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By Zach Montellaro | 09/20/2018 10:00 AM EDT


The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro's Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races - and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day's most important campaign news - sign up for Campaign Pro today.

A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN - Score is giving you a first look at the donors to one of the many so-called dark money groups in politics, thanks to researchers at Issue One, a nonpartisan watchdog tracking money in politics. Issue One pulled the most recent 990 form of Majority Forward, the nonprofit aligned with Senate Majority PAC, which covers the group's 2016 fiscal year that ran from June 1, 2016, to May 31, 2017. In that timeframe, Majority Forward raised $34 million - and like all political nonprofits, the donors are anonymous.

The largest individual donor during that time period contributed $14 million, 41 percent of the money raised. Issue One researchers were able to unmask some groups that donated to Majority Forward - some that fall into that filing period, and some that do not - by scouring public documents. But the identity of the $14M donor is still unclear. The identified donors:

- The Advocacy Fund ($1.5 million in 2016, per page 59 of this IRS Form 990)

- NEO Philanthropy Action Fund ($500,000 in 2016, per page 17 of this IRS Form 990)

- Sixteen Thirty Fund ($500,000 in 2016, per page 49 of this IRS Form 990)

-CVS Health Corp. ($250,000 sometime between 1/1/2017 and 3/31/2018, per page 2 of this corporate filing)

- American Health Care Association ($200,000 in 2016, per page 39 of this IRS Form 990)

- Environmental Defense Action Fund ($200,000 sometime between 10/1/2015 and 9/30/2016, per page 22 of this IRS Form 990)

- Fair Share ($135,000 sometime between 7/1/2016 and 6/30/2017, per page 25 of this IRS Form 990)

- National Education Association ($100,000 on 9/15/2016, per page 149 of this LM-2 filing with the Dept. of Labor)

- American Healthcare LLC ($25,000 on 12/31/2015, per this LD-203 filing with Congress)

- Intercontinental Exchange PAC, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange ($20,000 on 11/2/2016, per page 19 of this FEC filing)

- The State Government Citizens' Campaign super PAC ($15,000 on 9/20/2017, per this FEC filing)

On the other side of the aisle, the Republican Senate nonprofit One Nation raised over $62 million in its 2016 fiscal year (the 990). This money raised is not a direct apples-to-apples comparison: One Nation runs its fiscal year January through December, while Majority Forward runs its from June through May. One Nation's largest single donor in that fiscal year gave over $18 million, 29 percent of what was raised. Like the largest donor to Majority Forward, One Nation's largest donor could not be identified through public records. Unlike the handful of donors tracked down for Majority Forward, the Issue One research team was only able to identify one donor to One Nation in recent years -
$200,000 from the American Health Care Association in 2016.

The vast majority of money given to both of these groups (and most political nonprofits) remains unknown. Issue One used the same methodology to track these donors as it did in its recent "Dark Money Illuminated" report, which sought to source donations to AAN, AFP, Crossroads GPS, Patriot Majority USA, PPAF, VoteVets Action Fund, the Chamber of Commerce and more.

Good Thursday morning. As always email me at zmontellaro@politico.com or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the great Campaign Pro team at sbland@politico.com, eschneider@politico.com, dstrauss@politico.com and jarkin@politico.com and mseverns@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @ec_schneider, @DanielStrauss4, @JamesArkin and @MaggieSeverns.

Days until the 2018 election: 47.

HIGH AND DRY - Democrats running in New York are still waiting for help from Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. POLITICO New York's Laura Nahmias and Bill Mahoney: "The governor held a few campaign rallies where he's taken a noticeably light touch on the incumbents and done little fundraising. When he held a rally Tuesday in New York City with labor unions and argued New York needed to elect a blue Congress to stop President Donald Trump, it was one of only a handful of rallies he's done for Democrats across the state in the past year. Back in June of 2017, he suggested he'd be relentless in pursuit of a Democratic House. ...

"One campaign manager for a House Democratic candidate said the campaign had had no contact so far with the state party or the governor's campaign. A senior campaign official for another campaign told POLITICO the campaign had had minimal contact with state party officials so far, but is hopeful there will be more."

