Jason Kander's decision puts the Missouri Senate race on the map
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• MO-Sen: On Thursday, Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander announced that he would challenge Republican Sen. Roy Blunt for re-election. Kander gives his party a credible candidate in a tough race, and ensures that Team Red will need to work to safeguard another Senate seat in a cycle where they're mostly on the defensive.
Kander enters the contest with the backing of Missouri's Democratic statewide elected officials, and he's unlikely to face any real primary opposition. Kander has only won statewide once, but he proved in 2012 that he is capable of prevailing in tough races. He defeated then-state Rep. Shane Schoeller 49-47 at the same time Mitt Romney was carrying the Show Me State 54-44. As an Afghanistan veteran, Kander also has a background that contrasts well with Blunt, who has served in Congress for decades.
While Kander expands the map for Senate Democrats, Blunt is still the clear favorite at this stage. Missouri has become increasingly Republican in recent years, especially at the federal level. And while Blunt is not an exciting candidate, there's little doubt that he's ready for a real fight. Blunt has been stockpiling resources for his re-election campaign and has scared off notable primary challengers. Blunt also starts out far better known than Kander, and he'll work to make sure that voters do not get a good first impression of the Democrat.
This is still the GOP's race to lose, and Kander and his allies are going to need to work hard to pull off an upset. But Kander's entrance gives his party the chance to pull off a win in a contest that, only a few months ago, looked like a lock for the GOP. We'll be watching all the developments closely.
Senate:
• LA-Gov, Sen: To the surprise of basically no one, Republican Rep. John Fleming has endorsed Sen. David Vitter's gubernatorial bid. Fleming has not been subtle about his desire to be appointed to Vitter's Senate seat, and he's been taking every opportunity to suck up to Vitter to help make it happen. As of this writing, Fleming has not changed any of his children's names to "Vitter Awesome Fleming," but it's probably only a matter of time.
• PA-Sen: The Pennsylvania Democratic establishment isn't going to accept former Rep. and all-but-certain candidate Joe Sestak as their nominee again until he wins the primary or it becomes absolutely clear no one's going to beat him, and we're far from either outcome. There are real doubts among party leaders that the undisciplined Sestak can beat Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in a rematch, and there's plenty of personal tension between the two camps as well.
With Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro looking very unlikely to jump into the ring against Sestak, Keystone State power players are looking for other options, and the National Journal's Alex Roarty fills us in on who might emerge as the non-Sestak Democrat. Former Rep. Chris Carney talked about a run a while back, and some local Democrats still like him. But Carney's conservative record in the House could make him a liability in the primary, and it doesn't help that he comes from a heavily Republican area.
State Sen. Vincent Hughes also expressed interest in a bid at the beginning of the month, and his ties to labor and populist rhetoric could make him a formidable contender. But Roarty tells us that another prominent African American politician from Philadelphia, District Attorney Seth Williams, is being courted. Williams of course said he was focused on his current post when he was asked about his plans (just once, I'd love to hear someone say, "I hate my job and can't wait to get out of this hellhole") but he definitely sounds intrigued about the Senate. Williams asked, "[w]ho wouldn't want to be a U.S. senator?" and laid out some of the issues he'd like to focus on. Rep. Bob Brady, the powerful chair of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, is already touting Williams and sounds like he'd back him if he jumped in.
Roarty also informs us that the DSCC has met with some potential candidates, though the group doesn't sound like they're opposed to a Sestak rerun. Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski got a call, though if his weak 2014 gubernatorial bid is any indication, the party should look elsewhere. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald also got some DSCC love, but he says he won't go for it. Erie County Executive and former Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper also declined, though there's been no real talk of her running.
We'll see who else emerges, but it looks like Sestak can't expect an easy path to the Democratic nomination. Of course, the honey badger is no stranger to tough races and he may just not care who he has to devour to get to Toomey.
House:
• NC-03: Rep. Walter Jones won a bruising Republican primary last year, and it wouldn't have been shocking if the 11-term iconoclast decided to call it a career. But on Thursday, Jones confirmed that he's running again, telling Roll Call, "I like to be a thorn in people's ass."
Jones is quite conservative, but he hails from the Paulist wing of the party. Jones went from ardently supporting the Iraq War (he was one of the brains behind freedom fries) to becoming one of the few congressional Republicans to oppose it. Jones has also very much succeeded in being a pain in the ass for his party's leadership, with him voting for banking reform and voting against John Boehner in the last two speakership elections. Establishment-flavored Republicans have been tired of him for a while and they spent big on his 2014 primary challenger, former George W. Bush aide Taylor Griffin. Griffin was far from the first guy to try and primary Jones but he came the closest to winning, only falling short 51-45.
