Florida's current congressional districts
Leading Off:
• FL Redistricting: On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the state's GOP-drawn congressional map and ruled that eight seats need to be redrawn for the 2016 election.
The affected seats are FL-05 (Democrat Corrine Brown), FL-13 (Republican David Jolly), FL-14 (Democrat Kathy Castor), FL-21 (Democrat Ted Deutch), FL-22 (Democrat Lois Frankel), FL-25 (Republican Mario Diaz-Balart), FL-26 (Republican Carlos Curbelo), and FL-27 (Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen). But it's a good bet that plenty of other seats will be dramatically changed for the new map. As of Thursday, the Republican-led state legislature has 100 days to submit a new map, and the court will need to approve it before it goes into effect for the 2016 elections.
The court ruled that the current map violates the state constitution's Fair District amendment, which prevents lawmakers from drawing districts intended to favor incumbents or parties. The GOP had complete control over redistricting and the court decided that they did not respect the voter-passed law. The ruling only applied to the congressional map, but it's likely we'll see some changes for the Sunshine State's state legislative districts.
It's impossible to know exactly what House members will benefit and which ones will be hurt until we see the new map, but it looks very likely that the GOP will be on the defensive in the swingy St. Petersburg-area 13th District. The GOP deliberately put several heavily African American areas in the neighboring 14th District to help dilute FL-13's Democratic vote, and the court noted this in their ruling. Obama won the current 13th District 50-49 and Democrats were already planning to target David Jolly. The congressman has been mulling a Senate bid and if his seat becomes bluer, he may decide to take his chances on a statewide run. The 14th backed the president 65-34, and Castor should be safe even if she ends up with some more conservative areas.
The Tampa Bay Times' Adam Smith takes an early look at who else this decision might impact, and on balance the news is good for Team Blue. Head over the fold for more.
Jolly is the Republican most likely to be hurt, but there's a good chance that either John Mica or Daniel Webster's Central Florida seats will go from safely red turf into far more competitive territory. Carlos Curbelo, who was already a top Democratic target, is also likely to take in more of Democratic-leaning Homestead, but it may not change his seat Miami-area seat dramatically. Obama won the current 26th 53-46, but the GOP still does well downballot here.
While Rep. Ted Yoho's secure seat isn't likely to be in play for Democrats no matter what, he could draw a challenger if his constituency changes enough. Yoho won his 2012 primary in a complete surprise and he hasn't done much to ingratiate himself with the GOP establishment. An ambitious Republican could try and unseat Yoho if he picks up enough new constituents.
The news isn't all good for Democrats. It's quite possible that Gwen Graham's competitive North Florida seat will become safely Republican. Graham could conceivably run for Senate instead, though she wouldn't have an easy time jumpstarting a campaign this quickly. There's also talk of Graham being thrown into the same safely blue seat as Rep. Corrine Brown. South Florida Reps. Ted Deutsch, Alcee Hastings, and Lois Frankel may also see major changes to their seats, and we could see Deutsch and Frankel crammed into one seat.
The GOP could try to appeal the ruling in a federal court but as Rick Hasen points out, they may not get too far. The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld Arizona's independent redistricting commission, which drew the Grand Canyon State's congressional seats without any input from the legislature. Now that the highest court in the land has ruled that voters can place limits on a state legislature's ability to draw the lines, it won't be easy for the Republicans to argue that the Florida Supreme Court overstepped their authority.
There are a lot of dominos left to fall here but overall, Democrats should benefit under a more fair map. We'll be watching closely as things develop.
2Q Fundraising:
• AZ-Sen: Ann Kirkpatrick (D): $700,000 raised
• NV-Sen: Catherine Cortez Masto: $1.1 million raised
• CA-10: Michael Eggman (D): $145,000 raised (in 20 days)
• CA-52: Scott Peters (D-inc): $500,000 raised, $741,000 cash-on-hand
• NH-02: Annie Kuster (D-inc): $404,000 raised, $670,000 cash-on-hand
• NV-04: Susie Lee (D): $280,000 raised (in 34 days), $50,000 self-funded, $327,000 cash-on-hand
Senate:
• FL-Sen: On Thursday, Alan Grayson announced that he would run for the Senate, setting off an expensive Democratic primary with fellow Rep. Patrick Murphy. Both parties know that Florida's open seat could decide which side holds the Senate, and the Grayson-Murphy match will be closely watched.
To say that Grayson is polarizing would be a massive understatement. Supporters admire the congressman as an outspoken liberal who isn't afraid to speak his mind. Grayson first rose to prominence during the 2009 health care reform debate when he summarized the GOP's alternative plan as "Don't Get Sick! And If You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly!" Grayson has also made headlines for comparing the tea party to the KKK and praising the Occupy Wall Street movement.
