Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score, presented by AARP: Five Senate FEC filings to watch for — The NRCC names ‘Young Guns’ — Obama hits the fundraising circuit
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
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Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2018 08:03:10 -0600
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By Zach Montellaro | 07/02/2018 10:00 AM EDT

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)
 
WE'RE JUST UNDER TWO WEEKS AWAY from the FEC's July filing deadline, a big milestone as campaign season really heats up. The reports will give us hints on how the campaigns are shaping up, and today we're flagging five Senate filings we'll be watching for.
 
- MISSOURI: Will Josh Hawley step it up? Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) challenger worried much of the GOP earlier this year, when more than two dozen Republican officials told POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt they were concerned that Hawley was "depicted as a lackadaisical candidate who has posted sluggish fundraising numbers, turned down interviews with conservative radio show hosts, and spurned traditional GOP events." Hawley shored up his fundraising operation by hiring veteran GOP operative Katie Walsh, and these FEC filings will be the first signs of whether the new strategy is working. At the end of March, Hawley had $2.1 million cash on hand, compared to McCaskill's $11.5 million.
 
- FLORIDA: How much of his own money is Rick Scott willing to spend? The Florida governor has spent tens of millions of his personal fortune in his past elections - OpenSecrets reports that he raised about $78.2 million for his two gubernatorial runs, and that $60.4 million of that was self-funded - and this Senate race is shaping up to be expensive. We'll get our first look at how much Scott has kicked in thus far. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) suggested to POLITICO earlier this year that Scott could spend $100 million of his own money - and a filing with the state's Commission on Ethics said Scott's net worth was just under $233 million at the end of 2017, rising by more than $83 million from
 the previous year's report.
 
- ARIZONA: How much will Rep. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) have, and will it be enough to get her past a bruising primary? McSally entered the race trailing Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in fundraising - and she has a grueling primary. McSally has consistently led in primary polls, but the combined support of both Joe Arpaio and Kelli Ward has been greater than hers. Sinema, meanwhile, faces no real challenge in her primary, though she's been tapping her war chest (she had $6.9 million in the bank at the end of March) to go up with an early ad campaign.
 
- INDIANA: How big has Sen. Joe Donnelly's war chest become? One of the most endangered Democrats had just under $6.2 million in the bank when he filed his pre-primary report, which went through the middle of April. GOP nominee Mike Braun had to spend millions to get out of the primary. The wildcard: Bruan loaned his campaign over $5 million in the primary, and while he said he doesn't want to self-fund in the general election, a change in the dynamics of the race could force Braun to open his wallet again.
 
- TEXAS: Is Rep. Beto O'Rourke sucking up the oxygen from other Senate Democrats? O'Rourke's bid to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been closer in recent polls than many expected, and the Democratic base is excited at the prospect of knocking off one of the senators they loathe the most. As you saw in last Monday's Score, O'Rourke has been the most successful online fundraiser among Democrats running for the Senate, bringing in $3.5 million in two months. While this will force Cruz to tap into his own war chest, it also raises a troubling question: Are there other Senate Democratic nominees in more competitive races who could better use the money? Or is O'Rourke's strong fundraising
 merely a prelude to a tidal wave of donations coming for Democrats this year?
 
- 2020 BONUS: Keep an eye on the filings of potential 2020 presidential candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). The first two are expected to cruise to reelection, and the second aren't even up this cycle, but all have been tapping their big fundraising machines - and that money is transferable to a presidential run.
 
NEW GOP 'YOUNG GUNS' - The NRCC announced its first round of "Young Gun" candidates, who "represent the most competitive congressional seats in the 2018 election cycle." They include six candidates running for open seats currently held by the GOP: Young Kim (CA-39), Diane Harkey (CA-49), Mark Harris (NC-09), Jay Webber (NJ-11), Anthony Gonzalez (OH-16) and Dino Rossi (WA-08). Three candidates are in Democratic-held open seats: Pete Stauber (MN-08), Danny Tarkanian (NV-03) and Cresent Hardy (NV-04). Two are Pennsylvania candidates in the newly redrawn map: Marty Nothstein (PA-07) and John Chrin (PA-08). 
 
Some more details, per Campaign Pro: "All but Rossi and Stauber have already locked up their party's nomination. Rossi faces two other Republicans in Washington's top-two, all-party primary on August 7, while one minor GOP candidate has filed to run against Stauber in Minnesota. The list also includes one candidate who ousted a Republican incumbent: Harris defeated Rep. Robert Pittenger in the May primary in North Carolina."
 
Good Monday morning. This week's fun fact: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Colorado GOP nominee Walker Stapleton were once suitemates at Williams College, per the Hartford Courant. Email me at [email-masked] or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.
 
You can email the rest of the great Campaign Pro team at [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked] and [email-masked]. Follow us on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @JamesArkin, @MaggieSeverns, @ec_schneider and @DanielStrauss4.
 
Days until the 2018 election: 127.
 
Upcoming election dates - July 17: Alabama primary runoffs. - July 24: Georgia primary runoffs.
 
Upcoming primary filing deadlines - Delaware: July 10. - Louisiana: July 20.
 
THE NEXT MEMBER OF CONGRESS - Republican activist Michael Cloud won a special election on Saturday in Texas' 27th District to replace Republican Blake Farenthold, who resigned after allegations of sexual harassment emerged. Cloud will finish out the rest of this term before running in November for a full term.
 
