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
●PA-18 (special): In what seems to have become a tradition, national Republicans are complaining about how bad their candidate is just ahead of a competitive special election. The victim this time is Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District, a seat that Trump won 58-39. With just days ahead of his race with Democrat Conor Lamb, Republicans have told Politico's Alex Isenstadt that Saccone is doing almost everything, but especially fundraising, wrong. Unnamed Republicans even say that they've seen private polls give Lamb a "narrow" lead.
Campaign ActionThis isn't the first time that they've taken issue with Saccone's campaign. All the way back in December, Republicans also told Politico that they worried he couldn't raise a serious amount of money, and a few suggested that local Republicans were already trying to recruit another nominee for the regularly scheduled election. One nameless Republican operative even declared that there was "enough out there with Saccone to make him so wacky that Republicans—particularly moderate Republicans in the suburban areas—say this isn't my cup of tea," though we still don't know what they were talking about.
And it seems that Saccone's fundraising issues never went away. Saccone raised $703,000 during the first seven weeks of the year, which was considerably less than the $3.3 million Lamb took in during that time. National Republicans recount trying to walk the state representative through the basics of fundraising, and they say that NRCC chair Steve Stivers had to keep prodding him along. And Corry Bliss, who heads the major super PAC the Congressional Leadership Fund, even said on the record that "[c]andidate quality matters, and when one candidate outraises the other 5-to-1, that creates real challenges for outside groups trying to win a race."
Isenstadt also writes that the GOP was "horrified" with the few and underwhelming TV ads Saccone did run, and felt his social media strategy was amateurish. Even the White House reportedly felt Saccone was lousy, and they actually considered scrapping a planned fundraiser with Trump because they felt the candidate couldn't draw enough donors (the event was ultimately canceled because of the school shooting in Florida). However, while some White House officials wondered if Trump should cancel his planned campaign visit with Saccone to avoid embarrassment if Tuesday goes badly, Trump says he'll go anyway because he'll get blamed for a defeat no matter what.
Many of the Republicans that spoke to Isenstadt are likely trying to lower expectations ahead of Tuesday, as well as pin any loss or weak win on Saccone rather than Trump or the GOP brand. However, a few did say that it was unfair to blame Saccone entirely, acknowledging that the political climate was bad and that Lamb was a strong opponent. They also said that the outside groups that have been spending heavily to boost Saccone also have had a tough time. They argue that the GOP's earlier ads focusing on the tax bill and Nancy Pelosi "failed to move the needle," which could explain why, in the final weeks of the race, the GOP has taken to attacking Lamb's career as a prosecutor.