The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
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Leading Off
● CA-16: California will host its first-ever three-way House race of the top-two era this fall after final tallies showed two candidates finishing in an astonishing tie for second place.
While media outlets declared former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo the first-place finisher a week after the March 5 primary for California’s open 16th District, Assemblyman Evan Low and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian traded leads as small as a single vote over the ensuing month. (All are Democrats.)
But after county officials certified returns on Thursday, both Low and Simitian wound up with exactly 30,249 votes. California does not conduct automatic recounts but instead requires candidates to request them—and pay for them. But neither Simitian nor Low has the incentive to ask for one lest they fall behind, and given the expense—likely several hundred thousand dollars—Liccardo has little reason to want one either.
The end result is a remarkable turn of events that upends the pattern that California voters have grown used to ever since they approved the creation of a top-two primary in 2010. Under that system, which was first put in place the following election cycle, all candidates from all parties run on the same primary ballot, and the two leading vote-getters—regardless of party—advance to the general election.
Lawmakers also passed a bill clarifying that, in the event of a deadlock between runners-up, breaking the tie by a drawing of lots was forbidden. Instead, both candidates would move on to the next round of voting.
That had only ever happened once before since 2012, in circumstances that were both less striking and lower-stakes. In 2016, Democrat Autumn Burke was unopposed when she sought reelection to the state Assembly in a safely blue district in the Los Angeles area, capturing 99.9% of the vote in the primary. But a pair of write-in candidates, Republican Tony Leal and Libertarian Baron Bruno, each snagged 32 votes, sending all three contenders to a November face-off.
There wasn’t much drama in the fall, though: Burke crushed Leal in a 77-17 landslide while Bruno took just 6% of the vote. This time, however, the competition will be fierce.
The 16th District is a compact constituency just south of San Francisco that takes in a swath of Silicon Valley, including Palo Alto (the home of Stanford University) and parts of San Jose. It’s also heavily Democratic turf: President Joe Biden carried it by a 75-22 margin, according to data from Daily Kos Elections, and Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo last faced a Republican opponent in 2018.
But with Eshoo retiring, the race to succeed her is as wide open as can be, and handicapping this unprecedented contest will pose a unique challenge. Liccardo, who finished with 21.1% of the vote, has generally been regarded by local observers as the most moderate of the bunch; San Jose Inside’s Barry Holtzclaw recently described him as having “strong ties to Silicon Valley tech and real estate firms.”
Simitian has also been described as a moderate, but his most important asset may be that Eshoo endorsed him as her preferred successor earlier this year. (Eshoo is the only Armenian American in Congress, a heritage she shares with Simitian.)
Low, by contrast, has cut a profile as the most liberal candidate in the race, earning an endorsement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Low, who is of Chinese descent, was the youngest Asian American ever elected to the Assembly when he first won office a decade ago, and he would be the first LGBTQ+ member of Congress from the Bay Area.
It may be tempting to conclude that Liccardo and Simitian will split a similar pool of voters, but elections rarely fall out along neat ideological lines, and even attempts to label these candidates will likely break down as the November election gets fought on a wide variety of fronts. We can be sure, though, that all three of these Democrats will run well-funded campaigns—and that California will experience a race the likes of which it has never seen before.
1Q Fundraising
- NJ-Gov: Steve Sweeney (D): $1.05 million raised, $1.2 million cash on hand
- AZ-08: Blake Masters (R): $2.6 million cash on hand
- IA-02: Ashley Hinson (R-inc): $600,000 raised, $1.65 million cash on hand
- IA-03: Lanon Baccam (D): $900,000 raised
- LA-06: Cleo Fields (D): $602,000 raised, $596,000 cash on hand
- MT-02: Troy Downing (R): $550,000 raised
- NJ-03: Herb Conaway (D): $318,000 raised, $290,000 cash on hand
- NY-16: Jamaal Bowman (D-inc): $1.3 million raised
- NY-19: Josh Riley (D): $1.4 million raised
- OR-05: Janelle Bynum (D): $500,000 raised, $560,000 cash on hand
Senate
● MT-Sen: One Nation, a conservative group tied to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, just launched a new ad campaign attacking Democratic Sen. Jon Tester on immigration. The group’s spot, which takes the form of an “issue advocacy” message that purports to exhort viewers to contact Tester, features photos of heavily tattooed men in an El Salvador prison that have been a favorite of Republican ad-makers for many years.
