The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
●MN-Gov: Minnesota Public Radio's Brian Bakst reports that the Republican Governor's Association has canceled its TV reservations for Sept. 26 to Oct. 9, though it still has ad time on the books for the final weeks of the election. The RGA's move is a big vote of no confidence for GOP nominee Jeff Johnson, but it's not a complete surprise. The RGA reserved $2.3 million in fall TV time months ago, but an unnamed GOP operative told Buzzfeed back in June that it was "likely" they'd cancel it if their preferred candidate, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, lost the primary to Johnson.
Campaign ActionJohnson did indeed end up defeating Pawlenty last month, and there have been signs of tension between him and the RGA. Washington Post reporter James Hohman reported earlier this month that party strategists may urge groups like the RGA to leave Minnesota and redeploy their resources to more competitive races. When Johnson was asked about this, he told WCCO that "[f]rankly, if there are D.C. Republican strategists that don't have faith in the campaign, it doesn't bother me all that much because these are the same guys that said I'd lose the primary by 20 points," adding, "I don't think they have their finger on the pulse of Minnesota or Minnesota voters very well."
The RGA's reported cancelation came around the same time that SurveyUSA released a poll for the ABC affiliate KSTP that shows Democrat Tim Walz leading Johnson 47-40. The only other poll we've seen since the primary was a Suffolk survey taken days after Johnson's upset that gave Walz a similar 46-41 edge. While neither of those polls are good for Johnson, they also don't indicate that he's a massive longshot. However, the RGA's move indicates that either they're seeing much more pessimistic numbers or they don't have much faith that Johnson is doing what he needs to do to win.