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By Zach Montellaro | 06/20/2018 10:00 AM EDT


With Daniel Strauss

VOTERS IN SOUTH CAROLINA'S 4TH DISTRICT will pick their nominees in six days in primary runoffs, and the battle for the GOP nomination illustrates the divergent paths the party could take - and how retirements and open-seat primaries change Congress even when seats aren't flipping from blue to red, or vice-versa, in general elections.

The runoff to replace outgoing Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) pits conservative bomb-thrower Lee Bright, a former state senator, against the more "Main Street" Republican, state Sen. William Timmons. Bright has a history of courting controversy, including comparing the decision to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol in 2015 to a "Stalinist purge" and making transphobic remarks. Timmons called Bright an "extremist" in an interview with Morning Score.

Bright has won endorsements from the most conservative wing of the Republican Party. This morning, Club for Growth PAC endorsed him with a statement from CFG President David McIntosh praising him, saying "Congress needs more liberty-minded conservatives like" Bright. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) both endorsed him in May before the primary, with King praising him for not being "afraid to stand up for the conservative values that will restore the soul of America." Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) backed him yesterday ahead of the runoff. (Bright co-chaired Cruz's presidential campaign in South Carolina.) And he has pledged to join the House Freedom Caucus if he was elected, and
said he would support Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or any other HFC member in the running for speaker. "Conservatives in South Carolina and across the country understand we cannot send another anti-Trump establishment politician to Washington," Bright's campaign said in a statement to Morning Score, reiterating his support for the HFC.

Timmons, meanwhile, is fighting charges that he's not conservative enough to represent the district. Club for Growth Action spent more than $300,000 on ads earlier in the primary painting Timmons and fellow primary hopeful Dan Hamilton as "wrong about Trump" and "wrong for Congress." Bright's camp casts Timmons as an establishment Republican and tries to tie him to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), whom Bright challenged in a primary in 2014. CFG Action, which has easily spent the most out of any outside group in the district, also announced a new $230,000 buy across television and digital on Wednesday, blasting Timmons over a gas tax. A dark money group called Conservative Leadership Alliance
has also spent at least $217,000 in advertising against Bright, according to Advertising Analytics.

"It was completely dishonest and misleading," Timmons said about the earlier CFG Action ad, emphasizing his support for the president. "I mostly self funded my race and as such I think I'm going to be able to have an unusual degree of independence as a congressman, if everything goes well. I don't think the special interests like when congressmen do as they're told."

The pair met in a debate on Monday night, which turned contentious when they sparred over how they would govern in Washington and on personal finances. "I'm not going to give you excuses about why I wrote a check to Lindsey Graham, I'm not going to give you excuses about why I badmouthed our president," Bright said during the debate.

The district is a safe Republican district, and the winner of the GOP primary will almost surely win the seat in November - although Timmons said Bright risks GOP control because he "very well may lose in November" because he is extreme. The winner of the GOP primary will run against Brandon Brown or Doris Lee Turner, who are facing off in the Democratic primary runoff.

- Plus, both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will head to South Carolina to campaign for embattled incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster. McMaster's campaign announced that the vice president will come to the state on Saturday and the president will be there Monday, the day before McMaster tries to hold off businessman John Warren in the GOP primary runoffs. The New York Times' Jonathan Martin reported that the president "intends to join Mr. McMaster for a rally in the Columbia area hours before the polls open in the state."

REBELLION BREWING AGAINST PELOSI - A growing number of Democratic candidates, including some of the DCCC's red to blue candidates, have said they won't support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to be the leader of the Democratic caucus. POLITICO's Elena Schneider and Heather Caygle report: "[Clarke] Tucker, an Arkansas legislator who's running against Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), is one of at least 20 House Democratic challengers who've publicly rejected the minority leader on the campaign trail. ... If Democrats win the House by a narrow margin, the 78-year-old leader could only lose a handful of lawmakers and still secure the 218 votes needed to clinch the speakership in a floor vote. ...

"Whether those statements translate into 'no' votes against Pelosi - when she'll have enormous sway over new lawmakers' committee assignments and other perks, and a presumably fierce whip effort on her behalf - is impossible to know. But for Pelosi allies, the spectacle is nerve-wracking. Never has the California Democrat been so close to regaining the speaker's gavel since losing it in a wipeout in 2010. Yet the very key to what many consider her last chance at the top job - a group of mostly younger, moderate Democrats running in GOP-leaning seats - could also spell the end of her historic career."

