Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score: RGA executive director lays out the next battlefield — Democrats to Shultz: Pound sand — DCCC announces early targets in 2020 battle for the House
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
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Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 09:02:18 -0600
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01/29/2019 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 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.
          QUICK FIX         
- The new executive director of the Republican Governors Association says Republicans are confident heading into 2019 and 2020 in a POLITICO Q&A.

- Democrats are less than enthusiastic about former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's potential run for president as an independent, telling him he'll hand a second term to President Donald Trump if he runs.

- After Democrats picked up 40 seats in 2018, the DCCC hopes to remain on offense. The party committee announced its first 2020 targets.

Good Tuesday morning. The State of the Union is on ... Feb. 5. 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: 280

Days until the 2020 election: 644

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 GOVERNORS MANSIONS - 2018 was not a great year for Republican governors. Republicans lost a net of six seats across the country, despite hanging on to top prizes like Ohio and Florida. But with three red states holding gubernatorial elections in 2019 and more competitive battles in 2020, Republicans are hoping to go on offense again.

"You look at this time, almost all of our governors and all the seats we hold, are going to be run by incumbents next year," Dave Rexrode, the RGA's new executive director, told Campaign Pro's Daniel Strauss and me in an extended Q&A for Pros. For the 2020 elections, the RGA is eying Montana and North Carolina as prime pickup opportunities. Montana hasn't elected a Republican governor in 16 years despite reliably voting red in presidential elections, while North Carolina is "really going to be one of the centers of the political universe next year," with a contested gubernatorial race, a prime Senate battle and the Republican convention, Rexrode told us. "Montana is 1, North Carolina is 1A
 for 2020."

One Republican governor, Kentucky's Matt Bevin, is not particularly popular in his state, though Rexrode said he's confident Bevin will be re-elected. His approval rating is "something he's working on. But if you look historically at Kentucky, they truly haven't given their statewide elected officials a whole lot of favorable images," Rexrode said. "They don't necessarily love their elected officials, but when it comes down to a choice, they go with the right decision."
          IN THE TRENCHES         
PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD - Let the early endorsement race begin! Rep. Ted Lieu endorsed his fellow Californian, Sen. Kamala Harris. He's the third Democratic member of Congress to weigh in on the presidential race, after Rep. Joaqu&iacute;n Castro (D-Texas) backed his brother Juli&aacute;n and Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) endorsed the man he succeeded, former Rep. John Delaney.

- Harris strongly backed Medicare for All in a CNN town hall Monday night. When asked if someone could keep private insurance if they'd like to, Harris described the system as burdensome and said "let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on."

- The waiting game continues: When asked if he was running for president, former Vice President Joe Biden said "I'm a lot closer than I was before Christmas and I'll make the decision soon," per POLITICO's Marc Caputo.

- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is making her first trip to New Hampshire starting on Friday.

SPOILER ALERT? - Much of the Democratic Party is raging against Schultz, following the coffee mogel's (and failed former NBA team owner) announcement that he might seek the presidency as an independent, per POLITICO's David Siders reported. And Democrats have signaled they aren't afraid to spend money to sink him. "We would do everything we can to ensure that his candidacy is unsuccessful," Patrick McHugh, executive director of Priorities USA, told the AP's Gene Johnson and Steve Peoples.

Mike Bloomberg has publicly warned his fellow billionaire to not run as an independent. "In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the President," he said in a statement that doesn't mention Shultz by name. "That's a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can't afford to run it now."

But Schultz and his team aren't taking the criticism lying down. "It seems that nobody who is speculating about that on Twitter has given any thought to the possibility that the Democratic Party nominates someone who is so far to the left that it guarantees Trump a reelection," longtime GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, an anti-Trumper working for Shultz, told POLITICO's David Siders, Daniel Lippman and Daniel. When asked at a New York event if he'd drop out if polls show he'd help Trump win, Schultz demurred (per BuzzFeed News' Alexis Levinson): "I certainly will not do anything to put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office." Also on the team: Bill Burton, the former national press secretary for
 Obama's 2008 campaign and co-founder of Priorities USA Action, per The Washington Post's Robert Costa. 

VOTER DATA - Staffers for Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat, used a state database to look at the voting records of state employees, job applicants and potential political rivals. "Her staff searched for hundreds of voters, mostly state employees outside the secretary of state's office, for no discernible reason," ProPublica's Jessica Huseman and the Lexington Herald-Leader's Daniel Desrochers reported. "Presented with questions from ProPublica and the Herald-Leader, Grimes took a two-pronged stance: She cast doubt on the accuracy of the logs that revealed the searches while defending her right to engage in such searches."

CHANGING OF THE GUARD - The Koch network's turn away from partisan politics was on full display at its biannual gathering - leading to a major split with the GOP. "In a sign of the division, the data firm aligned with the Republican National Committee told The Washington Post that it does not plan to renew a data-sharing agreement with the Koch network for the 2020 cycle," The Washington Post's Michelle Ye Hee Lee reported.

EARLY LINE OF ATTACK - Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, will likely face criticism on taxes from Republicans hoping to challenge him later this year. "When he was a candidate in 2015, the Democrat Edwards said he didn't expect to directly raise taxes to solve the state's financial problems," the AP's Melinda Deslatte reported. "Instead, working with a majority-Republican Legislature, he did just that."

THE BATTLEGROUND - The DCCC is out with an early list of Republican held-seats that it will target in 2020, hoping to expand Democrats' majority. Here's the full list from Campaign Pro's Laura Barr&oacute;n-L&oacute;pez. Some interesting targets: Reps. Rob Woodall (GA-07) and Will Hurd (TX-23) - both of whom barely survived in 2018 - Reps. Chris Collins (NY-27) and Duncan Hunter (CA-50) - both of whom have been indicted - and Rep. Steve King (IA-04).

WEB WARS - Harris spent the most out of any political candidate on Facebook last week leading up to her Sunday kickoff rally, overtaking the president. Her campaign spent $194,359. Also of note: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spent more on ads on the platform last week compared to the week before, with the messaging focused on Citizens United and campaign finance reform. Here's more for Pros from my weekly Facebook spending roundup. 

- And speaking of Facebook ads: The company has moved to block outside ad transparency tools, including ProPublica's.

- Mark Kelly, whose name is kicked around as a potential 2020 Arizona Democratic Senate candidate, is appearing in an ad campaign for Amazon.

STEYER'S LITMUS TEST - Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer isn't running for president, but he's still committing millions to opposing Trump with his Need to Impeach group. Steyer said while he's still deciding on the process he'll use to back a 2020 candidate, he has one major sticking point: "Unless you support impeachment, we're not supporting you," Steyer told POLITICO's Maggie Severns.

STAFFING UP - Betsy Ankney is the new political director of the NRSC, Campaign Pro's Daniel and James Arkin reported.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Hello I am considering a presidential run in 2020. Please RT if you would support this endeavor for me." - the official Pop-Tarts Twitter account.
    
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