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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with further contributions from the Each day Kos Elections group.
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That is the final Digest of 2023! We’ll see you once more in January of 2024. Comfortable holidays!
Main Off
● 2023 was a tremendous yr on the poll field—and a really tough one right here at Each day Kos.
Whereas Democrats have been profitable races up and down the ticket from coast to coast, the identical tendencies which have devastated the media business have dealt us a severe blow as effectively. Information consumption has dropped ever since Donald Trump left the White Home, and monopolistic techniques by Google have led to a precipitous drop in advert revenues. (There is a purpose why the Division of Justice has introduced an antitrust go well with towards the tech big.)
On high of that, unscrupulous spammers have decimated our electronic mail list-building enterprise. Why pay extra for our strictly opt-in service when you possibly can pay cut price basement costs to shady distributors who will hand over 1,000,000 random electronic mail addresses—whether or not or not these folks truly wish to hear from you?
On account of all this, Each day Kos skilled its first-ever layoffs earlier this yr, affecting a 3rd of the corporate. The Elections group, already very small, wasn’t spared.
But our dedication to you, our readers, has by no means wavered. We’ve got continued to publish the neatest elections protection you will discover anyplace on this e-newsletter, the Morning Digest, each single weekday. We have additionally churned out best-of-breed information units month after month, all of which yow will discover—without spending a dime—at dailykosdata.com. (That information was used to create the map on the high of this put up—one other particular Each day Kos Elections creation.) And we have introduced you our one-of-a-kind podcast, The Downballot, week in and week out.
The explanation Each day Kos continues to be right here, regardless of all of our struggles, is due to you—and we’re rattling fortunate to have you ever. Reader donations now make up our most essential income, and that is one thing only a few media retailers can say. However through the years (we simply celebrated our twentieth anniversary at Each day Kos Elections), you may have cast the strongest on-line progressive neighborhood anyplace within the nation.
It is that power that retains us going. It is an infinite privilege to do what we do, and we hope we will maintain doing it for a few years to return. We’re grateful to you for giving us this chance, so if that feeling of gratitude is mutual, we might be extraordinarily appreciative if you happen to may make a donation to assist us this vacation season.
Finally, we’re extremely enthusiastic about what’s in retailer for 2024, and we wish to be sure that we will proceed to offer the identical superior information and evaluation that is been serving to progressives win elections for 20 years. Thanks a lot on your loyal readership—none of this may have been attainable with out you. Comfortable holidays!
The Downballot
● We’re celebrating a tremendous 2023 by revisiting all the yr’s greatest elections on this week’s episode of The Downballot! January kicked us off with an enormous particular election flip for Democrats within the Virginia Senate that set the tone for the remainder of the yr—and made it clear that abortion would stay essentially the most potent concern driving voters to the poll field. We noticed that time and again, from the Wisconsin Supreme Courtroom race to Challenge 1 in Ohio to the opposite Challenge 1 in Ohio and even to the governor’s race in deep-red Kentucky. The most secure wager you can also make is that we’ll see extra of the identical in 2024.
David Beard then arms out the First Annual Downballot Awards! Who will take dwelling the prize for Most Infamous Elected Official? Finest Leveraging of Uncooked Political Energy? Funniest Fall from Grace? And the largest honor of all of them, Most Badass Marketing campaign Announcement? Tune in to search out out! Our congratulations to all of the winners! And in all sincerity, an enormous thanks to all of our listeners, who’re the explanation for this present within the first place. We’re so grateful on your assist.
Subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts to be sure you by no means miss a present. You may discover a transcript of this week’s episode proper right here by midday Japanese time. We’ll be taking off subsequent week, however we’ll be again in January!
Senate
● AZ-Sen: The GOP agency VCreek/AMG’s new survey for the conservative Americas PAC exhibits Republican Kari Lake main Democrat Ruben Gallego 41-35, with unbiased Sen. Kyrsten Sinema taking 16%. The memo didn’t embody numbers testing a situation with out Sinema though it featured three completely different variations of a presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump with varied third-party or unbiased choices included or excluded. (Respondents favor Trump 46-41 in a head-to-head.)
Governors
● VA-Gov: EMILY’s Checklist has endorsed Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger within the 2025 contest for governor.
Home
● AZ-08: Abe Hamadeh has launched an inner from Nationwide Public Affairs that offers the election denier a double-digit lead within the August GOP main:
2022 lawyer common nominee Abe Hamadeh: 37
2022 Senate nominee Blake Masters: 14
State Home Speaker Ben Toma: 7
Former Rep. Trent Franks: 6
State Sen. Anthony Kern: 3
Undecided: 34
The survey was performed days after Trump endorsed Hamadeh on this busy contest.
● CT-05: Speaker Mike Johnson this week endorsed 2022 GOP nominee George Logan’s rematch marketing campaign towards Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes, although it stays to be seen if Logan can have any notable opposition within the August main. Former ESPN broadcaster Sage Steele did not rule out taking up Hayes again in September, however we have heard nothing else about her curiosity over the following three months.
