Morning Digest: Democrats pour it on to oust a top election denier, but the GOP isn't sweating

The top Republican groups have been tight-fisted, but others have spent big

House Majority PAC ad against GOP Rep. Scott Perry (Credit: HMP ad)

Leading Off

Independent Expenditures

The four major outside groups involved in House races have collectively spent $234 million across 43 districts, according to the latest update to The Downballot's independent expenditure tracker, but not all of these contests have seen evenly matched spending.

Some, in fact, have been quite lopsided. Two illustrative examples are Pennsylvania's 10th District, where Democrats are crushing far-right Rep. Scott Perry's side on the airwaves, and New York's 18th, where GOP organizations are spending big to oust Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan.

Perry faces a difficult battle against Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former TV news anchor, in a central Pennsylvania district that Donald Trump carried 51-47 in 2020. Axios' Andrew Solender reports that Stelson's campaign is outspending the incumbent by a lopsided $3.6 million to $860,000 margin on ads, and major Democratic groups are piling on.

The two largest pro-Democratic outfits―the House Majority PAC and the DCCC―together have spent $2.3 million to oust Perry and have about another $1 million booked based on previously announced ad reservations.

Their counterparts at the Congressional Leadership Fund and NRCC, by contrast, have yet to spend a penny. But that doesn't mean that Perry, who is one of the most notorious election deniers in Congress, is being left to fend for himself: Solender writes that three allied organizations―the Club for Growth, the Freedom Caucus, and the American Action Network―have spent a combined $2.1 million to aid him. 

Solender also says that an outside group called the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund has booked an additional $2.3 million to help Perry. The super PAC, whose name refers to the year the GOP was founded, was set up last cycle to stop hardliners from winning Republican primaries, but evidently, it now has a different mission. 

The state of the race, however, remains uncertain. Democrats were thrilled last week when Susquehanna Polling & Research, a GOP firm based in the Keystone state, released a survey showing Stelson crushing Perry 48-39 as respondents favored Kamala Harris 46-41.

However, we don't have any other recent data to confirm or contradict the idea that the Harrisburg area has finally had enough of Perry. The last poll we saw was conducted more than two months ago for the DCCC by Upswing Research, and it gave Stelson just a 48-47 advantage. 

Solender, though, says that unnamed GOP operatives tell him they "have not been viewing Perry as vulnerable" because of Trump's 4-point margin in the district in 2020. If CLF or the NRCC belatedly decides he needs protecting, their delay is going to be costly at a time when TV ad costs are skyrocketing thanks to Pennsylvania's ultra-expensive presidential and U.S. Senate races. HMP, by contrast, made its first TV reservations back in April. when it could still lock in cheaper ad rates.

The dynamic is completely different in New York's Hudson Valley, where CLF has spent $1.7 million to beat Ryan in the 18th District. The DCCC, by contrast, has deployed less than $230,000 to stop Alison Esposito, who was the GOP's 2022 nominee for lieutenant governor.

Ryan, though, has benefited from over $3 million in help from other groups. About two-thirds of that assistance has come from Fairshake, a crypto-aligned super PAC that helps candidates from both parties. VoteVets, which supports Democratic veterans, has also spent over $500,000 to aid Ryan, who served with the Army in Iraq.

Campaign finance reports covering the third quarter of the year are due Tuesday evening, and they'll tell us whether Ryan has maintained the massive fundraising edge he held through June. The only recent poll we've seen was an early October survey from Emerson College that showed the incumbent ahead 48-43. That sample also showed Trump edging out Harris 48-47 in a constituency that Biden carried 54-45 in 2020.

Looking nationally, HMP and the DCCC outspent the CLF and the NRCC $47 million to $39 million during the previous week, a turnaround after the two GOP groups posted a $32 million to $27 advantage million during the first seven days of October. Overall, Democrats have a $123 million to $111 million edge as of Oct. 14. You can find much more at our tracker, including district-by-district spending details, which we update every week.

