Morning Digest: The site of 2018's biggest shocker might soon draw renewed Democratic interest
Morning Digest: The site of 2018's biggest shocker might soon draw renewed Democratic interestThe DCCC is reportedly eyeing a seat the GOP gerrymandered after an upset in the last blue wave
Leading OffOK-05The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reportedly plans to direct “major funding” to help Democrat Jena Nelson defeat Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma’s 5th conservative District, according to a Nelson staffer who spoke with The Oklahoman. National groups had not previously signaled that they consider the race competitive. But Nelson also shared an internal poll arguing that she has a path to victory in a constituency Republicans—who lost this seat in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first midterm before regaining it two years later—aggressively gerrymandered to make sure it would always stay red. The survey, conducted by GBAO, shows Bice with a relatively small 48-43 lead over Nelson, a former middle school English teacher who was named Oklahoma’s 2020 Teacher of the Year. That would represent a dramatic shift from the congresswoman’s easy 61-39 win in 2024. At the same time, though, respondents give Trump a negative 42-53 favorable rating in this Oklahoma City-based district, which he carried 58-40 two years ago. But while Trump’s plummeting numbers have placed counted Republican candidates in electoral jeopardy, Bice didn’t seem to be one of them until recently. Nelson, who lost a high-profile statewide election for school superintendent 57-43 against conservative hardliner Ryan Walters in 2022, received little outside attention last July when she launched her campaign against Bice. She raised just over $440,000 over the next year but spent almost all of it ahead of her June 16 primary contest, which she won handily. As a consequence, Nelson finished the first half of the year with less than $20,000 on hand, while Bice, who faced no intraparty opposition, had more than 100 times that amount banked. (Updated reports covering the third quarter of the year are due Oct. 15.) Bice herself, though, suggested last month that “Trump fatigue” even among Republicans meant she was no longer as secure as she once appeared to be. “The challenge that we have is that we have to get over the narrative that ‘I don’t like this guy, so I’m going to vote for the Democrat,’” the congresswoman told a group of Republicans at Oklahoma State University last month in comments first shared by The Bulwark. “And what happens is that’ll impact me because … two things will either happen,” she continued. “They’re going to vote for the Democrat, and they may split [the] ticket and vote for me and a few others, or—this is my bigger fear right now—people don’t go vote.” Soon after, Bice insisted her comments were taken out of context. She told News 9 that her use of “I don’t like this guy” referred to Republicans in Oklahoma and elsewhere who were unhappy with their options further down the ballot. The congresswoman specifically mentioned Mike Mazzei, who, with Trump’s ardent support, narrowly won last month’s GOP runoff in the race for governor despite uncomfortable questions about whether he’s capable of leading Oklahoma due to his injuries in a 2008 car crash. “There are people out there that are, I think, questioning whether or not they want to support Mike Mazzei,” Bice told the station. “He would be an incredible governor and he will do the things that I think Oklahomans want him to do.” Nelson’s poll, though, finds that Mazzei, whose off-putting behavior during primary debates and at other events attracted scrutiny, is anything but an asset to Bice. GBAO shows Cyndi Munson, the Democratic nominee to succeed termed-out Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, outpacing Mazzei 52-44 in the 5th District. But before this week, there was little indication that prominent Democratic organizations, who have publicly warned that the GOP’s financial advantage limits the number of races they can target, planned to invest in Nelson. The FEC has not tracked any third-party spending for the general election, nor has the DCCC added Nelson to its Red to Blue program for top candidates. The Oklahoman, though, says that national Democrats began taking an interest in Nelson’s bid late in the cycle. Reporter Ben Felder, citing unnamed sources, writes that DCCC staffers visited Nelson’s campaign this week. Nelson’s campaign manager also predicted the race would receive “major funding” from the committee. Neither the DCCC nor any of its allies, however, have announced plans to spend here. If they do go on the offensive, though, they’ll be able to get more bang for their buck than they might in other conservative House seats: The Oklahoma City media market is only the 47th largest in the nation, which makes it relatively cheap to advertise in. Indeed, it was only eight years ago that a small, late infusion of third-party cash helped Democrat Kendra Horn flip the last version of the 5th District in perhaps the biggest shocker of the 2018 midterms. Horn, like Nelson, spent most of the race struggling to attract attention for her campaign to defeat Republican Rep. Steve Russell in a seat Trump had carried 53-40 in 2016. It was therefore a major surprise when Independence USA, a group affiliated with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, spent $430,000 on ads (about $570,000 when adjusted for inflation) during the final days of the race. Russell acted as though there was little to fear even as a national backlash against Trump had put Republicans everywhere in jeopardy. The congressman didn’t run negative ads, and Roll Call reported after the election that he’d never even told the National Republican Congressional Committee he was in danger. But Trump wasn’t the only Republican dragging Russell down. Gov. Mary Fallin was leaving office with disastrous approval ratings as budget cuts led to four-day school weeks and a teacher’s strike, prompting Independence USA to run ads linking her to Russell. And while Fallin still wasn’t unpopular enough to stop Stitt from winning the race to succeed her in one of the nation’s most conservative states, the Democratic nominee for governor, Drew Edmondson, outpaced him 53-44 in the 5th District. All of this helped propel Horn to a stunning 51-49 victory over Russell, a win that made her the first Democrat to represent the 5th since Rep. John Jarman switched parties and joined the GOP in 1975. Russell, for his part, took his defeat poorly, telling the National Journal of his soon-to-be-former constituents, “If you don’t study the issues, like a dog lapping