Leading Off:
● CA-17: In a stunning turn of events on Thursday, Rep. Mike Honda sued the campaign of his opponent, fellow Democrat Ro Khanna. Honda alleged that Khanna campaign manager, Brian Parvizshahi, illegally accessed private information about Honda's donors—and within hours, Parvizshahi resigned.
According to Honda's complaint, Parvizshahi served as an intern in 2012 for a fundraising consultant who worked for Honda. Parvizshahi quit the gig after just a month but, says Honda, he retained access to a set of private Dropbox folders that contained Honda contributor data, and he continued to view those files even after he began working for Khanna in 2014. The lawsuit also alleges that during his internship, Parvizshahi signed a nondisclosure agreement that made it clear that he was to treat this type of data as "strictly confidential." Honda's campaign says it began to suspect something was awry when donors reported that they started receiving personal emails from Khanna late last year, but the campaign says it didn't become aware of the data breach until May.
Khanna's campaign responded by denying all the charges and accusing Honda of delaying his suit until shortly before Election Day for political purposes. A Honda attorney, though, countered, "These charges are ones we don't take lightly—they took time to assess." And indeed, they are quite serious. While this is a civil matter and Honda's main aim is to secure a judicial order that all data be returned and Khanna cease using it, it's possible that prosecutors could take an interest in the case and decide to file criminal charges.
For now, though, Khanna's real concern will be how this plays politically. While campaign scandals like this can sometimes wind up being too abstract or picayune for voters to care about, "my opponent stole data about the people who donated to my campaign" is a pretty succinct charge to levy. The question now is whether Honda and his allies will find a way to give this story legs by running ads or sending mailers about it. And given the difficult re-election Honda faces in this Silicon Valley seat, you'd expect him to use an opportunity like to the fullest. Daily Kos Elections currently rates this all-Democratic race as Lean Khanna.
Senate:
● AZ-Sen: While Sen. John McCain's 52-39 win over underfunded GOP primary challenger Kelli Ward last month was very unimpressive, it may have been the toughest part of his re-election campaign. Team Blue has been hoping that Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick would give McCain a tough race here, but national Democrats aren't providing her with the support she needs to win.
When the DSCC announced its initial fall TV reservations in April, it left Arizona off the list. And while the committee recently diverted millions of dollars to Missouri and North Carolina, it still doesn't appear to have invested any money in Arizona. There's also no indication that any other outside groups, such as Senate Majority PAC, are preparing to air ads here, either. On the GOP side, the NRSC has helped McCain pay for some of his TV ads, but they've kept their expenditures fairly low. Early voting, which is very popular in Arizona, begins Oct. 12, so the clock is ticking loudly.
And while there hasn't been a surfeit of polling, the numbers we have seen are not good for Kirkpatrick. Even though CNN/ORC, Marist, and Insights West have all found Donald Trump with small leads in the Grand Canyon State, they've seen McCain defeating Kirkpatrick by double digits. The one recent bright spot was a PPP survey for a liberal group that had the race a 43-43 tie, but it also found that the undecided voters were disproportionately conservative. These voters may hate McCain, but they're unlikely to vote for a Democrat in order to get rid of him.
Unfortunately, all of this—the polls and the outside spending, or lack thereof—indicate that this is not a top-tier contest. We're not ready to write this race off entirely yet, though. Kirkpatrick is a good candidate who has won tough races before, and if Hillary Clinton manages to carry Arizona, that would give Kirkpatrick a lift. But with McCain looking strong, we're moving this race from Lean Republican to Likely Republican. And sadly, this really is good news for John McCain.
● Polls: Here are today's Senate polls:
● AR-Sen: Talk Business/Hendrix College: John Boozman (R-inc): 55, Connor Eldridge (D): 29 (55-34 Trump) (June: 51-29 Boozman)
● CO-Sen: Quinnipiac: Michael Bennet (D-inc): 52, Darryl Glenn (R): 43 (44-42 Clinton) (Aug.: 54-38 Bennet)
● GA-Sen: Quinnipiac: Johnny Isakson (R-inc): 55, Jim Barksdale (D): 34 (47-40 Trump)
● GA-Sen: JMC Analytics: Isakson (R-inc): 41, Barksdale (D): 28, Allen Buckley (Lib): 4 (44-38 Trump) (Aug.: 39-30-4 Isakson)
● IA-Sen: Quinnipiac: Chuck Grassley (R-inc): 55, Patty Judge (D): 43 (44-37 Trump) (Aug.: 51-42 Grassley)
House:
● AZ-02: Freshman Republican Rep. Martha McSally won an expensive and very tight race during last cycle's wave—in fact, it was the closest House election in the country in 2014—but this year's contest isn't shaping up to be anywhere near as competitive. McSally holds a huge cash advantage over Democrat Matt Heinz, a former state representative, and he'll likely need outside help to make up some ground.
