(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Digest: GOP playbook in North Carolina: Link a Black Democrat with a Black criminal [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2022-10-17 Back in 2019, Beasley joined a 4-2 majority that struck down a law requiring automatic lifetime monitoring for anyone convicted at least twice for the same offense. The decision concluded that such tracking violated the Fourth Amendment and emphasized that most states don't have any sort of lifetime tracking. The justices added that the state could order GPS monitoring but only in certain circumstances. The Club for Growth ran a similar ad last month that also implied that, because of the court's ruling, no one knew Grady's whereabouts. However, the Charlotte Observer wrote in its fact check that Grady, who remains on probation, still has his address listed in the state's public offender database. Efforts to link Black Democrats with criminals who also, not coincidentally, are Black is of course nothing new for the GOP. Not long ago, a conservative super PAC used footage from what the narrator calls "actual crime scenes across Wisconsin," including a clip of a group of people scattering in panic during a shooting. The ad then drew a red circle around one of the gunmen next to on-screen text reading "Mandela Barnes" before accusing the Democrat of wanting to defund the police despite all this violence, a position Barnes does not in fact hold. Senate ● AZ-Sen: The Heritage Foundation's Sentinel Action Fund has thrown down an additional $1.35 million to aid Republican Blake Masters, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's Protect Freedom PAC is deploying another $700,000 here. ● CO-Sen: NBC reports that the conservative American Policy Fund has booked another $4.6 million to help Republican Joe O'Dea. The group is funded by construction company executives, the Senate Leadership Fund, and Timothy Mellon, a billionaire who wrote in his 2015 memoir, "Black people, in spite of heroic efforts by the 'Establishment' to right the wrongs of the past, became even more belligerent and unwilling to pitch in to improve their own situations." On the Democratic side, the League of Conservation Voters is spending another $860,000 to defend Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet. ● NC-Sen: Senate Majority PAC has announced that it is booking an additional $4 million to aid Democrat Cheri Beasley. ● PA-Sen: Democrat John Fetterman is airing his first commercial about his May stroke, telling the audience that he was "just grateful" to see his wife and kids afterwards. He continues, "Across Pennsylvania, I keep seeing families that don't have enough time to focus on each other. They're struggling, left behind." ● UT-Sen: Bloomberg reports that the Club for Growth, which has been GOP Sen. Mike Lee's main outside group ally, will spend another $2.4 million in this contest. Meanwhile, data analyst Rob Pyers relays that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's Protect Freedom PAC has dropped $850,000 to help his colleague. ● Polls: AZ-Sen: OnMessage (R) for Sentinel Action Fund (pro-Masters): Mark Kelly (D-inc): 46, Blake Masters (R): 43, Marc Victor (L): 4 (Sept.: 50-40 Kelly) WI-Sen: Clarity Campaign Labs (D) for Mandela Barnes: Mandela Barnes (D): 48, Ron Johnson (R-inc): 47 AZ-Sen: This PAC did not release its September numbers until it publicized the newer and more favorable result. WI-Sen: This is the first poll to give Barnes the edge since Siena College showed him with an identical 48-47 lead a month ago, though a late September survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling had the contest tied. Governors ● AZ-Gov: Democrat Katie Hobbs and the state party are running a new commercial going after Republican Kari Lake for appearing to flirt with secession in response to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago. The spot shows a news clip where a reporter declares that Lake "even seemed to endorse secession," before it uses footage of Lake saying, "We need to fire the federal government." Hobbs' narrator then warns that if the Republican had her way, "Seniors lose Social Security checks and Medicare benefits. Two million Arizonans lose their health insurance." He continues, "Six military bases closed. The National Guard disbanded." ● LA-Gov: When LaPolitics asked state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson if he were interested in campaigning next year to succeed his fellow Democrat, termed-out Gov. John Bel Edwards, Wilson replied, “I’m not ready to say it’s not true.” Wilson would be the first African American elected statewide since Reconstruction. ● Polls: MI-Gov: This survey for American Greatness, which denies the results of the 2020 elections, is by far the best showing for Dixon that anyone has found. NY-Gov: The Schoen in this firm is for Doug Schoen, a one-time Democratic pollster who joined the far-right Newsmax TV in 2021 after years on Fox News. House ● AK-AL: Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola is running a commercial where she talks about upholding the legacy of her late Republican predecessor, 49-year Rep. Don Young. Peltola tells the audience how Young in the early 1980s gave the graduation speech in Tuntutuliak, a rural community where Alaska Natives make up almost the entire population, "and that proved to me that no community was too small or too remote to care about." She continues, "And that was what was great about Don Young: He didn't care if you were a Democrat, a Republican, or independent―he only cared about getting things done for Alaskans." Peltola's family had a close relationship with Young for decades, with the Anchorage Daily News writing that her father worked with him when they were both teachers, while her mother campaigned for Young before he was elected in 1973. Last year, when Peltola testified before Young's committee on fishing issues, the congressman himself recounted how the 3-month old Peltola accompanied her parents when they worked for his victorious House bid, saying, "I've always cherished that." The