The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● Netroots Nation: The 2018 cycle is shaping up to be just about the craziest—and maybe most amazing—midterm election we’ve ever seen. Every day, the team here at Daily Kos Elections works hard to break down every important development on the campaign trail to help give this community and progressive activists everywhere the tools they need to capitalize on this extraordinary political environment and have the greatest impact this November.
Now we’re headed to the Netroots Nation conference, an annual progressive gathering that’s taking place this year in New Orleans from Aug. 2 to 4, to share what we’ve learned with even more folks—in person. To get there, though, we need your help to ensure that our three proposed panels get included in the conference’s agenda. You can do that by voting for each of our three submissions:
Daily Kos Elections Q&A—our classic question-and-answer session with the whole team, where we discuss any race that attendees want to know more about
Ending Gerrymandering: Lessons We've Learned as Mapmakers and Reformers About Fixing Redistricting—now more than ever a topic of intense interest, featuring our in-house redistricting expert Stephen Wolf
2018 in Statehouse Action: Harnessing Strategy, Lessons Learned & Grassroots Energy to Win Legislative Races—you’ve followed legislative special elections with us all cycle; now it’s time to focus on November with our state politics guru Carolyn Fiddler
If you plan to attend yourself, please let us know—we’d love to say hi. We’re also hopeful that if any of our panels get chosen, they’ll be livestreamed for folks who can’t be there. Thank you for all your support!
Senate
● FL-Sen: National Republicans have done little to hide how delighted they are that Gov. Rick Scott is planning to kick off his bid against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson next month, but one prominent Florida Republican is not so enthused.
Campaign Action
Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters on Tuesday that, while he would "support the GOP nominee, and if Scott runs it's going to be him," he also declared that he wouldn't be campaigning against Nelson. Rubio explained that "Bill Nelson and I have a very good working relationship," adding that he "could not ask for a better partner, especially from the other party."
While Rubio still isn't actually endorsing Nelson, it's certainly odd that he's giving his colleague some nice quotes ahead of a very tough race. But as Politico points out, there's little love lost between Rubio and Scott. The governor enthusiastically praised Donald Trump while Rubio was running against him in the 2016 presidential primary, though Scott didn't endorse Trump until after Rubio left the race.
Rubio announced a few months later that he would seek re-election to the Senate, and Scott wasn't exactly helpful there, either. Scott had been promoting his friend, businessman Carlos Beruff, before Rubio jumped back in; while Scott eventually came around and endorsed Rubio in the primary, he still needled the senator by continuing to extol Beruff. It seems that Rubio has decided to exact a little payback.
● MO-Sen: Candidate filing closed for Missouri's Aug. 7 primary, and the state has a list of candidates here.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, who is seeking a third term in a state that shifted from 54-44 Romney to 56-38 Trump, is arguably the most vulnerable Senate Democrat in the country. National Republicans have consolidated behind Attorney General Josh Hawley, and while there was some talk that he could face a serious primary challenger from Rep. Ann Wagner, he's only running against an assortment of Some Dudes. While McCaskill famously helped her preferred 2012 opponent, then-Rep. Todd Akin, win his GOP primary six years ago, it's unlikely that she'll be able to boost any of Hawley's foes this time.
Both sides are preparing for an expensive contest. Former President Barack Obama will appear at a fundraiser for McCaskill in May, while Donald Trump has already been raising money for Hawley. Republicans have spent years portraying the incumbent as too liberal for this conservative state, and Missouri may be a place where Trump will be more of an asset than a liability with voters. McCaskill and her allies are arguing that Hawley, who was only elected attorney general in 2016, is an ambitious ladder-climber and an extremist. Democrats are also trying to tie Hawley to GOP Gov. Eric Greitens, who is under indictment.
● MS-Sen-B: The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports that Tupelo Mayor Jason Shelton, a Democrat, is considering running in the nonpartisan Senate special election this fall. Shelton hasn't confirmed anything about it publicly, but city officials told the paper that he was indeed thinking about it.
Shelton governs a strongly Republican-leaning city and has described himself as being on the "very conservative end" of the Democratic Party. That stance could help him win over Republican voters in this decidedly red state, but it's unlikely to be an asset for consolidating Democrats in the all-party first round.
If Shelton or another Democrat jumps into the race, they could end up complicating Democratic chances of making the likely runoff on Nov. 26, since former Clinton administration Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy is already running as a Democrat. If the Democratic vote is split too evenly or among too many candidates, appointed Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and state Sen. Chris McDaniel might advance to an all-Republican runoff and shut out Team Blue entirely.
