The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Cara Zelaya, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
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Leading Off
● Data: Daily Kos Elections is pleased to present the 2022 edition of one of our most useful tools for evaluating congressional elections: our House Vulnerability Index.
The HVI specifically tells you the likely order in which each party's House seats are apt to fall. For instance, if you expect that Democrats are on track to lose 15 House seats, the HVI provides a rank ordering of which 15 are the likeliest seats for them to lose. To do so, it relies on just two data points: the margin of victory in each incumbent's own race in the last election, and the average presidential margin of victory in that same congressional district over the last two presidential elections.
These two factors have proven remarkably predictive ever since we first launched the HVI in 2010, but this year presents an added challenge: redistricting. Because so many House districts have changed dramatically compared to just two years ago, we've adjusted incumbent margins of victory from 2020 to reflect whether their districts have gotten redder or bluer at the presidential level.
Each party's seats are ranked separately in our spreadsheet. At the top of the list for Democrats is Georgia's 6th District in the Atlanta area, which Republicans gerrymandered so aggressively that Rep. Lucy McBath chose instead to face off against a fellow congresswoman in a much bluer neighboring district (she defeated Carolyn Bourdeaux in the primary earlier this year), leaving what remained of her old seat open. With no incumbent to defend it, and with an average presidential margin that would have favored Donald Trump by 21 points in 2016 and 2020, this seat is an all but certain goner for Democrats.
The GOP's most endangered district involves a similar story. Illinois was the rare state where Democrats enjoyed unfettered control over redistricting, so they transformed GOP Rep. Rodney Davis' 13th District from one with a narrow Trump advantage into one that Joe Biden would have carried by 11 points. Davis likewise opted to seek re-election in the dark red 15th, but unlike McBath, he lost his primary to fellow Rep. Mary Miller. Democrat Nikki Budzinski is now the favorite to flip this district.
For both sides, we rank every seat, though barring the most gigantic of tsunamis, it's toward the top where we can expect to see the greatest churn. There are, of course, always exceptions—candidate quality still matters even in this polarized age, particularly in the most closely divided districts—and just because Democrats lose seat number 15, say, does not mean they're certain to have lost number 14 as well. But the HVI nonetheless offers a strictly quantitative guide to the relative vulnerability of every district and provides a succinct overview of the House playing field as we head into election night. You can bookmark it right here.
Senate
● PA-Sen: The conservative American Crossroads, which has committed $4 million to this race, is running a commercial designed to motivate voters supporting Josh Shapiro for governor to reject fellow Democrat John Fetterman for Senate. The spot argues that Fetterman voted hundreds of times for pardons that Shapiro, who also sits on the five-member pardon board, rejected. The ad, though, only compliments the gubernatorial nominee in a backhanded way by calling Fetterman "way more radical than Shapiro."
● WI-Sen: Senate Majority PAC and End Citizens United are together running what NBC says is the first TV ad in this race hitting GOP incumbent Ron Johnson over his defense of the Jan. 6 rioters.
The spot stars retired Milwaukee Police Capt. George Silverwood telling the audience, "I'll never forget Jan. 6th, watching my fellow law enforcement officers defending the Capitol … and then five officers died." Silverwood continues, "But Ron Johnson is making excuses for rioters who tried to overthrow our government, even calling them 'peaceful protests.' Johnson defended Donald Trump's lies, and supported efforts to make it harder for some people to vote at all."
Johnson, meanwhile, is airing his own commercial making use of a recent report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailing how Democrat Mandela Barnes appeared on the Russian government-funded RT six times from 2015 to 2016, including days after the fatal shooting of five Dallas Police officers. After the narrator blasts Barnes for appearing on "Vladimir Putin's propaganda news outlet," it shows footage where the Democrat told RT that "police officers are over-exercising their badges."
Barnes' campaign responded to the story last week by saying, "Ron Johnson is the only candidate in this race who recklessly ignored warnings from the FBI when they called him 'a target of Russian disinformation,' further endangering U.S. national security." That matter came up at Thursday's debate, to which Johnson said, "The FBI set me up with a corrupt briefing and then leaked that to smear me."
● Polls:
CO-Sen: Global Strategy Group (D) for ProgressNow Colorado (pro-Bennet): Michael Bennet (D-inc): 49, Joe O'Dea (R): 38, Brian Peotter (L): 7 (June: 49-36 Bennet)
OH-Sen: Lucid for Ohio Northern University: Tim Ryan (D): 43, J.D. Vance (R): 41
OH-Sen: Cygnal (R): Vance (R): 47, Ryan (D): 43 (Early Oct.: 46-44 Vance)
● Senate: AdImpact reports that Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC is spending a total of $3.8 million more across five Senate races:
- AZ-Sen: $725,000
- GA-Sen: $681,000
- NV-Sen: $653,000
- OH-Sen: $1 million
- PA-Sen: $770,000
The new offensive brings the super PAC's overall spending up to $8.6 million, which is probably far less than Republicans hoped for when Politico reported last month that Trump's team was "expected to spend heavily."
