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By Theodoric Meyer | 11/01/2016 10:00 AM EDT


With Maggie Severns, Kevin Robillard 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)

LATE LOOPHOLE - "Vulnerable incumbents use taxpayer funds on last-minute mailers," by Campaign Pro's Maggie Severns and Elena Schneider: "At least three members of Congress in tough reelection races have in recent weeks used taxpayer funds to send mail touting their accomplishments to constituents, using a loophole to avoid a pre-election ban on the practice. In California, where Democratic Rep. Mike Honda faces an unusual general election matchup against a fellow Democrat who argues he would be a better advocate for the district in Washington, voters recently received a letter on congressional stationery describing Honda's work returning 'more than 1.3 billion dollars to the taxpayers of
Silicon Valley.' In Northern Virginia, where Democrats are fighting to unseat GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock, some voters recently got large, double-sided postcards touting Comstock's work on veterans' issues and on stopping sex offenders. And on all of them, in fine print: 'This mailing was prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense.'"

- "Congressional offices are prohibited from sending mass mailers within 90 days of an election. The ban is designed to keep incumbents from leveraging their positions to give them an unfair advantage over challengers, who don't have that privilege at their disposal. But Honda and Comstock's offices said they had not violated the rule because of what Capitol Hill staffers call the '499' loophole: If a specific piece of mail goes to fewer than 500 constituents, it is not considered a 'mass' communication and is exempt from the pre-election blackout. The two offices declined to say just how many different 499 mailers they had sent constituents in the three months before Election Day. The
office of four-term GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen, who is his toughest-ever reelection fight in Minnesota, declined to comment at all on taxpayer-funded mailers recently sent to constituents by his office." Full story.

FIRST IN SCORE - "House Majority PAC makes late push to rope Republicans to Trump," by Campaign Pro's Theodoric Meyer: "House Majority PAC is hitting the air with its closing argument on Tuesday: eight new TV ads that link GOP House candidates to Donald Trump, whether they've rejected him or not.The almost identical ads mostly target voters in suburban districts which Hillary Clinton is likely to carry - but where Democratic House candidates have struggled to seal the deal with voters. They're designed to tie the Republican candidates to Trump's worst comments about women, including the 2005 "Access Hollywood" footage that was published at the beginning of October." The ads target Reps.
John Katko and Lee Zeldin of New York, David Young of Iowa, Will Hurd of Texas, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Mike Coffman of Colorado, and the GOP candidates Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania and Mike Gallagher in Wisconsin. Full story.

WISCONSIN IS LOVELY THIS TIME OF YEAR - AFP joins late ad buys in Johnson-Feingold race: With just a week to go before the election, Americans for Prosperity is hitting the air in the Wisconsin Senate races, with a new TV ad attricking Democrat Russ Feingold on Obamacare. "Russ Feingold will keep drowning us in the Obamacare disaster," the ad's narrator says. "Higher costs. Lost coverage. Lost doctors." Watch the ad here.

- Senate Leadership Fund to spend $2 million in Wisconsin: Senate Leadership Fund, the main GOP Senate super PAC, is set to spend $2 million in Wisconsin as GOP Sen. Ron Johnson makes a last-minute push to defeat Feingold. The super PAC, which is controlled by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is matching the $2 million investment its Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority PAC, made late last week. A number of other outside groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth, have entered the race in recent weeks. Feingold, Democrats' best fundraiser this cycle, has been outspent for the past several weeks. He's led in virtually every public poll this cycle,
although several have indicated the race is closer than it was this summer.

- And Johnson's campaign is running a new TV ad in featuring GOP Rep. Sean Duffy. Watch the ad here.

THE BIG PICTURE - "5 keys that will decide Senate control," by POLITICO's Burgess Everett and Kevin Robillard: "Democrats had all the momentum in the brutal battle for the Senate as Donald Trump's presidential prospects took a nosedive last month. But the sudden relitigation of Hillary Clinton's email practices has them on defense in the last week of the election, injecting even more uncertainty into the half-dozen races that could go either way and will determine which party controls the Senate." What could reshape these races? A November surprise, a tightening presidential race, less-than-accurate polls in Florida and Wisconsin, a return to ticket-splitting and/or a weak Republican ground
game. Full story.

Days until the 2016 election: 7.

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

You can also follow us on Twitter, where we tweet about campaigns and the Cubs and that's pretty much it nowadays: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @theodoricmeyer and @maggieseverns.

FIRST IN SCORE - Heck goes direct to camera on national security in new ad: A new ad from GOP Rep. Joe Heck in the Nevada Senate race features him speaking direct to camera about "a dangerous world: turmoil in the Middle East, an aggressive Russia, an assertive China, a rogue North Korea and a belligerent Iran." Heck notes his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and closes with: "As a soldier, I've seen the horrors of war. And only strong leadership will keep America safe and secure." Watch the ad here.

FIRST IN SCORE - Senate Leadership Fund attacks McGinty on outsourcing: Senate Leadership Fund's newest ad in the Pennsylvania Senate race puts a new spin on previous attacks on Democrat Katie McGinty's trip through the revolving door. The ad goes after McGinty for giving a grant that eventually laid off workers in Pennsylvania and transferred jobs to Mexico. "Pennsylvania got played," the narrator says. "McGinty got paid." Watch the ad here.

