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.
On Tuesday, Oklahoma held runoffs for races where no candidate won a majority of the vote on June 30, with the Republican contest for the 5th Congressional District taking center stage. You can find the results here. We’ll have a full rundown in our next Digest.
Leading Off
● GA-06: Republican Karen Handel's first general election commercial is essentially her version of the "law and order" pitch that Donald Trump is using to try to win back the suburban voters who have deserted the GOP in recent years. The spot doesn't mention Trump, but its message is just about as ugly and dishonest as anything you'd see in one of his ads.
Handel, who is white, tells the audience, "Neighborhoods and businesses trashed. People attacked. Police demonized. It's hit too close to home." She then says of Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath, who unseated her last cycle, "My opponent—she's supporting those who attack police, playing partisan politics and making things worse."
Campaign Action
As Handel delivers that line, the ad shows a clip of McBath, who is Black, at a June march against racism police brutality in Roswell, Georgia with the city's police chief; Mayor Lori Henry, who backed Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial contest, also spoke at the event. Unsurprisingly, though, Handel doesn't mention those details or the purpose of the gathering. Instead, the camera pans to a bystander located far behind the congressman holding a sign reading, "Some KKK wear hoods but most wear uniform and badge."
Handel concludes by saying, "In our community, police officers have always had our back. In Congress, I'll have theirs." She doesn’t make explicit whom she’s including—and excluding—from her definition of "our" community, but she doesn’t need to.
Senate
● AL-Sen: Democratic Sen. Doug Jones is running his first TV spot hitting Republican Tommy Tuberville over a scandal involving his old hedge fund.
The ad’s narrator declares that, after Tuberville stopped coaching football but was "still being paid a quarter-million dollars for a no-show job at Auburn," he "helped start a hedge fund that defrauded investors." The ad continues, "An Alabama teacher and parents saving for their children's education lost everything. Tuberville's partner got 10 years in prison." The narrator concludes by saying that, while Tuberville insisted he was ignorant of what was happening, "He had the money to settle out of court."
Last month, just before the Republican primary runoff, reporter Danny Hakim published an article in the New York Times that brought national attention to this story. About 10 years ago, Tuberville joined with former Lehman Brothers broker John David Stroud to create a hedge fund partnership that, as Hakim writes, "turned out to be a financial fraud."
Stroud pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2013 and was sentenced to a decade in prison, while Tuberville was not charged. However, Tuberville was sued by investors for fraud and, as Hakim explained, "violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments." He reached a settlement that same year, though the terms remain private.
Tuberville has repeatedly insisted that he'd done nothing wrong, claiming that Stroud had used his famous name to lure in customers. In February, he said of his former partner, "He went to jail. And then they sued me because I invested in it and he used my name to get other people to put money in." Tuberville continued, "I was an investor like the rest of them." However, Tuberville did acknowledge during his deposition during the investor lawsuit that he'd conducted no research into Stroud before partnering with him, saying, "I just got to know him more as a guy hanging around, going out with us."
Hakim, however, reported that Tuberville did more than just allow Stroud to use his name. "While he was not picking stocks, or even a frequent presence in the office," Hakim wrote, "Mr. Tuberville made introductions to potential investors, had business cards identifying himself as managing partner, and leased a BMW and got his health insurance through the company." Still, the director of the Alabama Securities Commission declared, "It appears from our investigation of the case that Mr. Tuberville was one of the largest victims in the Stroud theft, and that Mr. Tuberville did not do any actual trading himself."
Details about this case have been known for some time. In February, Jason Zengerle wrote in the New York Times Magazine that the scandal was one of the reasons that some unnamed Republican operatives feared that Tuberville would be a disastrous general election candidate, which led them to recruit former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to run for his old seat.
So far, though, the story hasn't appeared to harm Tuberville's electoral prospects. Hakim's reporting, which highlighted Tuberville's role in the hedge fund, was published a little more than a week before Tuberville's July 14 Republican primary runoff against Sessions. Sessions tried to make it an issue and ran ads on the topic, but Tuberville, who enjoyed Trump’s endorsement, won 61-39. Jones, however, is hoping that it will be a more salient topic in the general election.
● ME-Sen: Two affiliated Democratic groups, Senate Majority PAC and Duty and Honor, are running the first TV commercials we've seen focusing on the ongoing postal crisis.
SMP’s ad argues, "Legislation from Susan Collins crippled the postal service's finances. And racked up $160 billion dollars in debt." The narrator continues, "Collins' legislation helped private delivery companies earn billions. And she collected hundreds of thousands from those companies. Their Washington lobbyists even threw Collins a birthday party."
Duty and Honor also attacks Collins for having written "the legislation that put the postal service more than $160 billion dollars in debt. Forcing cuts in services, staff, equipment." The ad goes on, "Maine postal workers reported 80,000 pieces of mail delayed. And mailed-in ballots are at risk."
