Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: Rahm hopes to break 50 - Comer joins Ky. ad war - Christie to announce pension reform plan this afternoon
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2015 09:02:01 -0600

By Kyle Cheney

With Ben Schreckinger, Sandhya Raman and Steven Shepard

The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro&#39;s Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races - and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day&#39;s most important campaign news - sign up for Campaign Pro today. (
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RAHM AND THE RUNOFF? - The big questions from tonight's Chicago mayoral election: Did President Barack Obama's last-minute visit give Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his former chief of staff, the bounce he needs to avoid a potential runoff with Chuy Garcia? Will the city's African American voters - who were more likely to be undecided in pre-election polls - break against Emanuel? Did the mayor's multimillion-dollar ad blitz stave off a more serious challenge? Campaign Pro will be tracking the results and the takeaways tonight.

BLUEGRASS STATE AD WAR - GOP candidate reserves time during Louisville basketball games: James Comer, Kentucky's agriculture commissioner and one of four Republicans in the May 19 primary for governor, is going up on cable this week with a $60,000 ad buy, according to sources tracking the ad war. Comer has at least a two-week buy planned in the Bowling Green and Lexington media markets on channels like ESPN, the Food Network and Discovery. (ESPN and ESPN2 will air three Louisville basketball games and one Kentucky game during that time frame.) Republican Hal Heiner, a self-funding former Louisville councilman, has already aired three different spots.

Q POLL - Colo. voters lukewarm on Bennet: Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet has work to do to earn a second full term in 2016, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll out this morning. Just 32 percent of registered voters say he's deserves to be reelected, while 34 percent say he doesn't - and another 34 percent are undecided. Bennet's approval rating is positive (39 percent approve/28 percent disapprove), but again, roughly a third of voters don't know enough about him to form an opinion. In a separate survey, Quinnipiac finds Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley cruising to a seventh term if he decides, as expected, to run again: 55 percent think he deserves reelection, while just
 three-in-ten say he doesn't. Grassley's approval rating is at 67 percent. 
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As a Democrat (who isn't Hillary Clinton) and a Republican (who isn't Jeb Bush) woo New Hampshire, here&#39;s POLITICO&#39;s Morning Score: daily news, notes and essential information for the 2015 and 2016 election cycles.

Days until the 2015 election: 252; Days until the 2016 election: 623

Thanks for joining us. We're eager for your news and feedback. Email us at 
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GRANITE STATE PRIMARY - O'Malley making early March trip to N.H.: Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will meet next Friday afternoon with the New Hampshire Senate Democratic Caucus at the state party's headquarters in Concord. The meeting is part of a swing through the state, originally scheduled for later in March, that will take O'Malley to fundraisers for state and local Democratic organizations on March 6 and 7. "We're very interested in learning about what are his plans for the future," said state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, who added that members are wondering "If he's definitely committed to running" for president. The New Hampshire House has 400 members, but the state has only 24
 senators, and they are influential players in presidential primary politics.

-"In N.H., Rubio slams Democrats on DHS bill," by POLITICO's James Hohmann from Hollis, N.H.: "Marco Rubio, making his first trip of the 2016 presidential cycle to New Hampshire on Monday, ripped into Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and half a dozen other Democrats who expressed reservations about President Barack Obama taking executive action on immigration last year only to vote against GOP attempts to undo his orders. The Florida Republican missed the Senate's latest vote on Department of Homeland Security funding to promote his recent book ... Rubio, who at one point fondly recalled his first trip to New Hampshire to campaign for Bob Dole in 1996, took 13 questions over an hour. His
 outspokenness on the DHS funding issue helped neutralize the concerns of some conservative activists who came to the meeting to challenge him over his support for comprehensive immigration reform two years ago." 
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-- Ex-House candidate named New Hampshire GOP finance chair: Dan Innis, who fell short in last September's GOP primary in the state's First District House race, was elected the state Republican Party's finance chairman, the party's executive board announced Monday. The party announced that his appointment was backed by Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Frank Guinta, the man who bested him last year. He previously worked as the dean of UNH's Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics.

REPLACING GRIMM - "Sources: Gentile prepared to accept Dem nomination in NY-11," by Capital New York's Colby Hamilton: "New York State Councilman Vincent Gentile of Brooklyn is prepared to accept the Democratic nomination in the race to replace former congressman Michael Grimm, according to multiple sources. Gentile had previously expressed an interest in the race, but was until recently undecided on whether to run in the special election against Staten Island district attorney Dan Donovan, the presumptive Republican nominee. The councilman has now begun discussing his likely campaign with Democratic operatives, a source told Capital New York. The Staten Island Democratic Party will meet on
 Thursday to settle on a nominee, and Gentile represents the last of its credible options in the swing district." 
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"De Blasio 'happy' to help Gentile in congressional race," by Capital New York's Sally Goldenberg: "Gentile has the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio in his upcoming election to replace former Rep. Michael Grimm. 'I think Vinnie&#39;s a great public servant. I&#39;ve known him almost 20 years and I think he has a lot to offer,' de Blasio said after an unrelated press conference in City Hall on Monday. He added that he 'would be happy to' campaign with Gentile, a Democrat."

2016 GOP - Christie attempts to shore up fiscal flank: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is preparing to announce a major pension reform today at 2 p.m., a move that seeks to address, in part, a major vulnerability the Republican has shown on the campaign trail. Christie is planning to announce that his state's independent Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission has been working with the New Jersey Education Association to find a long-term pension fix. "I know we can get this done," he intends to say, according to prepared remarks. "We have proven time and again that even when we look like we're not going to make it work and that politics and partisan interests have won, we flip the
 script. We do it differently. We get it done." His speech will be livestreamed here: 
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CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I am an Internet legend. I started a digital media company before that was even a thing.' - Fark.com founder Drew Curtis on why he's qualified to be governor of Kentucky, per the Lexington Herald-Leader: 
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