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10/12/2018 10:00 AM EDT

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


Editor's Note: This edition of Free Morning Score is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Campaigns 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.
THE TOPLINES
SHELDON ADELSON TO THE RESCUE - The casino magistrate is swooping in to try to save Republicans. POLITICO's Alex Isenstadt and Jake Sherman report he "is pumping tens of millions of dollars more" into the bank accounts of the Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund. We'll have a better idea on the exact breakdown on Monday when FEC reports are due (The New York Times' Jeremy Peters later reported it is "at least $25 million"), but this puts Adelson into the upper echelon of midterm donors - perhaps only rivaled by two Democratic big spenders, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and philanthropist Tom Steyer.

- And Democrats? The super PAC Working for Working Americans (which is funded by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners) kicked in $2 million a piece to House Majority PAC and Senate Majority PAC this quarter. A second labor super PAC - the UAW Education Fund - gave $500,000 to HMP and $200,000 to SMP.

VOLUNTEER BACKLASH - Some volunteers for Democrat Phil Bredesen are frustrated over the Tennessee Senate hopeful's support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. From POLITICO's James Arkin and Burgess Everett: "Campaign volunteers have been calling to cancel door-knocking and phone-banking shifts for Bredesen since his statement backing Kavanaugh, according to an internal spreadsheet maintained by the campaign and obtained by POLITICO. At least 22 volunteers so far have reached out to express frustration with the decision, according to the spreadsheet. POLITICO spoke with five who contacted the campaign to vent their anger. It's a small fraction of Bredesen's total volunteer force,
which numbers in the thousands, according to his campaign. But it's also just one slice of the frustration roiling Democrats since Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court last weekend."

Happy Friday! Smell that smell? Those are jet fumes, after Senate Democrats accepted a deal to recess through the midterms in exchange for confirming 15 federal judges. Just campaigning (and no legislating) from here on out, folks! As always, email me at zmontellaro@politico.com or DM me at @ZachMontellaro.

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

Days until the 2018 election: 25.

POLITICO IS PARTNERING WITH THE MILKEN INSTITUTE to bring a special edition of the POLITICO Pulse newsletter to the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. Written by Dan Diamond, the newsletter will take readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators as they tackle today's most pressing health challenges. The newsletter will run Oct. 23-24. Sign up today to begin receiving exclusive coverage on Day One of the summit.

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IN THE TRENCHES
MORE Q3 NUMBERS - MI-Sen: Republican John James raised $3.6 million. The AP reported he has about $2.7 million cash on hand.

- PA-10: Democrat George Scott's campaign raised about $901,000.

- VA-10: Democrat Jennifer Wexton raised $2.6 million.

** 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 **

POLLS POLLS POLLS - Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has a comfortable lead over Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke in the Texas Senate race. In a new poll from Quinnipiac University, Cruz is ahead of O'Rourke, 54 percent to 45 percent. The poll was conducted from Oct. 3-9 and surveyed 730 likely voters.

- Democrat Tony Evers has a decent lead over GOP Gov. Scott Walker in a new Wisconsin gubernatorial poll, a bit different from our last look at the race from Marquette University, whichhad Walker up 1 percentage point. In the NBC News/Marist poll, Evers has 50 percent to Walker's 42 percent, while the Libertarian and Green candidates combine for five percent. In the senate race, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin leads Republican Leah Vukmir, 54 percent to 40 percent. The poll surveyed 571 likely voters from Sept. 30-Oct. 3.

- GOP Sen. Dean Heller has a narrow lead over Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen in Nevada. In one of the live polls from The New York Times/Siena College, Heller is up, 47 percent to 45 percent. The poll surveyed 642 voters from Oct. 8-10.

- Republican Maria Elvira Salazar is narrowly leading Democrat Donna Shalala in a new FL-27 poll, a district Democrats expected to be an easy pickup. The Mason-Dixon poll has Salazar up, 44 percent to 42 percent. The poll surveyed 625 registered voters from Oct. 1-6 and POLITICO Florida's Marc Caputo has a deeper dive on the results.

LEADING WOMEN - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have appeared in Republican attack ads across the country. POLITICO's Natasha Korecki: "Over the last 30 days, close to 100 Republican-funded TV spots casting Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - or both - as villains have aired more than 34,000 times, according to data compiled for POLITICO by Advertising Analytics. In three battleground Senate races alone - Indiana, Missouri and West Virginia - ads featuring Pelosi or Clinton blanketed TV screens, running more than 1,100 times in each state. All told, Republican campaigns or affiliated groups sunk $28.4 million into the Clinton and Pelosi messaging
over the last month."

MORE MEGABUCKS - Steyer is preparing to spend $4 million on digital ads to mobilize young voters before the midterms. From HuffPost's Kevin Robillard: "The massive digital ad buy through the Steyer-backed group NextGen America will target voters ages 18 to 35 in 11 states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. ... The ads will run on most digital platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, Hulu and Spotify. But this buy will also include the first-ever political ads on Twitch, a video game streaming platform."

TRIAGE ALERT - There are more districts to watch where Republicans could decide to pull funding soon, courtesy of The New York Times' Alex Burns: "Party strategists said several other incumbents must recover quickly or risk losing funding, including Representatives Peter Roskam of Illinois and Mimi Walters of California, who represent white-collar suburbs near Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. ... In the suburbs ringing Philadelphia, for example, they may soon redirect money out of an open-seat race where they are trailing, in Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, and funnel it to Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, who are in
difficult races."