LEFT HIGH AND DRY - Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) has been donating cash to some of his House colleagues over the past three years through his PAC "What a Country!". But when Curbelo needed them for the immigration discharge petition, some abandoned him, POLITICO Florida's Marc Caputo reported: "Curbelo needed just 25 Republicans to support his push for a 'discharge petition,' a parliamentary move designed to bypass House leadership and bring the issue of immigration reform to the House floor. But only 20 of the 61 Republicans he contributed to signed on, leaving the effort two votes short of the necessary threshold. Worse, 13 Republicans who received money from 'What a Country!' both
 refused to sign the discharge petition and also voted against the compromise legislation this week - denying the Miami Republican on his signature issue, immigration reform."
 
** Presented by AARP: There's only one true deciding factor in this year's elections: 50-plus voters. They won't be ignored and their votes are up for grabs. Medicare, Social Security, support for family caregivers, and prescription drug costs are all on the line-so you can be sure they'll be voting in record numbers. 
aarp.org/vote **
 
WHAT'S IN A NAME? - Sen. Bob Casey calls himself "pro-life." But how does he vote? POLITICO's Jennifer Haberkorn reported: "After a decade in the Senate, Casey has become an increasingly reliable vote in support of abortion rights - scoring as high as 100 percent on NARAL Pro-Choice America's vote tally in 2016 and 2017. Anti-abortion groups insist he's no champion of their cause - and view him as unlikely to support President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court whose confirmation will be a proxy battle on the future of Roe v. Wade. All of which may complicate Casey's reelection battle, forcing him to defend his voting record in heavily Catholic Pennsylvania as he attempts to hold
 off a challenge from GOP Rep. Lou Barletta."
 
MAYOR MIKE ALERT - Remember how former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg pledged to spend $80 million in the midterms, largely to elect House Democrats? Here's where that "largely" part comes in: The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher tweeted that Bloomberg hosted a fundraiser for Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) at his house, asking co-hosts to raise $10,000 for King. Shane reported that "Bloomberg adviser Howard Wolfson explains the fundraising saying Bloomberg and King 'have a long-standing relationship' that dates back to homeland security funding 'for New York during the Bush administration after 911'," while the Times' Alex Burns notes that Bloomberg-world mentioned King as "a possible
 exception" when he was reporting out the initial story.
 
- In more megadonor news, longtime Democratic donor Alan Patricof talked with CNBC's Brian Schwartz on why he is backing the House Victory Project. He told Schwartz that the list of candidates the group supports "will be decided after the primaries."
 
NEW GA-GOV POLL - A new poll from Cygnal found that Republicans Casey Cagle and Brian Kemp are statistically tied ahead of the primary runoffs. The poll found that Cagle had 44 percent to Kemp's 43 percent. The poll, a combination interactive voice response/live caller survey of 812 likely Republican primary runoff voters, was in the field June 26-27 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.44 percentage points. Cygnal told Score it has not done any work for any Georgia gubernatorial candidate or outside effort this or last year. 
 
DUKING IT OUT - One of the top Democratic data firms is suing a rival over trade secrets, The Hill's Reid Wilson reported: "In a lawsuit filed in federal court late Thursday in Boston, TargetSmart alleges that its rival Catalist engaged a Boston-based company specializing in corporate mergers to engineer a buy-out. As part of the ensuing due diligence process, TargetSmart says, the Boston firm Good Harbor Partners (GHP) learned trade secrets it then shared with Catalist and its top advisers."
 
AD ALERT - Twitter has unveiled a tool that will make it possible to see data on ads sold on the site, including how much was spent. TechCrunch's Anthony Ha: "Twitter says that with this tool, you should be able to search for any Twitter handle and bring up all the ad campaigns from that account that have run for the past seven days. For political advertisers in the U.S., there will be additional data, including information around billing, ad spend, impressions per tweet and demographic targeting." (The site from Twitter).
 
FROM THE WILDERNESS - Former President Barack Obama dipped his toes back into the political world last week when he spoke at a DNC fundraiser. POLITICO's Isaac Dovere's dispatch: "Do not wait for the perfect message, don't wait to feel a tingle in your spine because you're expecting politicians to be so inspiring and poetic and moving that somehow, 'OK, I'll get off my couch after all and go spend the 15-20 minutes it takes for me to vote,' Obama said in his first public comments in months, which only a few reporters and no cameras were allowed in for. 'Because that's part of what happened in the last election. I heard that too much.'" 
 
- Obama also defended House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a DCCC fundraiser on Saturday, per POLITICO Playbook.
 
STAFFING UP - The DNC has hired Seema Nanda to serve as its new CEO. More from POLITICO's Stephanie Murray: "Nanda previously worked as [DNC chief Tom] Perez's chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Labor. She replaces interim CEO Mary Beth Cahill, who took the helm of the DNC in February after replacing Jess O'Connell, a seasoned operative who left after less than a year on the job."
 
- The head of the Virginia GOP, John Whitbeck, stepped down on Saturday, and The Washington Post's Jenna Portnoy and Laura Vozzella report that the state party is in "turmoil" with Corey Stewart at the top of the ticket as the party's Senate nominee.
 
CODA - "This is still my only friend in town," Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), looking at his French bulldog Lily (pictured here) while talking to the Los Angeles Times about moderate House Republicans' failed immigration push.
 
** Presented by AARP: Americans 50 and over are the nation's most powerful voting bloc. In fact, more than 60 million of them voted in 2016-and this year, they're more motivated than ever to making sure that their voices are heard in Washington. 
They're frustrated with broken government. And they're fed up with politicians who'd rather get into fights than get results. The issues they care about most including Medicare, Social Security, support for family caregivers and prescription drug costs, are all on the line. America's 50-plus voters have put the candidates on notice. Anyone who ignores them will feel it on Election Day. aarp.org/vote **
 
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