IN THE VALLEY - Facebook is working on building a war room (both in the physical sense and in the staffing sense) to protect elections. The New York Times' Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac: "More than 300 people across the company are working on the initiative, but the War Room will house a smaller team of about 20 people focused on rooting out disinformation, monitoring false news and deleting fake accounts that may be trying to influence voters before coming elections in the United States, Brazil and other countries. ...

Samidh Chakrabarti, who leads Facebook's elections and civic engagement team, said what "happens in the War Room will be a 'last line of defense' for Facebook engineers to quickly spot unforeseen problems on and near Election Days in different countries. ... Many of the company's other measures are meant to stop disinformation and other problems long before they show up in the War Room. Once a problem reaches the War Room, the dashboards will be set to spot and track unusual activity, while data scientists and security experts take a closer look."

- Google rolled out a new tool to track what voters are searching for: the Google Trends Midterm page. The tool shows which issues voters are searching for, down to a county level. Poynter's Kristen Hare has more details.

SCOTUS WARS - Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill became the first vulnerable Democratic senator to say they won't back Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. POLITICO's Burgess Everett: "The Missouri senator, who is up for reelection this fall in a conservative state, cited Kavanaugh's views on 'dark, anonymous money that is crushing our democracy.' She said that the 'troubling' allegation of sexual assault leveled against Kavanaugh did not influence her decision."

SECURITY CHECK - The DNC is ditching Android phones in favor of iPhones and encouraging Democrats across the country to do the same. Forbes' Thomas Brewster: "[T]he DNC is choosing Apple over Google, promoting iPhones across not just its own staff, but campaigns, committees and state Democratic bodies too. That's according to Bob Lord, the chief information security officer at the DNC. Lord, who was previously in the same role at tech giant Yahoo, told Forbes that one key reason for choosing iPhones over Androids was that Apple provided patches for security weaknesses quicker than Google's myriad device manufacturers. ... As for [Chinese manufacturer] ZTE devices, the DNC is actively
telling Democratic bodies to avoid using the phones."

COLLINS ON THE TRAIL - Days after indicted GOP Rep. Chris Collins said he'd remain on the ballot in New York's 27th District, he said he will actively start campaigning and serve his term if reelected. The Democrat & Chronicle's Jon Campbell: Collins pledged "to ensure New York's 27th congressional district - the most heavily Republican district in the state - 'remains in Republican hands.' 'Voters can be assured that with the recent turn of events, they can count on me to actively campaign for Congress, and to serve should voters re-elect me,' Collins wrote."

HERE'S MIKEY! - Independence USA PAC, Mike Bloomberg's super PAC, made its first big independent expenditures of the cycle, per a new FEC filing. The group is spending nearly $1 million on digital ads targeting three California Republicans: Rep. Steve Knight in CA-25, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in CA-48 and Diane Harkey in CA-49 (The New York Times reported Monday that these seats would be his first targets). Women Vote!, EMILY's List affiliated super PAC, also reported a $1.5 million donation from Bloomberg in August, along with a $463,000 in-kind donation of polling and research.

THE CAVALRY - Republican Danny Tarkanian is getting some help from big outside guns in his race in Nevada's 3rd District. America First Action, a super PAC allied with the president, plans on spending $1.5 million to back Tarkanian, The Nevada Independent's Megan Messerly reported. The Congressional Leadership Fund will also spend $2.5 million in advertising in the district, the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Ramona Giwargis reported. They went up with their first ad hitting Democrat Susie Lee for being "rich, really rich." Trump is rallying in the state today (Tarkanian is scheduled to attend) and will host a fundraiser on Friday that will benefit Tarkanian.

WORRIED? - Indiana Republicans are concerned about Mike Braun's prospects of taking down Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. The AP's Brian Slodysko: "Groups that typically back GOP candidates, such as the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, are sitting on the sidelines. Braun's recent three-stop 'solutions' tour - spread out across three days - was ridiculed by Democrats, who pointed to Donnelly's seven-day, 40-stop trek in August. And while Braun, a multimillionaire businessman, took out $6.4 million in loans to fund his primary campaign, he also publicly groused about the cost. Now, with less than two months until the election, he has yet to purchase air time for October, while Donnelly has outspent
him by almost double on TV and radio since June, records show."