3Q Fundraising

Congressional candidates have until Tuesday at midnight Eastern time to file new campaign finance reports with the FEC covering the third quarter of the year. This week, we'll bring you charts for every major-party House and Senate candidate running in the November elections.

• MN-02: Angie Craig (D-inc): $2 million raised, $2.35 million cash on hand

House

AK-AL

The pro-Democratic group House Majority PAC has expended millions to help Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola's reelection bid in Alaska's at-large House seat, though because it's not spending funds directly, it doesn't appear on our independent expenditure tracker.

HMP instead has financed another group called "Vote Alaska Before Party," which in turn has spent close to $4 million since the Aug. 20 primary to attack Republican Nick Begich. The NRSC and Congressional Leadership Fund, by contrast, have spent close to $5 million to take down Peltola.

Republicans and Democrats are also hoping to take advantage of the presence of one of the two other candidates on the November ballot: John Wayne Howe, who leads the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and Eric Hafner, a federal inmate who is listed on the ballot as a Democrat. While voters are free to rank one of the two major candidates second after backing either Howe or Hafner, both sides are hoping that a crucial segment of voters won't take this extra step.

Politico's Ally Mutnick flags content on an NRCC website that reads, "Liberal Democrats with a college degree under 35 in urban and suburban Anchorage and Juneau need to hear that Democrat Eric Hafner supports Medicare for All and Defunding ICE on digital, streaming audio, texts, and in mailboxes."

The NRCC is posting this call to action in a public place so that groups it can't legally coordinate will know where to find it. This tactic is known as "red-boxing" because the information is often placed in a red box so it can't be missed, though there's no such box on the committee's site—probably because it operates an entire mini-site that's essentially one giant red box for all of its target races.

The DCCC is laying out a similar strategy explaining how its allies should boost Howe. The committee urges pro-Democratic groups to make sure that conservative-leaning "[w]hite men under the age of 60 without a college degree" are informed that Howe opposes restrictions on firearms and "believes that man-made climate change is bad science, and that we need to rapidly expand oil production here in Alaska for Alaskans."

The DCCC adds, "It is important that people who vote for John Wayne Howe rank him first and do not consider other choices." Like the NRCC, the DCCC eschews a literal red box, but its opposition research hub lives on its main website.

CA-49

The NRCC has publicized an internal survey from 1892 Polling that gives Democratic Rep. Mike Levin a tiny 46-45 advantage over Republican Matt Gunderson in California's 49th District, a once sleepy race that has attracted a good deal of outside attention over the last week. The memo for this poll, which was first publicized by Politico, did not include presidential numbers for a suburban San Diego seat that Joe Biden carried 55-43 four years ago.

The NRCC released these numbers less than a week after SurveyUSA's poll for local media showed Levin ahead 53-41 as Kamala Harris posted a nearly identical 54-41 advantage. But while those results might suggest the congressman has little to worry about, his allies at the House Majority PAC have sent a very different signal by reserving what Politico reported was $1.6 million to defend Levin on the airwaves.

Yet while 1892's memo gloats that HMP was "[c]learly panicked" by Gunderson's strength, there are no reports of the NRCC or any other major GOP group booking ad time to help him pull off an upset. And HMP, according to the newest edition of our House independent expenditure tracker, has yet to spend any money from its new reservation.

Early voting began last week in California, so any outside groups that want to get involved will need to act soon, before large numbers of votes are cast.

WI-01

The conservative Congressional Leadership Fund is out with a poll showing Republican Rep. Bryan Steil fending off Democrat Peter Barca 52-42, a survey that comes days after the DCCC publicized numbers placing Steil ahead just 49-46 in Wisconsin's 1st District. We haven't seen any other surveys of this race, though notably, there's been no major outside spending from anyone—including CLF and the DCCC.

WPA Intelligence's poll for CLF, which was first shared by the National Journal's James Downs, also shows Donald Trump ahead 49-45 in a constituency he carried 50-48 in 2020. The poll from the DCCC's in-house analytics team, by contrast, found Trump's margin slipping slightly, enough to deadlock him at 49 apiece with Kamala Harris.