By contrast, Murphy has a completely different profile. Murphy was a Republican until just before he ran for Congress in 2011, and he still has a reputation as a moderate. Murphy ran ads during his successful 2014 re-election campaign casting himself as a bipartisan problem solver, and he voted for the Keystone Pipeline and weakening Wall Street reform at the beginning of the year. Murphy has been a leader on more liberal causes like net neutrality and medical marijuana, but Grayson and his allies aren't going to hesitate to make this primary an ideological battle.
But Grayson's intra-party detractors are worried that his shoot-from-the-lip habit will cost them a critical pickup. Grayson's style didn't play well during the 2010 midterms, when he ran an ad accusing his Republican opponent of being a religious fanatic. The "Taliban Dan" spot used an out-of-context clip to make its point and it almost certainly played a role in Grayson's 56-38 loss to Daniel Webster.
Grayson returned to the House in 2012 in a different seat, and he's remained a lightning rod for controversy. Grayson is currently involved in a very messy public divorce, and we recently learned that he has strange offshore accounts that may violate House rules. Grayson's personal style hasn't changed much: When reporter Adam Smith asked Grayson about his accounts, he memorably asked if Smith was "some kind of shitting robot?"
National Democrats haven't done much to hide how much they dread the prospect of Grayson as their nominee. The DSCC endorsed Murphy months ago, and the Florida Democratic establishment has rallied behind him. Murphy has a reputation as a great campaigner: He narrowly defeated tea party favorite Allen West in 2012 even as Romney was carrying his seat, and he easily won last year in the face of a GOP wave.
Republicans are also looking forward to a nasty Grayson-Murphy duel. The conservative Club for Growth recently ran a spot attacking Murphy and praising Grayson, and we'll probably see more of that as next year's primary approaches. It's no secret that Republicans would rather face Grayson than Murphy, but they'd be content with just bloodying up Murphy ahead of the general election.
Both Grayson and Murphy are excellent fundraisers and there's no doubt that this is going to be an expensive primary. The good news for Team Blue is that the GOP is going to have their own costly intra-party match. Tea partying Rep. Ron DeSantis and businessman Todd Wilcox are both in, and the more establishment-flavored Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera is going to join them on July 15. Longtime Rep. Jeff Miller is also likely to jump in, and a few other Republicans are still considering.
There haven't been many polls here, and neither Democratic congressman starts out with much statewide name-recognition. However, we can expect that to change over the next year as the ads start to fly. Grayson's campaign comes as bad news to national Democrats, but it certainly won't be boring.
• IL-Sen: National Democrats have been excited about Rep. Tammy Duckworth's campaign against Republican incumbent Mark Kirk for a while, and the DSCC endorsed her on Thursday. Duckworth does face ex-Chicago Urban League CEO Andrea Zopp in the primary, but she should be favored.
• IN-Sen: Eric Holcomb, a former aide to retiring Sen. Dan Coats, raised a very disappointing $200,000 over the last three months, but it may be too early to count him out of the GOP primary. The National Journal notes that Holcomb has plenty of allies among the state Republican establishment who aren't just going to gravitate to likely-candidate Rep. Todd Young, who also hails from the non-tea party wing. Of course, if these various legislators and county party chairs really love Holcomb, they should help him with fundraising immediately so he can improve his name recognition with voters.
• NC-Sen: Public Policy Polling takes their first look at this race since ex-Sen. Kay Hagan announced that she would not oppose Republican incumbent Richard Burr. They find Burr leading a cavalcade of hypothetical Democratic foes, but never taking anything more than 47 percent of the vote:
• 45-35 vs. state Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue
• 47-33 vs. state Rep. Grier Martin
• 44-35 vs. ex-Rep. Mike McIntyre
• 46-36 vs. ex-Rep. Brad Miller
• 44-36 vs. ex-Rep. Heath Shuler
• 45-34 vs. state Auditor Beth Wood
Most voters don't know who any of these people are. Shuler is the least anonymous of this crowd, but 64 percent of respondents still have no opinion of him. Burr himself isn't well-liked with a 28-39 approval rating, down from a 35-36 score
last month. (It's unclear what, if anything, caused him to drop). It's a decent sign for Democrats that Burr still doesn't take a majority of the vote and the eventual Democratic nominee should be able to make up some ground as he or she becomes better known. But it still won't be easy to beat Burr in this competitive but Republican leaning state.
The DSCC has been looking for a candidate ever since Hagan closed the door on a comeback, but they don't have any takers yet. Of the six Democrats PPP tested only Blue has actually responded to inquiries about his 2016 plans, and he sounds very lukewarm about a statewide bid. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx wasn't polled this time, which is for the best: Foxx just reiterated that he has no interest in challenging Burr.
