The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● Deaths: Former Texas Rep. Ralph Hall, who was elected to the House as a Democrat in 1980 and joined the GOP in 2004, died Thursday at the age of 95. Daily Kos Elections has put together an obituary looking at Hall’s long and eventful career, which continued until his 2014 GOP primary defeat against now-Rep. John Ratcliffe.
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Hall was long a Democrat, but he only joined the GOP after 23 years in the House. Hall recounted Hall recounted in 2013 that in January of 2004, when it was time for him to file for re-election, he was conflicted about what party to run with. Hall said he “sent two applications down (to the elections office); two checks for $25: one for the Republican, one for the Democrat,” and that he “sent a guy 30 minutes before the deadline to go in there and said, ‘I’ll call and tell you which I want to be.’”
Hall ended up choosing to go with the GOP, saying that he made the decision “at the last minute.” He recounted that he hadn’t even told his wife, Mary Ellen Hall, that he was switching parties until he’d done it, and she replied, “Hope you enjoy eating out and sleeping by yourself for about three weeks.” Hall’s new party was much happier with his decision, but GOP primary voters got tired of him and he ended up losing renomination in 2014. Check out our obituary for much more on his long career, featuring appearances from Sam Rayburn and Bonnie and Clyde.
Senate
● CO-Sen: Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter said last month that he was considering a Senate run, but he didn't sound very enthusiastic about the idea in an interview with the Denver Post this week. Perlmutter said he was "not thinking about it" and liked being in the House, and added he was "not going to worry about any of that (Senate) stuff for some time." That's not quite a no and the "for some time" bit especially gives him some wiggle room, but it doesn't sound like Perlmutter particularly wants to challenge GOP Sen. Cory Gardner.
The paper also writes that local Democrats have "whispered" that former House Majority Leader Alice Madden could run. Madden, who has not shown any public interest in getting in, left the legislature in 2009 and is now the executive director at the University of Colorado Boulder's natural resources law center.
● KS-Sen: On Wednesday, the Journal-World reported that the citizen-initiated grand jury investigating former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach found that he had not committed a "cognizable crime under the laws of the State of Kansas" and adjourned without taking any action against him. Kobach is mulling seeking the GOP nod to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Roberts, and this is at least one fewer thing he needs to worry about.
As we've written before, Kansas is one of a few states that allows citizens to collect petitions to initiate grand juries, and a local man named Steven Davis, who unsuccessfully ran for the state House in 2016 and 2018 as a Democrat, did just that in 2017. Davis alleged that in 2016, Kobach's office failed to properly register a number of people who had tried to register to vote when they renewed their driver's licenses or filled out an online form.
Kobach's office denied any wrongdoing, saying that the allegations come from a brief period when the online voter registration systems were malfunctioning and claiming that both state and local officials worked to make sure people affected by the problem could vote.
● MA-Sen: Labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who has attracted national attention by suing ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft on behalf of drivers who were classified as "independent contractors" rather than employees, told the Boston Globe this week that she was considering challenging Sen. Ed Markey in the Democratic primary. It's not clear what argument Liss-Riordan would use for why voters should fire Markey.
● MN-Sen: The Star Tribune writes that there's been "chatter" that My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, an ardent Trump supporter, could challenge Democratic Sen. Tina Smith. Lindell was mentioned as a possible candidate for governor two years ago, and while he gave some confusing signals about whether or not he was interested, he never went for it.
Lindell recently earned national news in a decidedly unconventional and apolitical way back in Minnesota. Residents in the Minneapolis suburb of Jordan called police to report a "deranged person standing outside in the cold hugging a pillow." Investigators discovered soon that this "deranged person" was a cardboard cutout of Lindell shown hugging an equally flat pillow.
Meanwhile, Minnesota Public Radio's Brian Bakst writes that retired Marine intelligence officer Donna Bergstrom confirmed she was considering taking on Smith. Bergstrom was Jeff Johnson's running mate during his unsuccessful campaign for governor, and their ticket lost in November 54-42 to Democrat Tim Walz.
● NC-Sen: Politico writes that state Attorney General Josh Stein has decided to seek re-election to a second term rather than take on GOP Sen. Thom Tillis. We haven't seen a direct quote from Stein, who reportedly was Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer's top choice to run here.
Gubernatorial
● LA-Gov: While former Rep. John Fleming has reportedly been considering running for governor this year, he got a new job in government on Thursday when the Senate voted to confirm him as an assistant secretary of Commerce. Trump first nominated Fleming for this post in June, and it's possible that the former Republican congressman saw running for office again back home as an option if his confirmation got held up again.
House
● CA-45: On Thursday, Republican Laguna Hills City Councilor Don Sedgwick announced that he would take on freshman Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in this Orange County district. Sedgwick is the first notable Republican to enter the race for this seat, which swung from 55-43 Romney to 50-44 Clinton. (Hat-tip Rob Pyers)
● IL-16: This week, the Wisconsin National Guard ruled that GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who serves as a pilot in the Wisconsin Air National Guard, did not break any military rules when he publicly bashed Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers last month.