● TN-Sen, TN-Gov: Republican Rep. Diane Black has endorsed fellow Rep. Marsha Blackburn in the Republican primary for Senate, where Blackburn is the clear front-runner. However, so far Blackburn hasn't returned the favor and endorsed Black, who is running for governor in a crowded primary field.
Gubernatorial
● AL-Gov: Gov. Kay Ivey debuted a new ad ahead of the Republican primary, where she claims credit for the state's job growth and low unemployment.
● CA-Gov, CA-Sen: SurveyUSA takes a look at the very crowded top-two June primaries. They give Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom the lead with 22 percent of the vote in the race for governor, while Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa edges GOP businessman John Cox 14-11 for second place. In the Senate race, Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein leads with 31 percent, while Some Dude Republican Stephen Schrader is in second with 6; three other candidates, including Democratic state Sen. Kevin de Leon, take 5 each.
There are two caveats about this poll. The first is that this poll likely oversampled Latino voters. As California political consultant Paul Mitchell notes, Latinos made up 12 percent of the electorate in the 2014 primary, but they make up 28 percent of this sample. Apathy toward Trump and some competitive statewide races likely will give us a very different primary electorate this year than we had for the low-wattage 2014 contests, but it probably won't be that different. This survey has Villaraigosa leading Newsom with Latinos 25-18, so he may be doing a bit better here than he really is.
The other thing to note is that SurveyUSA gave respondents a list of 20 candidates for governor to choose from and 17 Senate contenders. While this does reflect how long voters' actual ballots will be, they didn't identify the candidates by anything except their name and party. As we've discussed before, candidates in California can choose a three-word description, known as the ballot designation, that appears below their name and party on the ballot. In very crowded contests like these, that ballot designation can make a big difference for voters who are trying to sort through all the candidates.
This might help explain why de Leon is polling so poorly here. He will be identified as a "California Senator" on the ballot, which could help him stand out from the numerous other Feinstein opponents. However, he's just one of the crowd in the SurveyUSA poll.
And speaking of de Leon's title, there's one other thing to note about him. He was the leader of the state Senate until last week, when Toni Atkins was sworn in as president pro tempore. It's customary in California for new legislative leaders to take over in the spring rather than after the fall elections, and De Leon will remain a member of the state Senate until the end of the year.
● MI-Gov: Former state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer continues to rack up key support from organized labor after the 30,000-member American Federation of Teachers Michigan chapter endorsed her campaign for the Democratic nomination. Whitmer recently earned a major endorsement from the United Auto Workers, and her campaign says the unions backing her represent several hundred thousand workers and retirees in the state.
Meanwhile, Better Jobs Stronger Families, a super PAC that is backing state Attorney General Bill Schuette in the GOP primary, has launched its first TV spot with an attack ad that hits Lt. Gov. Brian Calley for favoring tax increases.
● OH-Gov: State Attorney General Mike DeWine belatedly expressed regret but made no apology for a recent campaign tweet that called GOP primary rival Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor a "criminal" and used the hashtag "#LockHerUp," something that was very disturbing to see from the state's top law enforcement official. DeWine is the heavy favorite to win in the nomination, but the fact that his campaign is even attacking Taylor at all could be a sign that she poses a real threat in the primary.
● SC-Gov: On behalf of Save the Children Action Network, the nonprofit's political arm, the GOP pollster TargetPoint Consulting and the Democratic firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner are out with a joint survey of the June GOP primary. They give Gov. Henry McMaster the lead with 41 percent, a bit below the majority he'd need to win without a runoff. Former state cabinet official Catherine Templeton is a distant second with 10, while Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant, former Lt. Gov. Yancey McGill, and businessman John Warren each take less than 5 percent. They also took a look at the Democratic primary but they only sampled 296 voters, which just below the 300-person minimum we require in order to make it to the Digest.
This is the first poll we've seen all year, though a few polls last year also showed all of McMaster's opponents with very little support. That makes sense, because none of them have run statewide before. Bryant and McGill were state senators who were appointed lieutenant governor by the legislature after the previous office-holder resigned (in Bryant's case, it was McMaster who was elevated to the governorship). However, Templeton is well-funded and Warren reportedly plans to invest millions into his campaign, so they both likely have room to grow once they start running ads; Bryant and especially McGill don't have nearly as much to spend. The primary is about two-and-a-half months away, so the ad wars should start in earnest soon.
