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02/01/2019 10:00 AM EDT

By ZACH MONTELLARO (zmontellaro@politico.com; @ZachMontellaro)


Editor's Note: This edition of Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Campaign Pro subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.
QUICK FIX
- It's the first FEC reporting deadline of the year: President Donald Trump's reelection bid spent $23 million in the last quarter of 2018, while Democrats mulling presidential runs sit on millions.

- An early rift has emerged in the Democratic primary among progressive and more centrist candidates over tax and health care policy.

- Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) was flagged by the FEC for apparently accepting $270,000 in excessive contributions. Her 2014 run for the House faced similar issues.

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, unless you're a Patriots fan. Send your Super Bowl rants to zmontellaro@politico.com or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the great Campaign Pro team at sbland@politico.com, dstrauss@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com, and lbarron-lopez@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @DanielStrauss4, @JamesArkin and @lbarronlopez.

Days until the 2019 election: 277

Days until the 2020 election: 641
THE TOPLINES
FILING DEADLINE FUN TIMES - Thursday was the FEC deadline for year-end filings, bringing with it tons of information to pore over. Here are some interesting details, caught by the POLITICO team. Unless otherwise noted, the time period is from Nov. 27-Dec. 31.

In the presidential world (reminder that cash from a Senate or House campaign committee can be transferred to a presidential one):

- Trump is already spending at an impressive clip. "Trump's campaign spent $23 million in the last three months of the year, quadruple its expenses in previous quarters in 2018," POLITICO's Maggie Severns reported (filing). "The Trump campaign brought in $6.9 million ... Trump's campaign finished with $19 million in the bank".

- We didn't learn much from Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) first presidential filing. She reported $509,000 in debt (which was already paid off), but no donations because her campaign launched on Dec. 31 (filing). There are some clues from ActBlue's filing: Warren's presidential exploratory committee raised just over $299,000 on Dec. 31 on the platform (filing). Her Senate campaign, however, raised $154,000 and has $11.1 million cash on hand (filing).

- Julian Castro's then-exploratory committee raised $220,000, spent $18,000 and has $203,000 cash on hand at the end of December (filing).

- Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) raised $1.1 million (which includes $1 million from Delaney) and spent $958,000, from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 (filing).

- Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) raised $102,000 and has $1.4 million on hand (filing).

- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised $575,000 and has $9.1 million on hand (filing).

- Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) raised $1.3 million and has $1.3 million on hand from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31.

- Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) raised $651,000 and has $4.1 million on hand in the same time period.

- Montana Gov. Steve Bullock's Big Sky Values PAC raised $62,000 (filing).

- Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich brought in $29,000 and has $289,000 cash on hand (filing).

Committees/PACs:

- The NRCC raised $3 million, spent $7 million and has $16.6 million cash on hand (filing). The spending includes $1.1 million for legal counseling for recounts.

- The DCCC raised $5.1 million, spent $12. 5 million and has $5.6 million cash on hand (filing). The spending includes over $2.3 million to Perkins Coie alone for recount legal services.

- The NRSC raised $2.7 million, spent $8.9 million and has $7.5 million cash on hand (filing).

- The DSCC raised $2 million, spent $4.4 million and has $6.2 million cash on hand (filing).

- Senate Majority PAC raised $218,000, spent $981,000 and has $403,000 on hand, including over $285,000 on direct mail and telemarketing (filing).

- Senate Leadership Fund raised $90,000, spent $419,000 and has $6.2 million cash on hand (filing).

- House Majority PAC raised $500,000, spent $410,000 and has $445,000 in hand (filing).

- The Congressional Leadership Fund raised $219,000, spent $329,000 and has $591,000 cash on hand (filing).

Candidates:

- Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) raised $740,000 from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 and has $1.7 million in the bank to kick off his reelection bid.

- Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) raised $491,000 in the same time period and has a whopping $5.8 million cash on hand.

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IN THE TRENCHES
PRESIDENTIAL BIG BOARD - One month into 2019, there's real policy differences between the liberal and more moderate Democratic candidates, leading to early squabbles. "Though still gentle in comparison to the barbs traded by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at the height of the 2016 primary, the week's skirmishes over health care and taxes have come unexpectedly early to the 2020 contest, presaging a volatile year ahead," POLITICO's David Siders and Chris Cadelago reported.

- Sanders is the latest potential 2020 hopeful launching a tax the rich policy. A new proposal from Sanders - "For the 99.8% Act" - would greatly expand the estate tax, POLITICO's Holly Otterbein reported.

- Warren is expected to formally announce her run for president on Feb. 9, POLITICO's Natasha Korecki reported.

- Booker has been making calls telling members of Congress he is going to run and will announce in February, The Hill's Scott Wong and Mike Lillis reported.

- Former New York City Michael Bloomberg is preparing a backup plan if he doesn't run for president: Bankroll an operation to sink President Donald Trump. "The team wants to collect data about voters on an unprecedented scale, match those data with consumer data, and then hire a team of engineers to do high-level analyses," The Atlantic's Isaac Dovere reported. The Washington Post's Robert Costa has more on who Bloomberg has hired.

CAMPAIGN CASH - Some interesting details from Democrat Stacey Abrams' year-end filing from her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. She raised a grand total of $27.6 million through Dec. 31 (with a bit under $43,000 explicitly labeled for a general election runoff that ultimately never happened, which should be returned under Georgia law). She also seeded her nonprofit, Fair Fight Action, with some of the money from her campaign, donating over $1 million in the last two months of the year.

- McSally is under scrutiny for apparently accepting excessive campaign donations. The FEC "flagged dozens of contributions to McSally from more than 60 donors that appear to exceed [campaign contribution] limits, including one who cut a $10,000 check," the AP's Brian Slodysko reported. A spokesperson for McSally said she'll either correct errors or refund the money. McSally has a history of errors in her campaign finance reports, dating back to her 2014 run for the House.

NC-09, CONTINUED - North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper appointed five new members to the state board of elections: Democrats Stella Anderson, Jeff Carmon III and Bob Cordle and Republicans David Black and Ken Raymond. The board is expected to hold a hearing on the allegations of election fraud in NC-09 in February, but an exact date has not been set. The board will meet again next week.

THE VOTER ROLLS - The walkback of the potential non-citizen voters in Texas continues. In one small county, all 366 names on the list were actually citizens, the Waco Tribune-Herald's Cassie Smith reported. When asked about such inaccuracies, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott demurred. "They were clear that it was a weak match and they were reaching out to counties saying, 'Listen, this isn't a hard-and-fast list,'" he said, per The Texas Tribune's Patrick Svitek and Alexa Ura.

UP NEXT - Former Colorado state Sen. Mike Johnston, a Democrat, launched his Senate campaign with a video tying Gardner to the president. Here's more on his run from Campaign Pro's James Arkin.

ON THE AIRWAVES - Don't call it a Senate run, but... Abrams' nonprofit Fair Fight will air this ad during the Super Bowl in Georgia media markets focused on "election integrity."

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I met every member of the Senate. We all have brains above a single-cell organism," Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) talking about America's Middle East policies on the floor of the Senate.

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