about fellow Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who did not rule out a run on Thursday. Sanchez is reportedly seeking out endorsements and is privately claiming to have $1 million in pledges. Obama won her 46th District by a 61-36 margin, and this Orange County seat should be safe for the blue team in a presidential year. Former Rep. Ellen Tauscher also confirmed that she'll "think about" a run. Tauscher represented an East Bay seat until she left in 2009 to join the U.S. State Department; Garamendi won her seat that year. Tauscher had a reputation as a Democrat moderate in the House, serving in the Blue Dog Coalition.
However, we can probably add former Democratic state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg to the "probably won't run" list. The former Sacramento state senator left office at the end of 2014 and told KCRA 3 that he "want[s] to return to public service at some point, but I'm sure there will be a lot of people who are interested" in the Senate seat. However, when he was given the chance to rule out a bid Steinberg replied, "No Shermanesque declarations today," so we can't cross him off the potential candidates list yet.
On the GOP side, Fresno Mayor and 2014 controller nominee Ashley Swearengin's office also confirms that she's had some discussions about running, and will take a closer look now that Boxer's upcoming departure is official. Swearengin is termed out as mayor in 2016, so she doesn't have too much to lose by running. She was one of the stronger statewide Republican candidates last year but Swearengin still fell to Betty Yee (another potential Senate candidate) by 8 points even in the midst of the GOP wave.
Sophomore Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, who hails from the San Diego area, is also reportedly considering jumping in. Chavez starts off with little statewide name recognition, but the national GOP would be excited about having a Hispanic veteran as their standard-bearer. Carl DeMaio, who was the GOP nominee in the 52nd District last year, is saying he doesn't plan to run "at this time," which isn't a no. DeMaio's congressional bid was wounded, perhaps fatally, by unproved sexual harassment accusations; it will be hard for him to resurrect his political career as long as they continue to hang over him.
Tom Del Beccaro, a former state Republican chair, is also thinking about a campaign. Former Rep. David Dreier has been asked about a run but hasn't said anything about his plans, so he's worth keeping an eye on. But Tom Campbell, an ex-congressman who has run for Senate three times, doesn't seem incredibly interested in a fourth round. Campbell said he doesn't anticipate going for it: Not a no, but not a sign that he's likely to jump in. California is a very blue state and any of the aforementioned Republicans will have a hard time winning. Still, it's not impossible that the June 2016 top-two primary could send two Republicans to the general election, especially if too many Democratic contenders split the blue vote.
There are a few names we can take out of contention on both sides. Democratic Reps. Ami Bera, Julia Brownley, Jared Huffman, and Mark Takano all confirmed that they'll stay put. And to no one's surprise, Gov. Jerry Brown also ruled out a run. For the GOP, 2010 nominee Carly Fiorina made it clear that she's focusing on her possible presidential bid and will not try running for Senate again.
There are a lot of twists and turns left in this contest, and we'll be following them all here at Daily Kos Elections.
Gubernatorial:
• KS-Gov: If you're a governor, you very rarely want to be included in the same sentence as "grand jury" and "investigation." During his 2014 re-election, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's campaign received a $500,000 loan from his running mate Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer. Things may not have been kosher with this loan or any of Colyer's past contributions to the campaign, and a federal grand jury is subpoenaing the head of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. We'll see if this goes anywhere.
• LA-Gov: Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle does not have an easy road to victory in this year's open gubernatorial race. Angelle isn't as well known as fellow Republicans Sen. David Vitter and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, and state Rep. John Bell Edwards may do well in the Oct. 24 jungle primary simply by virtue of being the only credible Democrat. Angelle needs to at least place second in October to make it to the Nov. 21 runoff and he'll need some serious money, as well as regional support in Acadiana, to have a shot.
He seems to be doing decently in the fundraising department at least. On Thursday he announced that he has raised $1.5 million since jumping in the race in October. We'll see how it measures up next to the other contenders by the Feb. 15 reporting deadline, though as The Advocate points out, it'll be harder to get a good apples-to-apples comparison between Vitter and everyone else. The senator has moved much of his federal campaign money into a PAC, which will need to operate separately from his main campaign.