Good Wednesday morning and welcome to Morning Score. Three editions in and I've made my first Billy Joel reference in Score today. You're lucky I've made it this far. You can reach me at zmontellaro@politico.com and follow me on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro. Today I had help from Daniel Strauss (dstrauss@politico.com/@DanielStrauss4)

You can email the rest of the great Campaign Pro team at sbland@politico.com, mseverns@politico.com, eschneider@politico.com and jarkin@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter: @PoliticoScott, @MaggieSeverns, @ec_schneider and @JamesArkin.

Join POLITICO Playbook co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman and Playbook Florida author Marc Caputo for a special Playbook Elections event in the battleground state of Florida to discuss the 2018 midterm cycle and issues shaping the races. Part of the POLITICO-AARP Deciders series, this event will feature exclusive interviews with Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, David Richardson and Donna Shalala about their candidacies and campaign efforts to address the issues that matter most to voters. The event will take place Friday, June 29 at InterContinental Miami.Doors will open at 8 a.m. RSVP here.

Days until the 2018 election: 139.

Upcoming election dates - June 26: Colorado, Maryland, New York (congressional), Oklahoma and Utah primaries and Mississippi and South Carolina primary runoffs.

Upcoming filing deadlines - Rhode Island: June 27. - Delaware: July 10.

** Presented by AARP: There's only one true deciding factor in this year's elections: 50-plus voters. They won't be ignored and their votes are up for grabs. Medicare, Social Security, support for family caregivers, and prescription drug costs are all on the line-so you can be sure they'll be voting in record numbers.
aarp.org/vote **


ON THE AIRWAVES - Senate Majority PAC made a huge commitment to defend Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in his tight race against Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Campaign Pro's James Arkin: "Senate Majority PAC has reserved $23 million worth of TV ads in Florida for the five weeks prior to Election Day, a massive investment in what is likely to be the most expensive race this cycle between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and GOP Gov. Rick Scott."

- SMP also dropped a big buy in the Indiana Senate race, dropping two new ads: One positive ad defending Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and one negative ad attacking Republican Mike Braun on outsourcing. Roll Call's Simone Pathe reported that the ads will be backed by a $450,000 buy.

- And in Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jeff Greene will soon go up with an ad that seems specifically tailored to draw the ire of the president. POLITICO Florida's Marc Caputo: "A billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago is running for Florida governor as the only candidate in the race to stand up to President Donald Trump 'in his own dining room' - and Jeff Greene says he has a video to prove it. Greene's campaign told POLITICO he's featuring the snippet of video as B-roll in one of two TV commercials he's airing for a week as part of his mammoth $2.9 million introductory ad campaign.

"The video was taken in December 2017 by his wife, Greene told POLITICO, after Trump started yelling at him near the buffet at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. He said Trump was enraged because Greene both supported Hillary Clinton and had told the Palm Beach Daily News during the campaign that the Republican was guilty of sexual assault."

2020 STRATEGERY - Trump is setting his sights toward Minnesota for the 2020 presidential elections, POLITICO's Christopher Cadelago and David Siders report: "President Donald Trump, who finished fewer than 45,000 votes behind Hillary Clinton in Minnesota despite a threadbare effort that saw him visit the state only once, is intent on mining an urban-rural divide to capture the state in 2020. It's an ambitious expansion of the electoral map but Trump last summer confided to aides and state GOP officials in an Oval Office meeting that he regretted not campaigning more aggressively in Minnesota, suggesting he would have won had he held a second rally there. In the months since, Republicans
have come to see the state Democratic Party's increasing embrace of liberal candidates and policies as an opening for them to attract voters from rural, outstate districts who may be pro-union, and support abortion or gun rights."

