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
● Mail Voting: The coronavirus pandemic has caused major disruptions for the voting process by creating health risks with traditional in-person voting, and protecting public health by expanding access to voting by mail has become a key part of ensuring the continuity of democracy. Consequently, Daily Kos Elections has created a state-by-state guide detailing how and when to request a mail ballot (commonly called an absentee ballot) for every statewide primary happening this 2020.
Our guide includes information on deadlines to request and return mail ballots, whether a specific excuse or a witness signature is required, whether the state will send ballots or applications for ballots to all voters, and links for where to request mail ballots and find further instructions about the process. We'll keep this guide updated as states announce any further changes to election procedures or dates, and you can stay on top of any changes to election timing by bookmarking our calendar of 2020 primary elections here.
Election Changes
● Georgia: Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to require that Georgia loosen its restrictions on voting absentee by mail. Their suit asks the court to order that the state prepay the cost of postage, count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day so long as they arrive within seven days afterward, implement procedures to prevent ballots from being arbitrarily rejected for a supposedly non-matching signature on their ballot envelope, and allow third-party groups such as political campaigns or community groups to collect and submit completed absentee ballots.
● New York: Two of the candidates who had been running in New York City's canceled election for Queens borough president, Dao Yin and Jim Quinn, have filed lawsuits in state court aiming to put the special election back on the calendar for June 23, when the state's primaries are set to take place. They argue that Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo lacked the authority to cancel a city special election. Meanwhile, the election for the full term is also taking place this year, with the regular Democratic primary that will effectively decide who wins the November general election also happening on June 23.
● Pennsylvania: Citing their inability to recruit a sufficient number of poll workers, officials in Pennsylvania's largest county of Philadelphia have asked the state for permission to cut the number of polling places they will operate for the June 2 primary by more than the 60% allowed under the new state law that postponed the primary from April 28. Otherwise, the county is asking for the National Guard to be deployed to help staff them. Allegheny County, which is Pennsylvania's second-largest county and home to Pittsburgh, has similarly asked the state for permission to cut its polling places by up to 90% as the county undertakes a plan to mail applications for mail ballots to all voters.
● Texas: The NAACP and other civil rights advocates in conjunction with national Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to expand access to absentee mail voting. Plaintiffs request that the court order the state to prepay the cost of postage, extend the deadline by which ballots that have been postmarked by Election Day must be received by officials from one day after Election Day to no later than the date that election officials canvass the votes, prevent the state from using arbitrary standards to reject absentee ballots for supposedly non-matching signatures without giving voters a chance to fix the problem, and allow a third party to collect and turn in completed absentee ballots.
Separate lawsuits (one at the state level and one at the federal level) that had been previously filed are challenging Texas' requirement that voters under age 65 provide a specific excuse to be able to vote absentee by mail. The state-level case saw a lower court block officials from enforcing the requirement for the July 14 primary runoff, although Republicans are appealing that ruling.
Primary Night
● Election Night: Simi-Charmed Life: Tuesday brings us special elections for the U.S. House in California’s swingy 25th District and Wisconsin’s reliably red 7th, as well as Nebraska’s party primary. We’ve put together our preview of each state here. Our live coverage will begin at 9 PM ET, which is when polls close in Nebraska and Wisconsin, at Daily Kos Elections; you can also follow us on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates. The polls will close two hours later at 11 PM ET in California.
The main event will be the contest in California’s 25th District to succeed former Rep. Katie Hill, a freshman Democrat who resigned last year after she was victimized by revenge porn. No matter how Tuesday’s contest goes, both Democrat Christy Smith and Republican Mike Garcia will face off again for a full two-year term in November for this swing seat, which includes northern Los Angeles County and a small portion of Ventura County (including the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley).
As California election watchers are well aware, though, there’s a good chance that we won’t definitively know on Tuesday evening who won. The Golden State took major steps years before the coronavirus pandemic to increase voter participation over the years by making it easier to vote, and importantly, officials are required to accept ballots if they're received up to three days after Election Day so long as they are postmarked and mailed by Election Day. This means that a significant share of votes will not be tallied until days or possibly even weeks after the special election. The late vote has strongly favored Democrats in recent years, though things could be different in this mostly all-mail election.
