Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: Rubio, Sanders win Sunday contests — ActBlue raises its billionth dollar — Labor and Bera still on track for a possible crash
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2016 09:02:08 -0600

By Elena Schneider | 03/07/2016 10:00 AM EDT

With Kevin Robillard 

The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro's Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races - and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day's most important campaign news - sign up for Campaign Pro today. (http://www.politicopro.com/proinfo)

BIG SMALL MONEY - "Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue raises its billionth dollar," by Campaign Pro's Theodoric Meyer: "Around midday Sunday, the Democratic Party's all-but-official online fundraising platform, ActBlue, raised its 1 billionth dollar for the party since launching in 2004. The ten-figure landmark is momentous, but it only confirms what consultants on the left and the right already knew: ActBlue has helped transform Democratic fundraising, giving campaigns and committees across the country tools to rake in small-dollar donations that now play a huge role in elections. ... More than $100 million of the $1 billion raised through ActBlue since 2004 has come from Sanders
 donors. ... Even excluding presidential contributions, ActBlue is now handling twice as much money as at this time two years ago." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4e5f451c2ef87cd07ebbefedbe165e4e971e40367b66031f2

DEBATE NIGHT IN FLINT - "Clinton, Sanders spar over trade, auto bailout," by POLITICO's Gabriel Debenedetti: "Hillary Clinton lashed out against Bernie Sanders' vote against the auto bailout for the first time on Sunday, charging at a debate here that 'if everybody voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed, taking four million jobs with it.' The exchange turned a previously calm debate chippy, as Sanders repeatedly brought up Clinton's past support for multinational trade deals, a topic he's been using against her in Michigan over recent weeks in an attempt to appeal to blue-collar voters in the state." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4c3fdc70937250a1554310c3ea375044513ea38ce1a2861e7

SUNDAY RESULTS: "Rubio sweeps Puerto Rico primary" ... "Sanders wins Maine decisively."

TESTING GROUND - "Labor, Bera test each other after 2015 trade votes," by Campaign Pro's Elena Schneider: "'We had a universe of about 50,000 voters in his district that our union members made contact with [in 2014] and he only won by 1,400 votes, so if we choose to stay out of it or choose to do something different, that makes it very difficult for him to reach out to our members to convince them otherwise,' said Fabrizio Sasso, the executive director of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, the local AFL-CIO branch. 'Our participation in these races is key. Unless the president comes and knocks on those doors for him, then it's going to be very, very difficult for him.' ... Despite
 cajoling and threats to lawmakers last year, labor unions have not recruited primary challengers against Democrats who supported the free trade legislation. That makes Bera's race a key test case for whether they can influence the Democratic Party from the other angle - denying general election support." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4251e941373112e615b19a96aaf5f3a44eb1bf6d4cdf2cff3

Days until the Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi primaries, and Hawaii's GOP caucuses: 1. Days until the 2016 election: 248.

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You can also follow us on Twitter, where we tweet a lot about campaigns and occasionally about the difference between the literal and the figurative: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @theodoricmeyer and @kyledcheney.

SPOTLIGHT ON MD-08: "Maryland House race a 'caldron of power couples and Washington, D.C. politics,'" by The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg: "What happens when a coveted House seat opens up a quick subway ride from the Capitol? A hugely expensive free-for-all, studded with celebrities (or what passes for celebrities in Washington) - with a whiff of dirty tricks." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab49aab9a71258f3e77723a5405179c92e25a326d2d32c4e753 

- MD-08 is also a prime example of the outsize impact self-funders are having on congressional races so far this cycle. Our February story: http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab46c159f96db8db166eee26ef75fb067f5d0b7784d67c8a30d 

NEW ZOPP AD USES SHOOTING FOOTAGE - Democrat Andrea Zopp, challenging Rep. Tammy Duckworth in Illinois' Democratic Senate primary, is airing a new ad that opens with bits of footage from the deadly police shootings of LaQuan McDonald in Chicago and Walter Scott in South Carolina. "You don't have to be black to know our criminal justice system is broken," Zopp says in the 30-second ad, which began airing on Saturday in Chicago, St. Louis and Springfield media markets. "I indicted a police officer who murdered a homeless man." Zopp ends the ad by saying: "We don't need more band-aids on a broken system, we need fundamental change in Washington." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab45ba5c842cecd80e026c49bbd1071ff970fc48f274ff1ee94