Ballot Measures

School Funding

Three states will vote on ballot measures to decide whether public funds can flow to private schools, and Elaine Povich of States Newsroom takes a look at the contests in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska. Proponents say they want to give parents greater choice, while critics argue that diverting funds from public schools would disproportionately hurt rural students and allow state governments to fund religious institutions.

In Nebraska, Referendum 435 asks voters if they want to preserve a section of a new state law that allows the state to provide $10 million annually to a scholarship fund for private education. Unlike the other five measures on the Cornhusker State's ballot, including two dueling amendments on abortion rights, the options for Measure 435 are "retain" or "repeal" rather than "yes" or "no."

Over in Colorado, meanwhile, Amendment 80 would insert language into the state constitution that reads, "Each K-12 child has the right to school choice." But supporters say their plan, which needs at least 55% to pass (Nebraska and Kentucky require only a simple majority), would not automatically authorize any sort of voucher program and insist a second vote would be needed.

One skeptic, however, warns that the proposal is a "steppingstone" that could have unintended consequences.

"Nobody—not me, not the people who wrote the language, not the state’s voters—can say with any confidence what inserting this language in the state’s constitution will eventually lead to," Kevin Welner, who leads the National Education Policy Center, explained to the Colorado Sun's Erica Breunlin. "The wording is intentionally—and I think mischievously—vague."

That wording, Welner told Chalkbeat Colorado's Melanie Asmar, "puts judges in the driver’s seat later on to try to make some sense out of this." According to another expert who spoke with Breunlin, the creation of a "new legal right to access private schools could then enable legislation or a court case pursuing the start of a voucher program."

Finally, in Kentucky, the GOP-led legislature has placed Amendment 2 before voters, which would authorize the legislature to "provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools." It would also allow lawmakers to circumvent language that otherwise forbids them from funding "any church, sectarian or denominational school."

Ad Roundup

• FL-Sen: Rick Scott (R-inc)

• ME-Sen: Angus King (I-inc)

• MI-Sen: Mike Rogers (R); Great Lakes Conservatives Fund - pro-Rogers

• VA-Sen: Tim Kaine (D-inc)

• WI-Sen: Eric Hovde (R) - anti-Tammy Baldwin (D-inc); Hovde (R)

• AZ-06: Kirsten Engel (D); Engel - anti-Juan Ciscomani (R-inc); GIFFORDS PAC - anti-Ciscomani (in English and Spanish) (part of $1.2 million buy)

• CA-22: Rudy Salas (D)

• CA-27: NRCC - anti-George Whitesides (D)

• CA-34: David Kim (D) - anti-Jimmy Gomez (D-inc)

• CA-41: Will Rollins (D)

• CA-49: Matt Gunderson (R) - anti-Mike Levin (D-inc)

• CT-05: Jahana Hayes (D-inc) and the DCCC - anti-George Logan (R); Hayes - anti-Logan; NRCC - anti-Hayes (here and here)

• FL-13: Whitney Fox (D) - anti-Anna Paulina Luna (R)

• IA-01: Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-inc) - anti-Christina Bohannan (D); Bohannan - anti-Miller-Meeks

• MN-02: Angie Craig (D-inc); Joe Teirab (R) - anti-Craig

• NC-01: NRCC - anti-Don Davis (D-inc)

• NY-19: Josh Riley (D) - anti-Marc Molinaro (R-inc)

• NY-22: NRCC - anti-John Mannion (D) (here and here)

• PA-08: Rob Bresnahan (R)

• FL Ballot: Smart and Safe Florida - pro-marijuana amendment

• FL Ballot: Yes on 4 Florida - pro-abortion amendment (in English) (in Spanish here and here)

• NV Ballot: Nevadans For Reproductive Freedom - pro-abortion amendment

• OH Ballot: Citizens Not Politicians - pro-redistricting amendment