The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
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Leading Off
● MI-13: Former state Sen. Adam Hollier announced Tuesday that he would seek a rematch against freshman Rep. Shri Thanedar, who defeated him 28-24 in last year's expensive Democratic primary for Michigan's safely blue 13th District. Thanedar's victory over Hollier, who is Black, made him the first Indian American to represent Michigan in Congress. However, it also meant Detroit, which has the highest proportion of Black residents of any major city in America, would not have an African American representative in Congress for the first time since the early 1950s.
Hollier, an Army veteran who recently resigned as director of the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency in order to run again, launched his second campaign with endorsements from two prominent local Democrats: former U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, who represented about 40% of this seat prior to her retirement in January, and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, whose county includes the entire district.
Hollier's kickoff comes amid Thanedar's high-profile feud against fellow Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents the neighboring 12th District. Last week, Thanedar criticized Tlaib, who is the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, for her initial statement about Hamas' attack on Israel that he argued failed to denounce terrorism.
But Thanedar himself had cosponsored a 2021 resolution in the Michigan House calling for the U.S. to halt aid to Israel, and the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC spent millions to help Hollier in the following year's primary; the congressman told the Jewish Insider in August that his views have since changed.
Tlaib's response took an entirely different direction. "While he is busy posting memes, his residents are calling my office asking for my assistance because he is absent from doing his job," the congresswoman charged. Adam Abusalah, who is Thanedar's former communications director, also took to social media to denounce his one-time boss, writing that the congressman had once told him, "I don't care about policies or legislation right now, I just need you to focus on my re-election."
In the same thread, Abusalah, among other things, also accused Thanedar of failing to promote qualified Black women on his team, experiencing high staff turnover, and repeating "Republican talking points" after visiting the border with Mexico. "He's the most ignorant, self-centered, and uninformed human I've ever worked with," Abusalah concluded.
Thanedar and his current team responded by defending his constituent service and questioning Abusalah's motives. "These untrue allegations are clearly a direct response to Congressman Thanedar's principled stance in support of Israel's right to self-defense and against the brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas," his chief of staff said in a statement. Thanedar also insisted that he and Tlaib have "an excellent relationship."
Hollier did not directly mention any of the controversy swirling around Thanedar in his kickoff, but he did echo Tlaib's complaints. "We need a congressman who delivers, and we need it right now," he said in a press release launching his campaign. "Sadly, out of touch multimillionaires like Shri Thanedar seem more interested in posting memes than delivering for the district, and we've had enough." Thanedar's wealth will likely play a role in his next race: Last time, he deployed over $9 million of his own money to defeat Hollier and the rest of his opponents, and there's every reason to expect that he's prepared to do more self-funding.
Hollier may also not have Thanedar to himself. John Conyers III, who is the son of the late long-serving Rep. John Conyers, told Politico last month that he was planning on announcing he's running "soon." The younger Conyers took fourth place with 9% last year, which was about twice the margin between Thanedar and Hollier. As in most states, candidates in Michigan only need a plurality to win their party's nomination, which is why Thanedar was able to prevail last year with less than 30% of the vote.
3Q Fundraising
● Fundraising: Daily Kos Elections is pleased to present our third-quarter fundraising charts for both the House and the Senate. We'll have a more detailed rundown of the key numbers in the next Digest.
Governors
● MO-Gov: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has collected quarterly fundraising numbers for all three major GOP candidates and their respective allied PACs, and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe's side maintains a large edge over Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel.
Kehoe and American Dream together hauled in $1.3 million and finished with a total of $5 million in the bank; about $250,000 of that came from Rex Sinquefield, who has a long history of bankrolling conservative candidates and causes in Missouri. (Sinquefield, a 2014 Politico profile detailed, is devoted to advancing three "idiosyncratic passions: promoting chess, dismantling the traditional public school system and eliminating income taxes.")