NEW DEMOCRATIC POLLS ON SCOTUS EXPANDING THE SENATE MAP - The latest round of polls from Americans United for Change and Public Policy Polling looking at how the Supreme Court fight will impact Senate races are out, and they give hope to Democrats looking to stretch the Senate map. The polls come from four states with a reddish tint: Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina. At least two-thirds of voters in all four states say their incumbent Republican Senators should consider an Obama nominee on the merits. Fifty-five percent of voters in Arizona say they are less likely to vote for Sen. John McCain because of his stance, while 45 percent of Iowans say the same of Sen. Chuck Grassley,
 56 percent of Missouri voters would hold it against Sen. Roy Blunt and 47 percent of North Carolina voters would be less likely to vote for Burr. http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab41e13f45879b2a55c8a1a6c2ce84b88e75b38569f2621d00d

- FIRST IN SCORE - Strickland campaign launches microsite hitting Portman: Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland's Senate campaign is launching a new website, DoYourJobRob.com, hitting the Republican Senate for refusing to vote on President Barack Obama's potential Supreme Court nominee. The site features a number of regular Ohioans describing what would happen to them if "they followed Sen. Portman's example and refused to do their own jobs in Ohio," in the words of the Strickland campaign.

- And House Republicans preview strategies for dealing with Trump: GOP Reps. Carlos Curbelo (Fla.) and Jeff Denham (Calif.), who represent two of the most Latino-heavy seats in the Republican conference, are dealing with Trump differently so far, The Hill's Cristina Marcos reports. Curbelo: "My community knows I'm an independent voice for the district. That's one of the reasons I'm not supporting Donald Trump, because I'm not bound by party labels." Denham, meanwhile, "didn't rule out ever supporting Trump. At the same time, the third-term lawmaker sought to emphasize his own record for the district while noting that he won reelection when President Obama was on the ballot four years ago.
 'I've always lived with the top of the ticket in my district. ... No matter who's at the top of the ticket, I continue to win by big margins,' Denham said. 'So I don't think this election's going to be different.'" http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4195405d5d887a79fcab7afdf9bd73fae477d565c999a6c15

PRESIDENTIAL SPEED READ - "Cruz spoils Trump's Super Saturday," by POLITICO's Katie Glueck: "Ted Cruz delivered two crushing defeats on Saturday and denied Donald Trump big wins everywhere, rounding up a delegate haul he hopes will drive low-polling rivals toward the exit. ... It's a common refrain from the senator, but Saturday's results in Kansas and Maine highlight his ability to organize and get conservative voters to the polls. Of the five states that have held GOP caucuses so far, this is Cruz's fourth win, and his sixth primary contest overall. On Tuesday, he scored his home state of Texas, as well as Alaska and Oklahoma, and in February won the Iowa caucuses." 
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4af122580b5e3675ca7b86a8d999ee202285855c8439e6a60 

- "How Donald Trump scrambles the general election map," by POLITICO's Steve Shepard: "If Donald Trump's coalition carries him to the GOP nomination, it could produce a crazy-quilt general election that scrambles the conventional wisdom about the battleground state map. The Electoral College landscape has been fairly stable over the past four presidential elections: 40 states have voted for the same party in every race since 2000. But Trump's candidacy - and a unique base of support that's carried him to victory in places as varied as Alabama and Massachusetts - is raising the prospect of a scrambled November landscape that features long-time Democratic strongholds in play and states that
 have been firmly Republican for a half-century in jeopardy." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4ba67cb4775d10c05647e1410808738bd7813a3a34e4f1054

- "This is Trump country," by The New York Times' Thomas Kaplan, which takes a look at four different counties (Buchanan County, Va., Fall River, Mass., Atkinson County, Ga. and Macon County, Tenn.) http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4690bbeaaf6d417f978996a71340d852ed8ddc7aaf77a0b28 

- "Some supporters of Rubio say bad strategy, poorly run campaign killing his chances," by The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe, Robert Costa and Paul Kane: "...Party leaders, donors and other supporters of Rubio portray a political operation that continues to come up short in its message, in its attention to the fundamentals of campaigning and in its use of a promising politician. The failures have all but doomed Rubio's chances of securing the GOP nomination, leaving him far behind Trump and Cruz in both delegates and states won. ... All of Rubio's hopes now ride on his ability to win his home state's 99 delegates. But even if he prevails in Florida's winner-take-all contest, it will be
 difficult for him to secure enough delegates before the party convention in July, meaning he would have to try to win the nomination in an unpredictable floor fight. "They have no infrastructure," said Scott Reed, who is unaffiliated with any campaign but serves as the chief political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab428b240d3ce074642d7de64e46d437e5319fbcdf95ec058e1 

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I find their lack of originality disturbing." - Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, responding to reports that state government listings in New York City's official online directory are marked with the Imperial crest from Star Wars, via the New York Post. http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d315b23766febab4f9a1b985ec7ccc8973c5545e65f6f50d131117e5c30f4790

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