| | | | | |  | | By Zach Montellaro | Editor's Note: Weekly Score is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Campaigns policy newsletter, Morning Score. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — Former President Donald Trump is urging Republicans to push his election fraud lie, which is showing to be a driving narrative of the party. — Democrats' sweeping electoral reform bill — the For the People Act — was introduced in the Senate last week. But does it actually have a path through the Senate — and what are the concerns some supportive of the bill are raising? — Republican Julia Letlow won a special election in LA-05 over the weekend, while Democratic state Sens. Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson will face off in an April runoff in LA-02. Good Monday morning. If our content management system is to be believed, this is my 650th edition of Morning Score. Time sure flies, huh? Email me at zmontellaro@politico.com, and 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 special election runoff: 33 Days until the TX-06 special election: 40 Days until the NM-01 special election: 71 Days until the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections and OH-11 special election: 225 Days until the 2022 midterm elections: 596 Days until the 2024 election: 1,324 | | | | 
Former President Donald Trump continues to push lies about the election. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images | RELITIGATING 2020 — Trump continues to cling to his lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent — and is pushing the rest of the Republican Party to join him. "Sadly, the Election was Rigged, and without even going into detail, of which there is much, totally game changing," Trump said in a statement on Saturday, where he called much of the federal judiciary "gutless" (including the Supreme Court), for not backing his bunk claims. "No wonder so much money is being raised on this issue, and law-abiding people have every right to do so!" Trump was responding to a story from The New York Times, which reported that right-leaning groups were finding that the "center of gravity in the party," as one strategist put it, was pushing new restrictions on voters' access to the polls, many of which have been predicated on Trump's lie. The drive "is now at the heart of the right's strategy to keep donors and voters engaged as Mr. Trump fades from public view and leaves a void in the Republican Party that no other figure or issue has filled," The New York Times' Jeremy W. Peters wrote. And while Trump may remain banned on Twitter, he has shown that he does not need it when it comes to his main focus of advancing his electoral fraud claims, and integrating them within the conservative movement at large. That includes everything from his CPAC speech last month, where so-called "election integrity" efforts were one of the major topics of discussion throughout the event. Expect Republican candidates' stance on Trump's lies to be among the most prominent litmus tests in GOP primaries. Multiple Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidates have "election integrity" plans, and The Washington Post reported last month that just one of the six candidates had "directly said that [President Joe] Biden legitimately won the presidency." In that vein: Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who was one of the objectors to the Electoral College, is expected to launch a primary challenge to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger this week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein reported. POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt and I reported that Trump is expected to endorse Hice, who has also spread misinformation about elections in his own state by saying he didn't believe Biden won Georgia's 16 electoral votes.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised that the For the People Act will make it to the Senate floor. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images | LANDMARK LEGISLATION? — The For the People Act, Democrats' sweeping electoral and ethics reform bill, was introduced in the Senate last week, after passing the lower chamber on a party-line vote. It is the party's self-identified number-one priority, being given the designation H.R. 1 (117) in the House, and S. 1 (117) in the Senate. If signed into law — and Biden has indicated his support for it — it would be transformational in basically all aspects of federal elections, from how candidates are funded (public financing) to how elections are run. But the path in the Senate remains steep. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has guaranteed the bill will make it to the floor: "Make no mistake: Democracy reform must be a top priority of this Congress and I will put S.1. — the For the People Act — on the floor of the Senate," he said on Wednesday. "S.1. is going to be a top priority this Congress. We will fight and fight and fight to get this done legislatively. Failure is not an option." And when there's must-pass legislation in the Senate, all eyes turn to the true president of Washington: West Virginia's Joe Manchin. (This is a joke; don't yell at me.) Manchin, a popular guy in the hallways among my colleagues on the Hill, said on Tuesday that "I haven't seen it" when asked if he supported S.1. (He did, however, co-sponsor it in the 116th Congress, when it died in the Senate.) Then there's the filibuster, which we have mentioned in detail in Score previously. Since the bill is unlikely to get any Republican support — the AP's Nick Riccardi and Michael Biesecker reported