● NC-Sen: Morning Consult's new North Carolina survey shows Democrat Cal Cunningham leading Republican Sen. Thom Tillis 47-39, while Joe Biden has a smaller 49-46 edge in the state. Last month, the same firm had Cunningham ahead 46-37 and the presidential contest tied 47 apiece.
Morning Consult notes that a big reason that Tillis is running well behind Donald Trump is that a notable portion of Republican respondents are undecided on the Senate race: While Trump is carrying Republican voters 93-5, Tillis is only up 78-9 with the same group. By contrast, Cunningham is taking Democrats 89-4, while Biden is ahead 94-5 with members of his own party. Independents also favor Cunningham and Biden by similar 41-34 and 48-40 spreads, respectively.
Other firms, including Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, have also found that a sizable portion of Republicans are undecided in the Senate race. But Tillis' struggles with his party's base are nothing new: Last year, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post claiming that he would vote for a resolution rolling back Donald Trump's bogus emergency declaration aimed at building his border wall with Mexico, though he caved three weeks later and voted against that very resolution. Still, Tillis would make up ground if his Republican detractors hold their noses and vote for him along with Trump this fall.
● NE-Sen: This week, former Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford said he was preparing to launch a write-in campaign if the party's scandal-plagued nominee, Chris Janicek, didn't step aside by Sept. 1, which is the deadline to pick a new candidate. Ashford said he'd announce a bid Aug. 31 if Janicek is still in the contest on that day.
The state party asked Janicek to drop out back in June after his fundraising director filed a complaint over lewd texts he'd sent her and other staffers, but he's refused to go anywhere. Janicek also has agreed to a debate with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse that would take place on Sept. 4, several days after the deadline for him to exit the race. Daily Kos Elections rates this contest in this very red state as Safe Republican.
Gubernatorial
● MO-Gov: In her first TV spot, Democrat Nichole Galloway says that Missouri needs a "sense of urgency" it's not getting from Republican Gov. Mike Parson. Galloway continues, "Healthcare costs are sky high. He responds by cutting healthcare coverage for thousands." She goes on to argue, "We're in a pandemic. The problems we face are big. We can't have a governor who does so little."
● UT-Gov: Utah Policy reports that former Gov. Jon Huntsman is "expected" to decide this week whether he'll mount a write-in campaign this fall against Spencer Cox, who beat him in the June Republican primary. The deadline for write-ins to announce is the last day of the month.
House
● CA-39: Republican Young Kim uses her opening TV spot to go negative against freshman Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros, who beat her in a tight 2018 contest. The narrator declares that, while Cisneros said he'd oppose returning Nancy Pelosi to the speakership, he "elected Pelosi speaker with his very first vote" and has loyally voted with her since then.
Cisneros said during his 2018 campaign that he believed the Democratic Party needed new leadership, though he didn't explicitly say he'd oppose returning Pelosi to the speaker's chair. Weeks after his win, Cisneros signed onto a letter calling for new House leaders, but he dropped his opposition to Pelosi the following month after she agreed to a term-limits proposal for senior party leaders.
● CO-03: Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush's first general election spot declares that Republican Lauren Boebert is an extremist who "supports ending health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, even in a pandemic." The ad then argues that Mitsch Bush is an "independent leader" who will work across party lines and "fight to lower healthcare and prescription drug costs." The commercial doesn't mention Boebert's support for the QAnon conspiracy theory.
● MA-01: Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse's new commercial ahead of next week's Democratic primary features the candidate driving past his childhood home as he says that his dad still works at the same meatpacking plant that employed him when Morse was a child. Morse goes on to talk about how he became mayor at 22 and says of the incumbent, "My entire life, Richie Neal has been in Congress. He's gotten more and more power, but hasn't used it to help us."
Morse continues, "Instead, Neal has used his power to help big corporations. Like when he killed a bill that would protect people from getting surprise medical bills. And those big corporations? They've rewarded him with more money than anyone else in Congress." Morse goes on to pitch himself as a change agent who will "combat the opioid epidemic that has taken too many neighbors, including my own brother."
He concludes, "If you send me to Congress, we won't be losing power. We'll be gaining power, because I'll take you to Washington with me."
● MN-01: Democrat Dan Feehan's inaugural general election commercial begins with 2006 footage of a military vehicle being hit by an explosion in Iraq as the candidate then declares, "In Iraq, I learned to put service to country above all else." He continues, "I volunteered for the Army after 9/11. Dodged sniper fire, dismantled bombs, and captured terrorists."
Feehan then gives his opinion of freshman Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who defeated him in a tight race in 2018. "So I'm fed up with politicians like Jim Hagedorn," the Democrat says, "who sell out and serve the big drug and insurance companies instead of us." Feehan finished by saying by criticizing both parties and says he doesn't "take corporate PAC money."
● NC-11: Three women have recently come forward to accuse Republican Madison Cawthorn of making unwanted sexual advances, including two by name.