However, national Democrats don't appear to be stepping in. According to our data, Democratic groups haven't made any reservations in this Tucson-area seat, and it doesn't seem like that will change soon. On Friday, while the DCCC added several candidates to their Red to Blue program (see our DCCC item below), the committee notably left Heinz on its lower-tier Emerging Races list, where he's languished since July. Early voting starts in Arizona Oct. 12, so Team Blue is running out of time to make a move.
We're not taking this district off the big board yet, though. If there's a late-breaking Democratic wave, districts like this 50-48 Romney seat could suddenly become top targets for Team Blue. But right now, McSally is in a dominant position, so we're changing our rating from Lean Republican to Likely Republican.
● FL-07: Redistricting made Republican Rep. John Mica's suburban Orlando seat considerably bluer (Obama carried the new district by less than 0.1 percent in 2012), and national Democrats are making an expensive effort to flip it. While former Defense Department official Stephanie Murphy jumped in just before the June filing deadline, the DCCC quickly signaled its support with a huge $3 million fall ad reservation here. House Majority PAC has also recently began airing commercials as part of their own $800,000 buy.
Despite these big bookings, we'd been skeptical as to whether there was really any "there" there and wondered if Democrats were just trying to make fetch happen. But now it looks like fetch might indeed be happening: A few days ago, the D-Trip released a survey giving Mica a small 48-45 lead. Mica's team dismissed it as a "deceitful and misleading push poll" but notably didn't release their own numbers.
Still, national Republicans seem confident enough in the incumbent's chances to not reserve any airtime here. And Mica, who holds a large cash-on-hand lead over Murphy, also won't be easy to beat. The congressman hasn't faced a credible Democratic foe in well over a decade, but his decisive 61-39 2012 primary win over fellow Rep. Sandy Adams demonstrates that he still knows how to campaign. However, Democratic spending and this new poll both indicate a real race is brewing here, so we're changing our rating from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.
● MD-06: Democratic Rep. John Delaney should be safe in this suburban DC seat, which backed Obama 55-43. While Delaney only won 50-48 during the 2014 GOP wave, Donald Trump is a poor fit for this affluent and well-educated district. Still, the Baltimore Sun's John Fritze has a copy of a commercial Delaney is running against Republican Amie Hoeber, a former deputy undersecretary of the Army. The spot argues that Hoeber is "an extreme tea party partisan" who wants to defund Planned Parenthood and "fought for a global increase in chemical weapons," before the narrator talks up Delaney's business background.
Delaney's spot comes just as the super PAC Maryland USA began a $100,000 buy against Delaney. The spot's narrator argues that, "In business, Delaney financed companies that foreclosed on homeowners and provided poor care to seniors." DC viewers can expect even more spots from them: According to FEC, the super PAC recently paid for a total of $750,000 in TV advertising.
Maryland USA is almost completely bankrolled by Mark Epstein, one of the founders of the telecommunications company Qualcomm. Epstein just happens to be Hoeber's husband, and Delaney recently filed an FEC complaint arguing that Maryland USA and Hoeber's campaign are illegally coordinating.
Delaney is wealthy, so he'll have the resources to get his message out. It's also very tough to see him losing re-election at a time when Trump is damaging the GOP in seats like this one. Still, Delaney's ad indicates that he is taking this race seriously. Daily Kos Elections rates this as Safe Democratic, but we'll keep an eye out for developments.
● NH-01: A few days ago, the NRCC released a poll giving Republican Rep. Frank Guinta a 41-38 lead over Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, with independent Shawn O'Connor, a former Democrat, taking 8. But it didn't take long for Shea-Porter's allies at House Majority PAC to release a survey from Normington Petts that gives her a 44-34 lead, with O'Connor at 4.
One of the key differences between the two polls are the presidential results. While the NRCC's survey, which was conducted by North Star Opinion Research, finds Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton 41-38 in New Hampshire's 1st District, Normington Petts has Clinton ahead 46-38.
