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By Kyle Cheney

With Kevin Robillard, Sandhya Raman and Lauren French

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. (
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MARYLAND SHAKEUP - "Barbara Mikulski's retirement sets off Maryland Senate scramble," by Campaign Pro's Kyle Cheney (from Baltimore) and POLITICO's Lauren French (from Capitol Hill), with Katie Glueck, Burgess Everett and Kevin Robillard: "Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski said Monday that she will not seek reelection in 2016, opening a seat long coveted by Free State Democrats looking to advance. The race to replace the 78-year-old Mikulski - the longest-serving woman in congressional history - could pit Democratic powerhouses against one another. Potential candidates include ... six of the seven Democratic members of the House delegation, an Obama Cabinet secretary and the mayor
of the state's largest city. ... [P]ossible Democratic candidates include former Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who lost his bid to succeed O'Malley last year and is "seriously considering" a run, according to a Democratic aide in Maryland. Democrats control seven of the state's eight House seats: Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger, Elijah Cummings, John Sarbanes, Donna Edwards, John Delaney and Chris Van Hollen could risk their seats and run statewide. Van Hollen will "very likely" run for the post, an aide to the Democrat told POLITICO Monday night. The former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been vocal about his ambition to move up in House leadership or to run statewide
- and after backing away from a crowded primary in 2006 to let now-Sen. Ben Cardin run for an open seat, he is well-positioned to argue that it's his turn."
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POLITICO Pro's Kevin Robillard offers a deeper dive on the Maryland Democratic bench and the battle to succeed Mikulski, on in Campaign Pro's Morning Score:
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SESTAK WANTS A REMATCH - Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak will formally roll out his Senate campaign on Wednesday in Philadelphia, setting up a rematch against GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who edged him to win the seat in 2010. Sestak revealed his plans in a weekend email to supporters. "This Wednesday, March 4th at 11:00AM I will be kicking off my campaign for the U.S. Senate at Independence Hall - and I want you there with me. I won't go into details right now, but let me just say this: I'm going to make it interesting," he writes. Sestak began 2015 with nearly $1.6 million on hand. Although he ran a formidable race against Toomey in 2010 - a GOP wave year - he angered many Democrats by running
actively against then-Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. Specter, a former Republican who died in 2012, had switched parties to give Democrats a supermajority in 2010. Democratic insiders have pledged to recruit other contenders, but no one has stepped forward yet, and Sestak will begin with a huge financial advantage against any challenger. Toomey has $5.8 million in the bank.

AAN ON OFFENSE - "GOP group targets House conservatives on DHS fight," by POLITICO's Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan: "An outside group aligned with House GOP leadership will spend $400,000 this week to urge dozens of conservative House Republicans to vote for Department of Homeland Security funding - a new and more aggressive phase in the legislative battle among Republicans that's consuming Capitol Hill. The nonprofit, American Action Network, is airing an ad in three states - Kansas, Oklahoma and Ohio - urging Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to back funding for the anti-terrorism agency. The 30-second spot will run at least 50 times in each
district - on broadcast, in prime slots - Tuesday and Wednesday as the House is expected to take up a DHS funding bill."
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As Rauner rips the New Jersey economy and Christie brags about CPAC performance, here's POLITICO's Morning Score: daily news, notes and essential information for the 2015 and 2016 election cycles.

Days until the 2015 election: 245; Days until the 2016 election: 616

Thanks for joining us. We're eager for your news and feedback. Email us at
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kcheney@politico.com or find us on Twitter at @
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DRAWING LINES - "High court hears redistricting case," by Tarini Parti: "Attorneys for Arizona's state Legislature urged the Supreme Court on Monday to throw out the state's congressional map, arguing that the power to draw election districts cannot be in the hands of "an unelected and unaccountable commission" - even if that commission was established by popular vote. The Legislature's arguments were received more warmly by the court's conservative justices, leaving good-government groups who favor nonpartisan redistricting concerned the court could invalidate the districts drawn by commissions in other states, too. The case brought by the GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature against the
state's Independent Redistricting Commission claims that isolating the Legislature from the redistricting process violates the federal constitution's Election Clause, which states that 'the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the Legislature thereof.' Depending on how broadly the Supreme Court rules, the case could not only decide the fate of independent redistricting in a handful of states across the country, but could also upend some election laws ahead of 2016."

- "Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly questioned Paul Clement, attorney for the Arizona Legislature, on how the court would limit his argument solely to the redistricting process. 'All of these were done by referendum or initiative, so would all of those be unconstitutional as well?' she asked. 'I mean, we could go further. There are a zillion of these laws.'"
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"PORTMAN WILL BE REELECTED": Gov. John Kasich talked up his foreign policy credentials in a conversation with POLITICO's James Hohmann Monday, but he also offered some bravado for his party's chances to win a critical Senate race in 2016. From the POLITICO story: "The Buckeye State is a perennial presidential battleground so, even if Kasich doesn't run, he's almost certain to be on vice-presidential short lists. That's especially true because Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who Mitt Romney considered as his running mate last time, is up for reelection. Portman faces a challenge from former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, whom Kasich defeated in 2010. 'Portman will be reelected,' Kasich said
when asked if Strickland has a shot."