Ashcroft, who has led in every poll that's been released, and his backers at Committee for Liberty PAC took in just a total of $450,000 and had $2.2 million banked between them. That's well behind the $810,000 that Eigel and BILL PAC took in, though the two entities had a smaller $1.4 million to spend: Eigel's force also outpaced Ashcroft in the previous quarter.
The only notable Democrat currently in the race, state House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, and Crystal PAC raised $280,000 and had $270,000 banked. Restaurant business CEO Mike Hamra set up a fundraising account after the beginning of the fourth quarter and says he'll likely reveal his plans this month.
House
● AZ-08: Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko announced her retirement on Tuesday evening after a fairly short career representing Arizona's 8th District, saying in a statement that "Washington, D.C. is broken; it is hard to get anything done." Lesko's district, which is based in the suburbs west of Phoenix, is solidly red turf that voted for Donald Trump by a 56-43 margin, so the action to succeed the congresswoman will likely center on next year's GOP primary.
But that wasn't quite the case for Lesko when she first sought to join the House in a 2018 special election, following GOP Rep. Trent Franks' resignation in a shocking sexual harassment scandal after he pushed a pair of aides to serve as surrogate mothers. Lesko, a state senator at the time, defeated 11 other candidates to secure the Republican nomination, beating her nearest opponent by a 35-24 margin in a bizarre primary. But the prior version of the 8th was just as conservative as its current iteration, so the general election should have been a foregone conclusion.
However, special elections during the early years of Trump's presidency had seen turbocharged enthusiasm for Democratic candidates, and Lesko's race was similarly affected. Physician Hiral Tipirneni capitalized on that energy, and nervous Republicans spent more than $1 million to avoid getting humiliated. It was a wise move: Tipirneni held Lesko to a narrow 52-48 win, a result far closer than the district's normal lean. But the closeness of that victory pointed to serious dangers for the GOP, which were realized during the midterm wave that saw Democrats pick up 40 seats that fall.
Lesko, though, was not swept up by that tsunami. She defeated Tipirneni 55-45 in a November rematch and held her seat without issue in the subsequent two elections (she was unopposed last year). In Congress, Lesko joined the far-right Freedom Caucus and consistently supported her party's most extreme positions, which included voting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
● CA-22: Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla has endorsed Rudy Salas’ rematch campaign against GOP Rep. David Valadao.
● IN-05: Every day seems to bring some new chaos from retiring Rep. Victoria Spartz, and Axios' Juliegrace Brufke relayed Monday evening that an unnamed member tells her that the congresswoman addressed the GOP conference and "gave an emotional and tearful incoherent speech where I think she told everyone she's leaning toward running again." Spartz over the last month has publicly implied she was thinking of seeking a third term, reaffirmed she would retire, and threatened to resign.
International
● Poland: Opposition parties won a stunning victory amid record turnout in parliamentary elections on Sunday, ending eight years of authoritarian rule by the radical-right Law and Justice Party and its allies.
Law and Justice, known by the Polish acronym PiS, has for years undermined democracy, media freedom, and judicial independence in the European Union's fifth-largest member state. But despite its efforts to entrench itself in power, PiS lost to an alliance led by the centrist Civic Coalition that also includes two smaller blocs of parties—one to its left and another on the center-right.
Final results for the all-important lower chamber released on Tuesday showed this opposition alliance winning a 54-43 majority of votes over PiS and the far-right Confederation alliance, which could have kept PiS in power had the two won the most seats, but the opposition instead secured a 248-212 majority.
While Sunday's historic result pulls Poland's democracy back from the brink, there's still a long way to go before the winners can fully reverse the damage PiS has inflicted. President Andrzej Duda, who was elected as a PiS ally, still has two years left in his final term, and the incoming government will lack the three-fifths supermajority needed to override his vetoes. It will also have to contend with courts packed by the right.
However, the new government will have the chance to dismantle PiS' control over the media, prosecute political corruption, and strengthen Poland's support for its embattled neighbor, Ukraine.
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