We Did it: The special elections to watch in the coming months — New fundraising numbers for the party committees

Feb 22, 2021

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Quick Fix

— There will be five special House elections in the early months of Joe Biden's presidency. Here's what we know about them so far — and what we could learn from them as they develop.

— Monthly fundraising reports are in for the party committees, with three of the four congressional committees still carrying significant debt.

— Former President Donald Trump has posted up at Mar-a-Lago as his base of operation, as Republican officials travel to Florida to meet with him.

Good Monday morning. Email me at zmontellaro@politico.com, or follow me on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the rest of the POLITICO Campaigns team at sshepard@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com and amutnick@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin and @allymutnick.

Days until the LA-02 and LA-05 special elections: 26

Days until the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: 253

Days until the 2022 midterm elections: 624

Days until the 2024 election: 1,352

TopLine

JUST SPECIAL — In the coming months, we'll get five special elections to fill seats in the House. Only two of those five have firm dates on the calendar, and just one of the group is expected to be competitive at this point. But special elections can get weird. Let's break down what we know about each race.

— LA-02: This New Orleans-based district is open after Cedric Richmond vacated his seat to become a senior adviser in the White House. It is a deep blue district where Democrats are expected to maintain control on March 20, but the question is who will emerge. Running in the district is Democratic state Sens. Troy Carter and Karen Peterson and activist Gary Chambers, along with Republican Claston Bernard. All the candidates (plus a handful of others) compete in one all-party primary. If someone breaks 50 percent, they win the seat. If not, the top two advance to an April 24 runoff.

Peterson has the backing of the state Democratic Party (she is a former party chair) as well as national groups like EMILY's List and Our Revolution, while Carter has Richmond's support. Bernard has been endorsed by the state Republican Party, but it would be a major climb for a Republican to make any sort of waves in this district (at least when the Democrats aren't under indictment and hiding bribe money in the freezer).

— LA-05: This district, which stretches along much of the state's eastern border, is a heavily Republican district that will likely stay that way. It is open because Republican Luke Letlow died of Covid-19 complications after winning the 2020 election, days before he was set to be sworn in. His widow, Julia Letlow, is running and is the presumed frontrunner in the district. She has the backing of the state GOP and national Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, who represents neighboring LA-01. The state Democratic Party backed Candy Christophe, who narrowly missed out on a runoff in 2020. (Luke Letlow easily won that runoff against fellow Republican Lance Harris, who did not run again for the special election.)

— NM-01: This race will officially kick off presuming that current Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland is confirmed as Interior secretary. (A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday .) She has not yet resigned from her seat, so nothing has been scheduled yet. It is still a bit fuzzy how nominees will be picked: Current policy calls for state parties to select nominees in the case of a vacant House seat. But there is a bill making its way through the state legislature that seeks to change the process to a special primary election. This district is likely to remain in Democratic hands in all but the most hostile scenarios for Team Blue, after Haaland carried it by about 16 points in 2020 and Biden notched a 23-point win. More than a dozen candidates have already declared interest; the Albuquerque Journal's Ryan Boetel has a roundup of those who have already said they'd run.

— OH-11: The second House Democrat nominated for a cabinet position is HUD Secretary-designate Marcia Fudge. (Fudge has been approved by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, but has not gotten a full vote in the Senate.) This race in the safe blue district sweeping from Cleveland to Akron also hasn't been scheduled yet, but it is shaping up to be a battle between different wings of the Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others figures on the left have lined up behind former state Sen. Nina Turner, who ran the Sanders-founded Our Revolution group for a time and was a prominent surrogate for the Vermonter on the presidential campaign trail. Meanwhile, Shontel Brown — a Cuyahoga County council member and chair of the county Democratic Party — is emerging as Turner's main opponent. HuffPost's Daniel Marans has a good story on the district that we highlighted in Score last week.

