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
● East Baton Rouge Parish, LA: On Saturday, voters in the suburbs of Baton Rouge voted to secede from their surrounding local government by a 54-46 margin in order to create the new city of St. George, which will become the fifth-largest city in Louisiana.
Campaign Action
The campaign, while successful, has been beset by controversy. St. George's 86,000 residents are overwhelmingly white, but Baton Rouge, the city that anchors East Baton Rouge Parish, is more than half black. Secession supporters say they were driven by a desire to form their own school district, but opponents, which include much of Baton Rouge's political and business establishment, have accused backers of seeking to segregate St. George's white students from the predominantly black East Baton Rouge Parish school system.
The St. George area is also more affluent than the rest of Baton Rouge, so its departure could undermine parish schools and government financially: One analysis concluded that St. George's secession could lead to an 18% budget cut unless the rest of the parish raises taxes.
Baton Rouge, which is the state's capital, has a troubled history when it comes to integrating schools. The city only began implementing court-ordered desegregation in 1981, a generation after the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Integration quickly sparked a backlash among white parents, many of whom withdrew their children from public schools and sent them to private schools that critics derided as "segregation academies."
This latest move by St. George voters represents a continuation of that backlash decades later and is part of a national trend of "white flight" suburbs seceding to form their own segregated school districts. According to one nonprofit, 73 similar efforts have succeeded in the last two decades, and with St. George's high-profile success, more are likely to come.
St. George will still remain part of East Baton Rouge Parish, which is led by Democratic Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, but it will be run by a local mayor in addition to her parish government. A few smaller cities in East Baton Rouge Parish operate this way, while the government of the city of Baton Rouge is consolidated with the government of East Baton Rouge Parish. This means, in effect, that St. George will go from having one local government to two. Broome had opposed the referendum, while secession leaders had attacked her administration in order to make their case that St. George needed a separate level of local government.
There will be a 30-day window between Saturday's election and the incorporation of St. George, and it's possible that a legal challenge could further slow things down. The main campaign opposing the breakaway said on election night that they would accept the results of the referendum, though Broome said it was "too early" to talk about potential litigation
The governor will need to appoint the city's first mayor and five-member council, but it's not clear when this has to happen. The leadership of the St. George's campaign says they want the city government to be set up by Jan. 1, which would fall in the final weeks of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' current term. (Republican Eddie Rispone, who is Edwards' opponent in the Nov. 16 runoff, was an early supporter of the St. George movement.) The city's first municipal elections would happen in the autumn of 2020, when Broome is also up for re-election.
Senate
● AK-Sen: Last week, independent Al Gross picked up the endorsement of the Alaska Democratic Party for his bid against GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. Gross, who is an orthopedic surgeon, is competing in the August Democratic primary while still identifying as an independent, and he currently faces no serious opposition. If Gross won the nomination, he would be identified on the general election with both a "U" for unaffiliated and as the "Alaska Democratic Party Nominee."
● MA-Sen: On Monday, business executive and author Steve Pemberton announced that he was ending his Democratic primary bid against Sen. Ed Markey. Pemberton had initially vowed to remain in the race even if Rep. Joe Kennedy III also ran, but he dropped out three weeks after the congressman announced his Senate bid. Labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is self-funding most of her campaign, is still running in the September primary.
● NC-Sen: Meredith College: Thom Tillis (R-inc): 33, Cal Cunningham (D): 33, Someone else: 17; Erika Smith (D): 34, Thom Tillis (R-inc): 33, Someone else: 16
Gubernatorial
● KY-Gov: Politico reports that Donald Trump is planning to hold a rally for GOP Gov. Matt Bevin one day before the Nov. 5 election, and Mike Pence will also be stumping for the incumbent a few days before that on Nov. 1. Presumably, attendance for both events will be considerably better than it was for the infamous Donald Trump Jr. rally with Bevin that took place just before Labor Day.
Trump is probably Bevin's biggest asset in this very red state, but Democrat Andy Beshear is out with an ad that explicitly appeals to Trump voters. The spot features two Republicans saying that they backed Trump in 2016 and still support him, and one volunteers that he even voted for Bevin in 2015. However, these Republicans characterize the governor as someone who "cares about himself and his friends that are literally putting us good, honest working people in harm's way," while they praise Beshear as "a good guy."
