Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: Election eve in Mississippi — House Democrats up to 39-seat gain, with CA-21 still too close to call — How early voting might shake up the Democratic presidential primary
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2018 09:02:05 -0600
List-Id: <1376319.xt.local>

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11/26/2018 10:00 AM EDT
        
By ZACH MONTELLARO ([email-masked]; @ZachMontellaro)

        
Editor's Note: This edition of Free Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Campaign Pro subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here. 
          THE TOPLINES         
IT'S THE MIDTERMS AGAIN! - Hard to believe, but we're at another election eve, for the special Senate runoff down in Mississippi. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed earlier this year to replace resigned Sen. Thad Cochran, is trying to hold off Democrat Mike Espy. A race that was widely seen as a gimmie for Hyde-Smith months ago has attracted more attention after a steady trickle of stories highlighted Mississippi's (and America's) complicated history with race - and Hyde-Smith's response to it.

"A swirl of controversy surrounding the Republican senator - stirred up by her comment about attending a 'public hanging' - has given Democrat Mike Espy momentum in the home stretch, officials from both parties say," Campaign Pro's James Arkin wrote. "Hyde-Smith has never trailed in polling, and Democrats acknowledge she's likely to win, but they argue that her flubs have given Espy a very narrow opening if everything breaks his way."

Hyde-Smith's statements have drawn scrutiny, but so have her actions as a politician. Hyde-Smith has publicly praised the Confederacy, inflaming a fraught relationship between the "Old South" and the "new South" trying to move past the racist roots of the failed rebellion, The Washington Post's Matt Viser writes. Hyde-Smith introduced a bill while she was a state lawmaker to rename a highway after Jefferson Davis, posed with a Confederate hat and gave an award to a Confederate heritage group, Viser reported. CNN's Eric Bradner and Andrew Kaczynski reported that she pushed a resolution in 2007 that praised a Confederate soldier for "defend[ing] the homeland," while the Jackson Free Press'
 Ashton Pittman reported that she "attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students" and later sent her daughter to that same school.

Espy has largely avoided hitting Hyde-Smith over the revelations, focusing instead on health care and keeping his "head down," Luke Ramseth of the Jackson Clarion Ledger reported. Republicans have homed in on a report from Fox News' Lukas Mikelionis that showed Espy was misleading about his record lobbying for a notorious African despot accused of crimes against humanity. Espy's 1997 indictment on corruption charges (he was acquitted in 1998) while serving as a Clinton Cabinet secretary has also been fodder for Republicans. And the GOP has trotted out a tried-and-true playbook in reliably red Mississippi - tying Espy to more liberal politicians in Washington. President Donald Trump is
 headed to the state today to rally for Hyde-Smith.

Good Monday morning! I hope you missed me, because I missed each and every one of you. As always, email me at [email-masked] or DM me at @ZachMontellaro. 

Email the great Campaign Pro team at [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked] and [email-masked]. Follow them on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @JamesArkin, @ec_schneider and @DanielStrauss4.

Days until the 2020 election: 708

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          IN THE TRENCHES         
THE REST OF THE RACES - While we were all enjoying the Score-less Thanksgiving week, a host of House races were resolved, as were the governors races in Florida and Georgia and the Florida Senate race. Republicans took the gubernatorial and Senate races, but the House results included more Democratic pickups, with the party netting 39 seats (for a 234-201 House majority) thanks to victories for Gil Cisneros in CA-39 and Ben McAdams in UT-04. In GA-07, Republican Rep. Rob Woodall prevailed after a recount, while TX-23 GOP Rep. Will Hurd secured victory in his third consecutive close race.

One outstanding note: While the AP called CA-21 on election night, Democrat TJ Cox has made up a lot of ground on Republican Rep. David Valadao as California continues to count mail-in and provisional ballots. Valadao currently leads by 0.4 percentage points (54,713 to 54,266) with thousands of mostly provisional ballots still out, particularly in Kern County, which comprises just under half the district and has given Cox more than 60 percent of its votes so far. Keep an eye on this one as counting potentially wraps up this week. Here's more from the Fresno Bee.

THE END OF SESSION(S) - If former Attorney General Jeff Sessions opts to try to reclaim his old Alabama Senate seat, he may not have a lock on the Republican nomination. Campaign Pro's Daniel Strauss and James: "POLITICO interviewed more than a dozen GOP operatives and potential candidates in the state about the prospect of a Sessions comeback bid and the forecast for the Senate race against Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.). They agreed that Sessions remains overwhelmingly popular in his home state after representing it for nearly two decades in the Senate.

