• CA-Sen: With ballots about to go out to voters for California's March 5 top-two primary, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff is deploying his massive war chest to try to pick his preferred general election opponent.
Schiff, employing tactics that Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill made famous in 2012, is airing ads ostensibly attacking former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey as an ally of "far-right conservatives." Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, whose campaign would be over if Schiff's plan succeeds, blasted her colleague's commercial as "brazenly cynical," but he's hardly the first Golden State Democrat to try something like this.
The congressman's offensive, though, comes the same day that Garvey was the subject of a Los Angeles Times story challenging his self-described image as a "devoted family man."
Jeff Singer has more about the volatile final weeks of this primary―including how a classic joke on "The Golden Girls" foreshadowed Garvey's current predicament.
• CO-03: Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout announced Wednesday evening that she was dropping out of the June 25 Democratic primary for the 3rd District. Stout joined the race last summer, well before far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert surprised everyone and launched a bid for the more conservative 4th, but she struggled to raise money. That has not been a problem for 2022 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, who ended 2023 with a mammoth $5.1 million banked for what's now an open-seat race.
• NC-06: Lobbyist Addison McDowell this week publicized an endorsement from Sen. Ted Budd ahead of the March 5 Republican primary. McDowell already had Donald Trump's support in the contest to replace Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning, who retired after Republicans gerrymandered this seat to make it all but unwinnable for her party.
• VA-02: Attorney Jake Denton announced Wednesday that he was joining the Democratic race to take on freshman GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans. Denton says he raised $100,000 since he began eyeing this contest in late December, though he didn't open an FEC account before he entered the race.
Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal has been running since September, and she earned a spot on the DCCC's Red to Blue list two days before Denton launched his own bid. Smasal, however, has struggled to raise money for her effort to flip this swing seat in Virginia Beach, and she ended 2023 with only $94,000 in the bank. Kiggans, for her part, finished last year with $1.5 million available.
The local Democratic Party doesn't appear to have announced yet whether Kiggans' eventual opponent will be selected through a traditional party primary on June 18, a convention, or a party-run "firehouse primary." Democrats in all 11 congressional districts, though, opted for primaries last cycle, so it would be a surprise if the same thing didn't happen this time. The deadline for parties to make a decision is March 5.
• NC Supreme Court: Campaign finance reports released this week show Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin finishing 2023 with a wide $703,000 to $282,000 cash on hand advantage over Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, whom Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper appointed to the bench last year. Riggs faces opposition from Superior Court Judge Lora Cubbage in the March 5 party primary but, according to numbers compiled by journalist Bryan Anderson, the challenger ended the year with all of $76 in the bank.
• OR State Senate: The Oregon Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that a 2022 referendum prohibits 10 Republican state senators from running for reelection because they participated in a legislative boycott last year. Six members, including Minority Leader Tim Knopp, will be forced to retire this cycle (two of them already planned not to run again), while the other four won't be able to seek a new four-year term in 2026.
The decision may not do anything to stop Republicans from utilizing dilatory tactics when the new legislative session begins next week, though. "I think we still win," Knopp told reporters on Wednesday ahead of the ruling, "because our members literally have no reason to show up, and so in order for them to show up, they’re going to want to see that they’re going to be able to make a difference."
In 2022, voters approved a constitutional amendment known as Measure 113, which says that any legislator who incurs 10 or more unexcused absences in a legislative session can't seek another term in the subsequent election, requiring them to sit out a term in order to regain their eligibility.
The amendment, which passed 68-32, came after Republicans spent years boycotting the legislature in order to deny Democrats the two-thirds supermajorities needed for a quorum, tactics that let the GOP minority block bills on topics such as climate change and gun safety.
Republicans continued to utilize the same walkout tactics last year despite Measure 113's passage, and they sued when Democratic Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade announced that she'd invoke the amendment to keep the boycotters from running again. The GOP senators argued that, because of how the text of the amendment was worded, Measure 113 couldn't bar anyone from the ballot until 2028 at the earliest. The state's highest court disagreed, meaning that these 10 senators―who make up a third of the chamber―are now lame ducks.
The Republicans are still suing in federal court, and one plaintiff anticipates a decision this month. Knopp and his fellow travelers, though, had previously endorsed successors―some of them family members―in the event that they were not restored to the ballot. Oregon's candidate filing deadline is March 12.