Beshear is also out with a commercial starring state House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, who took second place in the May primary and did very well in rural Eastern Kentucky. Adkins tells the audience, "I've fought for Eastern Kentucky my whole life, for our jobs and our people." Adkins continues by pledging that, unlike Bevin, Beshear will "fight for us and treat us with respect." Beshear then declares, "Instead of attacking and dividing our people, I'll focus on better paying jobs, career and skills training, and apprenticeships. And I'll always protect our miners and your health care."
● LA-Gov: ALG Research is out with a poll for Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards that gives him a 52-36 lead over Republican Eddie Rispone in the Nov. 16 runoff. The survey was completed Oct. 3, which was just over a week before Rispone beat GOP Rep. Ralph Abraham to secure a spot in the runoff. ALG says that the unreleased primary portion of this survey gave Edwards 46% of the vote, which is very close to the 47% he won Saturday.
While ALG’s result is a good number for Edwards, Rispone may have room to grow. This survey took place during a time that Rispone and Abraham were attacking one another, and ALG found that a full 12% of Abraham’s voters said they’d back Edwards while another 15% were undecided. However, many of those Abraham supporters may come home to the GOP now that the intra-party attacks have stopped and the congressman has endorsed Rispone.
P.S.: No matter how next month’s race turns out, Edwards will make history as the first incumbent governor to compete in a runoff campaign. Louisiana nominated its gubernatorial candidates through traditional party primaries until it switched to the current system starting with the 1975 election, a contest that Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards (no known relation to the current governor) won decisively in the all-party primary. While three Louisiana governors have lost re-election since then, none of them have fallen in runoffs.
Edwin Edwards, who was forbidden from running for a third consecutive term in 1979, regained the governorship four years later by defeating Republican incumbent David Treen 62-36 in the all-party primary. Edwards ran again in 1987 but took second place in the primary to conservative Democrat Buddy Roemer 33-28. Edwards chose to concede right then and there, and Roemer became governor without going through a second round of voting.
In 1991 Roemer, who had become a Republican earlier that year, missed the runoff altogether by taking third place in the primary. Edwards won his fourth and final term decisively against Republican David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan.
● MS-Gov: While Republican Tate Reeves had to win an expensive GOP runoff campaign in August, he still ended September with a large $3.2 million to $1.3 million cash-on-hand lead over Democrat Jim Hood.
● NC-Gov: Meredith College: Roy Cooper (D-inc): 46, Dan Forest (R): 33, Someone else: 9.
House
● CA-08: On Friday, former GOP Assemblyman Tim Donnelly filed with the FEC for what would be a third bid for this reliably red seat. Donnelly, who was a tea party ally during his time in the legislature, ran here in 2016 against GOP incumbent Paul Cook, but he failed to advance past the top-two primary. Donnelly campaigned here again last year and managed to reach the general election, but Cook beat him 60-40 in November. Cook is retiring to run for the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.
● CA-53: Last week, San Diego City Council president Georgette Gómez picked up an endorsement from the state SEIU.
Gómez faces several other Democrats in the March top-two primary for this safely blue open seat, but last month, San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced that he would not join the field. Fletcher, a Republican turned independent turned Democrat, seemed to enjoy messing with the Great Mentioner a little, saying, "I had a little fun not publicly ruling it out and loved all the local Republicans encouraging me to go to D.C., but never considered it."
● ME-02: On Thursday, former Gov. Paul LePage threw his support behind ex-state Rep. Dale Crafts in the June GOP primary to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. Crafts faces real estate agent Adrienne Bennett, who used to be LePage's press secretary, as well as 2018 Senate nominee Eric Brakey. LePage's endorsement seemed to catch Bennett by surprise, since she said earlier that week that she believed that her old boss might remain neutral.
● NY-17: On Saturday, Assemblyman David Buchwald became the first Democrat to announce a bid for this reliably blue seat since longtime Rep. Nita Lowey decided to retire last week. Buchwald is the author of the Trust Act, which allows Congress to obtain Donald Trump’s New York tax returns; unsurprisingly, Trump is suing to block it.
● OK-02: On Friday, state Sen. Joseph Silk announced that he’d challenge Rep. Markwayne Mullin in the June GOP primary for this safely red eastern Oklahoma seat.
Silk has a notoriously bad relationship with his party’s legislative leaders, and he claims he got booted from his committee vice chairmanship this spring after he promoted an unsuccessful bill to classify abortion as murder. Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat said in response that he’d demoted Silk not for this legislation but because of his behavior. Treat accused Silk of trying to fundraise for an anti-abortion group to buy billboards that criticized another GOP senator, and he also argued that Silk and his allies had hurled unjustified attacks at the Senate Republican Caucus over social media.