Katrina Krulikas published an Instagram post earlier this month describing a 2014 date with Cawthorn, when she was 17 and he was 19. Krulikas says Cawthorn made her uncomfortable by pressing her about her sexual history, then twice tried to kiss her, prompting her to pull away. She says her hair got stuck in Cawthorn's wheelchair, explaining, "I had to yank out some of my own hair just to free myself." (Earlier that year, Cawthorn had been paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident.)
Cawthorn acknowledged trying to kiss Krulikas, saying, "I did try and kiss her just very normal, just in a flirtatious way." However, his campaign disputed Krulikas' characterization of the incident as sexual assault, with a spokesperson saying, "There's a big difference between a failed teenage romantic advance and being forceful, to the extent that's possible when you're a paraplegic."
After Krulikas published her story, another woman, Francesca McDaniel, told reporter Harvest Prude from World Magazine, a Christian publication, about her own similar experience with Cawthorn. In 2015, Cawthorn, who was raised in the same community in western North Carolina as McDaniel, was the featured speaker at McDaniel's high school graduation. Following the ceremony, McDaniel says that Cawthorn offered to drive her to a graduation party.
However, says McDaniel, Cawthorn took an apparently longer route and began quizzing her about her sexual experiences. According to McDaniel, he then pulled off the highway on to an overlook and twice tried to kiss her, despite her telling him no and reminding him she had a boyfriend, who'd attended the graduation ceremony. McDaniel says she forcibly pushed Cawthorn away and attempted to flee the car, at which point she says he locked the car doors. She then said that when he tried to kiss her a third time, she felt "pressured to give in to it because he started being aggressive, and he is a strong guy."
A third unnamed woman told World Magazine that in 2016, when Cawthorn briefly attended Patrick Henry College in Virginia, he groped her thigh in a dining hall and slid his hand up her skirt. Prude says that the woman was granted anonymity "because speaking to media would jeopardize her current job in the federal government." Neither Cawthorn nor his campaign appear to have responded to the claims made by McDaniel or his fellow college student.
Cawthorn, who is 25 years old and describes himself as a real estate investor, faces Democrat Moe Davis, a retired Air Force colonel, in the November general election in North Carolina's 11th Congressional District. In recent weeks, Cawthorn has faced intense scrutiny for describing his visit to Adolf Hitler's vacation home, the Eagle's Nest, as an item on his "bucket list" and calling Hitler "the Führer." He also has been criticized for suggesting his hopes of attending the Naval Academy were "derailed" by his auto accident, even though he had already been rejected by the school.
● NY-11: Democratic Rep. Max Rose argues in his new commercial that, while he's been working hard to hold the companies behind the opioid crisis responsible, Republican Nicole Malliotakis "bought stock in them." Rose concludes, "[N]o one should profit off companies that kill our kids. We should be locking their CEOs up and throwing away the key."
● VA-05: Democrat Cameron Webb's opening general election commercial features the candidate touting his local roots and describing how "family came first. Our faith kept us centered, and we worked hard for everything we got."
Webb goes on to talk about how, as a physician, he was "honored to serve my country in the White House." He continues, "But working for both Presidents Obama and Trump, I've watched how toxic partisan politics can be. Standing in the way of getting things done." The candidate calls for "stopping insurance companies from gaming our system" and "guaranteeing the free market gives us choices in our care."
Webb concludes by pledging to work with both parties and the president when they're right "and standing up to any party leader when they're wrong."
Other Races
● Los Angeles County, CA District Attorney: On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom endorsed former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón against incumbent Jackie Lacey in November’s nonpartisan general election.
Newsom and Gascón have a long history going back to when they were both public officials in San Francisco: Newsom, who was the city's mayor, chose Gascón as police chief in 2010, and he appointed him the following year to succeed now-Sen. Kamala Harris as district attorney after she was elected state attorney general.
Gascón, who is challenging Lacey from the left to become the top prosecutor in America's largest county, earned endorsements earlier this year from Harris, who has since become the Democratic nominee for vice president, and Reps. Tony Cárdenas and Maxine Waters. Last month, Rep. Alan Lowenthal also announced he was switching his endorsement from Lacey to Gascón, arguing that the challenger had a "transformative vision" and displayed "progressive leadership."
Two other Democratic congressmen who represent part of the county, Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu, also withdrew their support for Lacey over the summer, with Schiff explaining, "This is a rare time in our nation's history. We have a responsibility to make profound changes to end systemic racism & reform criminal justice." Unlike Lowenthal, though, neither of them has backed Gascón.
Back in June, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also sounded like he might back away from Lacey when he acknowledged that it might be time for a change in the prosecutor's office. However, Garcetti doesn't appear to have said anything new over the following two months, and Lacey's website still lists the mayor as a supporter. The mayor's father, former District Attorney Gil Garcetti, did endorse Gascón in July, though.
Lacey maintains the backing of a number of prominent state and local Democrats including Sen. Dianne Feinstein; Reps. Judy Chu, Grace Napolitano, Norma Torres, and Brad Sherman; and four of the five members of Los Angeles County’s powerful Board of Supervisors. The Los Angeles police union is also supporting Lacey.
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