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
● NJ-02: After standing by their racist nominee in New Jersey's 2nd Congressional District for weeks, the NRCC finally withdrew its backing from Republican Seth Grossman after Media Matters unearthed social media posts in which Grossman favorably linked to hate-filled essays on white supremacist sites. One typically unsubtle passage from a piece that Grossman highlighted:
However, my experience has also taught me that blacks are different by almost any measure to all other people. They cannot reason as well. They cannot communicate as well. They cannot control their impulses as well. They are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike.
Campaign Action
While Grossman squirmed when Media Matters asked him for comment, he'd never made any attempt to hide his views. Last month, shortly after he unexpectedly won the GOP primary, audio emerged from an April candidate forum in which he'd declared, "The whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American," calling the concept "an excuse by Democrats, communists, and socialists, basically, to say that we're not all created equal."
Soon thereafter, we learned what he believes about Islam ("a cancer"), Kwanzaa ("a phony holiday invented in 1960's by black racists"), and George Soros (akin to Leon Trotsky, who was an "International Communist—and a Jew"), thanks to a series of other online writings uncovered by CNN.
It's never just one isolated comment with guys like this, but the NRCC waited until maximum embarrassment had set in to cut ties, even though the committee was unlikely to ever devote real resources to Grossman. It's nevertheless a remarkable turn of events: The GOP has now triaged a seat it's held for decades—and one that Trump won!—because it couldn't avoid nominating a white supremacist. It won't be the last time.
2Q Fundraising
● ND-Sen: Heidi Heitkamp (D-inc): $1.9 million raised, $5.2 million cash-on-hand
● NV-Sen: Dean Heller (R-inc): $2.4 million raised, $5.85 million cash-on-hand
● OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown (D-inc): $3.7 million raised, $11.1 million cash on hand
● PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc): $2.2 million raised, $9.8 million cash-on-hand
● TX-Sen: Ted Cruz (R-inc): $4 million raised, $10 million cash-on-hand
● WI-Sen: Kevin Nicholson (R): $1 million raised
● CT-Gov: Joe Ganim (D): $736,000 raised cycle-to-date, $60,000 self-funded, $316,000 cash-on-hand
● TN-Gov: Craig Fitzhugh (D): $75,000 raised, $200,000 self-loaned
● CA-10: Josh Harder (D): $1.25 million raised
● CA-25: Katie Hill (D): $1.3 million raised
● CT-05: Mary Glassman (D): $380,000 raised
● FL-17: Julio Gonzalez (R): $225,000 raised
● FL-18: Brian Mast (R-inc): $1 million raised, $2 million cash-on-hand; Lauren Baer (D): $500,000 raised, $1 million cash-on-hand
● IA-01: Abby Finkenauer (D): $765,000 raised
● IL-06: Peter Roskam (R-inc): $944,000 raised, $2.3 million cash-on-hand
● ME-02: Jared Golden (D) $560,000 raised
● NY-22: Anthony Brindisi (D): $660,00 raised, $1.4 million cash-on-hand
Senate
● FL-Sen: The GOP group America Next has debuted an ad that attacks Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson for supposedly voting to raise taxes and adding to the national debt.
● WI-Sen: Wisconsin Next PAC, which is funded by billionaire megadonor Diane Hendricks, has put $438,000 behind an ad attacking businessman Kevin Nicholson in the GOP primary against state Sen. Leah Vukmir. The spot uses footage of him speaking at the 2000 Democratic National Convention to argue he's an unreliable conservative.
Gubernatorial
● AK-Gov: The Democratic firm Harstad Strategic Research has polled Alaska's gubernatorial race on behalf of the state AFL-CIO, which isn't officially backing a candidate yet. Their survey finds likely GOP nominee Mike Dunleavy with a 32 percent plurality while independent Gov. Bill Walker and former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich are tied for second at 28 percent apiece. However, if either of Walker or Begich were to drop out, the race looks very different. In a two-way matchup, they have Begich up 50-41 over Dunleavy, while Walker leads him by a similar 49-40.
The pollster also tested the Aug. 21 Republican primary, where they find Dunleavy with a 43-17 advantage over former Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell.
● CT-Gov: Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst has debuted his first TV ad ahead of the Aug. 14 Republican primary. He boasts of balancing the budget in Trumbull and calls for eliminating pensions for legislators and political appointees.
● GA-Gov: Secretary of State Brian Kemp has finally unloaded on Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle with a TV ad in the GOP primary runoff that makes use of a damning secret recording where Cagle admitted to supporting what he called a bad law solely because it deterred a super PAC from spending millions to support another candidate. Kemp says, "If that's not criminal, it should be."
● Governors, Redistricting: With Donald Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court is about to take a major step backward in the battle against Republican gerrymandering, but Stephen Wolf details in a new post how Democrats can fight back by winning gubernatorial elections. This map shows which states hold gubernatorial elections that matter for 2020s redistricting, and the 10 biggest battlegrounds this year are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
House
● AL-02: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has gone up with a TV ad attacking former Rep. Bobby Bright in the GOP primary runoff over his Democratic past, noting he backed Nancy Pelosi for speaker. They tout Rep. Martha Roby as a Trump-supporting conservative.
● CA-25, MN-02, NJ-03: Last week, the League of Conservation Voters and the Environmental Defense Fund released a June poll from Global Strategy Group of 2,000 voters across 20 Republican-held congressional districts and found Democrats with a 44-40 lead on the generic ballot in these seats. As part of that survey, GSG also polled extra respondents in five districts in order to have a sufficiently large sample size to analyze the individual head-to-head matchups in those races, and now they've published the data from three of those contests.
In California's 25th District, GSG gives GOP Rep. Steve Knight a 45-40 lead on Democrat Katie Hill while Donald Trump is underwater with a 43-49 favorability rating. This is the first poll we've seen here in many months, and therefore the first we've seen since Hill won the second slot in June's top-two primary.
Over on the other side of the country in New Jersey's 3rd Congressional District, GSG has Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur in a 42-all tie with his Democratic opponent, Andy Kim, with Trump even more unpopular at 43-52. Those numbers are even better than the 48-44 MacArthur advantage that Kim's own internal from early June found.
Finally, in Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District, GSG for some reason didn't test Democrat Angie Craig by name against freshman GOP Rep. Jason Lewis, even though Craig is the only Democrat on the August primary ballot. Instead, they have Lewis up 43-42 over an unnamed "Democratic candidate," while Trump's favorables stand at a negative 41-54.
● IL-12: The DCCC has added $319,000 to its October ad reservation on behalf of Democratic nominee Brendan Kelly in the race against GOP Rep. Mike Bost.
● KS-03: Women Vote, which is affiliated with EMILY's List, is putting $387,000 behind a two-week TV ad buy on behalf of attorney Sharice Davids ahead of the Aug. 7 Democratic primary. The ad calls her a “fighter” as Davids, who is in fact a mixed martial arts fighter, is shown practicing with a punching bag. The narrator notes her background as the daughter of a single mother Army veteran and also highlights how Davids went from community college to getting a law degree from Cornell. They close by calling her a progressive who will take on Trump and the NRA.
● MI-11: Democrat Haley Stevens, who was the former chief of staff to President Obama's Auto Task Force, has released her first TV ad ahead of the Aug. 7 primary. She touts how the auto rescue saved over 200,000 jobs and says she's running for Congress to get more people covered under Obamacare and stop Trump from sabotaging it. Meanwhile, state Rep. Tim Greimel has also launched his first Democratic primary ad. The spot emphasizes how Greimel stood up to Trump and Michigan Republicans by fighting for Medicaid expansion, a higher minimum wage, and women's reproductive health care.