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
●LA-Gov: Two Louisiana Republicans, Rep. Ralph Abraham and wealthy businessman Eddie Rispone, are competing in this year's October all-party primary to face Democratic Gov. John Bel Edward, and Abraham began July with a massive financial disadvantage against both men. However, as we'll explain, while Rispone has far more money available than Abraham, the Republicans are about even in their competition to see who can emulate Donald Trump and be the most racist candidate.
Campaign ActionAbraham hauled in $800,000 during the period of April 6 through July 4, and he had $1.3 million in the bank. That's actually a considerably better fundraising quarter than Rispone, who only raised $277,000 from donors and did no notable self-funding this quarter. The congressman's problem is that Rispone loaned his campaign a massive $10 million in previous months, and he still had $9.8 million on-hand. State law prohibited Edwards from raising money during the legislative session, which lasted for most of this quarter, so he brought in just $33,000. However, the governor had $9.6 million left to spend.
Republicans began fretting about Abraham's meh fundraising as early as February, though not everyone's in love with the deep-pocketed Rispone. LAPolitics summed up the knocks against both Republicans at the time, writing that "Abraham has the personality but not the money to win" while Rispone's detractors say he "has the money but not the personality to shake trees and move rooms." After months of this griping, Abraham's campaign now says that they just hired a well-connected fundraising team, though we'll need to wait until September to see if they've finally turned things around for the congressman.
Abraham's people will have to work fast, though, since the all-party primary is Oct. 12; if no one takes a majority, the general election would take place Nov. 16. While Edwards has run TV spots and the RGA has aired commercials slamming the governor, neither Abraham nor Rispone have taken to the airwaves yet. It's not clear when either Republican will go on TV, though Rispone cryptically predicted last week that, when the Aug. 8 candidate filing deadline arrives, "[E]veryone will know who I am."
While Rispone has considerably more resources than Abraham, there's one other metric that has them deadlocked: They're tied to see who can be the most racist. On Monday, Abraham endorsed Donald Trump's tweet that four congresswomen of color should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" by offering to "pay for their tickets out of this country if they just tell me where they'd rather be." Rispone also tweeted out his support for Trump and declared that "if these America hating crazies in Washington don't like it, they should crawl back under the rock they came from."