BALLOT ACCESS - The state arm of the NAACP is preparing to sue Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (who's also running for governor), after an AP report that his office is holding up tens of thousands of voter registration applications, most of whom are from African-Americans. Campaign Pro's Daniel Strauss has more: "The injunction would seek to reopen voter registration in Georgia to ensure that 53,000 registrants on hold in Kemp's office - and possibly others affected by an outage of the Georgia Department of Driver Services and the state's voter registration website - would be allowed to register for the upcoming election. ...

"The strict policies enforced by Kemp's office for voter registration and verification have been under scrutiny in his campaign against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, who once ran a nonprofit focused on registering new voters. Under Kemp's verification policies, voter application information must perfectly match information on file at Georgia's Social Security Administration and the state's Department of Driver Services. If they don't match precisely, officials can put the application on hold."

WEB WARS - Facebook removed hundreds of pages and accounts based in the U.S. that mimicked "disinformation-spreading tactics that Russians used during the 2016 presidential election," POLITICO's Ashley Gold reports: "Much of the content the pages and accounts shared amounted to 'clickbait' that used misleading headlines to drive users to ad-filled outside sites, they said. Among the pages were a number that billed themselves as sources of news, typically with a partisan bent, a Facebook spokesman told POLITICO."

AD ROUNDUP - Daniel and I rounded up Thursday's new ads for you, totaling around 60 new spots. A theme that's recently emerged in the Indiana Senate race: "No, YOU'RE the outsourcer." Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly and Republican Mike Braun as well as various super PACs have flooded the airwaves accusing the other of outsourcing American jobs to Mexico (in Donnelly's case) or China (in Braun's case). The latest ad, from SLF, calls Donnelly "unamerican" while parroting one of his speeches.

- FIRST IN SCORE - CLF released a new ad in CA-10, defending GOP Ref. Jeff Denham while attacking Democrat Josh Harder. The ad starts by pushing back against attacks on Denham, saying his "vote does not change the guarantee of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions." It refers to a Washington Post fact check that says the "AHCA does not change the ACA's guarantee of coverage" (the Democratic case, however, is that people would be effectively priced out of coverage even if it is offered to them). The ad then targets Harder, who supports "Medicare for All": "Josh Harder's health care scheme would be a nightmare for taxpayers and patients alike."

TRUMP ON THE TRAIL - President Donald Trump will head to Missoula, Mont., on Oct. 18 for a rally, KPAX reported.

FAMILY FEUD - Truly, a lot of awkward Thanksgivings are in order after the midterms. The latest ad featuring a family member bashing a politician comes out of Nevada, where Republican Adam Laxalt's aunt stars in an ad praising his rival, Democrat Steve Sisolak (h/t to The Nevada Independent's Riley Snyder). They also launched a video of one of Laxalt's cousins criticizing him.

WAY DOWN BALLOT - There will be more than 6,000 state legislative seats up for grabs in November. How will those shake out? Tim Storey and Wendy Underhill of the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures breaks it down for Sabato's Crystal Ball: "Several factors point to a good year for Democrats in the states. Midterm elections are almost never good for the party in the White House and can be downright awful. In only two of the past 29 midterm election cycles going all the way back to 1902, did the president's party not lose seats. ... Another reason Democrats are optimistic about Nov. 6 is that the election is likely to be a referendum on President Donald Trump. 'All politics
is local' is no longer true - even state legislative races are becoming increasingly nationalized. Democrats believe that the president's historically low approval ratings point to a big surge for them."

2020 WATCH - The battle to be the DCCC chief next cycle might come down to Washington (bet this wasn't the kind of 2020 watch you were expecting). From National Journal's Ally Mutnick: "Reps. Denny Heck and Suzan DelBene have expressed interest to colleagues and party leadership about running for the chair position, which, depending on the party's midterm showing, could entail protecting the majority and its swath of moderate freshmen in red-leaning districts. ...

"[Heck's] pitch to current and prospective members will be that after six years at the committee, he needs little on-the-job training, begins with in-depth knowledge of the district dynamics, and has relationships with DCCC staff and vulnerable members in their first terms. ... DelBene has proven fundraising prowess. She brought in $3.3 million this cycle for the DCCC as the committee's finance cochair and has also contributed $100,000 to Red-to-Blue candidates."

FIRST IN SCORE - ENDORSEMENT CORNER - The Jewish Democratic Council of America announced a series of House endorsements: Former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-02), Jason Crow (CO-06), Lauren Baer (FL-18), Donna Shalala (FL-27), Andy Levin (MI-09), Haley Stevens (MI-11), Susie Lee (NV-03), and Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06). The group also backed four senators for reelection - Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) - along with three gubernatorial candidates, Rep. Jared Polis (CO), J.B. Pritzker (IL) and Andrew Gillum (FL).

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Only after, 2024," Kanye West on whether he'll ever run for president.

CORRECTION: The Oct. 11 edition of Morning Score misstated the proportion of House Democrats who support a "Medicare for All" bill. It is more than 60 percent.

** 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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