— TX-06: This race to replace the late GOP Rep. Ron Wright, who died after contracting the coronavirus, is still in its infancy, with many could-be candidates saying they were waiting until after the late lawmaker's funeral, which happened this weekend, before talking about the political ramifications of his death. A special election hasn't been scheduled yet, but this would likely be the most competitive of the bunch. The district, initially drawn as a safe Republican seat at the start of the decade, has raced toward competitiveness: Mitt Romney carried it by 17 points in 2012, but former President Donald Trump won a 3-point squeaker there in 2020. (Wright won reelection by 9 points.) Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez, who ran competitively against Wright in 2018, already announced she would run again.

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Down the Ballot

THE CASH DASH — Fundraising continues unabated for the political parties, but many of the congressional party committees are still carrying significant debt. Republicans also completed a clean sweep in outraising their Democratic counterparts. All of these filing cover the month of January.

— DNC: The DNC raised $13.5 million, spent $7.4 million and had $44.9 million in the bank, with $5.2 million in debt (DNC filing).

— RNC: The RNC raised $16.3 million, spent $13.1 million and had $83.7 million in cash reserves (RNC filing).

— DSCC: The DSCC raised $6.1 million, spent $6.8 million and had $9 million in the bank, with $20 million in debt (DSCC filing).

— NRSC: The NRSC raised $8.3 million, spent $5.5 million and had $17.2 million in cash reserves, with $9 million in debt (NRSC filing).

— DCCC: The DCCC raised $7 million, spent $5.6 million and had $22.4 million in the bank, with $13 million in debt (DCCC filing).

— NRCC: The NRCC raised $7.5 million, spent $6.5 million and had $13.5 million in cash on hand (NRCC filing).

OLD DOMINION — We have polling on both sides of the Virginia gubernatorial primary, courtesy of the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University. Both primary fields remain unsettled. In the Democratic primary, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe is at 26 percent, Lt. Gov. Justice Fairfax is at 12 percent, former state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy and state Sen. Jennifer McClellan at 4 percent each and state Del. Lee Carter at 1 percent. 49 percent are undecided.

On the Republican side, state Sen. Amanda Chase sits up top at 17 percent, former state House Speaker Kirk Cox is at 10 percent and Pete Snyder is at 6 percent. 55 percent are undecided (1,005 registered voters [for the entire survey], Jan. 31-Feb. 14; +/- 3.4 percentage point MoE).

— A Virginia judge tossed a lawsuit from Chase that sought to stop the Republican Party from having a convention because of the state's pandemic rules, The Washington Post's Laura Vozzella reported. The judge ruled that Chase did not have standing to sue.

THE PROCESS — The Georgia state House had its first hearing on Friday into a "far-reaching" bill introduced by state Republicans that would impose restrictions on voting in the state, including banning early voting on Sundays and adding an ID requirement for mail voting. Many witnesses spoke out against it, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Mark Niesse reported. The bill is set to be amended today, and it could get a committee vote.

— Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, pitched plans to add some restrictions to mail voting in the state, POLITICO Florida's Gary Fineout reported, including limiting drop boxes and requiring that voters request ballots every election year. (A request currently carries over for two general elections.)

— Republicans in several states have started targeting ballot initiative processes to make it harder to pass them, after liberals have used them in recent years to pass progressive policies, The Hill's Reid Wilson reported.

EMPIRE STATE — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has been embroiled in a scandal about nursing home data, as the dreaded "third-term curse" seemingly kicks in. POLITICO New York's Terry Golway has a deep dive on the history of the curse that has often befell prominent politicians in the state who stick around for longer than two terms: "There is little question now that even Cuomo, as resourceful as any of his predecessors and shrewder than most, has come face to face with the third-term curse. The nursing home scandal he now faces will shadow his pending reelection campaign next year — assuming nothing worse happens between now and then — and may yet threaten his presumed bid for a fourth term."

— Democrat Maya Wiley secured the endorsement of New York City's largest union, Local 1199 of SEIU, a boost to her mayoral campaign, the New York Daily News' Michael Gartland reported.

REPUBLICAN TEN-SION — A former Trump aide is expected to primary Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president, POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt reported. Alex reports that Max Miller has been in talks with donors in the state and other party leaders, and recently purchased a home in the district. Miller worked for both the White House and Trump campaign in senior operations roles.