That’s not all we have on tap for Tuesday, though. Check out our preview for a look both at the special election for Wisconsin’s 7th District and the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Don Bacon in Nebraska’s 2nd District. You’ll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates of the presidential and downballot primaries in all 50 states, as well as our separate calendar tracking key contests further down the ballot taking place nationwide this year.
Senate
● CO-Sen: Nonprofit head Lorena Garcia ended her campaign for the Democratic nod on Thursday after the June 30 primary ballot was finalized without her name on it. Garcia had asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent this from happening, but she was rebuffed. The Democratic contest will be a duel between former Gov. John Hickenlooper and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, and the winner will take on GOP Sen. Cory Gardner in the fall.
● IA-Sen: Retired Vice Adm. Michael Franken is out with a spot ahead of the June 2 Democratic primary focused around the Des Moines Register's endorsement of his campaign.
● TX-Sen: Former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards announced on Friday that she was endorsing state Sen. Royce West in the July Democratic primary runoff to face GOP Sen. John Cornyn. Edwards had competed in the first round of the primary in March and taken fifth place with 10% of the vote.
Gubernatorial
● AK-Gov: The long legal battle over the recall campaign against GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy ended on Friday when the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the recall could proceed. This is a big win for Recall Dunleavy, the group spearheading the effort to remove the governor from office, but as we'll explain, it still has one huge hurdle ahead of it before it can make the ballot.
As we've written before, an official in Alaska may only be recalled for "(1) lack of fitness, (2) incompetence, (3) neglect of duties, or (4) corruption." This provision, which recall expert Joshua Spivak calls a "malfeasance standard," differs from the practice in many other states, where only voters' signatures are needed for a recall to go forward. Recall Dunleavy is focusing on the first three grounds for recall, and on Friday, the state's highest court agreed that the campaign had met the state's requirements.
Recall Dunleavy still needs to turn in more than 71,000 valid signatures—which is 25% of the votes cast in 2018—to make the ballot, and it had collected a total of about 35,000 petitions as of May 4. There is no deadline to turn in signatures, but Recall Dunleavy's campaign manager, Claire Pywell, said she believed it needed to hand in its petitions by July 3 to place a recall measure on the November ballot.
The campaign switched in March to collecting signatures by mail instead of in person because of the coronavirus pandemic, but social distancing appears to have made this task more difficult: The Anchorage Daily News writes that about 60% of the petitions were collected during the two weeks before the state's new public health guidelines were issued.
If Dunleavy is ousted then his fellow Republican, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer, would fill out the rest of his term. No matter what, though, Alaska's regularly scheduled gubernatorial election will take place in 2022.
While defeating Dunleavy wouldn't change which party holds the governor's office, his critics have good reason to want him out. Dunleavy alienated plenty of Alaskans last year—including some of his old supporters—with his draconian budget cuts that included an attempt to slash 41% of higher education funding, as well as retaliating against the state Supreme Court by cutting $335,000 in funding after it upheld a ruling that protected abortion rights.
House
● GA-07: State Sen. Zahra Karinshak is up with what her campaign calls a "six-figure ad buy" ahead of the June 9 Democratic primary for this competitive open seat. Karinshak's ads (here and here) touts the Air Force Intelligence veteran and former federal prosecutor as someone who will stand up to bullies.
On the GOP side, state Sen. Renee Unterman picked up an endorsement on Friday from the NRA.
● MI-06: Democratic state Rep. Jon Hoadley is out with a poll from Victoria Research that gives him a 38-37 edge over veteran GOP Rep. Fred Upton. This survey, which is the first we've seen here, also shows Joe Biden winning 47-44 in a Kalamazoo-area seat that moved from 50-49 Romney to 51-43 Trump. The poll also finds Democratic Sen. Gary Peters leading Republican John James 40-39 in a district James won 50-47 during his 2018 Senate bid.
● NY-24: 2018 nominee Dana Balter is out with her first TV spot ahead of the June 23 Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. John Katko. Balter shows how she's doing video conference town halls now and relays, "People are furious Donald Trump made this crisis so much worse, and they want someone who will fight for them." Balter continues by saying she's always fought for people, starting when she stood up for her little brother with disabilities, and during her career as a special education teacher and nonprofit leader.