- More from Kasich, who's in town today for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress:
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AD WAR - Crossroads GPS aims at Hassan again: This time, the GOP group has bought $50,000 of digital ads intended to appear on Facebook, Twitter and browser searches. That's on the heels of a $230,000 radio ad buy that rips Hassan's budget decisions and reliance on new revenue to balance the state budget. The digital spot:
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YOU'VE GOT MAIL - "Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept.," by The New York Times' Michael S. Schmidt:

- "Clinton's thin shield," by POLITICO's Gabriel Debenedetti and Glenn Thrush: "Hillary Clinton is still weeks away from announcing her candidacy for president, but she's already absorbing her share of damaging mid-campaign-style salvos from reporters and Republicans - without actual campaign staff to defend her. Clinton, backed by Cheryl Mills, her most trusted adviser, has bucked the advice of many top Democrats - former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe personally urged her to staff up late last year - by pushing the hiring of many key staffers into the spring, until after her formal declaration. That has left Clinton, a defense-minded politician who coined the term 'War Room,'
without a rapid response team to offer robust explanations to reporters probing the fundraising and management practices of her family's foundation - or even to muster an organized corps of surrogates to get out the talking points. While reporters scramble to divine the precise date Clinton will announce her candidacy (the consensus opinion since late last year is that has she'll jump into the race later this month or in April), Clinton insiders say assembling and deploying staff is a far more important milestone. 'We have had our head up our ass,' one former senior Clinton aide told POLITICO, reflecting the general view of a half-dozen Clinton loyalists. 'This stuff isn't going to kill
us, but it puts us behind the eight ball.'"
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CHRISTIE FILE - "Illinois gov. Christie helped elect says N.J. 'going down the drain, and they ain't turning it around,' by NJ.com's Claude Brodesser-Akner: "In a speech to the Illinois farm bureau last week newly-elected Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner noted that Illinois has the highest property taxes in America 'other than New Jersey. I don't want to compete with New Jersey on anything, especially that. That's a disaster,' according to a report in the Springfield, Ill. State Journal-Register. 'New Jersey is lost,' said Rauner. 'They're going down the drain, and they ain't turning it around.' Christie spent a third of last year out of state fundraising for GOP
candidates as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. He visited Illinois eight times, supplying $10 million in RGA funds to help get Rauner elected."
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- "Christie to donors: I did well at CPAC," by Alex Isenstadt: "Chris Christie boasted to supporters Monday that he beat expectations at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference - an event in which he faced a barrage of tough questions from radio host Laura Ingraham. In a private conference call with financial backers of his Leadership Matters for America political action committee, the New Jersey governor crowed about the reception he received from the confab's libertarian-heavy audience ... A recording of the call, which was held Monday afternoon, was provided to POLITICO by a source who was listening in."
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CASH RACE - "The Goldman Sachs primary," by Ben White from New York: "Forget the Democratic and Republican primaries: The two biggest names in the 2016 presidential race are competing directly against each other in an elite forum, the halls of Goldman Sachs. Jeb Bush will be back in New York raising money next week with his sights set on Goldman, the wealthiest and most successful bank in Wall Street history. He has a pair of events scheduled for next Wednesday with current and former Goldman executives, sources familiar with Bush's plans said. The events signal that Bush hopes to go head to head for Goldman money and support with Hillary Clinton, who also has strong ties to the bank and is
expected to raise large sums from its executives to help fund her likely presidential campaign."
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- "The real Iowa kingmaker," by POLITICO Pro Agriculture's Helena Bottemiller Evich, with Kenneth P. Vogel: "A dozen potential Republican presidential candidates are about to sit down, one by one, with the biggest GOP donor in Iowa - a multimillionaire few people outside the state have ever heard of. Bruce Rastetter, an agribusiness mogul who's made a fortune in pork, ethanol and farm real estate, has long worked behind the scenes to help bankroll conservatives across the country, but Saturday is a public coming out party of sorts for Rastetter as he hosts the first-ever Iowa Agriculture Summit. It's an event designed to promote farm policy in a state where pigs outnumber voters 10 to one,
but it's also a bold display of the political power Rastetter has amassed - and a reminder to candidates that his endorsement would be a big get ahead of the Iowa caucuses."
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CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Maryland has a lot of talent, and they'll be telling you about it within the next 10 minutes." Sen. Barbara Mikulski, as she declined to say whether she has a favored candidate in mind to succeed her.

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