IN CONGRESS — Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), the lead author of H.R. 1, Democrats' sweeping elections and campaign finance bill, announced that every House Democrat has signed on as a co-sponsor. The bill, which passed on a party-line vote out of the chamber in 2019 only to die in the Senate, is expected to get a floor vote next week in the House. It then heads back to the Senate, where it faces a more uncertain future.

— The House Administration Committee took its first formal (baby) steps on Democrat Rita Hart's challenge to freshman GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks' narrow victory in IA-02. POLITICO Campaigns' Ally Mutnick : "The Friday meeting was brief. Members unanimously agreed to a resolution that establishes procedures the committee will abide by as it considers recent elections contested under the act. The committee has yet to act on a request by Miller-Meeks to dismiss Hart's contest. A formal refusal to dismiss is what would truly set an investigation into motion, opening up a lengthy discovery period during which the campaigns can submit evidence and the committee could request ballots or even send staff into the southeastern Iowa district."

AFTER-ACTION REPORT — Biden may have beaten Trump in November. But with underwhelming results down the ballot, Democratic groups are pulling together a review, The New York Times' Alex Burns reported. The Times reported that the effort is backed Third Way, End Citizens United, the Latino Victory Fund and Collective PAC, with three Democratic caucuses on board: the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, and the New Democrat Coalition. 270 Strategies is carrying out the process.

THE GOLDEN STATE — The campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, progresses: The state has now validated nearly 670,000 signatures of the roughly 1.5 million that they need, POLITICO California's Jeremy B. White reported. Of the nearly 800,000 signatures reviewed, 84 percent have been found valid, a high rate. Organizers of the recall are happy with their progress, but some in the state are saying it could be a tight call.

Newsom also recently signed legislation that would require all elections conducted in 2021 to be conducted predominantly by mail, Jeremy wrote (for Pros), with all active, registered voters being mailed a ballot. This would include any potential recall.

NOTABLE FLOATABLES — Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a Republican, has been calling key operatives in Wisconsin as he floats a run for governor, my POLITICO Playbook colleagues report.

CONSULTANTS' CORNER — Three veteran Democratic consultants — Meredith Kelly, AJ Lenar and Trey Nix — are launching their own "screen-agnostic" media firm called Declaration Media. POLITICO's Scott Bland has more (for Pros).

JOIN US TUESDAY TO MEET THE FRESHMEN: The freshman class of the 117th Congress took office just three days before an armed mob stormed Capitol Hill and in the middle of a once per century pandemic, making its first month in office just a bit different from any previous class. Join POLITICO for "Red, Fresh and Blue," featuring live interviews with newly elected members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. Huddle newsletter author Olivia Beavers will moderate back-to-back live interviews with Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.). REGISTER HERE.

Presidential Big Board

STILL IN CONTROL — In his post-presidency, Trump is still eager to exercise control over the Republican Party. POLITICO's Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw reports that Trump soon plans on vetting candidates at his Florida resort "who are eager to fulfill his promise to exact vengeance upon incumbent Republicans who've scorned him, and to ensure every open GOP seat in the 2022 midterms has a MAGA-approved contender vying for it." Trump met with Scalise last week, while The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and RNC chair Ronna McDaniel are also on the president's calendar.

— Trump is also set to speak on Sunday at the final day of CPAC, which is taking place in Orlando, Fla., this year instead of the D.C.-region, POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt reported.

CLIP AND SAVE — The fine folks at Daily Kos, the liberal blog, have completed their immensely helpful data crunch calculating the presidential results by congressional district for the 2020 election. You can check it out here; Biden carried 224 districts and Trump won 211.

CODA — FAKE FEC REPORT OF THE DAY: "Mr. SpongeBob Edward SquarePants" declared his candidacy for presidency with an impressively detailed statement of candidacy and statement of organization. (We can't condone fake FEC filings, but if you're going to do it … we appreciate the commitment to the bit.)

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