The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
●NY-11: Former Rep. Mike Grimm, a Republican who represented Staten Island in the House from 2011 until he resigned in 2015 ahead of a seven-month prison stint for tax evasion, has been talking about running for New York's 11th District again for a while, and he recently told Politico that he was "90 percent of the way there to run." Grimm added that he was very close to launching a campaign against freshman Democratic Rep. Max Rose. This seat, which also includes a portion of Brooklyn, backed Trump 54-44.
Campaign ActionIf Grimm gets in, he'll face a primary against Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who was Team Red's 2017 nominee for mayor of New York City. Grimm, per usual, is ready for a nasty intra-party campaign. Back in January, the disgraced former congressman posted a video where he declared, "It is comical to expect Republican voters will want someone as unprincipled, unaccomplished, and underwhelming as Nichole to share the ballot with President Trump in 2020."
However, Grimm may deter another Republican. New York City Councilman Joe Borelli has been eyeing this seat, but Politico wrote last week that the potential Grimm campaign was "freezing" him out. Grimm himself said this week that he'd back Borelli if he didn't run himself.
Grimm ran for his old seat last year in the primary against incumbent Dan Donovan, who had won the 2015 special election to succeed him. However, while Grimm had spent his career building up a Trump-like cult of personality by portraying the Obama Justice Department as out to get him, the White House backed the incumbent. Trump even told his Twitter followers that Donovan "will win for the Republicans in November … and his opponent will not," and invoked Roy Moore and his disastrous 2017 Senate campaign with a "Remember Alabama." Donovan did indeed win that primary 66-34, but, contrary to Trump's bold prognostications, he lost for the Republicans in November when Rose beat him 53-47.