Kinzinger was pissed that Evers, a Democrat who is commander-in-chief of his state's National Guard, was recalling 112 National Guard troops from the border with Mexico, and the Illinois congressman proceeded to go after him on Twitter and on Fox. The Wisconsin National Guard opened an investigation to determine whether Kinzinger had broken state or federal laws that forbid officers from criticizing governors, but they announced this week that he was "not speaking as a commissioned officer, but as a U.S. congressman."
● NC-03: Former Greenville Mayor Allen Thomas has announced that he’ll seek the Democratic nomination in this special election. While only about 30 percent of Greenville is in the 3rd District, Thomas may have some name recognition and connections outside the city from his current role as executive director of Global TransPark, a large industrial park that the National Journal called a "a major economic driver on the coast." (Thomas is stepping down from that post to run.) The filing deadline is Friday.
● NJ-07: This week, state Senate GOP Leader Tom Kean Jr. confirmed to the New Jersey Globe that he was "exploring a run" against freshman Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski. This seat swung from 53-46 Romney to 49-48 Clinton, and Malinowski unseated Republican incumbent Leonard Lance 52-47 last year.
Kean is the son and namesake of former Gov. Tom Kean Sr., who served from 1982 to 1990 and went on to chair the 9/11 Commission. The younger Kean ran for a previous version of this seat back in 2000 and narrowly lost the GOP primary to future Rep. Mike Ferguson. Six years later, Kean was the GOP nominee against Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez. This was a high-profile and expensive race, but Kean lost 53-44 during the Democratic wave year.
Since then, Kean has flirted with running for governor or for the Senate again a number of times, but he's always chosen to stay in the legislature. Kean was last on the ballot in 2017 when he won re-election 55-45 in a state Senate seat that had swung from 52-47 Romney to 53-43 Clinton.
● VA-07: Roll Call reports that the radical anti-tax Club for Growth is trying to persuade GOP Del. Nick Freitas to challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, with the Club's vice president of campaigns predicting that if Freitas gets in "we will invest more money there than any House race in the history of the club." This suburban Richmond seat went from 55-44 Romney to a smaller 51-44 Trump, and last year, Spanberger ousted GOP Rep. Dave Brat 50-48.
Freitas, who served with the Green Berets in Iraq, ran against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine last year. Few Republicans had much optimism that Freitas could actually defeat Kaine, but some hoped that he'd win the primary in order to prevent Prince Williams County Supervisor Corey Stewart from taking the nod and dragging down the party in more winnable races. However, it was Stewart, a notorious Confederate fan boy, who beat Freitas 45-43. The GOP nightmare scenario went pretty much as scripted: Kaine defeated Stewart 57-41 and three GOP House members, including Brat, lost re-election.
However, while Freitas may have spared his party a few headaches if he'd won that Senate primary, he was hardly Mr. Reasonable Moderate. Freitas took to the floor of the state House of Delegates in March of last year and speculated that "the abortion industry" may be linked to mass shootings. Freitas said afterwards that, while he wasn't actually implying that legalized abortions lead to mass killings, children being born out of wedlock leads to "far-reaching social ills."
Freitas also used that speech to tell his audience that it wasn't Republicans "that supported slavery, that fought women's suffrage, that rounded up tens of thousands of Asian-Americans and put 'em in concentration camps, that supported Jim Crow, that supported segregation, or supported Massive Resistance," concluding, "That was the Democrat [sic] Party." Many of Freitas' black colleagues walked off the floor in protest.
Mayoral
● Chicago, IL Mayor: Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot is out with a poll from GBA Strategies that gives her a wide 59-29 lead over Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in the April 2 general election.
The only other poll we've seen since the primary concluded last week was a FM3 survey for Stand for Children Illinois that found Lightfoot ahead by a similar 58-30 margin. While Stand for Children Illinois has not endorsed anyone in this race, they're ardent opponents of the Chicago Teachers Union, which is one of Preckwinkle's biggest allies. The CTU dismissed that poll as "trash" on Monday, but neither they nor anyone else has released contrary numbers yet.
Grab Bag
● Netroots Nation: This year's Netroots Nation, the country's biggest annual gathering of progressive activists and elected officials, will take place from July 11-13 in Philadelphia, and members of the Daily Kos Elections team are proposing two election-related panels you can vote on for the organizers to approve. The first one, featuring Jeff Singer and Stephen Wolf, is our long-running question and answer panel where we and campaign professionals will answer your questions about the horse race—no presentations or speeches, just answering audience questions!
The second panel, featuring Wolf and Daily Kos' Carolyn Fiddler, consists of redistricting practitioners discussing the lessons they have learned from actively participating in the process to draw fair maps for courts or commissions. That panel would also feature Princeton's Sam Wang, California redistricting commissioner Maria Blanco, and Campaign Legal Center's Christopher Lamar.