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By Scott Bland | 05/16/2017 10:00 AM EDT


With Kevin Robillard, Daniel Strauss and Elena Schneider

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. (http://www.politicopro.com/proinfo)

SOUTH CAROLINA SHOWDOWN - Pope, Norman runoff for SC-05 GOP nomination today: Tuesday's Republican runoff for OMB Director Mick Mulvaney's former district has been an old-school conservative vs. establishment showdown. State House Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope has won the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $250,000 for him, and earned the endorsement of Rep. Trey Gowdy. On former state legislator Ralph Norman's said, the Club for Growth has spent $825,000, RAMPART PAC (last seen backing Rep. Marlin Stutzman in the Indiana Senate race) has spent over $250,000 and former Sen. Jim DeMint has endorsed. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz campaigned with Norman on Monday. There's been exactly one
poll in the runoff: A Trafalgar Group survey showing the two men tied at 45 percent. In the first round of voting, Pope beat Norman by 135 votes. And reading the results from early returns will be difficult since the two men share a geographic base in the Charlotte suburbs.

- The polls close at 7 p.m. The winner will face Democrat Archie Parnell in the heavily Republican district on June 20.

- Also, remember to keep an eye out Tuesday for one of our way-down-ballot races to watch: Philadelphia's district attorney primary. POLITICO Magazine has a story out on the ACLU beta-testing a new national DA strategy there: "venturing into district attorney's races across the country to turn out its members and turn up the heat on candidates to take a stand on ACLU priorities like mass incarceration." Full story.

MORE PRIMARY POLITICS - "Brooks' Senate run could draw familiar GOP primary battle lines," by Campaign Pro's Daniel Strauss: "Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks' Senate run could kick off the latest chapter in the long-running Republican primary wars. Brooks, former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and a field of lesser-known Republicans have piled into the special election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions' old Senate seat, now held by appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), the former state attorney general. And while Strange has picked up support from the NRSC and Senate Leadership Fund to keep the seat, Brooks could draw insurgent conservative groups into yet another incumbent primary clash."

- As he kicked off his campaign Monday, Brooks touted his high scores from a number of conservative groups, including the well-moneyed, anti-tax Club for Growth. ... For now, the Club for Growth says only that it is 'watching the race.' Brooks has an 86 percent lifetime voting score from the group. In an interview, Brooks said he had brought on consultants and met with conservative groups about his Senate campaign - but refused to name any of them." Full story.

SPECIAL ELECTION UPDATE - "Democrats face heart vs. head decision in Montana," by POLITICO's Elena Schneider (in Kalispell, Mont.) and Gabriel Debenedetti: "Sen. Jon Tester bounded to the stage on Saturday, whipping up a standing-room-only crowd with fist pumps and cheers that a Democratic victory in Montana's special House election next week will be a 'shot fired across the bow' of the GOP ... That's exactly what the Democratic base ... wants to hear. But an increasingly vocal handful of national Democrats, weighing spending priorities ahead of a possible battle for control of the House of Representatives in 2018, grumble that they're spending at all." Full story.

- IN GEORGIA - Handel releases first TV ad for GA-06 runoff: Republican Karen Handel speaks straight-to-camera in her first TV ad of the runoff period, five weeks before Election Day on June 20. "I've been involved in the 6th District for almost 25 years, from my time as Fulton County Commission chairman and as secretary of state, and even from my time as president of the Chamber of Commer," Handel says in the ad. "... It would be extraordinary and a real privilege" to represent the district in Congress, she continues. Watch the ad here.

- "House Speaker Paul Ryan urged Republicans Monday to rally behind" Handel, the Atlanta Journal Constitution's Greg Bluestein reports. "... In a brief pep-talk at a Dunwoody hotel, Ryan invoked the history of the suburban Atlanta district, which has been in GOP hands for decades ... Ryan said Georgians could play a deciding role ... in ensuring whether the sweeping plan to repeal Obamacare or overhaul the tax code is achieved. 'The left and Nancy Pelosi are trying to stymie people here in the 6th District,' he said." Full story. Ryan's visit could be the first of several big names including Vice President Mike Pence, also per the AJC.

Days until the 2017 election: 175.

Days until the 2018 election: 539.

Thanks for joining us.You can email tips to the Campaign Pro team at sbland@politico.com, eschneider@politico.com, krobillard@politico.com and dstrauss@politico.com.

You can also follow us on Twitter: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin and @danielstrauss4.

