On Friday, Politico reported that the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund had canceled all its planned TV advertising to help two very vulnerable Republican congressmen whom their private polls show in bad shape: Colorado's Mike Coffman and Michigan's Mike Bishop. Politico says CLF had $1 million reserved in Colorado and $2.1 million in Michigan, money that will be redeployed to races they see as more competitive. And it's not just the GOP that’s pulling out: Politico ads that the House Majority PAC, the main pro-Democratic super PAC, quietly canceled $800,000 in planned TV time in Coffman's race days earlier.
We'll start with a look at Colorado's 6th. We've only seen one poll here in months, but that was Siena's mid-September survey for the New York Times, which found Coffman badly trailing Democrat Jason Crow 51-40. Team Red has yet to offer up any better numbers, and based on Politico’s reporting, we certainly shouldn’t expect any.
This turn of fate is somewhat unexpected, though. Coffman is a tough bugger who has a history of winning very expensive fights in this competitive suburban Denver seat, most recently pulling off a 51-43 victory in 2016 even as Hillary Clinton was carrying his district 50-41. However, Donald Trump has been particularly toxic in well-educated, affluent areas like this one, so much so that the "moderate” image Coffman has carefully crafted for himself over the years is no longer providing sufficient insulation.
And while CLF has spent heavily on ads attacking Crow, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, they don't seem to have done him nearly enough damage. Coffman is still a well-funded incumbent who has run ahead of the ticket many times, and the DCCC has still been airing ads, so not everyone has left Coffman for the vultures. But the congressman would need a near-miraculous turn-around in the next five weeks to stave off his looming fate, which is why Daily Kos Elections is moving this contest from Tossup to Lean Democratic.
Next is Michigan’s 8th District, where GOP Rep. Mike Bishop faces a tough fight against Democrat Elissa Slotkin. (Interestingly, the CLF's chief Corey Bliss named this very seat back in June as one of the two races he'd be watching to see which party would win the House; the other was GOP Rep. Mimi Walter's California's 45th District.) However, the NRCC has been running spots here, so not all national Republicans seem ready to triage Bishop.
Bishop is also arguing he's very much still in the fight, and he quickly released a mid-September survey from Public Opinion Strategies in response to the CLF cancelations that gave him a narrow 45-43 lead over Slotkin. Days ago, Slotkin released her own poll that gave her a small 47-43 lead, which likewise suggests that Bishop isn't in quite as dire shape as the CLF seems to think he is. The good news is that we'll get our first independent look at this race very soon from Siena on behalf of the New York Times. For the moment, we're keeping our rating here at Tossup, but we're going to be re-evaluating that in the coming days.
Notably, Medium Buying reported two weeks ago that the DCCC canceled all its planned TV time for the Lansing media market, which covers about 40 percent of this seat. We wondered at the time what the D-Trip was thinking, so it's possible the committee’s move was an early indication that they felt good about Slotkin's chances in this seat, which moved from a narrow 51-48 Romney to a larger 51-44 Trump.