So, why is Save the Children taking an interest in this race? Much of the poll is devoted to questions about education, and they're making the case that whomever emerges from the primaries should focus on improving early childhood education. They have not endorsed anyone in this race.
● SD-Gov: GOP Rep. Kristi Noem is out with another spot featuring various people promoting her agriculture background and her love for her family.
House
● CA-39: Navy veteran Gil Cisneros, a Democrat, is out with another ad ahead of the top-two primary. Cisneros promises to stand up to the NRA if elected to Congress, and he advocates for universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.
● FL-17: Sen. Marco Rubio has waded into the GOP primary for this open red seat and endorsed state Rep. Julio Gonzalez over state Sen. Greg Steube. Rubio is a longtime supporter of Gonzalez, and the senator did ads for him during the expensive 2014 state House primary.
● IA-03: It was a chaotic 24 hours for Democrat Theresa Greenfield, whose prospects for making the June 5 primary ballot lurched from hopeful on Tuesday to doubtful on Wednesday, and ended with her deciding to abandon any further efforts to remain in the race.
It began when Iowa's State Objection Panel, a three-member board that rules on challenges to candidates' eligibility, declined to weigh in on whether state law allowed the Democrats' 3rd District Central Committee to place Greenfield's name on the ballot after she failed to submit a sufficient number of signatures to the secretary of state's office. Following that decision, Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, one of the members of the objections panel, said he'd certify Greenfield for the Democratic primary ballot.
But in an unexpected development, another member of the panel, Democratic state Attorney General Tom Miller, issued a legal opinion saying he believed Iowa law did not permit 3rd District Democrats to belatedly put Greenfield on the ballot. In response, Pate made an about-face and said he would not certify Greenfield's candidacy. Miller's move was surprising because last week, he refused to give his formal opinion on the matter even though his fellow Democrats had asked him to do so. It's possible Miller felt the controversy wasn't ripe for him to address at the time, since the 3rd District committee did not vote to add Greenfield to the ballot until Monday.
But whatever the reason for his turnabout, Greenfield evidently decided Miller's opinion was an insurmountable obstacle. (Legal opinions from state attorneys general do not have the force of law in the way that judicial rulings do, but they do carry serious weight in court.) It's a sad end to a promising campaign, and one for which Greenfield is blameless.
Right before the filing deadline, her campaign manager confessed that he'd forged signatures to get her on the ballot. Rather than submit tainted petitions—even though it's likely they would have gone undiscovered—Greenfield chose to throw out all the signatures she'd collected so far and engaged in a mad one-day dash to gather the 1,790 she'd need to qualify as a candidate. A number of other campaigns pitched in to help her, including that of rival Pete D'Alessandro, but she still fell 198 signatures short.
That led Greenfield to turn to the 3rd District Central Committee, whose decision to add Greenfield's name to the ballot Miller opined was contrary to state law. (In a bitter irony, it was Miller's office that first pointed to the statute in question as potentially offering a solution to Greenfield's dire problem.)
With Greenfield gone, three Democrats remain: businesswoman Cindy Axne, insurance company owner Eddie Mauro, and political consultant Pete D'Alessandro. Of the bunch, Axne had raised the most money, though Mauro has done some self-funding and had the most cash-on-hand at the end of last year. D'Alessandro, meanwhile, was a top staffer for Bernie Sanders ahead of the Iowa caucuses in 2016, and he earned the Vermont senator's endorsement earlier this year.
Axne could stand to benefit the most from Greenfield's departure, though, since she's now the only woman in the race and might appeal to EMILY's List. But whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee will face a difficult fight against GOP Rep. David Young, who's stockpiled $833,000. Like the rest of the state, Iowa's 3rd District swung sharply toward Trump, who won the seat 49-45 after Barack Obama carried it 51-47 four years earlier. To succeed here, Democrats have to hope the pendulum now swings back.
● KS-03: While civil rights activist Alvin Sykes expressed interest in challenging GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder as either a Democrat or as an independent last year, he's instead supporting labor lawyer Brent Welder in the Democratic primary.
● MO-02: All eight members of Missouri's House delegation (six Republicans and two Democrats) are running for re-election, and seven of them have little to worry about in the primary or general election. The one exception is GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, who is defending a suburban St. Louis seat that shifted from 57-41 Romney to 53-42 Trump even as the state as a whole was moving in the opposite direction.
