Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: Americans not thrilled to fill out the census — Harris kicks off campaign with big rally — O’Rourke said he could be ‘potentially’ months away from decision
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:02:59 -0600
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01/28/2019 10:00 AM EDT
        
By ZACH MONTELLARO ([email-masked]; @ZachMontellaro)

        
Editor's Note: This edition of 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.
          QUICK FIX         
- 1 in 5 Americans say they're "not likely" to fill out the census, which could have a major effect on House apportionment in 2021.

- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) kicked off her campaign with a rally in Oakland, drawing a contrast between herself and the president without explicitly mentioning him.

- Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke is still not any closer to running for president, telling POLITICO a decision could be "potentially" months away.

Good Monday morning. 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, @DanielStrauss4, @JamesArkin and @lbarronlopez.

Days until the 2019 election: 281

Days until the 2020 election: 645

Get "Freezin' for a Reason" with Special Olympics DC. Support more than 1,600 Special Olympics DC athletes and take the "Polar Plunge" on Saturday, Feb. 2. Proceeds provide sports, health and inclusion programs that benefit both children and adults with intellectual disabilities in the District. Visit www.dcpolarplunge.org to register as an individual, as a team or join an existing team. 
          THE TOPLINES         
THE REAPPORTIONMENT BATTLE - The census is coming, and with it the once-a-decade reapportionment of House districts per state. Details like what questions appear and how many people fill it out will have major impact on which states gain or lose seats and where federal tax dollars flow.

But that does not mean Americans are thrilled to fill it out. An analysis from Civis Analytics, the data firm founded by former Obama 2012 Chief Analytics Officer Dan Wagner, found that 20 percent of Americans said they are "not likely" to answer the 2020 Census (which, for the record, is against the law).

Civis tested several messages that respondents said would increase their likelihood of filling out the census. The most successful one? Framing responding to the census as a "civic duty" of U.S. residents. Ensuring the most accurate representation in Congress was the second best message. But Civis found that reminding respondents that their data would be protected actually made people less likely to want to participate in the census.
          IN THE TRENCHES         
PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD - Harris held the first mega-rally of the year, kicking off her campaign in front of a crowd estimated at over 20,000. "With the stately backdrop of Oakland City Hall, where a preacher bellowed, a gospel choir sang and 'artists of the black diaspora' performed, Harris' dual message [of truth and civility] underscored her candidacy as one of both a Democratic uniter and a principled leader tough enough to stand up to the Trump White House, whose administration she said was failing the public," POLITICO's Chris Cadelago and Carla Marinucci reported.

- O'Rourke is still hemming and hawing about his decision on running for president. He told POLITICO's David Siders that a decision could "potentially" be months away and that he doesn't want to "raise expectations" about a bid. He also said efforts by some of his former staffers and the "Draft Beto" movements were not at his direction.

- Could Hillary Clinton run again? CNN's Jeff Zeleny reported that she's "not closing the doors" to running for president in conversations with friends, though he notes that doesn't mean she has a campaign-in-waiting.

- Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is (probably) running for president. "Given that there is still uncertainty in the future, I probably would take the bet that I would run for president," he said on CNN.

- Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is headed to Iowa this week for his "Dignity of Work" tour (and has a fresh haircut to boot).

- Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, said he is preparing to run as an independent, already drawing sharp rebukes from Democrats saying a run would hand a second term to President Donald Trump. A notable critique from Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Michael Bloomberg: "I have seen enough data over many years to know that anyone running for POTUS as an independent will split the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote." But Schultz pushed back. "I think it's un-American to say it can't be done. I'm not doing this to be a spoiler," he told The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin.

- Richard Ojeda's longshot presidential campaign is officially over, via The Intercept's Ryan Grim.

PARTY LEADERSHIP - Ronna McDaniel was reelected chairwoman of the RNC at its winter meeting. Tommy Hicks was elected as the new co-chair, Ron Kaufman as treasurer, and Vicki Drummond as secretary.

- Kelli Ward was elected new chair of the Arizona Republican Party, months after her loss in a vicious primary to now-Sen. Martha McSally. In picking her, "Republicans from across the state on Saturday chose a more right-wing vision headed into the 2020 election cycle where Arizona is poised to reach battleground status," the Arizona Republic's Yvonne Wingett Sanchez wrote.

- Georgia Democrats elected Nikema Williams to be their new chairwoman. Her win is "a symbol of a larger shift in Georgia Democratic politics, away from the more moderate approaches of past decades and toward a more liberal, and confrontational, stance," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein wrote.

UP NEXT - Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told WMUR's Adam Sexton she will run for reelection in 2020.

- Republican Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis said she'd challenge Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) in NY-11, via the New York Post's Carl Campanile.

- Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, announced he was running for reelection this year, but swapped his running mate from current Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton to state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, Campaign Pro's Daniel Strauss reported. Republican Rep. James Comer said he won't seek the nomination, but was critical of Bevin in a statement.

- Democrat Dan McCready raised $500,000 in the closing weeks of 2018, ahead of a potential new election in NC-09, via Campaign Pro's Laura Barr&oacute;n-L&oacute;pez.

JONES IN HOSPICE - Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) is in hospice care because his "health has declined after sustaining a broken hip last week," his office said in a statement. Jones had already said he would not seek reelection in 2020 prior to his illness.

BIG MONEY - Many Wall Street bankers are not fans of Trump, but they are wary about the Democratic field. "As the nation comes off the longest shutdown in American history amid warnings of an impending economic slowdown, there is also a clear preference for a change to more predictable leadership," POLITICO's Ben White reported.

SCARE TACTICS - Trump tweeted Sunday that "58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas," before pivoting to a wider claim that voter fraud is rampant and calling for voter ID. The premise of the president's tweet is not true. That 58,000 figure is in elections from 1996 through 2018 combined, per The Texas Tribune's Alexa Ura, and all those people are not necessarily non-citizens. "It's unclear exactly how many of those individuals are not actually U.S. citizens," Ura wrote, because those flagged had at one time indicated they weren't citizens but could have since become one before voting. It is up to individual counties to investigate.

REBELLION BREWING? - Some anti-Trump Republicans are cautiously putting out feelers to challenge the president in a primary, even as much of the party infrastructure rallies to head off any potential challenge. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan "is planning a trip to Iowa in his capacity as an officer of the National Governors Association. But his advisers also recently reached out to [Iowa Republican strategist David Kochel], to ask that he put together a dinner with similarly minded Republicans while Mr. Hogan is there," The New York Times' Alexander Burns, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman reported. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld is also considering running, they report.

WEB WARS - The DCCC put up its first digital ads of the cycle, hitting 25 House Republicans over the shutdown. Those targeted include Rob Woodall (Ga.-07), Andy Barr (Ky.-06) and Steve Chabot (Ohio-01).

PRIMARY WATCH - Cori Bush, a Democrat who attracted about 37 percent of the vote in a 2018 primary against Rep. Lacy Clay in MO-01, announced she will run again in 2020. Bush campaigned with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) last year.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR - The Supreme Court has set argument dates for three redistricting cases: Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause, two cases about partisan gerrymandering for congressional districts, will be argued on March 26, and VA House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, a case about racial gerrymandering for legislature boundaries, is on March 18. 

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I 'so much as jaywalked' while she was D.A." - Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the San Francisco Chronicle.
    
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