BLACKOUT CURTAINS - Democrat Aftab Pureval's campaign in Ohio's 1st District is caught up in questions about a redaction on a local office campaign account. The Cincinnati Enquirer's Scott Wartman and Sharon Coolidge: "A Hamilton County Board of Election official said she blacked out the memo line on four checks at the request of the campaign manager for Democratic congressional candidate Aftab Pureval. The Board of Elections met Wednesday to discuss the redaction of the memo line on checks written by Pureval's Hamilton County Clerk campaign fund. The memo lines detailed the purpose of the checks.

"In a text message to The Enquirer, Pureval said: 'I didn't know about the redaction, and I didn't authorize it. Nothing is more important to me than transparency, and I've made that very clear to my team. All our filings have been clear and accurate. I'm confident this issue will be resolved in our favor.' Pureval's statement came after the board's deputy director [Sally] Krisel Wednesday apologized for blacking out the memo." The local election official said she believed the redaction was permissible, but that she now thinks the campaign manager should've done it.

FIRST IN SCORE - ON THE AIRWAVES - The Congressional Leadership Fund is going up with a new ad in Iowa's 3rd District, hitting Democrat Cindy Axne. "After being forced to resign from government, Axne started a consulting firm and got richer," the ad says. "Cindy Axne put herself first and Iowa taxpayers paid the bill." In 2014, a state lawmaker told the Des Moines Register that Axne and another official were asked to resign "to reduce management costs."

MIDTERM MESSAGING - More political ads are mentioning the opioid crisis. The Wall Street Journal's Dante Chinni, Joshua Jamerson and Danny Dougherty: "An analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that, so far in 2018, ads containing opioid messaging have aired in congressional and gubernatorial races more than 50,000 times across 25 states. At this point in 2014, there had been only one political TV ad touching on the topic that aired 70 times-in Kentucky's Senate race. ... Opioids aren't as widely discussed in this year's campaign ads as some issues-ads discussing the drugs make up only 3% of total TV advertisements".

- Democrats are also becoming more open to talking about their personal medical histories on the trail as they make health care a central message, Roll Call's Simone Pathé reported.

FAMILY FEUD - After the Congressional Leadership Fund released an ad in Wisconsin's 1st District featuring Democrat Randy Bryce's brother James Bryce criticizing him, their mother is calling for the ad to come down. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Mary Spicuzza: "'I'm used to my sons getting into disagreements with each other - every mom is. And I understand that my boys see the world differently when it comes to politics,' Nancy Bryce wrote in a letter provided to the Journal Sentinel by the Bryce campaign. 'There is now a group of people from Washington who consider it a good idea to pit my boys against each other for their own political gain. But they didn't consider a mother's pain at
seeing her children used as tools in a political fight, splashed with millions of dollars of ads across the airwaves.'"

A TRUMP ON THE TRAIL - Ivanka Trump is raising money to help defend Republicans' majority in the Senate. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Andrea Drusch: "An invitation shared with the Star-Telegram Tuesday lists the president's daughter as a 'special guest' at a Dallas fundraiser that's now being rescheduled, according to the White House. ... Ivanka Trump is expected to headline a limited number of campaign events for Republicans this fall, but could offer valuable fundraising help to GOP Senate candidates who struggled to keep pace with their Democratic opponents in the last reporting period."

AD ROUNDUP - James and I slogged through another round of ads 30 seconds at a time (for you, dear reader!), and we rounded them all up. One ad I want to highlight is from Democrat Lisa Brown, who's running against GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers in WA-05. Like many Democratic ads, this one is focused on health care. This ad features a testimonial from a woman whose husband died from cancer, and she credits the Affordable Care Act for allowing him to have insurance while he battled the disease. Even in many Democratic ads that defend provisions of the ACA, few explicitly mention it like Brown's does.

TREND BUSTER - One local election that's bucking the national trend: In a Texas state Senate race, Republican Pete Flores beat former Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego in a seat that has been in Democratic hands since the 1800s, the San Antonio Express News' Dylan McGuinness reported.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "This is the killer app of Obamacare. ... What you have to do at this point is duck and cover," Republican strategist Rick Wilson told POLITICO, on pre-existing conditions as an issue on the campaign trail.

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