Governors
● WV-Gov: Black Bear PAC, which is supporting Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in the May 14 GOP primary for West Virginia’s open governorship, has released a new survey from WPA Intelligence showing Morrissey with a 37-20 lead over former Del. Moore Capito, with businessman Chris Miller at 18% and Secretary of State Mac Warner at 14%. Just 9% of voters say they’re undecided. Previously unreleased trendlines from mid-March had Morrissey up 34-26 on Capito.
Yet even though Capito, who is the son of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, is in second place, Black Bear has focused its attacks on Miller, who is the son of Rep. Carol Miller. The group recently began airing a spot slamming Miller for mocking Donald Trump, featuring footage of Miller sporting a Trump wig that was apparently taken from an old ad he filmed for his auto dealership.
Morrisey’s allies (which include the Club for Growth) have already spent more than seven figures going after Miller on the airwaves, but Miller’s supporters have responded with a similar spending spree. Capito and Warner, meanwhile, don’t seem to be either the beneficiaries or targets of comparable outside activity.
House
● CO-04: Rep. Lauren Boebert, who represents Colorado’s 3rd District, took first place with 41% at Friday’s convention of Republicans in the state’s 4th District, ensuring she’ll advance to the June 25 primary.
The runner-up wasn’t so fortunate, however. Former state Sen. Ted Harvey won 26% of the vote, but that was below the 30% needed to secure a spot on the primary ballot because he chose not to gather signatures from voters as a backup plan. As a result, he’s now out of the race.
The other two convention contestants, Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg and state Rep. Richard Holtorf, took 18% and 15%, respectively. But since they cleared the 10% minimum to remain in the race, they can still advance to the primary if their signatures pass muster with election officials.
Among the candidates who skipped the convention, the only one so far who is guaranteed a spot on the primary ballot is conservative talk radio host Deborah Flora. Officials have yet to certify the signatures of several others, including state Rep. Mike Lynch, wealthy perennial candidate Peter Yu, businessman Floyd Trujillo, and former congressional staffer Chris Phelen.
● IN-03: America Leads Action, a conservative super PAC that just targeted one former Republican congressman in Indiana, now has its sights on another. The group is airing a new ad slamming Marlin Stutzman, who’s attempting a comeback in the conservative 3rd District, as a self-serving politician who voted to increase his pay and “used his campaign account as a personal slush fund, paying for family vacations to Hollywood.”
It’s not yet known how much the PAC is spending, or why it has a beef with Stutzman, who is one of several Republicans seeking the open 3rd District in the northeastern part of the state. Likewise, it’s not entirely clear why the group is going after former Rep. John Hostettler in the 8th District, another open seat in Indiana’s southwestern corner.
But despite never serving together, the one thing the two ex-congressmen have in common is that they frequently made trouble for GOP leadership. The iconoclastic Hostettler got crossways with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich for voting against a bill to end a lengthy government shutdown in 1996, while Stutzman, who joined Congress in the 2010 tea party wave, helped foment another long shutdown in 2013 and participated in the push to oust John Boehner as speaker two years later.
● NY-16: AdImpact reports that Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is challenging Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s June 25 Democratic primary, has booked at least $235,000 in TV time to start airing his first ads beginning on Tuesday. Copies of Latimer’s advertisements are not yet available. Bowman does not yet appear to have booked any airtime.
● TN-05, TN-07: Candidate filing in Tennessee closed on Thursday, and the state has compiled a list of congressional candidates.
The most notable developments came in two conservative districts in the Nashville area. In the 5th, Republican Courtney Johnston, who had said last month that she was considering a challenge to freshman Rep. Andy Ogles in the Aug. 1 GOP primary, filed to run, though the secretary of state said a review of the signatures she submitted was still “pending” as of Friday.
However, Johnston, a member of the Davidson County Metro Council, does not appear to have said anything publicly about her bid, nor does she have any discernible social media presence. Two other Republicans who had reportedly been interested, businessman Baxter Lee and music video producer Robby Starbuck, did not file after the state GOP passed new rules aimed at rendering them ineligible.
Meanwhile, in the 7th, state Rep. Brandon Ogles, a cousin of Andy Ogles, did not file signatures despite previously announcing a campaign against Rep. Mark Green in the Republican primary. Green seems to have emerged largely unscathed following his recent decision to un-retire two weeks after announcing he would quit Congress. Only one little-known Republican, Caleb Stack, will appear on the ballot alongside the incumbent.