• NH-Sen: Republicans have been working hard to make next year's Senate race as unenticing as possible for Gov. Maggie Hassan, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently dropping a poll showing her losing to Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte 52-41. Democrats are pushing back, and PPP just released a survey giving a Hassan a tiny 45-44 edge, the same margin they found in an April independent poll. Hassan herself isn't expected to decide on a Senate campaign until the state budget is sorted out, which could take months.
• NV-Sen: On behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fabrizio Lee takes a look at the matchup between Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and newly-minted Republican foe Joe Heck, and well... it definitely flies in the face of conventional wisdom. They give Heck a 50-36 lead, which is just very hard to believe.
• OH-Sen: Ex-Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland released his fundraising totals from the last three months and... meh. Strickland brought in $1 million and he has $1.2 million in the bank, not horrible of an expensive state like Ohio but not impressive for such a sought-after recruit. Strickland's own team set some fundraising benchmarks in late 2014 as he mulled a bid: They calculated that he'd need to raise $2.5 million from April to June, a goal he came nowhere close to hitting.
Republican incumbent Rob Portman is a talented fundraiser and he hauled in $2.9 million during the same period, and he's sitting on a $10 million warchest. Strickland was never going to outraise Portman, but he can't afford to get buried like this. Strickland's team decided that they'd need to raise a total of $20 million for this race, and he's not on track to get there. It doesn't help that Strickland will need to spend some of his dough on his primary with Cincinnati Councilor P.G. Sittenfeld, while Portman can hoard his moolah until next year.
Gubernatorial:
• NC-Gov: Public Policy Polling does another monthly checkup of the duel between Republican incumbent Pat McCrory and Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper. They find Cooper holding a slim 43-41 edge, almost exactly what they had in June.
The good news for Democrats is that McCrory's approval ratings have taken another hit as the legislative session has continued: The governor has gone from an already-tepid 38-44 rating to a terrible 33-48 mark. The bad news is that most of the decay was with conservatives. As PPP points out, McCrory has been vetoing several right-wing pieces of legislation, and that's likely done him some damage with his base. But McCrory usually recovers as the legislative session becomes a distant memory, and the governor should be able to bring angry Republicans back into the fold without too much difficulty.
We saw something similar during last year's session with then-GOP state House Speaker Thom Tillis. A July PPP survey gave Tillis a wretched 24-47 favorable rating, with Romney voters only stomaching him by a 43-25 margin. He was still underwater in November with a 36-48 favorability score, but he'd improved enough for him to narrowly unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. The change was almost entirely from Romney voters, who now liked him 66-15. (Hagan's own approval rating was almost the same in both July and November). If conservatives behave the same way next year it should allow McCrory to dig himself out of the ditch he's found himself in, though Cooper won't make it easy for him.
House:
• AZ-01, 04: Ex-Secretary of State Ken Bennett has confirmed that he'll run for the swingy 1st District, which Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick is leaving behind to run for the Senate. Bennett's last campaign didn't go so well, with him taking a distant fourth place in last year's GOP gubernatorial primary. Bennett was an afterthought for pretty much the entire race, and he's probably not going to scare any of his prospective foes out of this contest. Bennett joins rancher and 2014 candidate Gary Kiehne in the primary, though several other Republicans are considering.
One of those other Republicans is Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. MBQF, which is run by one of Babeu's consultants, released a poll on Thursday giving him a clear lead in a hypothetical primary:
• Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu: 38
• Ex-state Secretary of State and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Ken Bennett: 12
• Rancher and 2014 candidate Gary Kiehne: 10
• State RUCO Director David Tenney: 4
• Ex-state Sen. and 2012 nominee Jonathan Paton: 3
• Speaker of the House David Gowan: 2
Tenney and Paton have been mentioned as possible candidates but have yet to say anything. Gowan expressed interest in this post a month ago, though he was hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the current congressional map and allow him to draw himself a friendly seat. But AZ-01 won't be changing anytime soon, and Gowan barely represents any of it. However, one of Gowan's consultants says that he's still considering a campaign here and is forming a super PAC ahead of a possible bid.
One of the prospective candidates who wasn't tested was 2014 nominee Andy Tobin, who currently serves as head of the state Department of Weights and Measures. Tobin says he's still considering but sounds pretty reluctant, noting that he and Babeu are friends.
But Tobin reveals that he's been approached to run against incumbent Paul Gosar in the safely red AZ-04. Tobin doesn't rule anything out, though it's hard to see him unseating Gosar next year. Gosar faced a primary challenge from then-state Sen. Ron Gould in 2012 after redistricting dramatically transformed his seat and won by a not-incredible 51-32 margin. But Gosar had no trouble last year and he's done little to alienate primary voters since then. Tobin also proved to be a weak fundraiser last time, which makes an upset even tougher to envision.
