MOScout Daily Update: October Quarter Talk - Vulnerable GOP House Seats - Jones' Next Moves - DHSS' Data Problems and more...
Early October Quarter Talk
The October campaign finance deadline is Thursday 5PM. Here’s some early information….
· Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe posted his October report over the weekend. It showed $160K raised in the month of September. Adding that to his 8-Day and 30-Day reports and it looks like Kehoe raised $390K during the last three months. He now has $577K cash on-hand in his candidate committee. His PAC, American Dream PAC, hasn’t filed its report yet. One observer: “As when he led the Republican Senate campaign arm, he's showing his fundraising chops thanks to a solid statewide network built over his business career. Remember, the election is in 22 days, but 2024 starts in 23 days!”
· Expectations are so another very strong quarter from Rep. Deb Lavender, running in Senate 15. She has consistently outraised incumbent Sen. Andrew Koenig. I’m told cash on-hand will be north of $600K with pages and pages of donors. Lavender’s strength is one of the reasons Republicans are getting nervous about St. Louis County (see below).
GOP Fear in STL County
First, don’t gloss over this important caveat – in polling beware looking into subgroups where the margin for error can go from modest to enormous as the sample size is sliced.
But – with that caveat – inside the numbers last week’s MOScout/Remington Senate 15 poll, Biden was beating Trump in a couple St. Louis County House districts.
· Biden was winning where you’d expect in Deb Lavender’s House 90 (57%-37%).
· But also in House 99, the old district of Jean Evans which Dems recently flipped (57%-39%).
· And surprisingly in House 98 where incumbent Republican Shamed Dogan is running for his fourth term (57%-41%).
· Trump was beating Biden in Republican Rep. David Gregory’s district where Dems made an unsuccessful foray last cycle (55%-38%).
“Anywhere Trump Won Less Than 60%”
I was told by one Republican consultant that the HRCC “watch list” is basically any House district where President Donald Trump won less than 60% of the vote in 2016.
In St. Louis County, that would include the Dogan district. But also others…
· House 94, Rep. Jim Murphy is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the whole state.
· House 89, Rep. Dean Plocher does a good job representing his district. But Hillary Clinton took 44% of the vote in 2016, it’s unlikely that Biden does worse in 2020.
· House 100, Rep. Derek Grier has apparently become much more urgent in fundraising appeals and is taking his re-election very seriously.
Other Hot Spots
There are other clusters outside of St. Louis County that could be the site of Dem upsets (Clinton vote percentage in parenthesis).
St. Charles County
· House 65: Tom Hannegan (HRC 41.4%)
· House 106: Chrissy Sommer termed (HRC 43.5%)
Mid-MO
· House 44: Cheri Toalson Reisch (HRC 42%)
· House 47: Chuck Basye (HRC 44.3%)
Springfield
· House 134: Elijah Haahr termed (HRC 41.4%)
· House 135: Steve Helms (HRC 46.6%)
KC Suburbs
· House 16: Noel Shull termed (HRC 42.6%)
· House 30: Jon Patterson (HRC 44.3%)
· House 34: old Roeber seat (HRC 41.1%)
“Garbage” COVID Data
Post-Dispatch reports on DHSS’ new COVID dashboard website which has led to fist-shaking across social media. For all the governor’s talk about watching the data and being data-driven, this is a failure to collect and present the data. See the article here.
A reporting error on the state’s new COVID-19 data dashboard caused it to look like more than 5,000 new cases of the coronavirus had been detected in the state on Saturday, health officials said. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services officials said Sunday that a “database extract error” on Saturday caused an “incorrect inflation in the number of reported cases going back over several days, suggesting that over 5,020 cases had been added in 24 hours.”
Staff are working to fix the issue, officials said, though a timeline for the problem to be fixed wasn’t offered. Updated case numbers were not immediately provided.
The Reaction
· PD reporter on Twitter: Absolute garbage data reporting from Missouri health department continues. Today they say the 5,020 cases yesterday were caused by a "database extract error" but they don't give more accurate data. Eight months in and they still cannot get this together. This huge leap in cases made national news yesterday, yet @HealthyLivingMo director and spokeswoman have yet to explain the error or correct it and have been unreachable all weekend
· Republican text: This is ridiculous, at what point can we all together just flat out say [Randall] Williams has failed, seven months in and we still get these mistakes…
· Respected SLU researcher Chris Prener: [T]his is not silly survey about our experience on your website. This is about the inability of DHSS to report reliable public health surveillance data on a daily basis. This is a financial problem, a technical problem, and a cultural problem. All three need to be fixed… Dr. Williams should resign.
Meanwhile
Springfield News Leader takes readers inside the hospitals. Read it here.
Ask Renee Fesperman what it looks like to work in Cox’s coronavirus intensive care unit, she’ll offer a few words: Loud, stressful, sad.
Her fellow nurse, Lois Miller, said the room in Cox South's west tower looks like an “airplane hangar” lined with beds and “big, blue walls.” Inside, machines and monitors beep and screech. Phones ring. Patients, delirious and confused, cry out and attempt to pull oxygen tubes from their noses or crawl out of bed.
Care providers shuffle through the aisles, covered head to toe in protective equipment. They wheel equipment around on carts, practically yelling to be heard behind their face coverings. “It would, to an observer, seem chaotic,” Fesperman said.
But in that apparent chaos are nurses like Fesperman and Miller, working as hard as they can during their 12-hour shifts to save patients and help them recover… And in each of the beds, there are patients, fighting for their lives. Many of them won't make it.
“I’ve been a nurse for almost 25 years, and this is the worst continuous situation I’ve ever been in," Fesperman said. “We’re working our asses off, and patients are dying left and right."
Jones Details Post-Pelopidas Work
Nuggets from the press release…
· Speaker Tim Jones is expanding his statewide media reach by announcing today that he has been selected to host “The Morning Line” on Springfield’s 93.3FM and AM560 KWTO, The Voice of the Ozarks. Jones will host the show five days per week in addition to continuing to host “The Tim Jones Show” weekly on St. Louis’ 97.1FMTalk…
· Earlier this month, Jones launched “Elevation Strategies”, a strategic political consulting and communications company dedicated exclusively to elevating conservative causes and candidates at all levels of government. He is currently advising several members of the Missouri Legislature including members of the various House and Senate conservative caucuses.
· Speaker Jones has also been named a Senior Fellow for External Affairs at the Grover Norquist led “Americans for Tax Reform” (ATR). In this capacity, Jones will work directly with Norquist and his vast network of state organizations to expand the organization’s mission to support conservative fiscal policies.
· Jones continues to serve as the Chairman of the Board for “The Missouri Club for Growth” and Senior Policy Fellow at “The Hammond Institute”, a free market think tank based at Lindenwood University in St. Charles.
Lobbyists Registrations
Carmen Schulze added Carmen Schulze & Associates, LLC.
$5K+ Contributions
Democratic Governors Association - Missouri - $475,000 from Democratic Governors Association.
A Stronger Missouri - $475,000 from Democratic Governors Association – Missouri.
Democratic Association of Secretaries of State - $93,500 from Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.
DougPac - $125,000 from Protect Missouri Freedom.
American Dream PAC - $15,000 from Emery Sapp & Sons Inc.
Planned Parenthood Votes-St Louis and Southwest Missouri - $33,500 from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc.
STL Approves - $30,000 from Center for Election Science.
Birthdays
Happy birthdays to Reps. Jason Chipman and Rick Francis, Jeff Mazur, Mavis Busiek, Alexandria Cypert, and Charles Schlottach.