On the Democratic side, a group called Save America Fund is dropping $1.3 million to help Tim Ryan in Ohio. The organization is not related to a Trump leadership PAC called Save America.
Governors
● Polls:
CO-Gov: Global Strategy Group (D) for ProgressNow Colorado (pro-Polis): Jared Polis (D-inc): 52, Heidi Ganahl (R): 34 (June: 50-32 Polis)
FL-Gov: Sachs Media for Florida Politics: Ron DeSantis (R-inc): 52, Charlie Crist (D): 42
IL-Gov: Osage Research (R) for Darren Bailey: J.B. Pritzker (D-inc): 44, Darren Bailey (R): 42, Scott Schluter (L): 4
MA-Gov: Suffolk University for local media: Maura Healey (D): 56, Geoff Diehl (R): 33 (Sept.: 52-26 Healey)
OH-Gov: Lucid for Ohio Northern University: Mike DeWine (R-Inc): 60, Nan Whaley (D): 29
OH-Gov: Cygnal (R): DeWine (R-inc): 56, Whaley (D): 35 (Early Oct.: 57-35 DeWine)
OR-Gov: GBAO (D) for Tina Kotek: Tina Kotek (D): 40, Christine Drazan (R): 38, Betsy Johnson (I): 14
IL-Gov: This internal comes after two recent media polls from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling and Research America showed Pritzker ahead 49-34 and 50-28, respectively.
OR-Gov: This is the first poll we've seen giving Kotek the edge since June, though most recent surveys have only shown Drazan slightly ahead in this three-way race.
House
● CA-45: The NRCC is airing a commercial accusing Democrat Jay Chen of having "led efforts to bring Chinese communist propaganda to schools," a move that comes weeks after Republican Rep. Michelle Steel drew national attention with a mailer declaring, "Jay Chen invited China into our children's classes."
The NRCC, after declaring Chen supported a "program reportedly funded and run by an arm of the Chinese Communist Party," plays several clips of the Democrat saying, "China is … the best opportunity for our future generations to get a job … it's to do business with China." This western Orange County seat is home to a large Vietnamese electorate, and local Republicans have spent decades linking their opponents to communists.
The Los Angeles Times recently explained that Chen, who is a member of a local school board, voted over a decade ago to support the Confucius Institute, with the paper writing, "The Beijing-backed language and cultural learning centers were popular on campuses across the nation at the time but have drawn scrutiny in recent years and are now viewed as propaganda arms of the Chinese government."
Chen's campaign responded to the GOP offensive weeks ago by highlighting the fact that his grandmother fled China after the Communist Party took power and his own service in the U.S. Navy Reserves, though he doesn't appear to have run any ads on the topic.
● CA-47: The Congressional Leadership Fund is taking advantage of a leaked text conversation between Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan where Porter expressed her anger at how the local police handled a fight that broke out after far-right hecklers disrupted her 2021 town hall, though CLF's ad unsurprisingly simply makes it sound like the congresswoman just hates the police. "Porter called the Irvine police a 'disgrace,'" bemoans the narrator.
Porter's event last year was crashed by a group of self-described "American Nationalists" who shouted insults at the congresswoman, with one attendee telling the Orange County Register that they brought up her history as a domestic abuse survivor and yelled "some really horrible stuff about her kids." Things later turned violent when a person named Julian Willis allegedly threw a punch at a heckler; the paper writes that Willis, who was cited afterwards, "reportedly has lived at Porter's Irvine home, although it's not clear if that is still the case."
Porter afterwards texted Khan and told her she would "never trust" the Irvine Police again, saying, "Your police force is a disgrace." Fox News reported the conversation last month, and local Democrats are still asking how the right-wing outlet obtained the messages in the first place. Khan has tweeted, "There were public records requests from CNN and Fox News for conversations between me, IPD, and the Congresswoman. I complied. I did not leak these." The Voice of OC, though, writes that Irvine's records department only released the texts days after Fox published them, so it couldn't have obtained the conversations through these means.
Porter's team responded to the initial Fox story by saying, "She was disappointed that despite our staff alerting police days before the event that the extremists were openly advertising their intention to disrupt the town hall, officers on the day of the incident were hundreds of feet away and did not intervene immediately when fighting broke out." The statement said that, since that town hall, Porter and her office "have worked productively with the Irvine Police Department, including the Congresswoman hosting the new police chief in her office for a constructive and cooperative meeting."
● FL-13: Florida Politics relays that Progress Pinellas, which is funded by Democrat Eric Lynn's cousin, has dropped another $1.3 million to support his campaign.