that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told a conservative group that he participated in an "all-day strategy call with national conversative leaders to coordinate opposition" — it would require Manchin, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and other Democrats to support changing Senate rules to approve it. As for the idea du jour of having a carveout in the filibuster for voting rights bills, that was immediately shot down by Manchin, who compared it to like "being a little bit pregnant." One thing to watch: Is there a universe in which pieces of H.R.1 are chunked off and pushed through as standalone bills? Noted election law professor Rick Hasen floated the idea of a more targeted piece of legislation in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing that not doing so runs the risk of nothing getting passed. In conversations Score has had with aides and activists, not many seemed to be entertaining that idea yet. But the battle over S.1 in the Senate is just beginning — there is a Senate Rules hearing on Wednesday — so any ultimate outcome isn't close to being clear yet. — Some who are supportive of the ethos of the bill are nevertheless raising concerns with it. VoteBeat's Jessica Huseman , writing in The Daily Beast, touches on some election administrators' complaints with deadlines and funding within the package: "The sections of the bill related to voting systems — wholly separate from its provisions on voting rights — show remarkably little understanding of the problems the authors apply alarmingly prescriptive solutions to. Many of the changes the bill demands of election administrators are literally impossible to implement. Others would significantly raise the cost of elections but provide no assured long-term funding." "The devil is in the details. There are aspects of HR1 that if they went into effect, wouldn't necessarily affect states like mine. ... We have to make sure, though, that we are not creating unintended consequences, and creating less opportunity," one Democratic secretary of state told me last month. "Those of us that are in support of the principle of HR1, we want to work closely with Congress, to make sure that states that have very accessible election systems in place, that those are protected, that those aren't unintentionally altered to the negative." The ACLU has also raised concerns with some of the speech-related aspects of the bill, first in 2019, and recently in an op-ed in The Post from Kate Ruane and Sonia Gill , senior legislative counsels at the organization. The duo praised the bill's sections on voting rights, public campaign financing and more, but said there are "significant flaws that are detrimental to the health of our democracy and will likely have unintended consequences on the political rights of noncitizen immigrants as well as many nonprofits." JUST SPECIAL — Letlow will be the newest member of Congress, after commandingly winning a special election in LA-05 to fill the seat of her late husband, Luke Letlow. POLITICO Campaigns' Ally Mutnick has more on Letlow's victory, which makes her the 31st Republican woman in Congress. The special election in LA-02 is headed to a runoff between Carter and Peterson, both state senators, on April 24. Carter finished comfortably in first at 36 percent of the vote while Peterson inched past fellow Democrat Gary Chambers for the second spot. — FIRST IN SCORE — Democrat Victor Reyes, who is running for the nomination in NM-01, is out with what his campaign calls a "five-figure" digital ad campaign starring former state Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel promoting him. (Reminder that the state party's central committee will pick the nominee here.) #METOO ALLEGATIONS — Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) said he will not run for reelection or any other office in 2022, after a former a former lobbyist and current Army officer accused him of unhooking her bra and moving his hand up her thigh at a 2017 lobbying event. Nicolette Davis originally spoke with The Washington Post's Beth Reinhard, and her allegations were backed by a person at the event that night, along with two then-co-workers of Davis who said she told them about the incident shortly afterward. Reed did not say he would resign. Reed, who was considering a gubernatorial run, originally denied the sexual misconduct allegations in a statement to The Post. But on Sunday, he put out a lengthy statement apologizing to Davis. "Even though I am only hearing of this matter as stated by Ms. Davis in the article now, I hear her voice and will not dismiss her," he said. "Simply put, my behavior caused her pain, showed her disrespect and was unprofessional." Reed further went on to say he entered treatment for alcohol addiction in 2017, saying it was "in no way an excuse for anything I've done," but that "consistent with my recovery, I publicly take ownership of my past actions, offer this amends and humbly apologize again to Ms. Davis," his family and constituents. THE CASH DASH — Who doesn't love a good FEC deadline? Saturday was the reporting deadline for monthly filers, giving us a peek into the finances of the party committees. The reports cover the month of February. — DNC: The Democratic National Committee raised $21.9 million, spent $23.4 million and had $43.4 million in cash on hand, with $502,000 in debt (DNC filing). — RNC: The Republican National Committee raised $10.4 million, spent $10.2 million and had $84 million in the bank (RNC filing). — DSCC: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $7.3 million, spent $6.1 million and had $10.2 million in cash on hand, with $18 million in debt ( DSCC filing). — NRSC: The National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $6.4 million, spent $8.5 million and hand $15.2 million in the bank, with $5.4 million in debt (NRSC filing). — DCCC: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $11.5 million, spent $8 million and had $25.9 million in cash on hand, with $11 million in debt (DCCC filing). — NRCC: The National Republican Congressional Committee raised $7.2 million, spent $5.1 million and had $15.7 million in cash reserves (NRSC filing). | 
The effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, looks basically guaranteed to qualify for the ballot. | AP Photo/Jeff Chiu | RECALL ON ITS WAY — The effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is all but certain to qualify, POLITICO California's Jeremy B. White reported, based on the most recent update of verified signatures. Recall organizers said they submitted 2.1 million by the Wednesday deadline last week. Through March 11, 1.2 million signatures were verified at a rate of 82 percent validity, with the remaining 300,000 or signatures left toward the total needed likely to come from the ones still waiting to be processed. REPUBLICAN TEN-SION — Club for Growth, the anti-tax hardline conservative group, is going in against the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. Alex reports that the Club is endorsing Max Miller, who is primarying Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, and is sending an official to Wyoming to talk to potential challengers to Rep. Liz Cheney . "Where we see incumbents who are not good on the economic issues … when they stumble and become vulnerable, and there's a good strong economic conservative on the other side, we're going to look at that race and get involved in the primaries," CFG president David McIntosh told Alex. Alex also reports the Club is looking to back potential challengers to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). WORST KEPT SECRET — In what might be the worst-kept secret in Alabama, GOP Rep. Mo Brooks is expected to announce a Senate run today at a rally with former Trump White House aide Stephen Miller. Brooks even went as far as to change the name of his campaign committee to "Mo Brooks for Senate" on Sunday … so not leaving much suspense there. There is, however, significant jockeying going on to secure Trump's endorsement in the state. POLITICO's Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw reported that Lynda Blanchard, who was ambassador to Slovenia during the Trump administration, was making all the right steps toward locking it down, but that Trump favors Brooks. Brooks was likely always the favorite for it, but "what likely sealed Blanchard's fate, according to four people familiar with the matter, was the moment they said her team broke a cardinal rule in Trump World: they exaggerated just how much of a Trump insider she truly is." There was an outside group hoping to kneecap Brooks before his announcement. Trucks paid for by the American Exceptionalism Institute have been rolling around Huntsville, Ala., adorned with Brooks' picture and a reminder of what he said during the 2016 campaign: that Republicans "will be very regretful of voting for Donald Trump," our POLITICO Playbook colleagues spotted. 51ST STATE? — The drive to make D.C. a state gets its turn in the spotlight today, with a House Oversight Committee hearing scheduled for 11 a.m. The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis and Meagan Flynn have a deep dive on how the push from statehood, "once a fanciful dream of local activists, now enjoys near-unanimity inside the Democratic Party" that has elevated the issue as one of its top voting rights priorities. STAFFING UP — Vote From Home USA, a progressive group that launched last year to push voters to vote via the mail, will now be chaired by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. The group plans on running mobilization campaigns initially in three states: Georgia, Iowa and Arizona.
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| | | 2024 ALREADY? — The Republican jockeying for 2024 is already underway. "Mike Pompeo and Rick Scott are headed to Iowa this week and next, followed by Tim Scott in mid-April. Mike Pence plans to visit the early primary state of South Carolina, while Ron DeSantis appears to be conducting a soft launch in his home state of Florida. Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said he's never seen so much interest so early in a presidential election cycle," POLITICO's David Siders wrote. There is a big but, however: "What's truly unique about the Republicans' pre-presidential primary is the contingent framework that is unfolding around it. It's a primary — but a wholly conditional one. Prospective 2024 candidates, donors and conservative media outlets — the entire Republican ecosystem — are building strategies and structuring the race around the single question of whether former President Donald Trump runs again." DARK MONEY WATCH — Building Back Together, a pro-Biden nonprofit operating with the blessing of the White House, plans on raising an unlimited amount of funds without disclosing donors, Axios' Hans Nichols reported. (It has no legal requirement to do so.) The group told Axios it wouldn't accept money "from corporations, registered lobbyists, or the oil and gas industry." CODA — "WHERE ARE THEY NOW?" JOB OF THE DAY: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been named to the board of directors of the New York Mets, the greatest team in baseball. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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