• MT-Gov: Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock will likely be target for defeat in 2016, and it's no surprise he's already begun raising money. As of Dec. 31 Bullock has brought in $320,000, and he has $273,000 on hand. No credible Republicans have declared their intentions yet, though wealthy businessman Greg Gianforte is a potential candidate.
• WV-Gov: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has been mulling a campaign for his old job as governor in 2016 rather than seeking re-election in 2018. Manchin recently told the Associated Press that he will make a decision "by this summer, end of the spring". West Virginia only forbids governors from serving more than two consecutive terms so if Manchin won, he'd be eligible to seek re-election in 2020.
Manchin is almost certainly Team Blue's best bet to keep the governorship in what is rapidly becoming a very red state. However, Democrats would have a tough time holding his Senate seat without him. Of course given how quickly West Virginia is turning against Democrats, even Manchin may have trouble by 2018. It's also worth noting that we haven't seen any recent polling indicating how popular Manchin still is in the Mountain State. A September 2013 PPP poll gave him only a 46-44 approval rating, but there hasn't been any fresh data since then.
House:
• IL-12: Democrats lost this swingy southern Illinois seat last year, and are eager to get it back. Outgoing Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon is a potential candidate against Republican Rep. Mike Bost, and she's not ruling anything out. Simon unsuccessfully ran for comptroller last year against Republican incumbent Judy Baar Topinka (who passed away shortly thereafter) and did carry a few counties in the 12th District, but almost certainly lost it. The DCCC is already looking for potential candidates for this seat, though it's unclear if Simon is on their list.
• NY-11: Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan's unofficial campaign for the Republican nomination in the upcoming special election has been going very well, and on Friday he declared his candidacy.
Donovan also got some expected but still very good news on Saturday. Donovan received the endorsement of the Staten Island Republican Party, which essentially secures him the Republican nomination. In New York county party committees pick the special election nominees, with each county's votes weighed by the number of committee members and registered party voters. The Brooklyn Republican Party also has a say in the process and is likely to back Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who has not officially entered the race. But since Staten Island holds a much larger proportion of the vote, it's incredibly hard to see Malliotakis emerging with the nomination.
Other Races:
• Anchorage Mayor: Alaska's dominant city will host the first round of its open-seat mayoral race April 7, and the Feb. 13 filing deadline is not far away. Former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is considering a run for his old post, and plenty of would-be candidates would rather not face him. Still, there plenty of non-Begich candidates out there, and Caslon Hatch of KTUU gives us a rundown.
Republican Anchorage Assemblymember Amy Demboski and independent former Assemblymember Dan Coffey are already in. In the maybe column we have Republican Assembly Chair Dick Traini, who admitted that he's waiting on a Begich decision. On the Democratic side we also Assemblymember Patrick Flynn and former state Sen. Hollis French as potential contenders. Local Chamber of Commerce head Andrew Halcro is also interested; Halcro ran for governor as an independent in 2006, taking 9 percent statewide.
• Chicago Mayor: We haven't seen any polling here in months, but on Thursday Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a survey showing himself in a strong position. A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll gives Rahm 50 percent of the vote, with Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia at 22; Ald. Bob Fioretti and wealthy businessman Willie Wilson are at 10 and 7 respectively. All the candidates are Democrats in this officially non-partisan race. Rahm needs to secure a majority in the Feb. 24 election to win outright, or else he'll be forced into an April runoff.
The mayor didn't poll particularly well throughout 2014 but he's launched a major ad buy that may be helping him turn things around. Hopefully we'll see another poll soon enough that will tell us if Rahm is still as vulnerable as he looked last year or if he's really about to secure a second term.
• Jacksonville Mayor: Democratic Mayor Alvin Brown will face a serious challenge this year in this conservative city, and Team Red seems to have settled on their candidate. Former state party chair and businessman Lenny Curry has been gobbling up endorsements from local and state Republicans; he got some more good news recently when 2011 candidate Mike Hogan declined to run. Councilman Bill Bishop is also running, but he has nowhere near the money or institutional support that Curry has. The election will be held March 24 with a May 19 runoff scheduled if no one takes a majority.