Obama carried this district 50-49 while he was winning statewide 52-46; the current HuffPost Pollster average has Clinton leading in the Granite State 42-37. It seems very tough to believe that Clinton's lead in this district could match, or even exceed, her performance in the entire state, so there's good reason to think Normington Petts's sample is too blue. However, they do show Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Sununu up 47-42 in this district, though Senate results were not included.
● NY-19: The contest for this open Hudson Valley seat has been an unusual race to handicap. On the one hand, Barack Obama carried this district 52-46, and Democrat Zephyr Teachout has been one of the best House fundraisers in the country, thanks in part to a big endorsement from Bernie Sanders. However, this area is still friendly to Republicans downballot, and Teachout, a law professor who challenged Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary two years ago, has one big liability: She only recently moved to the district full time, and Republican John Faso and his allies haven't hesitated to portray her as a carpetbagger from New York City. As a result, we've given Faso, a former state Assembly minority leader, the edge here.
However, both parties are acting like this race is very winnable. Republican outside groups have reserved $1.3 million here to help Faso offset Teachout's huge financial edge, an edge that's allowed the DCCC to book only $186,000 in TV time so far. But more than that, Faso released a poll a few weeks ago giving him a 46-41 lead, while Democrats recently dropped their own survey showing Teachout up 47-42. If the truth lies somewhere in between, then the truth is as evenly divided as it gets.
Teachout's weak ties to the area still concern us, but she has more than enough resources to get her own message out casting Faso as a stereotypical politician who puts Wall Street above the middle class. Given the polling, it's tough to call either candidate a favorite, so we're moving this race from Lean Republican to Tossup.
● NY-25: After a very unexpected, very close call in 2014, Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter is taking her rematch with Republican Mark Assini much more seriously this time. She been running negative ads against him, portraying him as unacceptably conservative, and now he's proven the point:
The uproar relates to editor's notes written in response to reader responses to his blog posts on the website Writers on the Loose between 2005 and 2009. The postings have since been taken down but links provided by Monroe County Democrats show Assini agreeing with a reader who called members of the LGBTQ community "sexual deviants" and quoting a pastor who called transgender individuals "mentally disturbed."
In one post, Assini suggested Barney Frank, then an openly gay member of Congress, should go to prison, where "Old Barney would have plenty of dates along with three squares and cable TV."
Assini claims his views have since changed, but as Assemblyman Harry Bronson, an openly gay Democrat, put it, "If you have evolved, tell me something you've done for the LGBTQ community." Assini has done nothing. Oh, and as for those remarks about Frank? Assini called that "an 'off-color joke' but one commonly made about prison and not Frank's sexual orientation." So he's defending "jokes" about the prison rape of the most prominent gay person ever to serve in the House. So much for "evolving."
● DCCC: On Friday, the DCCC added five candidates to their Red to Blue program, which promises to help Democratic candidates the committee regards as its strongest recruits in the seats it considers its top priorities:
FL-26: Joe Garcia
KS-03: Jay Sidie
MI-08: Suzanna Shkreli
PA-16: Christina Hartman
VA-05: Jane Dittmar
Joe Garica defeated Annette Taddeo, the DCCC's preferred candidate, in the Aug. 30 primary. However, national Democrats were never going to ignore this Miami seat, which backed Obama 55-44. The DCCC and House Majority PAC have reserved a total of $5.8 million in ad time against Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, while Team Red has reserved $5 million here. Daily Kos Elections rates this seat as a Tossup.
The other four additions are Democrats running in conservative districts. So far, neither side appears to have reserved any money for any of those seats (though it's unclear how much of the $345,000 that HMP reserved in the Lansing area will go to Michigan's 7th District, and how much will go to Suzanna Shkreli in the 8th). We'll see if the DCCC's decision to add these four candidates to their top-tier list is a signal that they're planning to change that. We rate all four contests as Likely Republican.
The D-Trip also added Lynn Coleman, who is running in Indiana's 2nd District, to their Emerging Races program, which essentially serves as the farm team for Red to Blue. Coleman, a former South Bend police officer and mayoral aide, is challenging Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski. A few weeks ago, Politico reported that GOP polls found Walorski in an unexpectedly close race in this 56-42 Romney seat, though they didn't provide any actual data. So far, no outside groups appear to have reserved any ad time here, either. We rate this seat as Safe Republican, though we'll see if there are any signs that Walorski is vulnerable.