"But the Republicans were split on whether the 71-year-old Sessions would take the plunge, and whether he would clear the GOP field if he did. The belief, at least among some Republicans in the state, that Sessions might not be a gimme for the seat shows just how tumultuous the past three years have been for the Alabama political icon: From coming out as Trump's earliest and most prominent campaign supporters, to being tapped as the nation's most powerful law enforcement official, and now, potentially, to a difficult campaign for his old seat."

THE COMMITTEE CHAIRS - Democrats have pinned their hopes on Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to try to take the upper chamber this cycle. She's trying to use her home state as a model for Democratic hopefuls across the country. "Nevada, if you really look at the demographics, is a microcosm of the rest of the country," Cortez Masto said in an interview with POLITICO's Burgess Everett and Elana Schor. "If you are able to get in and talk and go into those communities and talk to people of all walks of life and be successful because you're going to advocate on their issues, then that can be replicated in other communities across the country."

- Illinois Rep.  Cheri Bustos ' bid to lead the DCCC (which will be decided this week) relies on her carving out a path down the middle, the Los Angeles Times' Jennifer Haberkorn reported: "Moderate Democrats such as Bustos will likely be pivotal to the party's success in 2020. The Democratic presidential candidate will have to appeal to their voters to have any shot of denying Trump a second term. And in the House, 21 Democrats newly elected in Trump districts will have to figure out how to sustain the Democratic enthusiasm they rallied this year while not angering their Republican or independent voters too much."

THE PRIMARY CALENDAR - Iowa and New Hampshire may lose some of their clout in the Democratic presidential primary, thanks to the rise of early voting. New York's Gabriel Debenedetti: "[A] handful of huge, diverse states could see troves of ballots returned even before some of the traditional small and largely white early-voting states do - a shift that just might herald real changes to the way Democrats nominate their presidential pick, and quite possibly the nominee's identity. 'It's not baked in yet - a lot of the conversations now are, "Which of the first four states should I really concentrate on?" rather than "How can I build an infrastructure that will be enough to get me through
 Super Tuesday?"' says David Huynh, Hillary Clinton's director of delegate operations in 2016."

- And speaking of the Democratic primaries: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) laid out what a potential presidential platform could look like in an interview with our own Elana Schor: "Brown sketched the outlines of a potential presidential campaign that connects with the working-class, particularly Rust Belt voters who've fled the Democratic Party for Trump - but with a less divisive message. 'I don't play off American workers against Mexican workers,' Brown told POLITICO, even as he touted his ability to draw support from 'a lot of Trump voters.'

"'I don't inject race in it,' he added. 'I don't inject anti-foreigner sentiment in it.'"

- Two more names for the big board: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) acknowledged they were mulling a bid for the White House in interviews on ABC's "This Week" and with NJ Advance Media's Jonathan Salant, respectively.

THE MIDTERM LESSONS - Looking to learn something about 2020 from the midterms? POLITICO's Steve Shepard writes that the early signs are bad for the president: "Some of Democrats' biggest gains came in the states that powered Trump's Electoral College victory in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And while a president's base has stayed home in previous midterm elections, leading to losses, the record turnout in this year's races suggests 2018 was more like a 2016 re-run than Trump voters standing on the sidelines. Thus far, even Trump loyalists in the party haven't seen the president expand his electoral base beyond core Republicans."

THE MONEY GUY - Before Sen.-elect Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is sworn into office, he's already rekindling his old donor network. POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt: "The senator-elect is hosting a donor event Tuesday evening in Washington for Believe in America PAC, his newly-formed political action committee, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. The fundraiser will be the PAC's first. ... Organizing the event are Michael McCollum Adams and Lauren Hamel, both of whom served as top fundraisers for outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, Romney's 2012 running mate."

DOWN SOUTH - Democrats in the South are reckoning with a party realignment that sees black and other minority voters becoming even more important to their coalition, while white rural voters fade away. The New York Times' Jonathan Martin: "The campaigns of Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Andrew Gillum in Florida and Beto O'Rourke in Texas may have electrified black and progressive white voters - just as Ms. Hyde-Smith's [hanging] comments may energize Mississippians to support Mr. Espy - but they had an equal and opposite effect as well: in rural county after rural county, this trio of next-generation Democrats performed worse than President Barack Obama did in 2012."

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING ... - The FEC dismissed a complaint from Common Cause against Kid Rock, over him teasing a run for Senate that ended up being a promotion for his music and tour, the Detroit Free Press' Brian McCollum reported.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "A few thoughts on 2020 since all of my friends appear to be running which is good," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) at the start of a Twitter thread (he also said "there are no circumstances under which I will run.")
    
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