• FL-09: Senate candidate Alan Grayson leaves behind an Orlando-area Obama 62-37 seat (though who knows what it will look like once redistricting is sorted out) and three Democrats wasted little time kicking off their campaigns. State Sen. Darren Soto said months ago that he would run here if Grayson left and he made good on that promise on Thursday. Soto was quickly joined by ex-state Rep. Ricardo Rangel. Rangel narrowly was unseated in the 2014 primary after just one term, so he may not be able to count on a solid base of support. Osceola County Democratic Executive Committee Chair Valleri Crabtree is also in.
The Democratic field will probably get a bit larger soon. Susannah Randolph, who serves as Grayson's district director, is reportedly in, but she has yet to confirm it. Businesswoman Dena Minning, who is also Grayson's girlfriend, is also believed to be interested in this seat.
While this district is very blue at the top of the ticket, the GOP may make a play for it. State Rep. Mike La Rosa confirms he's thinking about it, and Kissimmee City Commissioner Wanda Rentas may also be interested.
• FL-13: The last few days have brought Democrat Eric Lynn got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the Florida Supreme Court has ordered the state legislature to redraw this swingy district (see our FL Redistricting item) and the changes are likely to make this seat more Democratic.
The bad news is that we just learned that Lynn had homestead exemptions for properties in both D.C. and Maryland. On Wednesday, Lynn refunded the $606.90 tax-break he got from D.C. and blamed it on a paperwork error (both D.C. and Maryland forbid these double tax breaks). Of course, the GOP is likely to use the incident to portray Lynn, who used to work in the Obama Administration, as a creature of D.C. who has little in common with St. Petersburg. Still, Republican incumbent David Jolly had his own homestead problems with a D.C. property, though he settled it years before he ran for Congress.
• NV-04: And then there were four. On Thursday, ex-Assembly Speaker John Oceguera announced that he would challenge freshman Republican Cresent Hardy. Oceguera joins state Sen. Ruben Kihuen, ex-Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, and businesswoman Susie Lee in the Democratic primary for this Obama 54-44 seat. A few other candidates have expressed interest in the seat, but they've mostly been quiet for months. (Or in the case of North Las Vegas Mayor and 2012 candidate John Lee, making news for the wrong reasons).
Oceguera was Team Blue's 2012 nominee in the nearby 3rd District, but southern Nevadans don't seem to have a problem with politicians treating the area's three seats as interchangeable. (Kihuen ran an aborted run for NV-01 that cycle). But Oceguera did not impress many people during his last congressional campaign. He infamously refused to say if he supported Obamacare in a cringeworthy interview with Jon Ralston, and still didn't have a position three months later.
Oceguera may have calculated that taking no stance was the best course of action in the swingy 3rd, but it probably did a lot more harm than good: Republican Joe Heck beat him 50-43 as Obama was carrying the seat 50-49. The 4th is a lot more friendly for Team Blue and Hardy isn't nearly as strong as Heck was, so Oceguera has a lot more room for error if he gets to the general election. But expect his Democratic primary opponents to remind voters about his old wishy-washy stance. But hey, at least we won't have any more sleepless nights wondering what Oceguera thinks about Obamacare.
Other Races:
• OR Recall: A few months ago, conservative activist Jason Thiesfeld started a drive to recall state House Majority Leader Val Hoyle over her support for a bill requiring background checks for private gun sales. Well, the whole thing fizzled out, and Thiesfeld has pulled the plug on the campaign. Hoyle just stepped down as majority leader to explore a statewide bid, and she's reportedly eyeing the secretary of state's office.
Grab Bag:
• Demographics: Here's one heck of a cartogram of the United States: the size of the counties is based on the total value of all housing in each county. The overall shape is reminiscent of U.S. cartograms that are based on population or number of votes, but focusing on property values emphasizes major cities even more, to the extent that California and the New York City metropolitan area seem to take up nearly half the country by themselves.
CityLab's Kriston Capps starts to delve into "why" this is important (and it's an issue we've talked about too, in more detail). Property values in cities are high because demand exceeds supply, and the demand is there not just because there are entertaining things to do in cities, but because that's where most of the well-paying jobs are. If you're in a rural area with poorly-paying jobs, though, with dreams of moving to the city to improve your lot, the impossibly-high barrier of housing costs (associated with getting your foot in the door in the city in order to get a better job) just keeps you stuck in place -- which just further increases the growing economic inequality between the nation's major cities and its dwindling rural areas.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir and Jeff Singer, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, and Daniel Donner.