● NJ-08: Rep. Rob Menendez this week secured the county line in Union County, which forged 12% of the vote within the 2022 main for this seat, for the June Democratic nomination contest. Menendez already had the road in Hudson County, which was the supply of 83% of the vote in that main. Leaders within the district’s remaining county, Essex, haven’t but taken sides within the intra-party battle between the congressman and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.
● Ohio: Candidate submitting closed Wednesday for Ohio’s March 19 main, however there is not one single supply to search out each contender operating for the U.S. Home. These candidates file with the county that makes up the biggest proportion of their district quite than with the state, so this info might be discovered on county election websites.
We have put collectively a listing with the biggest county in every Home seat, in addition to a hyperlink to its respective board of elections:
We’ll have a rundown of the 2024 races to observe within the Buckeye State early subsequent yr.
● OH-09: Republican state Rep. Derek Merrin unexpectedly launched a marketing campaign towards Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur simply earlier than submitting closed Wednesday, an entrance that Politico’s Ally Mutnick says got here after a “heavy last-ditch recruitment effort” from Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies.
Merrin, who as we’ll talk about has been on the middle of loads of intraparty angst all yr, dived into the race for this 51-48 Trump seat about two weeks after the GOP’s ostensible frontrunner, former state Rep. Craig Riedel, watched his standing plummet with the bottom. Far-right persona Charlie Kirk shared audio the place Riedel bashed Donald Trump as “smug” and known as for the occasion to go “in a special course,” quotes which might be poisonous within the Trump-era occasion.
Riedel shortly tried to undo the injury by endorsing his occasion’s grasp, and he has remained within the March main. Nevertheless, his travails left Home Republican leaders satisfied they wanted a substitute for forestall voters from as soon as once more nominating J.R. Majewski, the QAnon ally who misplaced to Kaptur 57-43 final yr. Nonetheless, Mutnick notes that the presence of each Merrin and Riedel on the poll may nonetheless make it simpler for Majewski to safe the plurality he’d have to advance.
Merrin himself additionally has loads of enemies inside his personal occasion. He started 2023 as his occasion’s official alternative to steer the state Home, a chamber the place Republicans maintain 67 of the 99 seats. Nevertheless, Jason Stephens and 21 different Republicans unexpectedly joined all 32 Democrats to make Stephens speaker.
Merrin, who’s much more of a hardliner than the conservative Stephens, nonetheless retains the loyalty of a majority of the GOP caucus, and that is created an unpleasant scenario within the caucus. The 2 wasted no time feuding over who would have entry to the official company debit playing cards that enable them to regulate the state Home GOP’s highly effective marketing campaign arm, and issues escalated additional in October when Merrin’s aspect filed a lawsuit.
Legislatures
● VA State Home: Democrat Kimberly Pope Adams conceded to Republican Del. Kim Taylor Wednesday after the recount affirmed that Taylor gained their Nov. 7 contest. The recount decreased Adams’ deficit from 78 to 53 votes in a $5.8 million contest that the Virginia Public Entry Challenge says was the third-most costly state Home race because it started monitoring spending in 1997.
Taylor’s win leaves Democrats with a 51-49 majority within the decrease chamber, an virtually mirror picture of the 52-48 edge the GOP gained two years prior. Democrats will get pleasure from a 21-19 benefit within the state Senate after Republicans netted a single seat.
Poll Measures
● FL Poll: Professional-choice activists mentioned Tuesday that they are “assured” they’ve collected the requisite 892,000 legitimate signatures wanted to position an modification on the November 2024 poll that may assure abortion rights as much as 24 weeks right into a being pregnant, and that they might subsequently cease gathering petitions. Beneath state regulation, this proposal must win 60% of the vote to cross.
As we lately wrote, although, Republican Lawyer Normal Ashley Moody has filed a lawsuit to persuade the conservative state Supreme Courtroom to maintain the modification from going earlier than voters. That could possibly be a formidable impediment to beat: The excessive courtroom blocked two completely different amendments in 2021 to permit using leisure marijuana after ruling that the proposals have been confusingly worded, and Moody is insisting that this abortion rights modification is equally flawed.
Seize Bag
● The place Are They Now?: Louisiana Gov.-elect Jeff Landry introduced Wednesday that he was naming his fellow Republican, former Rep. Ralph Abraham, to be the state’s well being secretary. The Advocate reported throughout Abraham’s failed 2019 run for governor, “When in comparison with different family-practice docs all through the U.S., Abraham was within the high 0.2% within the variety of Medicare Half D sufferers he wrote opioid prescriptions for in 2013.”
Abraham, writes reporter Tyler Bridges, would later spend the early months of the pandemic selling hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that scientists have warned is ineffective and probably lethal when used to deal with COVID. The American Medical Affiliation Journal of Ethics additionally known as out Abraham for his 2020 tweet falsely insisting that “abortions almost at all times have a deadly end result for the newborn, and plenty of occasions it is the identical for the mom.”
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