● MT-01: The super PAC Big Sky Voters is airing a commercial declaring that Republican Ryan Zinke "promised to build a park honoring veterans but focused instead on cutting a deal with private developers" and lied to investigators about the matter. The narrator continues, "As interior secretary, Zinke broke his promise to stay out of the Whitefish development deal, violating ethics rules."
The spot uses materials from a government report released in February that concluded that Zinke violated federal ethics rules while in office by taking part in talks with developers about a project involving land owned by his foundation, the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation, and then lying about his involvement in the negotiations. The Department of Justice, though, decided not to prosecute him last year.
● Polls:
NY-25: Tarrance Group (R) for La'Ron Singletary: Joe Morelle (D-inc): 43, La'Ron Singletary (R): 39
OH-01: Impact Research (D) for Greg Landsman: Greg Landsman (D): 49, Steve Chabot (R-inc): 46 (Sept.: 49-46 Landsman)
PA-07: Muhlenberg College for Morning Call: Susan Wild (D-inc): 47, Lisa Scheller (R): 46
NY-25: Other than this poll, there has been no indication that Morelle is in any danger against Singletary in a Rochester-based seat that Biden would have taken 59-39. Singletary also hasn't impressed donors, as he raised all of $440,000 for the entire campaign through Sept. 30 (not including the $100,000 he self-funded.) The New York Post says that the sample finds Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul ahead by just 4 points, but it did not include any other information.
Singletary served as Rochester Police chief in 2020 when a Black man named Daniel Prude died a week after officers placed a hood over his face and pinned him to the ground. Singletary, who initially suggested Prude died instead of a drug overdose, resigned after documents emerged indicating that he was one of the officials who tried to keep the police camera footage from being released. Prude's family this month reached a $12 million settlement where the city did not admit any wrongdoing.
OH-01: We haven't seen any other surveys of this expensive race apart from Landsman's internals. Biden would have carried this Cincinnati district 53-45.
PA-07: This is the first poll we've seen of this 50-49 Biden constituency since early August, when an RMG Research survey for Scheller's allies at U.S. Term Limits had her ahead 47-43. Muhlenberg's sample shows Josh Shapiro ahead 53-37 in this Lehigh Valley constituency in the race for governor as fellow Democrat John Fetterman enjoys a 50-43 edge for Senate.
Ballot Measures
● MA Ballot: Suffolk University's new poll for The Boston Globe, NBC10 Boston, and Telemundo shows a 58-37 majority in favor of the "millionaires tax" or "Fair Share Amendment," which would increase taxes on personal income over $1 million in order to fund education and transportation projects. This proposed constitutional amendment, which is identified as Question 1 on the ballot, led by an identical 56-35 margin last month even though both sides have been spending huge amounts to sway voters.
Mayors
● Los Angeles, CA Mayor: The Republican firm J. Wallin Opinion Research, polling on behalf of the Southern California News Group, gives billionaire developer Rick Caruso a surprising 40-37 edge over Rep. Karen Bass ahead of next month's officially nonpartisan race.
That's very different from the last survey we saw, a late September UC Berkeley poll that showed Bass ahead 46-31. J. Wallin, though, did ask a few issues questions before the horeserace, including whether respondents felt more or less safe compared to a couple of years ago, that could have influenced the results.
The mayoral contest over the last week has been overshadowed by the fallout from a leaked conversation where then-City Council President Nury Martinez made bigoted comments against numerous groups to two colleagues and a labor official in a conversation where she also talked about using City Council redistricting to strengthen Latino representation and weaken their opponents. It remains to be seen just how this scandal will impact the race to lead America's second-largest city.
Politico argued last week that Bass, who has a long history of working to unite Black and Latino residents, now has the chance to portray herself as someone who can help bridge the ugly racial fault lines that Martinez's recording has put front and center. Caruso, for his part, has in turn insisted that all of this shows that "[w]e need a change of direction."
Attorneys General and Secretaries of State
● Polls:
AZ-AG: HighGround Public Affairs (R) for Arizona's Family: Abe Hamadeh (R): 43, Kris Mayes (D): 38
AZ-SoS: HighGround Public Affairs (R) for Arizona's Family: Mark Finchem (R): 42, Adrian Fontes (D): 41
CO-AG: Global Strategy Group (D) for ProgressNow Colorado (pro-Weiser): Phil Weiser (D-inc): 44, John Kellner (R): 36, William Robinson (L): 7
CO-SoS: Global Strategy Group (D) for ProgressNow Colorado (pro-Griswold): Jena Griswold (D-inc): 46, Pam Anderson (R): 36, Bennett Rutledge (L): 4, Amanda Campbell (ACP): 3
AZ: Arizona's Family, the news channel that commissioned this poll, released results earlier this week from this sample showing narrow leads for Democrats for Senate and governor.
Ad Roundup
Dollar amounts reflect the reported size of ad buys and may be larger.