Griffin hasn't said what he plans to do in 2016, but local operatives tell Roll Call that they think he'll seek a rematch with Jones. Griffin's 2014 fundraising wasn't incredible last time, and Jones portrayed him as a carpetbagger, but he may have solved both problems. Griffin's near win and past campaign experience should make it easier for him to raise money, and he's stayed in the district since his defeat. Romney won this coastal seat 58-41, so it should stay red regardless of who prevails in the primary.
Other Races:
• DLCC: This is a welcome development: The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is responsible for helping to elect Democrats to state legislatures around the country, just launched a new super PAC called Advantage 2020 that's aimed at putting the party in a stronger position when it's time to draw new district maps after the next census—now only five years away. Michigan ex-Rep. Mark Schauer, who unsuccessfully ran for governor last year and previously served as a state senator, will lead the committee.
Democrats largely got the shaft after the last round of redistricting, thanks to the GOP wave of 2010, which ushered in tons of new Republican governors and state lawmakers. (There's nothing worse than getting killed in the election just before a census.) But Republicans also outhustled Democrats with their REDMAP effort, something the blue team does not want to—and indeed cannot—let happen again.
One good bit of news is that 2020 will at least be a presidential year. However, nearly all of the key governorships that will have a say in redistricting are going to be up in 2018, so another midterm swoon would seriously limit the Democrats' ability to craft their preferred maps, even if the party does meet with legislative success in 2020.
Grab Bag:
• Dark Money: While nobody's arguing that it's a good thing that the Koch brothers and their ilk are flooding the airwaves with outside-group money, it's past time to stop blaming that as reason #1 for poor Democratic results in the last two midterm elections. Alan Abramowitz offers two charts that demonstrate how that's the case. One, you may have seen before, courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics; it compares outside spending by Dem- and GOP-friendly outside groups in key 2014 Senate races, and shows little relationship between the ratio and each race's results (for instance, Dem groups had the upper hand in Alaska and North Carolina, both of which still were losses).
The second one is something new, though: it's a regression analysis of what various factors shaped the overall 2014 results. Each state's presidential-election partisanship, and the benefit of incumbency, explain almost all of the variance in the Democratic margins; party and outside spending both barely register.
• Great Mentioner: New Hampshire is always an unpredictable state, but there's no telling what will happen here in 2016. National Democrats are trying to recruit Gov. Maggie Hassan to challenge Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, but Hassan is also up for re-election that year. Plenty of Democrats will eye the seat Hassan doesn't run for, and we could see a very crowded primary. There are also several Republicans who could campaign for the governorship regardless of what Hassan does. Check out our new Daily Kos Great Mentioner post for more.
• Senate: Now that Democrat Jason Kander is running for Senate (see our MO-Sen item above), Nathan Gonzales takes a look at other secretaries of state who sought the same promotion. Unfortunately for Kander, this group does not have a good track record. In fact, the last time a sitting secretary of state was elected to the Senate was 1996, when Georgia Democrat Max Cleland won.
Plenty of secretaries of state have run for Senate since then and lost: In 2014 alone, four sitting or former ones were defeated. What's more, in the last 110 years, only 10 senators had ever served as secretary of state, so this isn't a recent trend at all. For gubernatorial races, though, things have been a little better. In 2006, Iowa Democrat Chet Culver won the governor's mansion, but no other secretary of state has since then. (Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Oregon's newly elevated Gov. Kate Brown took office after their predecessors resigned.)
It's not too hard to account for the failure of secretaries of state to win. The job is usually pretty low-profile: It's hard for most voters to really get excited about the person who certifies election results and hands out business licenses. Usually when a secretary of state is in the news, it's because he or she is at the center of a disputed election, transforming them into polarizing figures. When Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell ran for higher office in 2006, they already were at a disadvantage due to the Democratic wave, but their controversial roles as chief election officers certainly didn't help. Whether you're anonymous or infamous, neither is a good thing to be.
By contrast, other statewide electeds can usually find other ways to get their name out. Attorneys general get the chance to prosecute well-known criminals and argue high-profile cases. State treasurers and auditors can take credit for rooting out inefficient spending and even good economic news, whether or not they had anything to do with it (most likely not). And lieutenant governors can ride the coattails of popular departing governors, even if they also had little to do with their boss's success. But few voters have much interest in the people who make sure elections proceed without a hitch.
This doesn't mean that Kander or any of his counterparts can't win higher office. If they can raise money and are running in a good political climate, they can definitely make some noise. But it does mean that they can't count on past statewide wins to propel them to the Senate or governor's mansion.
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.
