Morning Digest: Republicans seek to oust wayward GOP members of Alaska's bipartisan House coalition

Alaska state Rep. Chuck Kopp (R-coalition)

_{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

● AK State House: A Democratic-led coalition currently holds 22 of the 40 seats in Alaska’s state House of Representatives even though the GOP members nominally are in the majority, but national Republicans are trying to rectify that situation by defeating several rogue incumbents in Tuesday’s primaries.

The Anchorage Daily News’ James Brooks reports that the Republican State Leadership Committee and GOPAC have spent a total of $165,000, which he calls “a huge amount for the Alaska legislative races.” On the other side are unions, which are a powerful force in local politics and are taking action to protect the GOP coalition members.

Despite the national GOP’s outrage over the state of affairs, coalition politics are nothing new in Alaska. Democrats and a group of Republicans ran the state Senate from the start of 2007 through the 2012 elections, but mainline Republicans retook control that year and have held the upper chamber ever since. In 2016, though, all 17 Democrats in the 40-member state House, as well as three Republicans and two independents, banded together to form a majority that elected Democratic state Rep. Bryce Edgmon speaker.

Republicans seized a nominal 23-seat majority in the 2018 elections, and for a while, those results appeared to spell the end of another bipartisan alliance—and give the GOP its lone pickup of a legislative chamber that cycle. However, Republicans simply could not find a candidate for speaker who could command a majority.

The deadlock lasted through February of the following year, a full third of the way through the legislature's 90-day session. Edgmon, though, dropped his party affiliation and formally became an independent, a move that made it easier for him to win GOP support. Ultimately, a new coalition was formed that included all 15 Democrats, two independents, and eight Republicans, which gave it a 25-15 majority.

However, the alliance has shrunk by three since then. In March of 2019, GOP state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux was stripped of her committee assignments after she voted against the chamber’s leaders on the budget, though she still isn’t part of the regular GOP caucus. GOP state Rep. Tammie Wilson later resigned and was succeeded this winter by Mike Prax, an ardent conservative who had no interest in taking part in the coalition.

The coalition also tragically lost another one of its members in late July when state Rep. Gary Knopp was killed in a mid-air collision. Knopp, whose name will remain on the ballot, was facing two GOP primary opponents, and if he wins posthumously on Tuesday, Republicans will be able to petition to choose a replacement nominee. House District 30, which is located in Kenai is the south-central part of the state, backed Donald Trump 71-21.

As Brooks reports, several other Republican coalition members face notable opposition as well. One major target is state Rep. Chuck Kopp, who holds a 52-40 Trump seat in Anchorage.

Labor is also working to renominate state Rep. Jennifer Johnston, who represents a 49-43 Trump seat in Anchorage. LeDoux, whose own Anchorage district voted for Trump 52-38, also maintains labor support even though she no longer is part of any alliance and was charged with voter misconduct back in March.

State Rep. David Eastman faces a tough GOP primary battle even though he isn’t part of the coalition. However, his intra-party critics remember how, after the 2018 election, he said he wouldn’t back a GOP speaker without some preconditions. Eastman was supposed to be one of the 21 Republicans who was to form the new majority, and his enemies blame him for causing the deadlock that eventually led to Edgmon becoming speaker.

Since then, Eastman has spoken against a number of his party’s priorities, and House Minority Leader Lance Pruitt announced in March that he was on “probation.” Eastman’s HD-10, which is based in Sarah Palin’s old Wasilla stomping grounds, favored Trump 71-21.

Senate

● IA-Sen: A new Democratic group called One Country Fund recently launched a $1 million TV and radio ad campaign arguing that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is looking out for Donald Trump instead of her constituents, and Bloomberg's Kenneth Doyle reports that the PAC is funded by a very familiar Democrat.

Then-North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp notably received a massive influx of donations in October of 2018 after she voted against confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and she just didn't have the time to spend much of it before Election Day. Heitkamp decisively lost re-election that year, but she's contributed a large chunk of her remaining war chest towards helping Democrats win in 2020.

Heitkamp donated $500,000 to One Country Fund, a group whose purpose she describes as "support[ing] Senate candidates who are committed to fighting for accountability in Washington, rejecting the corruption and cronyism that defines Trumpism, and truly serving the unique needs of rural communities." Its first target is Ernst, who told a North Dakota TV host back in 2018 that Heitkamp's vote against Kavanaugh was "reprehensible."