- The super PAC is also running digital ads in two more Senate races, encouraging voters to turn out and reject "liberal Jason Kander" in Missouri and "liberal Catherine Cortez Masto" in Nevada. Watch the ads here and here.

NEW THIS MORNING - Congressional Leadership Fund debuts 14 new ads: Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network are hitting the air with a final round of TV ads. The groups have now spent a combined $45 million on ads, mail and phone calls in 32 districts. Watch the new CA-10 ad here. Watch the new FL-18 ad here. Watch the new IA-01 ad here. Watch the new IA-03 ad here. Watch the new ME-02 ad here. Watch the new MI-01 ad here. Watch the new MI-07 ad here. Watch the new MN-08 ad here. Watch two new NE-02 ads here and here. Watch the new NY-19 ad here. Watch the new NY-21 ad here. Watch the new VA-05 ad here. Watch the new WI-08 ad here.

NEW THIS MORNING - Freedom Partners launches at in North Carolina governor's race: Freedom Partners Action Fund is spending $500,000 on an ad attacking Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper for backing tax hikes as a state legislator and supporting Obamacare. Watch the ad here.

MORE POLLS - WMUR poll: Hassan 46, Ayotte 44; Van Ostern 43, Sununu 40: A new WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll finds the state's Senate and governor races are close, although Democrat Hillary Clinton has a healthy lead in the presidential contest. Clinton earns 46 percent of the vote to 39 percent for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in the four-way presidential race. In the Senate race, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan matches Clinton's performance at 46 percent, but GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte earns 44 percent. That's significantly different than the last poll, in which Hassan had a 48 percent to 39 percent lead in mid-October, even as most other polls of the race remained tight. In the
governor's race, Democrat Colin Van Ostern earns 43 percent of the vote to Republican Chris Sununu's 40 percent. Operatives in both parties have regularly criticized the WMUR poll, and Ayotte's campaign worked aggressively to spin the last iteration of the poll.

- Shea-Porter 37, Guinta 32, O'Connor 14 in NH-01: Democrat Carol Shea-Porter holds a small lead over GOP Rep. Frank Guinta, according to WMUR poll, though Shea-Porter's support has declined since the last edition of the poll. Shea-Porter leads Guinta 37 percent to 32 percent among likely voters in the new poll, with the independent candidate Shawn O'Connor at 14 percent. That's a much closer race than the poll found two weeks ago, when Shea-Porter led Guinta 44 percent to 32 percent, with O'Connor at 10 percent. O'Connor - who's poured $1.3 million of his own money into his campaign, allowing him to run TV ads - is stuck in third but clearly affecting the race. He has the support of 28
percent of independents, 13 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of Democrats in this survey. Full results here.

CAUGHT ON TAPE - Burr says he'll try to keep Clinton from filling Supreme Court vacancy: GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina quipped on Saturday while speaking to Republican volunteers that he was surprised a gun magazine with a picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover didn't have a bulls-eye on it - a comment for which Burr quickly apologized, CNN's Manu Raju reports. But Burr hasn't backed away from another remark he made. "If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court," Burr said. Full story.

VOTERS ARE VOTING - "Democrats go pedal-to-the-metal on early voting," by POLITICO's Katie Glueck in Greensboro, N.C.: "Democrats are in the midst of an all-out blitz to turn out the early vote, hoping to bank enough votes to overwhelm Donald Trump even before the polls open on Election Day. Nowhere is the urgency more apparent than in North Carolina where, thanks in part to restrictions on early voting enacted by the Republican legislature, Democrats hold a lead in ballots cast so far but are running behind their 2012 pace. In places that are home to significant African-American populations, like Greensboro's Guilford County and Winston-Salem's Forsyth County, Democrats are still smarting
from legislative changes that significantly restricted the number of polling sites available for the duration of in-person early voting - a method frequently utilized by minority voters." Full story.

PRESIDENTIAL SPEED READ - "Donald Trump used legally dubious method to avoid paying taxes," by The New York Times' David Barstow, Mike McIntyre, Patricia Cohen, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner: "Donald J. Trump proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. ... But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would likely declare it improper if he were audited. Thanks to this one maneuver - which was later
outlawed by Congress - Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes." Full story.

- "U.S. officials doubt Donald Trump has direct link to Russia," by The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers: "For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead - which they ultimately came to doubt - about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank. Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any link
between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump." Full story.

- "Swing-state Democrats don't sweat Clinton email review," by POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Katie Glueck: "Democratic fears that the FBI's new review of Hillary Clinton's emails might sap party enthusiasm at exactly the wrong time may turn out to be unfounded. In the three days since the news surfaced, early voting data and public polling suggest the rank-and-file are responding with a collective shrug. Even amid blanket cable news coverage over the weekend, Democrats continued to add to solid leads in early voting in several key swing states. In Colorado over the weekend, Democrats stretched their early vote lead over Republicans to 31,000 votes, including a 1,500-vote net gain in Denver,
the state's most heavily Democratic turf. In Nevada, Democrats netted about 6,300 votes on Saturday and Sunday - stretching their overall lead on Republicans to about 34,000." Full story.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "When you're the only one in the office in a costume this morning. #HappyHalloween." - A Monday tweet from Koch Industries, accompanied by a picture of Charles Koch in a Darth Vader costume.

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