Ad Roundup:
● FL-Sen: In this animated spot, AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers attack Republican Sen. Marco Rubio over his support for Social Security cuts, Medicare privatization, and abolishing the Department of Education. The two unions are putting $1.3 million behind the ad and it will run through the end of September.
● MO-Sen: Republican Sen. Roy Blunt speaks directly to the camera, touting his bipartisan bona fides and accomplishments with several Democratic senators. Blunt of course doesn't mention that these were far from the biggest or most divisive issues, on which he almost always votes the party line. Meanwhile, Blunt's allies at the Senate Leadership Fund attack Democrat Jason Kander as a career politician and libruhl boogeyman who just loves high taxes.
● NC-Sen: EMILY's List is putting $2 million behind a spot attacking Republican Sen. Richard Burr for repeatedly voting to raise his own pay, pointing out that his net worth increased five-fold during his 20 years in Congress. They further note he voted against a ban on insider trading by members of Congress and even called the measure "a waste of time."
● NH-Sen: The NRSC attacks Democrat Maggie Hassan over her handling of the state's opioid abuse crisis, with a woman named Susan who lost her son to an overdose castigating Hassan for not doing her job as governor.
A related NRSC spot uses a similar framing to portray Hassan as "either corrupt … or inept" over her handling of the New Hampshire Hospital. The NRSC notes she awarded the company Dartmouth-Hitchcock a $36 million dollar contract to provide health services after receiving campaign donations from executives, and they laid off hundreds shortly thereafter, potentially endangering its ability to live up to its commitments.
However, Dartmouth-Hitchcock's was the only bid, and as Hassan's campaign has noted, the contract went through the normal procurement process and received unanimous support from even the Republican-majority Executive Council, which can veto important budgetary matters in New Hampshire. Even so, attacks like this can stick if they aren't forcefully responded to.
From the other side, Hassan promotes her record as a business-friendly governor with a record of fiscal responsibility and working across party lines.
● PA-Sen: Republican Sen. Pat Toomey tries to paint himself as above the political fray, working across the aisle with Democrats on issues like background checks for gun buyers, while attacking Democrat Katie McGinty as a partisan insider with ethics issues. The commercial was temporarily pulled down after ex-Rep. Gabby Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, objected to Toomey using her in the ad to attack McGinty; Giffords says that while she backs Toomey, she isn't supporting him out of opposition to McGinty. Toomey's team says they'll change the ad, but it will still feature Gifford's endorsement.
● AZ-02: Democrat Matt Heinz uses his first general election ad to show a doctor excoriating Republican Rep. Martha McSally for voting six times to defund Planned Parenthood, noting that millions of women rely on it for treatments like cancer screenings. Heinz, who is also a doctor, uses that as his title rather than saying he's a former state representative.
● IA-01: House Majority PAC attacks Republican Rep. Rod Blum for supporting trade deals and tax breaks that benefit big corporations that ship jobs overseas.
● MN-03: Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen tars Democrat Terri Bonoff as a stereotypical tax-and-spend liberal, literally employing the phrase "A billion dollar tax increase … a billion, with a 'B'" without a hint of pop culture awareness.
● MT-AL: Democrat Denise Juneau features little kids saying they what they want to do when they grow up, which Juneau uses to highlight her efforts as Montana's education chief to get schools to prepare students for good jobs in fields like medicine or engineering.
● NV-04: The DCCC has an elderly veteran taking Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy to task for wanting to raise the retirement age to 75 and calling the disabled "a drain on society." They then link Hardy's disrespectfulness to Donald Trump's, with a clip of Trump's infamous insult that John McCain wasn't a war hero because he was captured.
● NY-24: Democrat Colleen Deacon ties Republican Rep. John Katko to national Republicans and says both are bad for women. She attacks Katko over voting to defund Planned Parenthood after promising he wouldn't, and also for wanting to ban abortion.
● PA-08: If it's another Republican ad attacking a Democratic legislator, it's a good bet that it's over taxes. Defending Mainstreet uses a Santa Claus setup to hit Democrat Steve Santarsiero as a "bad Santa" who wants billions in higher taxes and presumably didn't make the cut to star in the Billy Bob Thornton sequel this November.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, and James Lambert.