Heitkamp also contributed another $1.5 million to the PAC's nonprofit affiliate One Country Project, and she had $3.7 million in the bank at the end of June. Doyle writes that former Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, who had $210,000 left about a year-and-a-half after losing re-election, will donate to Heitkamp's efforts too.

● MA-Sen: YouGov has released a poll of the Sept. 1 Democratic primary for UMass Amherst and WCVB, and it finds Sen. Ed Markey beating Rep. Joe Kennedy by a wide 51-36 margin. That's a huge shift from YouGov's early May survey for UMass Lowell, which showed Kennedy up by a narrow 44-42. The only reputable pollster that has released numbers in the intervening time is the Republican firm JMC Analytics, which gave Markey a small 44-41 edge in an August crowdfunded survey.

Politico's Stephanie Murray took a look at this contest just before the new YouGov poll came out, and she writes that both sides "give Kennedy the edge at the moment." However, Murray reports that political observers widely agree that, while Kennedy very much has looked like the frontrunner for most of the race, things have gotten far closer.

Kennedy is a member of a political dynasty that's still revered in Massachusetts, and early polls showed him well ahead of Markey. However, Murray writes that even some Kennedy supporters agree that he hasn't done an effective job arguing why voters should oust the incumbent.

Kennedy began the race arguing that he could bring change to the political system Markey's inhabited since before Kennedy was born, but the senator has worked hard to portray himself as the candidate who is challenging the status quo. Notably, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently starred in a Markey TV spot and praised him for being an early champion of Medicare For All and the Green New Deal, concluding, "When it comes to progressive leadership, it's not your age that counts. It's the age of your ideas."

Kennedy's campaign has also stumbled at times, including in one truly strange way just last month. After Markey put out a map highlighting his work for Massachusetts' many municipalities, Kennedy's team issued a statement naming several communities that weren't mentioned and thus "do not exist in Markey's Massachusetts." Multiple state news outlets, though, immediately pointed out that three of those places, as the Boston Globe put it, "don't exist in anyone's Massachusetts" because they were flooded to create a reservoir in the 1930s.

Still, as both Murray and the Globe's Victoria McGrane report, each side agrees that this contest could still go either way. Both candidates remain well funded, and McGrane notes that no one's sure what turnout will look like next month, especially since this will be the first election in state history where voting by mail will be widely available.

● MS-Sen: Democrat Mike Espy has released a poll from Garin-Hart-Yang that shows him trailing Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith only 47-42 in a contest that hasn't attracted much outside attention; the sample also favors Donald Trump 53-43, which is a notable drop from his 58-40 performance here in 2016. The last poll we saw here was a late May survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling for an unnamed client that found Hyde-Smith up 49-41.

● MT-Sen: Democrat Steve Bullock is out with a commercial attacking Republican Sen. Steve Daines for not coming out against confirming William Perry Pendley as the new head of the Bureau of Land Management.

Bullock tells the audience, "Twenty years ago, this man sued the state of Montana trying to get rid of the public's right to access our rivers and streams. I took him on in court, and won." The Democrat continues, "Two decades later, Sen. Daines says the same guy who wants to sell off our public lands should be in charge of America's public lands. No senator for Montana should stand for that."

The League of Conservation Voters also recently went up with a spot tying Daines to "anti-public lands zealot William Perry Pendley," and the group has a new ad as "part of a seven figure buy." The narrator declares that Daines "cast the deciding vote that would open the door for the sale of Montana's public lands to the highest bidder. A move that would benefit out-of-state billionaires."

● NC-Sen, NC-Gov: The Republican firm Harper Polling has released a new poll for the Civitas Institute, and it shows Democrat Cal Cunningham leading Republican Sen. Thom Tillis 41-38, while Joe Biden is up 45-44. Harper's last survey back in May had Tillis up 38-36, which was the most recent poll from a reputable firm to give the incumbent any sort of advantage.

Harper also shows Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper beating Republican Dan Forest 49-39, which is similar to his 49-37 edge in May.

● NH-Sen: Retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc ditches the slightest appearance of moderation in his second TV spot for the Sept. 8 Republican primary. Bolduc tells the audience, "I didn't spend my life defending this country to let a bunch of liberal, socialist pansies squander it away." Bolduc faces wealthy attorney Corky Messner, who has Donald Trump's endorsement.

