Daily Archives: August 25, 2020

House-Critical Runoff in OK-5 Today

By Jim Ellis

OK-5 encompasses just over 91 percent of Oklahoma County, and all of Oklahoma City.

Aug. 25, 2020 — Voters in the Oklahoma City area will go to the polls today to choose a Republican general election opponent for freshman Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Oklahoma City) who scored a major upset victory here in 2018. The Sooner State’s 5th District race is one of the top national congressional races, and a Republican must win if the party is to have any chance of re-taking the House majority they lost two years ago.

The 5th District of Oklahoma had been a Republican domain since 1977 when GOP candidate Mickey Edwards captured the seat after 47 consecutive years of Democratic representation, though in the final two years of Rep. John Jarman’s 26-year congressional career before retiring, he served as a Republican.

During the interval between Edwards’ election and 2018, four other Republicans were elected here including future Gov. Mary Fallin and current US Sen. James Lankford. In 2018, then-Rep. Steve Russell lost to Horn in a 51-49 percent result, a margin of 3,338 votes.

Today’s GOP competitors are former lieutenant governor nominee Terry Neese, from both the 1990 and 1994 elections, and state Sen. Stephanie Bice (R-Oklahoma City). In the June 30 Republican primary, Neese secured 36.5 percent of the vote, outdistancing Bice’s 25.4 percent from a turnout of 68,032 GOP votes cast. A total of seven Republicans were on the ballot. A mandatory 50 percent was required for outright nomination. With no one receiving the required majority, the top two finishers, Neese and Bice, advanced into today’s runoff election.

Both Neese and Bice were the top fundraisers for the primary. For the campaign through the Aug. 5 pre-election period before this runoff, Bice had raised over $1.463 million, just ahead of Neese’s $1.235 million. According to Neese’s financial disclosure report, however, $450,000 of her receipts were self-contributed in the form of a candidate loan. Helping Neese has been an ongoing $982,000-plus media independent expenditure from the Club for Growth whose leadership is opposing Bice. An expenditure of this size obviously gives Neese a huge boost in the runoff election.

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MA-1: Will Rep. Neal Become #9?

By Jim Ellis

Rep. Richard Neal (left) finds himself defending his seat against credible Democratic challenger Alex Morse.

Aug. 25, 2020 — The intense Democratic Senate primary battle between incumbent Sen. Ed Markey and challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Newton), is not the only Massachusetts competitive intra-party campaign to be decided in the upcoming Sept. 1 nomination election.

House Ways & Means Committee chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Springfield) finds himself defending his seat against credible Democratic challenger Alex Morse, the mayor of Holyoke, a city of 40,000-plus people located just eight miles north of Springfield on I-391. Neal is clearly taking this primary seriously and fighting hard to avoid being the ninth House incumbent denied re-nomination in the 2020 election cycle.

Rep. Neal has already spent $4.3 million for his re-nomination campaign as reported in the Aug. 12 pre-primary Federal Election Commission campaign finance disclosure report. Conversely, Mayor Morse has spent just over $1 million, but the contest still appears close.

Now, an outside organization, Democratic Majority for Israel, has launched an attack television ad that hit Morse for a poor attendance record at Holyoke City Council meetings while claiming the local schools are among the lowest performing in Massachusetts. They cite, in support of their contention, the state government coming into the Holyoke district and assuming control of their education system.

Earlier, controversy arose when the College Democrats organization at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, located within the 1st District, accused Morse of sexual impropriety, which resulted in an immediate loss of local and national support. The move backfired, however, when it came to light that no such incidents had occurred during the times when Morse appeared at the university both as a candidate and previously a guest lecturer.

This challenge appears typical of the other three Democratic primaries where candidates successfully opposed veteran incumbents from the political left armed with money and support from national activists and progressive organizations. The three such challenges that transformed into upsets came at the expense of Reps. Dan Lipinski (D-IL; 8 terms), Eliot Engel (D-NY; 16 terms), and Lacy Clay (D-MO; 10 terms). Whether the Morse effort proves as successful remains to be determined.

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