up antifreeze, you’ll lick it up; it tastes good. There’s consequences.” Local Democrats hoped that Horn’s breakthrough would mark the start of a new era, but she didn’t remain in Congress long. Bice, then a state senator, ran against Horn in 2020 and prevailed 52-48 following an expensive race. Republicans then quickly set to work to make sure they wouldn’t lose the 5th again. Following the 2020 census, the GOP-dominated legislature passed a new congressional map that moved Democratic-friendly areas of Oklahoma City into other districts and replaced them with conservative turf. The gerrymander did its job, and Bice easily won her next two races. Nelson and Bice will now find out if those new boundaries are enough to prevent a repeat of 2018, when Trump—who is even more unpopular now than he was eight years ago—helped cost the GOP control of the 5th District. GovernorsVT-Gov, VT-LGDemocrat Amanda Janoo holds a 49-43 lead over Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who has long defied political gravity in overwhelmingly Democratic Vermont, according to a startling new poll from the University of New Hampshire. The school’s last survey in July showed Scott with a 44-33 advantage over Janoo, an economist who has also chaired a network of advocacy groups, in his quest for a sixth two-year term. (New Hampshire is the only other state that still elects its governors to two-year rather than four-year terms.) But before concluding that Janoo might be poised for an astonishing upset against Scott, who would be the first governor to lose reelection since Republican F. Ray Keyser in 1962, it’s critical to emphasize that no other polling of this contest has been made public. Even Janoo’s own campaign has yet to release any internal polls to convince activists and donors that Scott, who has long seemed invincible at the ballot box, is finally in trouble. Caution is particularly warranted when it comes to someone like Scott who, thanks to his mix of personal popularity and vocal denunciations of Donald Trump, has developed a cross-party appeal all but unseen in an era when ticket-splitting has virtually vanished. Scott’s political skills were as strong as ever in 2024 when he won reelection in a 73-22 blowout even as Kamala Harris was carrying his state 64-32. The governor, who blamed the Democratic supermajority in the legislature for rising property taxes, also called for voters to elect more Republicans to state offices—and got what he wanted. John Rodgers unexpectedly won the separate election for lieutenant governor by unseating Democratic incumbent David Zuckerman 49-47. Republicans also made dramatic gains in both chambers that, while still leaving Democrats in control, deprived them of their ability to override Scott’s vetoes. UNH, though, now finds Rodgers in a rough position as he seeks a second term. The school gives former Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who left office following her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for the state’s only U.S. House seat, a huge 54-35 lead in the race to regain her old job. UNH also polled many other races in Vermont as well as each of the other five New England states—Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. We’ve collected the most notable results in the Poll Pile at the bottom of this Digest, and you can find the school’s full numbers in the link for each state. HouseLA-06The hardline anti-tax Club for Growth has launched what NOLA.com characterizes as “a million-dollar attack ad” against Republican state Sen. Rick Edmonds ahead of the Nov. 3 all-party primary for Louisiana’s open 6th District. The Club, which is backing fellow GOP state Sen. Blake Miguez, argues Edmonds “lied” when he pledged not to raise taxes. The offensive is the first notable outside spending from any group in the race for this freshly gerrymandered—and now deep-red—constituency. NV-02Republican David Flippo falsely said that he won a Bronze Star with a special distinction for heroism in combat on multiple occasions, the Washington Post’s Dan Merica reported on Thursday. Flippo, an Air Force veteran running for Nevada’s conservative 2nd District, was awarded a Bronze Star in 2004 for managing aviation fuel distribution while serving on a base in Dayton, Ohio, according to a contemporaneous Dayton Daily News article. However, he did not receive the much rarer distinction of a Bronze Star with a “V device,” which is reserved only for those who demonstrate valor under fire. However, as Merica catalogs, Flippo has repeatedly said he received a “Bronze Star for valor,” even though he was thousands of miles removed from any fighting. One top expert on military honors and stolen valor, Army veteran Doug Sterner, told Merica that Flippo’s claim “amounts to a lie.” He added, “It’s a falsification, a misrepresentation of the award that he received. He did not get an award for heroism.” Flippo’s campaign called his attempts to inflate his record “an honest mistake,” and according to the Post, he “apologized for not paying closer attention to the specifics” of a video he released in which a narrator characterized him as a “recipient of the Bronze Star that he received for valor.” In 2013, Military Times reported that the Air Force had awarded 13,354 Bronze Stars during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with just 839, or 6%, including a designation for valor. Flippo faces Democrat Teresa Benitez-Thompson in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Mark Amodei, who loathes Flippo and told the Post, “The guy is a fraud.” Democrats are hopeful that Benitez-Thompson can pull off an upset, but they’re not the only ones who think the race might be in play. Since the start of the month, the House Freedom Caucus and the Club for Growth have combined to spend $1.2 million to rescue Flippo. VA-05A Democratic group called Our Virginia has spent more than $1 million to aid former Rep. Tom Perriello in Virginia’s conservative 5th District, while Republican outfits, including one linked to Donald Trump, are mobilizing to prop up GOP Rep. John McGuire. A brand-new super PAC called Virginians for Conservative Leadership has already devoted more than $250,000 to help the incumbent, while No Going Back PAC, which is supported by Trump’s MAGA Inc., recently dropped more than $100,000 on the race and could readily spend more. Perriello, who represented a previous version of the 5th District for a single term after winning a major upset in 2008, faces a difficult road back to Congress in a constituency that Trump carried 56-43 two years ago. Poll PileAll polls must comply with The Downballot’s requirements.
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