● WA-10: Last week, state Rep. Beth Doglio picked up an endorsement from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a prominent progressive who represents a nearby district, as well as the Washington Federation of State Employees for the August top-two primary. Former state Rep. Kristine Reeves, another Democrat running for this open seat, also earned the backing of the National Education Association and the Laborers' International Union of North America. A third Democrat, former Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland, has the support of former Govs. Christine Gregoire and Gary Locke and another union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1504.
● House: House Majority PAC, which is the second-largest spender on House races among outside groups on the Democratic side, announced Monday that it was reserving an additional $18 million for fall TV and radio buys across 28 different media markets. We've assembled this new data into a spreadsheet, which includes our best guesses as to which House seats HMP is specifically targeting or defending.
These new bookings come a month after HMP reserved $51 million for its first wave of reservations. While HMP focused its initial reservations on media markets that will likely attract hordes of ad money from presidential and Senate campaigns, and where the price of ad time will shoot up as Election Day draws closer, this second wave was directed at markets like Los Angeles and Salt Lake City that are outside the swing states.
However, HMP did add some extra money to its existing reservations in a number of places. In Las Vegas, for instance, HMP booked an extra $1 million on top of the $3.5 million it reserved last month.
Legislative
● Special Elections: In addition to the special election happening in the 25th Congressional District, there will also be a legislative special election taking place in Southern California.
CA-SD-28: This is a Republican district, covering a wide swath of Riverside County, that became vacant when former state Sen. Jeff Stone took a position with the U.S. Department of Labor. This is the second round of voting for this seat and Democrat Elizabeth Romero, who is a member of the Riverside County Board of Education, will face Republican Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez. In the March all-party primary, Melendez led the way with 40% of the vote, while Romero narrowly edged out fellow Democrat and 2018 nominee for this seat Joy Silver 24-21. Overall, Republican candidates outpaced Democrats 52-48 in the first round.
The results of the primary match the light red nature of this district: Mitt Romney won this district by a 53-46 spread in 2012, which narrowed to a 49-47 win for Donald Trump in 2016. In the 2018 elections, Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox carried this seat 52.5-47.5 overall Gavin Newsom and, in his bid for a third term, Stone defeated Silver 52-48.
Democrats currently hold a wide 29-10 majority in the Senate, so a win for either party would not have a tangible effect on the chamber's makeup. However, a win for the Democrats would give the party their largest advantage in this chamber since the 1960s, according to analyst Drew Savicki.
Other Races
● IN-AG: On Monday, the Indiana Supreme Court announced that it was suspending GOP Attorney General Curtis Hill's law license for 30 days beginning on May 18 with an automatic reinstatement afterwards. However, as we'll explain, it remains to be seen whether Hill will still be in office after his punishment is over.
Hill's sanction came about two years after four women accused him of groping them at a party, and the justices agreed that Hill had "committed the criminal act of battery." However, the ruling also said that there wasn't enough evidence to demonstrate that the attorney general had shown the "wholesale lack of insight or lack of remorse that ordinarily would prompt us" to require him to "prove his fitness to resume the practice of law" after his sentence was over.
The ruling did not say, though, whether or not Hill will be able to remain in office. The state requires its attorney general to be "duly licensed to practice law in Indiana," but there's no agreement whether or not a suspended license is acceptable. The state House, with GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb's support, tried to clarify this in March by passing an amendment that would remove the attorney general from office if their license were suspended for at least 30 days, but the provision died in the Senate.
Holcomb, who would be tasked with appointing a new attorney general if the post became vacant, said Monday that he wasn't sure what would happen next. The governor said he and his legal team would "see what are the steps ahead, what do they look like," and added that they'd work as quickly as possible to figure out what the law requires.
Hill made it clear last year that he'd seek a second term, and there's no indication that he's reconsidering. However, he already faces an intra-party challenge from two other Republicans, attorney John Westercamp and Decatur County Prosecutor Nate Harter, and a familiar name may also join the race. Former Rep. Todd Rokita, who lost the 2018 GOP primary for Senate, has hinted that he's interested, and he has until May 20 to enter the contest.
No matter what happens, we'll know in a few weeks if Hill will be Team Red's candidate this fall. Both parties in Indiana select nominees for attorney general at conventions rather than in party primaries, and the GOP gathering is scheduled for June 20, days after Hill's license is to be renewed. The party still plans for the event to take place in person, though it has plans in place to make this a virtual gathering with mail-in ballots if necessary.