new congresswoman, who has spent Thanksgiving with the Young family, hired his chief of staff to run her office after winning the August special election. ● IL-11: The Club for Growth has dropped at least $470,000 on an ad campaign to help former Trump administration official Catalina Lauf beat Democratic Rep. Bill Foster in a suburban Chicago constituency that, at 57-41 Biden, hasn't attracted much attention. The commercials (here and here) tie Foster to Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and former state House Speaker Mike Madigan. ● PA-07: The DCCC is taking advantage of Doug Mastriano's disastrous campaign for governor to tie Republican Lisa Scheller to her party's standard bearer, a tactic the committee has also been using against Jeremy Shaffer at the other side of the commonwealth in the 17th District. The D-trip's anti-Scheller spot uses a clip of Mastriano declaring, "My body, my choice is ridiculous nonsense" before the narrator faults her for campaigning with Mastriano. ● Polls: CA-27: Mellman Group (D) for Christy Smith: Christy Smith (D): 47, Mike Garcia (R-inc): 41 (Aug.: 44-42 Smith) IL-10: Victory Research (R) for Joseph Severino: Brad Schneider (D-inc): 48, Joseph Severino (R): 41 MT-01: Victoria Research (D) for Big Sky Voters (pro-Tranel): Ryan Zinke (R): 41, Monica Tranel (D): 40, John Lamb (L): 8 CA-27: We haven’t seen any other polls in the time between the two Smith internals. Major Democratic groups, though, haven’t spent to aid Smith in this 55-43 Biden seat in northern Los Angeles County even as the GOP has dropped $1.8 million. IL-10: The suburbs north of Chicago long were GOP friendly turf downballot even as they became more Democratic in presidential races, but Schneider hasn’t faced a serious fight since he regained the last version of this seat in his third match with Republican Bob Dold in 2016. (For old time’s sake: Bob Dold!) Biden would have won 62-36 here, and other than this poll, there’s no indication that Schneider is vulnerable. Ballot Measures ● AZ Ballot: Voters have twice voted against creating a lieutenant governor post in Arizona, a state where a secretary of state twice took over for a departing governor from the opposite party, but they'll have another chance next month to make sure this doesn't happen again. If a majority support Proposition 131, nominees for governor would choose a running mate after their primary starting in 2026. The governorship swapped parties in 1988 when the state legislature suspended Republican Evan Mecham for misuse of public funds and obstruction of justice and Democratic Secretary of State Rose Mofford became acting governor; Mecham was impeached two months later, and Mofford became the first woman to be governor of the Grand Canyon State. Arizonans decisively voted down a 1994 ballot measure that would have required candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to be nominated as a ticket, so the current rule remained in place three years later when Secretary of State Jane Dee Hull replaced her fellow Republican, Fife Symington, when he resigned after being convicted of bank fraud. Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano later quit in 2009 to become Barack Obama's secretary of homeland security, and Jan Brewer's ascension began a still-unbroken period of GOP control. (Brewer actually supported the 1994 referendum that would have prevented her ascent.) Voters the following year were presented with another ballot measure that would have turned the secretary of state into the lieutenant governor; under this arrangement, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor would have run in separate primaries but competed together in the general election in what can often be an awkward "shotgun wedding." No one took any vows, though, because that referendum was also rejected 59-41. GOP state Sen. J. D. Mesnard, who sponsored the bill that advanced Proposition 131, is arguing that the last two attempts had "a lot of design flaws," but that his plan fixes "concerns that were raised in prior versions." This measure, unlike the 2010 one, would keep the secretary of state's office in place, though both nominees for that post, Democrat Adrian Fontes and QAnon ally Mark Finchem, are still urging a "no" vote for Prop. 131. While those two candidates have little else in common, the pair agree that a lieutenant governor would just be a waste of money. Mesnard, though, is arguing that won't be the case at all. "In order to mitigate the concern that this was just creating another bureaucrat, expanding government, etc., we actually give the lieutenant governor a job that already exists in government today," he says, "So they would either become the governor's chief of staff, which of course, the governor already has, or they'd become director of the Department of Administration, which again, we already have, or some other appointment the governor already has to make." If Prop. 131 passes, only Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Wyoming would still lack a lieutenant governor's office. Oregon also puts the secretary of state first in line for the governorship, and Kate Brown became the Beaver State's chief executive in 2015 when a scandal forced out fellow Democrat John Kitzhaber. In the other three states, the state Senate president is the one who would inherit a vacant governorship. ● KY Ballot: The campaign to defeat Amendment 2, a referendum that would amend Kentucky's constitution to say that the state's governing document does not "secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion," raised a total of $3 million through Oct. 9 compared with $595,000 for the “yes” side. The pro-choice effort, which has the airwaves to itself right now, went into the final month with a $917,000 to $497,000 cash-on-hand lead. Secretaries of State ● AZ-SoS: The progressive group iVote has announced that it’s spending $5 million to help Democrat Adrian Fontes defeat election denier Mark Finchem. Ad Roundup Dollar amounts reflect the reported size of ad buys and may be larger. 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