Grab Bag:
• Demographics: You're probably getting tired of hearing it, but it bears repeating: as much as changing demographics are helping the Democrats to a stronger lock on the presidency, those same changes are making it harder and harder for them to muster a majority in the House. With non-white and well-educated people increasingly (and inefficiently, from an electoral standpoint) clustering in major cities, that leaves more and more congressional districts with a majority of likely Republican voters. And when you factor in the role of gerrymandering — where legislatures intentionally draw districts so the non-white and well-educated people are sectioned off — that only magnifies the effect.
We bring this up again because National Journal's Ron Brownstein, one of the most perceptive observers of demographics in politics, has an interesting new post quantifying just how big a deal this is in the House. He breaks CDs down into four quadrants: high-education and high-minority, high-education and low-minority, and so on. Unsurprisingly, Democrats dominate the high/high districts, and Republicans dominate the low/low districts.
Unfortunately, though, there are way more low/low districts than any other category. One-hundred seventy of 435 (39 percent) are low/low, and they elect 150 Republicans and 20 Dems; 61 percent of the GOP's caucus comes from this quadrant. (The Dems' majorities in decades past were dependent on these types of districts electing a fair number of Blue Dogs, who've been mostly eradicated now.) There are only 102 high/high districts, in the nation's cities and inner suburbs, though they elect 80 Dems and 22 GOPers: Forty-three percent of the Dem caucus comes from these districts.
The remaining 70 high-diversity/low-education and 88 low-diversity/high-education districts are sort of the swing districts and they should be the route to a Democratic majority in the future, but they each come with their own sets of problems: the high/low districts don't generate the kind of turnout that reliably elects Democrats, and the low/high districts in the outer suburbs may be socially liberal but not always that interested in appeals to economic populism.
• Media: Congratulations to Nathan Gonzales of The Rothenberg Political Report, who announced on Friday that he will be taking over as editor and publisher of the publication, which has been renamed "The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report." We've linked to Gonzales's work many times over the years (his articles on loserspeak remain my personal favorites) and we're looking forward to more great stuff from him!
• Votes: The 114th Congress has barely gotten started, and we've already had two interesting House votes that have exposed some of the fissures within the Democratic caucus: Wednesday's vote on a smorgasbord of stuff but, mostly notably, weakening some key Dodd-Frank provisions (which failed even though it got a majority of votes, because it was a suspension vote requiring two-thirds), and Friday's vote on the Keystone XL pipeline (which passed, though it also really failed because it didn't reach veto override numbers).
By Venn diagramming the Dems who were outliers on both votes, we can pin down what's left of the moderates in the caucus (further reduced after losing some of the core members in 2012 to retirement, like Jim Matheson and Mike McIntyre). Only 14 Dems fall in that category: Brad Ashford, Sanford Bishop, Cheri Bustos, Henry Cuellar, Gwen Graham, Dan Lipinski, David Loebsack, Sean Maloney, Patrick Murphy, Collin Peterson, Kurt Schrader, David Scott, Terri Sewell, and Albio Sires. For the most part, it's the members in R+ districts that you'd suspect, but Bishop (in 59 percent Obama GA-02), Scott (in 69 percent Obama GA-13), Sewell (in 72 percent Obama AL-07), and Sires (in 78 percent Obama NJ-08) stand out a bit.
Among the ones who only voted to weaken Dodd-Frank, they tend to be New Dem-ish types from affluent suburban districts where there's not much call for economic populism (Jim Himes, Elizabeth Esty, Suzan DelBene, for example). Among the ones who only voted for Keystone, they tend to fall into one of two bins: Texans (Marc Veasey, Filemon Vela, both Al and Gene Green), or northeast labor Dems (Mike Doyle, Donald Norcross, Bob Brady, for example).
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.
