Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: The shaky world of online ad transparency — Democrats back Pelosi for speaker — Our Revolution loses nearly $250K to email scam
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
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Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2018 09:02:56 -0600
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11/29/2018 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 Pro Campaigns 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         
THE WILD WILD WEB - After the Russians meddled in the 2016 elections, policymakers and tech companies agreed something needed to be done. But that something is still to be determined. My dive into online ads (only for Pros): "Major ad platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter each launched their own versions of transparency platforms, which detail online political spending - a $1.9 billion industry in 2018, according to a projection from Kip Cassino of the ad-tracking firm Borrell Associates. ... But each system has major differences and major holes, from different definitions of political ads to a lack of specificity about spending totals.

"'Simply put, all these ad networks weren't designed to be transparent,' said Damon McCoy, a professor of computer science and engineering at NYU, who has tracked online ads as part of the school's transparency project. 'They've having to do a lot of jury-rigging of their ad networks to make everything transparent.' The Honest Ads Act, which was introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner and the late Republican Sen. John McCain in 2017, would require certain online platforms to maintain public records of political ads, including contact information for the purchaser and how much they spent. ... However, the bill has sputtered."

"The lack of action has left tech companies to institute their own disclosure schemes - and left a lot of political advertising undisclosed because not every company is participating."

Good Thursday morning. My new favorite leadership PAC name: Velvet Hammer PAC, newly registered to Minnesota DFLer Sen. Tina Smith (h/t to POLITICO Influence). Send your favorite PAC names to [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 2019 election: 341

Days until the 2020 election: 705

Election Day has come and gone, but the real work is just beginning. Head to Pro's Midterms HQ to find out how election outcomes affect you and how to plan your next move. Read More. 
          IN THE TRENCHES         
THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi won the overwhelming majority of her caucus to become her party's nominee to be Speaker of the 116th Congress. But there's still some bumps in the road, POLITICO's John Bresnahan, Rachael Bade and Heather Caygle report. "But she's not there yet. Pelosi will still have to pick up roughly 15 votes to get back to the speaker's chair, although the California Democrat, her allies, and aides are increasingly confident she will get there after Wednesday's session." The vote was 203-32, with three blank ballots and one absent.

And the race you, my dear Score reader, care deeply about: the DCCC chair. New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney dropped out, leaving it a three-person race among Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos and Washington Reps. Denny Heck and Suzan DelBene. The vote is expected this morning, per National Journal's Ally Mutnick. Reps. Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn were unopposed for House majority leader and majority whip, respectively, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries defeated Rep. Barbara Lee in the race for caucus chair.

MORE VOTES COUNTED IN THE LAST RACE - In CA-21, the last outstanding race, Democrat TJ Cox extended his lead over GOP Rep. David Valadao to 529 votes. The DCCC and Cox's campaign have both declared victory, but Valadao has not conceded the race.

- GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney formally conceded the race to Democrat Anthony Brindisi in NY-22 (POLITICO called the race on election night).

OOPS - Our Revolution, which was launched by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), lost nearly $250,000 to an email scam. Campaign Pro chief Scott Bland: "Our Revolution 'was the victim of a Business E-Mail Compromise scam that took place in December 2016 but was not discovered until January 2017, resulting in the loss of approximately $242,000 via an electronic transfer of funds to an overseas account,' the group disclosed in its tax forms covering the year 2017, which were filed earlier this month. ... Our Revolution blamed 'an international syndicate of cyber-thieves targeting nonprofit organizations globally' for the incident, which robbed the group of about 7 percent of its total fundraising in
 2016."

PAINT IT RED - Party committees ran up hefty debt in the battle for the House. NBC News' Alex Seitz-Wald: The next DCCC chair "will inherit $18 million in debt from this year's midterms, a source familiar with the group's finances told NBC News. ... The National Republican Congressional Committee also spent heavily this year as it fought to defend the GOP majority, taking out a $12 million line of credit that still has to be paid off, according to the committee's communications director, Matt Gorman."

THE NC-09 MYSTERY - It's still unclear why the North Carolina Board of Elections voted unanimously to not certify the results in NC-09, but a county official said a state investigator came to the district. WFAE's Steve Harrison: "Bobby Ludlum, chair of the Bladen County Board of Elections, told WFAE Wednesday that the board's chief investigator, Joan Fleming, came to Elizabethtown to get the records during the week of the election. 'She was here the day after, or around that time,' said Ludlum, a Republican who chairs the county's board. 'I've heard rumors and allegations (about what they are looking for) but they haven't said anything.'"

THE ARIZONA SEAT - Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is still eying the door. The Washington Examiner's Al Weaver and David M. Drucker: "He is widely expected to depart at the end of the 115th Congress, which would be a matter of weeks, say Republican insiders familiar with his thinking. ... One Arizona-based GOP strategist described Kyl's desire to leave the Senate as 'definitive,' despite urging from many of his colleagues and [Gov. Doug] Ducey to remain in the seat through late 2020."

- And an interesting nugget from a postmortem memo from GOP Rep. Martha McSally's Senate campaign (which was published by The Washington Post): "A significant segment of the AZ GOP was hostile to the President. In internal polling during the primary, President Trump never broke 80% favorability among Republican voters."

HERE COMES THE MONEY - A roundup of the top industries that funded defeated Republican House incumbents and their successful Democratic challengers shows a lot of the usual suspects. The Center for Responsive Politics' Doug Weber reported the top five funders to the Republicans in the midterms were "leadership PACs," "retired" "securities & investment," "real estate" and "insurance". On the Democratic side, it was "Democratic/liberal," "lawyers/law firms," "securities & investment," "retired" and "education."

PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD - In the "sure, why not?" category: Former Secretary of State John Kerry didn't rule out another run for the White House. "I'm not taking anything off the table," Kerry said, per POLITICO's Rebecca Morin. "I haven't been running around to the most obvious states, laying any groundwork or doing anything."

REDISTRICTING WATCH - Wisconsin Democrats are worried that state Republicans could try to cut Gov.-elect Tony Evers out of the redistricting process. The AP's Todd Richmond: "'There's just about anything you can do if you really want to,' U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, said earlier this month. 'I'm just concerned. I'm watching everything. It's just the wrong thing to do. You already have gerrymandered the state enough that you have all of the seats that you could possibly want.' ... Senate Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' spokeswoman, Kit Beyer, both say there's been no talk about changing redistricting."

HAIL MARY - GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who lost in ME-02 to Democrat Jared Golden, is asking a judge for a new election in the district if ranked-voting is not tossed. The Bangor Daily News' Judy Harrison: "The new election was requested in an amended complaint filed by Poliquin's attorneys at about 10 p.m. Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor. It was the latest legal twist in Poliquin's efforts to reverse the results of the Nov. 6 election, where he lost to Jared Golden in the nation's first federal race decided by ranked-choice voting."

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I don't really have much more to say about this huge cow that's like half again as big as any cow I've ever tried to milk," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) reacting to a picture of a massive steer on BuzzFeed News' AM to DM. 
    
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