A few Democrats are running, but the only one who had a credible amount of money in the bank at the end of 2017 was attorney Cort VanOstran. Wagner, who had been raising cash for a planned Senate run for months, still held a massive $2 million to $334,000 cash-on-hand lead, and the former George W. Bush fundraiser should have little trouble brining in more if she feels threatened. This seat will be a very tough pickup for Democrats, but if this well-educated and affluent district reacts badly to Trump in November, Wagner could be in for some turbulence.
● NC-09: Rep. Robert Pittenger launched a TV spot last month arguing that pastor Mark Harris, his rival in the May GOP primary, had tried to stop Donald Trump from ever becoming president, and Harris is now responding. The narrator in Harris' ad says that during their 2016 primary, where Pittenger ended up beating Harris by just 134 votes, the congressman wrongly claimed that Trump was supporting him.
Back then, Pittenger indeed did send out an email just before the primary claiming Trump was behind him, and he also tweeted his thanks to Trump's account. However, the endorsement that Pittenger was so proud of was really just a tweet from a pro-Trump group that wasn't actually affiliated with the campaign. But the ad doesn't actually go into those details, it just features the narrator saying that the supposed Trump endorsement was "just plain untrue," as some on-screen text shows some unflattering lines from Charlotte Observer articles.
The rest of the ad argues that Pittenger was telling more lies when he insisted that Harris wasn't a Trump supporter. But the commercial doesn't actually present any evidence to the contrary, it just features the voice of a local radio host saying that Pittenger "may have approved that ad, but it's not clear he did any fact-checking on it."
● OH-12: Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther has joined much of the state Democratic establishment and endorsed Franklin County Recorder Danny O'Connor in the May primary for this open seat. O'Connor's best-known foe is former Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott, who was Ginther's opponent in the 2015 mayoral race.
● VA-06: The GOP will choose their nominee for this very red open seat in a May 19 party convention rather than through a primary, but the convention's rules won't be set until the event begins. This week, the state GOP announced that the convention delegates would decide if they would require the nominee to win a majority of the vote, or if a simple plurality would be sufficient.
The state GOP got involved two months after the 6th District Republican Party Committee decided that there would just be one round of voting at the convention, which would mean that the candidate earning a bare plurality of delegate support would win the GOP nomination outright. Most Virginia conventions require multiple rounds of voting until one candidate secured a majority of the delegates. However, this rules change was pushed by supporters of Republican National Committee Member Cynthia Dunbar and opposed by Del. Ben Cline. Cline, who is arguably the frontrunner to succeed retiring Rep. Bob Goodlatte, said that Dunbar's allies were deliberately trying to hurt him with the plurality rule.
And indeed, one Dunbar supporter named Matt Tederick made his case by telling district committee members that the Dunbar camp had gotten a call from an attorney in DC with some explosive claims. The attorney supposedly had been recruited to run by a group called Anybody But Dunbar, and he had been instructed to campaign as normal until a few rounds into voting at the convention, when he would then throw his support to Cline.
But while the district GOP voted to require just one round of balloting after hearing this account, the state party was unmoved. The State Central Committee overruled the decision, saying delegates would make the choice on what rules to use. John Findlay, the executive director of the state GOP, added that it would be "unprecedented" to require just one ballot to choose a nominee, though in an email to Daily Kos Elections, he said that he does "not have any personal preference" as to which method is used.
Note: This post has been updated to reflect comments from John Findlay regarding his views on the method for selecting a nominee in Virginia’s 6th Congressional District.
● VA-07: Former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger is out with a poll of the June Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Dave Brat from Global Strategy Group. The survey gives her a 27-7 lead over Marine veteran Dan Ward; Helen Alli, who took 4 percent, has since dropped out and announced she will run as an independent. Ward held a $415,000 to $289,000 cash-on-hand edge over Spanberger at the end of 2017.
Legislative
● Special Elections: A quick recap from Johnny Longtorso:
Alabama HD-21: Republicans held on to this seat, though it was a close one. Rex Reynolds defeated Democrat Terry Jones by a 53-47 margin. This was a large swing from 2014, when Jones ran for this seat and lost 67-33.
While we don't have our own calculations of the presidential election results to compare Tuesday night's outcome to (Alabama has a host of data problems), there's no question this was a red district, and that Jones' performance was a strong one. And that matters, because Reynolds will face Jones again in November's regularly scheduled election.