Silk in turn said that he had no control over what his supporters did. He also told several of his colleagues in a letter, “I have served in the U.S. Coast Guard under many different commands, held many different occupations, run a business and served in the State Senate under three different leadership teams and have never seen a more authoritarian leadership than we currently have.”
Silk emphasized his anti-establishment reputation as he argued that Mullin has spent his four terms in D.C. doing the bidding of congressional bosses rather than pushing through necessary conservative change. Silk did not attack Mullin, though, for abandoning his 2012 pledge to only serve three terms. However, that issue could cause the congressman some trouble.
In 2016, Mullin began hinting that he wanted to stay in Congress a whole lot longer, which drew an angry rebuke from former Sen. Tom Coburn. Coburn, a term-limits true believer who represented this area in the 1990s, ended up backing Army veteran Jarrin Jackson in the primary; Mullin won, but by an unimpressive 62-38 margin. Mullin sought that once-forbidden fourth term in 2018 and he once again ran against Jackson as well as a few other candidates. This time, Mullin took just 54% of the vote, while Jackson was a distant second at 25%.
Mullin’s team said Friday that he would seek re-election again. Oklahoma requires a runoff for primary contests where no one takes a majority of the vote, so the incumbent could be in real trouble if he does just a little worse than he did last cycle.
● PA-07: On Monday, former Lehigh County Commissioner Lisa Scheller announced that she'd seek the GOP nod to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Susan Wild in this competitive Lehigh Valley seat. Scheller will face 2018 candidate Dean Browning, who almost won the nomination last year despite raising little money, in the April primary.
Scheller leads Silberline Manufacturing, a multi-million-dollar paint pigment company started by her family, and the National Journal wrote back in May that she could self-fund. Scheller retired from the county commission in 2015, but she was in the news last year when The Morning Call ran a story about a coffee shop she started that hires and aids other people recovering from addiction.
This seat moved from 53-46 Obama to just 49-48 Clinton, but Wild decisively beat Marty Nothstein, whom the national GOP abandoned before Election Day, last year by a strong 53-43 margin.
● TX-02: Mike Collier, who was the 2018 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, announced Sunday that he would not challenge freshman GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw.
● WI-05: Republican Ben Voelkel, who serves as spokesman for Sen. Ron Johnson, announced on Friday that he would not be running for this open seat.
● WI-07: On Monday, Wausau School Board president Tricia Zunker because the first notable Democrat to enter the upcoming special election. Zunker, who is also a justice on the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court, would be the state’s first Native American member of Congress.
Mayoral
● Raleigh, NC Mayor: Charles Francis, who was the runner-up in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary for mayor of Raleigh, announced Friday that he would decline to seek a runoff against former City Council member and fellow Democrat Mary-Ann Baldwin. This move makes Baldwin mayor-elect of North Carolina’s capital and second-largest city.
Francis trailed Baldwin 38-31 last week, a result that was much closer than his 58-42 general election defeat in 2017 against Mayor Nancy McFarlane, an independent who is retiring this year. However, Baldwin rolled out endorsements from McFarlane and several incoming Council members for the runoff, which may have signaled to Francis that he would have been the heavy underdog. Francis said in a statement that he believed “the path to a runoff victory to re-connect with my voters and reach other voters concerned about our city would require an additional several hundred thousand dollars—more resources than available for an election just three weeks away.”
A runoff between Baldwin and Francis would have likely featured an emphasis on development policies, which was a significant issue in the first round of voting. Baldwin has stated that housing affordability would be her top priority as mayor and has said she'd work on creating more walkable areas in the city, while Francis was focused on ensuring that Raleigh's extensive growth would not displace any current residents.
Grab Bag
● Demographics: David Jarman takes a look at a growing demographic phenomenon: congressional districts represented by members who are of a different race or ethnicity than the majority or plurality of the district's residents. We're up to a total of 68 such members, up from 56 in just two years. That's largely thanks to the election of a diverse freshman class amidst the Democratic wave of 2018, but also thanks to a number of districts switching from a white plurality to a Latino plurality in recent years.
● International Digest: Israel went to the polls again last month after no government could be formed following April's elections, but right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right and religious party allies failed to win a majority yet again. The center-left opposition failed to win a majority on its own, but the prospect of a compromise unity government means Netanyahu's days in power could be numbered at long last. Meanwhile, Portugal's left-of-center government won a landslide re-election, Tunisia elects its second president since the Arab Spring revolution, and Italy's far-right was replaced with the center-left in its governing coalition. Read about these stories and more in the October edition of the International Digest.