Gubernatorial

● NH-Gov: State Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes picked up an endorsement from the state branch of the American Federation of Teachers this week ahead of the Sept. 8 Democratic primary.

● PR-Gov: On Wednesday, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruled that primary voting would take place on Sunday in any precinct that was not open for the legally required eight hours on Aug. 9. The high court also said that any votes cast on Aug. 9 would be valid, but that no results would be released until voting ends on Sunday.

The commonwealth's major political parties postponed voting a week after more than half of the voting centers didn't receive any ballots. However, the parties said that their directive only applied to precincts where voting was unable to take place at all, not to precincts where ballots arrived late and where many voters had already left, a provision that Gov. Wanda Vásquez successfully challenged in court.

Vásquez, who is a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, faces a serious primary challenge from former Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, who represented Puerto Rico in the U.S. House as a non-voting member. The rival Popular Democratic Party, which supports Puerto Rico keeping its commonwealth status, also has a competitive gubernatorial contest between Puerto Rico Senate Minority Leader Eduardo Bhatia, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, and Isabela Mayor Carlos Delgado.

House

● FL-15: St. Pete Polls, surveying on behalf of Florida Politics, finds freshman Rep. Ross Spano leading Lakeland City Commissioner Scott Franklin by a tiny 42-41 margin in Tuesday's Republican primary. This is the first poll we've seen of the nomination fight for this seat, which includes Lakeland and the exurbs of Tampa and Orlando.

Spano is under federal investigation over loans made to his 2018 campaign, a story that Franklin has been more than happy to use against the incumbent. Franklin has also been self-funding most of his campaign, and he outspent Spano $355,000 to $160,000 from July 1 to July 29, which is the time the FEC classifies as the pre-primary period. However, Spano's allies at the Club for Growth are sticking with him, and the group has spent $275,000 on anti-Franklin commercials.

● FL-19: Conservative Outsider PAC recently launched a new $142,000 ad buy against state House Majority Leader Dane Eagle ahead of next week's incredibly expensive GOP primary, which takes its total investment here to $459,000. Florida Politics writes that the group is allied with the Club for Growth, which has deployed almost $2.5 million to aid another candidate, state Rep. Byron Donalds.

● GA-06: Freshman Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath is airing her first TV spot, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that she's putting at least $100,000 behind it.

McBath tells the audience, "I named Jordan after the river in the Bible. I never expected to be in Congress—but then my son was murdered." She continues, "My tragedy turned to purpose. I decided to fight for anyone desperate for common sense in Washington." McBath goes on to talk about her work passing legislation "taking care of veterans, lowering drug costs and yes— to prevent gun violence," and describes herself as "a mom on a mission."

● MA-01: In a new report, The Intercept says that leaders of the UMass Amherst College Democrats deliberately sought to undermine Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse's campaign for Congress by connecting with him on dating sites and obtaining information they hoped would prove "damning." According to the article, they failed to do so but instead sent a letter last week to Morse, which soon became public, accusing him of "taking advantage of his position of power for romantic or sexual gain, specifically toward young students" and barring him from future events.

The Intercept cited online chats in which one College Democrats official, Timothy Ennis, said he had hoped to land a job with Rep. Richie Neal, Morse's opponent in next month's Democratic primary. The organization issued a statement denying that it had sent the letter to Morse because of "any of our members' professional ambitions or personal politics." The Massachusetts Democratic Party has said it will investigate the College Democrats after the primary.

● MA-04: Dave Cavell, who served as a senior adviser to Attorney General Maura Healey, announced Thursday that he was dropping out of the crowded Sept. 1 Democratic primary and endorsing former Alliance for Business Leadership head Jesse Mermell.

Cavell said he was taking action to stop Newton City Councilor Jake Auchincloss, who has attracted plenty of attention for his loyalties and past statements, from winning the nomination. Cavell declared, "In a crowded field without ranked-choice voting, I refuse to make it more likely that the people of our District, particularly Black and brown people, will be represented by someone we cannot trust."

● OK-05: The anti-tax Club for Growth is resuming its ad campaign against state Sen. Stephanie Bice ahead of the Aug. 25 Republican primary runoff. The narrator says of Bice, "At the same time that Bice gave herself a pay raise, she voted to take money away from police and teachers." Bice faces businessman Terry Neese, whom the Club recently endorsed, for the right to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn.