OFF MESSAGE PODCAST: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks that Washington is too focused on the craze around President Donald Trump and unable to see what's actually going on - and what's not. In the latest episode of Off Message, Isaac Dovere dissects what's really going on in the West Wing with the former chief of staff for Obama. Listen and subscribe iTunes | Panoply | Stitcher

FIRST IN SCORE - Northam releases two new television ads: Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam is out with two new ads in the Virginia governor's race. The first ad, "Emily," features the mother of a student wounded at the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech testifying about Northam's support for universal background checks. "Ralph was from a conservative district. But he agreed to take on the NRA and support expanded background checks," she says. Watch the ad here. The second ad, "Build," has Northam speaking direct to the camera about his plans to offer free community college and raise teacher pay. Watch the ad here.

ON THE AIRWAVES - American Action Network spending $400,000 on AHCA radio ads across 10 districts: The GOP nonprofit is up with another round of advertising thanking Republican House members for voting for the party's Obamacare repeal bill at the beginning of the month. The expenditure brings the group's post-vote spending to $3.1 million and total health care-related spending this year to $13.1 million. Key claims from the ad's narrator, as Democrats attacks the bill and the GOP: "It protects people with pre-existing conditions by stopping insurance companies from raising their premiums if they maintain continuous coverage, And it provides new funding for maternity coverage and newborn
care." The ads will back 10 GOP members in mostly swing districts, with a few others tossed in: Reps. Martha McSally (AZ-02), Jeff Denham (CA-10), David Valadao (CA-21), Steve Knight (CA-25), Rod Blum (IA-01), Kevin Yoder (KS-03), Bruce Poliquin (ME-02), Don Bacon (NE-02), Pat Tiberi (OH-12), and Speaker Paul Ryan (WI-01). Listen to the ads here.

SWING-SEAT SHOCK SYNDROME - "Frelinghuysen targets activist in letter to her employer," by WNYC's Nancy Solomon: "Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen wrote a fundraising letter in March to a board member of a local bank, warning him that a member of an activist group opposing the Republican worked at his bank. The employee was questioned and criticized for her involvement in NJ 11th for Change ... 'Needless to say, that did cause some issues at work that were difficult to overcome,' said Saily Avelenda of West Caldwell, New Jersey, who was a senior vice president and assistant general counsel at the bank before she resigned. She says the pressure she received over her political involvement was one of
several reasons she decided to leave." Full story.

- Frelinghuysen has never gotten less than 58 percent of the vote in his 12 House terms, but he is now being targeted early by Democrats looking ahead to 2018, after Hillary Clinton narrowly lost his district (NJ-11) last year. That first battleground experience can be treacherous for members whose campaign instincts may have gotten rusty in a previously safe district. Think former Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.), who grabbed a tracker in a fit of pique before losing in the 2010 wave, or Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who was redistricted into battleground territory in 2012 and was later taped saying he didn't think President Obama was American "in his heart." Coffman narrowly won reelection and
has since been touted by some Republicans as a model battleground-district incumbent - but first there was that adjustment period, and members sometimes don't get a second chance.

2018 WATCH - Democratic businessman and philanthropist Dean Phillips is in for MN-03 - and he says he won't self-fund his campaign for GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen's seat, nor does he plan to take money from interest groups or PACs. "I'm going to do it the old fashioned way, which is to meet and greet and pound the pavement and solicit contributions big and small," Phillips said in an interview. "And I think that's how this should be done." Phillips also said he planned to focus on Paulsen himself, rather than tying the incumbent to President Donald Trump: "I have grave concerns about the way our president is leading our country. No question. But to try to tie Erik Paulsen directly to Donald Trump
is disingenuous and something that I believe reasonable people would dismiss." (It didn't work in 2016, when Paulsen won by 14 points as Trump lost the district by 9.)

MORE ADS - SBA's List launches radio ads in North Dakota, Missouri: Susan B. Anthony's List is attacking Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill in radio ads this week, questioning whether "Planned Parenthood deserve our tax dollars," as "Planned Parenthood performed one million abortions in the last three years." The ads total about $80,000.

LEGAL UPDATE - "Supreme Court leaves in place ruling that struck down North Carolina's voter ID law," by POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "Chief Justice John Roberts issued an unusual statement Monday saying the high court's decision not to wade into the case should not be taken as an indication of the justices' views on the broader issues at stake. He suggested the high court's decision not to wade into the case was because of the confusion over the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general's efforts to have the state back out of the litigation and accept the 4th Circuit's decision last year voiding the controversial measure." Full story.

ON TAP - RGA chairman Scott Walker and nine other Republican governors are holding a "corporate policy summit" in Doral, Fla. Tuesday and Wednesday - at the Trump National Doral Miami. Schedule here via the Tampa Bay Times.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We believe we're for them, but they don't." - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, talking about Democrats' struggles reaching middle-class voters in the latest episode of POLITICO's Off Message podcast.

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