FUNDRAISING CIRCUIT - The DCCC announced it had its best May ever, raising $11.3 million, including $3.3 million in online fundraising. This compares to $8 million in May 2016, according to the committee.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND - If Cynthia Nixon somehow pulls off her almost quixotic bid to take down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and goes on to win in November, she'll become a trailblazer of a different sort, becoming one of the first female celebrities to win elected office. The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher: "Every celebrity seeking office, especially those with show-business backgrounds, has confronted the question of qualifications. But will a famous woman be treated differently from all the famous men who have come before her? ... Ms. Nixon said that perception [that women have to prove their credentials more than men] is internalized, too. She noted she had
first been approached to run for governor back in 2010. The idea took years to sink in. 'I think women ourselves feel like unless we have a Nobel Prize, written a best seller and labored in the industry for 20 years then we're not qualified to put our hat in the ring.'"

ROUDA INCHES FURTHER AHEAD IN CA-48 - Democrat Harley Rouda's lead over fellow Democrat Hans Keirstead bumped up to 69 votes as of 8 p.m. Tuesday. Rouda tweeted that he's "confident these results will stand" and that certification will be on June 25.

BUSH VS. TRUMP, CONTINUED - The long-running Bush and Trump family feud drags on, per Axios' Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene: "Donald Trump Jr. and George P. Bush had formed an unlikely alliance despite their fathers, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, loathing each other - with Don Jr. backing George P. in his re-election campaign for Texas land commissioner, and even planning to headline a New York fundraiser for him on June 25. ... Two sources close to Don Jr. tell Axios that he has decided to pull out of the fundraiser due to the Bush family's opposition to his father."

A MESSAGING MATTER - Senate Democrats are pushing the limit on campaign finance rules, Campaign Pro's James Arkin reports: "Democratic senators are pushing the limits by essentially posting instruction manuals on how they prefer allied groups to attack their opponents, which super PACs have then turned into ads in within a matter of days or weeks. The messages are short, featuring just a couple paragraphs or set of bullet points detailing either a line of praise for the senator or criticism aimed at their opponent. Occasionally, they link to larger research documents detailing and backing up the specific claims. Links to these pages appear on the front page of campaigns' websites under
innocuous headlines like 'Missourians Need To Know' or 'A Special Message for Hoosier Voters.' Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, called it a 'further deterioration' of campaign finance coordination rules."

TRUMP CALLS ON CONGRESS TO ACT ON HIS FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY - The president spoke to the House GOP conference Tuesday and told them he'd accept either of the immigration bills in the House, POLITICO's Rachael Bade and John Bresnahan reported. He also talked about his administration's family separation policy and told Congress to address it: "Trump also said that his daughter Ivanka Trump had approached him about his policy of splitting kids from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, telling him the images did not look good. He encouraged Republicans to pass a package that includes a fix that keeps families together - even though he could stop the practice at any moment."

SWING AND A MISS - Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who once chaired the president's voter fraud commission, had his day in court to prove that voter fraud was widespread. ProPublica's Jessica Huseman took a deep dive on what happened: "The trial had a significance that extends far beyond the Jayhawk state. One of the fundamental questions in the debate over alleged voter fraud - whether a substantial number of non-citizens are in fact registering to vote - was one of two issues to be determined in the Kansas proceedings. (The second was whether there was a less burdensome solution than what Kansas had adopted.) That made the trial a telling opportunity to remove the voter fraud
claims from the charged, and largely proof-free, realms of political campaigns and cable news shoutfests and examine them under the exacting strictures of the rules of evidence.

"That's precisely what occurred and according to [federal Judge Julie] Robinson, an appointee of George W. Bush, the proof that voter fraud is widespread was utterly lacking. As the judge put it, 'the court finds no credible evidence that a substantial number of noncitizens registered to vote' even under the previous law, which Kobach had claimed was weak." The judge overturned the law Kobach was defending.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Is Mark Sanford here? I just want to congratulate him on running a great race," President Donald Trump mocking the South Carolina Republican in a meeting with the House GOP yesterday, POLITICO's Jake Sherman reported.

** Presented by AARP: Americans 50 and over are the nation's most powerful voting bloc. In fact, more than 60 million of them voted in 2016-and this year, they're more motivated than ever to making sure that their voices are heard in Washington.
They're frustrated with broken government. And they're fed up with politicians who'd rather get into fights than get results. The issues they care about most including Medicare, Social Security, support for family caregivers and prescription drug costs, are all on the line. America's 50-plus voters have put the candidates on notice. Anyone who ignores them will feel it on Election Day. aarp.org/vote **

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