● Polling: It's House Poll O'Clock:

• CO-03: GQR (D) for Diane Mitsch Bush: Diane Mitsch Bush (D): 43, Lauren Boebert (R): 42, Robert Moser (I): 5, John Keil (L): 4 (48-48 presidential tie)
• IL-13: RMG Group for U.S. Term Limits: Betsy Dirksen Londrigan (D): 43, Rodney Davis (R-inc): 41
• IN-05: WPA Intelligence (R) for the Club for Growth (pro-Spartz): Victoria Spartz (R): 47, Christina Hale (D): 40, Ken Tucker (Lib): 5
• MN-01: RMG Group for U.S. Term Limits: Jim Hagedorn (R-inc): 41, Dan Feehan (D): 38
• NJ-02: Global Strategy Group (D) for House Majority PAC: Amy Kennedy (D): 46, Jeff Van Drew (R-inc): 45 (47-45 Biden)
• NJ-02: GQR (D) for DCCC: Kennedy (D): 51, Van Drew (R-inc): 46 (47-46 Biden)
• TX-22: RMG Group for U.S. Term Limits: Sri Preston Kulkarni (D): 39, Troy Nehls (R): 39

This is the first poll we've seen from Colorado's 3rd District since Lauren Boebert, who has expressed sympathy for the bonkers QAnon conspiracy theory, upset Rep. Scott Tipton in the late June Republican primary. This seat backed Donald Trump 52-40, and two years later, Republican Walker Stapleton took it 50-46 even as he was losing his bid for governor 53-43 statewide.

U.S. Term Limits, which has released numerous House and Senate polls recently, says that all three Republicans tested in this new batch oppose congressional term limits, while the Democrats haven't taken sides. As always, the group argues that the Democrats would pull off landslide wins if they would only embrace its pet issue. None of these polls included presidential toplines.

The Club for Growth, like most Republican groups and campaigns in recent months, also did not release presidential results in its poll of Indiana's 5th District, an ancestrally red seat in the Indianapolis suburbs that has been moving to the left during the Trump era. The only other survey we've seen of this seat in the Indianapolis suburbs was a late June GBAO poll for Democrat Christina Hale that showed her ahead 51-45; that sample also gave Joe Biden a large 53-43 lead in a seat Trump won 53-41 in 2016.

We've only seen one other poll from New Jersey's 2nd District, where party-switching Rep. Jeff Van Drew faces Democrat Amy Kennedy. An early July survey from DCCC Analytics, taken shortly before Kennedy won the Democratic nod, gave Van Drew a 47-44 edge, while Trump led 46-45 in a South Jersey seat he'd carried 51-46.

Mayoral

● Honolulu, HI Mayor: Businessman Keith Amemiya earned an endorsement on Wednesday from Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz ahead of the nonpartisan general election. Amemiya faces independent Rick Blangiardi, a fellow businessman who is backed by former Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, in November.

Ballot Measures

● MA Ballot: MassINC, polling on behalf of WBUR, is out with the first survey we've seen of the November ballot initiative to institute instant runoff in Massachusetts, and it finds a 36-36 tie. If the measure passes, then Massachusetts would be the second state after Maine to use this method to decide many of its elections.

Data

● Maps: Introducing the Daily Kos Elections Atlas of the 117^th Congress, a suite of maps for each congressional district, now available for everybody to download! The Locator file shows where a district is in a state; Political files are similar in style to standard street maps. Physical maps can give good insights into why a district is or isn't well-drawn, and sometime they're just plain fun. In addition, we have two files with demographic maps, which are great for helping to understand spatial patterns in election results. And don't forget the rest of our map templates available for download, or our treasury of election and demographic data!

ELECTION CHANGES

● Michigan: Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is sending postcards to the 4.4 million Michigan voters who have not already requested an absentee ballot for the November general election urging them to do so. Earlier this summer, Benson's office sent ballot applications to all voters, which included an option to request ballots for both the state's Aug. 4 primary and for the general election.

You can keep tabs on whether election officials are sending out absentee ballot applications in major counties in key 2020 states with our continually updated tracker.

● Rhode Island: The Supreme Court has declined to block an agreement between voting rights advocates and Rhode Island officials waiving the state's requirement that absentee voters have their ballots signed by two witnesses or a notary, which Republicans had challenged.

As the Washington Post's Robert Barnes notes, this is the first time since the start of the pandemic that the court has sided with efforts to make voting easier, though the case was unusual because state officials did not oppose relaxing the witness requirement. Three conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—all said they would have granted the Republicans' request.