Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Earlier this week, Rep. Jim Renacci’s (R-OH) U.S. Senate campaign announced he and his allies had raised slightly more than $4.5 million since he jumped in the race in January.”
“As it turns out, $4 million of that was Renacci’s own money, according to a newly available federal campaign finance filing.”
Harry Enten: “The five presidents — George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman — who faced strong headwinds in the New Hampshire primary all had approval ratings among their own party members of less than 75%. The four presidents — Carter, Ford, Johnson and Truman — for whom the nomination was in doubt or dropped out of the race completely had approval ratings of less than 70%. The two presidents — Johnson and Truman — who dropped out completely had approval ratings of less than 55%.”
“Now, it’s not a perfectly linear relationship between approval ratings and primary difficulty for an incumbent president. The dividing line seems to be a 70% to 75% approval rating within your own party. Those above it do significantly better in primaries than those below it. It seems that when a president has an approval rating above the 70% to 75% line, prominent challengers are more likely to pass on the race.”
“Trump, of course, is well above the line right now. He actually has a higher approval rating among Republicans than Barack Obama did among Democrats just before the 2012 New Hampshire primary.”
Republican megadonor Foster Friess (R) has told party leaders in Wyoming that he plans to run for governor, Politico reports.
Denver Post: “Democrats have secured a candidate on the ballot in every 2018 Colorado congressional, statehouse and major statewide race.”
“At least two of the memos that former FBI Director James Comey gave to a friend outside of the government contained information that officials now consider classified,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Of those two memos, Mr. Comey himself redacted elements of one that he knew to be classified to protect secrets before he handed the documents over to his friend. He determined at the time that another memo contained no classified information, but after he left the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bureau officials upgraded it to ‘confidential,’ the lowest level of classification.”
[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]It’s ironic that this is exactly what happened to Hillary Clinton when some of her emails were retroactively considered classified.[/alert]
“Close allies of John Kasich have reached out to prominent GOP donors to gauge their interest in backing the Republican Ohio governor against President Donald Trump in a possible 2020 showdown,” CNBC reports.
“Kasich has not decided whether he will run for president in 2020, but Republican megadonors have indicated to his top political lieutenants that they are willing to back him over Trump under certain circumstances.”
“A Democratic wave this fall could indicate to donors that a change is needed at the top of the party.”
Bergen County Record: “To most people, the image that sums up Chris Christie’s time as governor is the picture of him on that beach closed to everyone else, in that chair with his family and friends while the public was shut out of state parks on a holiday weekend during a government shutdown.”
“The image that Christie wants to officially mark his time as governor and the one that the public is paying for will be painted by an Australian artist… At a total of $85,000, Christie’s portrait will cost more than what his three predecessors combined paid to have their images hang in commemoration of their political service.”
This is quite an ad for West Virginia U.S. Senate candidate Don Blankenship (R).
The Cook Political Report identifies “seven risk factors” for House GOP incumbents in the midterm elections:
“Only one incumbent, Rep. Steve Knight (CA-25), has all seven risk factors. Eight incumbents have six risk factors, 23 incumbents have five, 23 incumbents have four and 32 have three.”
“The DNC filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and the WikiLeaks organization alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 campaign and tilt the election to Donald Trump,” the Washington Post reports.
“The complaint, filed in federal district court in Manhattan, alleges that top Trump campaign officials conspired with the Russian government and its military spy agency to hurt Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help Trump by hacking the computer networks of the Democratic Party and disseminating stolen material found there.”
“The lawsuit echoes a similar legal tactic that the Democratic Party used during the Watergate scandal. In 1972, the DNC filed suit against former president Richard Nixon’s reelection committee seeking $1 million in damages for the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.”
A new novel from Jake Tapper is out next week: The Hellfire Club, a political thriller set in 1954.
New York Times: “It’s an ambitious debut, a meticulously researched work of historical fiction with a byzantine plot punctuated by explosive, Dan Brown-esque twists: a shootout at the Capitol, blackmail, murder, corruption, a stolen dossier, a terrorist attack at the House of Representatives and a top secret society made up of senior lawmakers, lawyers, chief executives and lobbyists, whose elite members engage in absinthe-fueled debauchery and other unsavory acts.”
An analysis by the Associated Press shows the nation’s six big Wall Street banks saved at least $3.59 billion in taxes last quarter, thanks to the recently enacted Trump tax law.
James Hohmann: “These memos only got released because Republicans lawmakers demanded they be turned over and threatened to hold Trump officials at the Justice Department in contempt if they weren’t, even raising the specter of impeachment. It’s hard to overstate how irregular it is for DOJ to release evidence central to an ongoing federal investigation. Special counsel Robert Mueller is probing whether Trump obstructed justice, and these notes would be key building blocks of any obstruction case.”
First Read: The Comey memos hurt Trump more than they help him.
Slate: Why were Republicans so desperate to release the embarrassing Comey memos?
“Arizona teachers voted for a statewide walkout next week, escalating their push for higher pay and increased school funding,” CNN reports.
“The Arizona Education Association announced Thursday night that its members voted to strike. Of the more than 57,000 votes tallied, 78% of school employees in the state were in favor of a walkout.”
Cook Political Report: “Multiple indicators, including generic ballot polls , President Trump’s approval ratings and recent special election results, point to midterm danger for Republicans. But without robust race-by-race polling, it’s trickier to predict individual races six months out.”
“Our latest ratings point to 56 vulnerable GOP-held seats, versus six vulnerable Democratic seats. Of the 56 GOP seats at risk, 15 are open seats created by retirements. Even if Democrats were to pick up two-thirds of those seats, they would still need to hold all their own seats and defeat 13 Republican incumbents to reach the magic number of 218. Today, there are 18 GOP incumbents in our Toss Up column.”
“That Toss Up list is likely to grow as the cycle progresses. Out of the 65 GOP incumbents rated as less than ‘Solid,’ 49 were first elected in 2010 or after, meaning more than three quarters have never had to face this kind of political climate before. And, Democrats have a donor enthusiasm edge: in the first quarter of 2018, at least 43 sitting Republicans were out-raised by at least one Democratic opponent.”
Amy Chozik writes in Chasing Hillary that Vice President Joe Biden had confided — off the record — to the White House press corps that he wanted to run for president, but he added “You guys don’t understand these people. The Clintons will try to destroy me,” according to the Daily Beast.
Playbook: “Senior Republican aides on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly concerned about their ability to ratify a NAFTA deal that the White House cuts. They worry that if the president’s negotiators come to an agreement in the coming months, they will not have the support to pass it. It’s the middle of an election year, and trade politics are particularly thorny on Capitol Hill.”
“It is getting almost no attention but Congress would have to ratify a new NAFTA deal — Trump can’t do this alone. The Trump administration has done absolutely nothing to prepare the Hill for a bruising trade vote in the middle of an election year, according to key aides involved. GOP leadership is well aware of the void. When the Trans-Pacific Partnership cleared the Capitol, it benefited from a multi-year, multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.”
Politico: “One strategy that has seemed to gain favor is to force a congressional approval on the new NAFTA by withdrawing from the existing pact even before the new one is ready. The thinking is that Congress will have to approve whatever terms are in the new deal quickly, lest the U.S. is left hanging without an agreement with two of its largest trading partners.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.