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By Theodoric Meyer | 09/16/2016 10:00 AM EDT


With Maggie Severns, Kevin Robillard and Seung Min Kim

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)

POLL POSITIONS - "Rubio leads by 2 in internal Murphy campaign poll," by POLITICO Florida's Marc Caputo: GOP Sen. Marco "Rubio's 47-45 percent lead is buoyed by his higher name ID, solid GOP backing and the support of Hispanics voters, according to polling memo from Global Strategy Group. In the presidential race, Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 46-43 percent in Florida, according to the poll of 800 likely voters. It has an error-margin of 3.5 points."

- "Murphy's campaign sent the polling memo during a tough time in his campaign. Two recently released surveys from Quinnipiac University and CNN/ORC showed Rubio leading by 6 and 7 points, respectively. The bad poll numbers for Murphy coincided with a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee decision to pull $800,000 in TV ads - money that Murphy could use at this juncture to boost his name ID, one of his biggest weaknesses." Full story.

- AIR BRB? - "DSCC yet to re-book canceled Florida TV," by Campaign Pro's Kevin Robillard: "The DSCC has yet to bolster its end-of-election TV buy in Florida, after a committee official said last week that the Senate Democratic committee had canceled early ad buys supporting Rep. Patrick Murphy's Senate bid in order to shift the money to a later date." Full story.

NEW THIS MORNING - New AFSCME TV ad attacks Heck on housing crisis: AFSCME is out with a new TV ad going after Rep. Joe Heck in the Nevada Senate race for "In 2008, Congressman Joe Heck called Nevada's housing crisis 'a blip on the radar'" the ad's narrator says. "That's just how out of touch Joe Heck is," an older woman chimes in. "After Heck sponsored a bill giving tax breaks to big banks, he took over $500,000 from Wall Street, including banks that caused the housing crisis," the narrator says. AFSCME is spending more than $900,000 to air the ad, which starts today in the Las Vegas market and on Monday in Reno. It's the third spot the union has aired in the race. Watch the ad here.

- Kirk returns to the air with TV ad about his stroke: GOP Sen. Mark Kirk is going back to the emotional TV ad that kicked off his campaign with, airing a lightly edited, 30-second version of a spot he first aired last year in which in which he talks frankly about his 2012 stroke and recovery. "As I learned to walk and climb again, I thought about Illinois families struggling to get by," Kirk says in the ad. The Kirk campaign is spending six figures to air the ad on broadcast in the Chicago market. Watch the ad here.

Days until the 2016 election: 53.

Days until the first presidential debate: 10.

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 a lot about campaigns and occasionally about the subculture that must not be named: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @theodoricmeyer and @maggieseverns.

FOUR HOUSE INTERNALS - GOP PA-08 poll: Fitzpatrick 50, Santarsiero 38: "Republican Brian Fitzpatrick has a double-digit lead over Democrat Steve Santarsiero in the race for an open swing seat in the Philadelphia suburbs, despite Donald Trump losing to Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket, according to an internal poll conducted for Fitzpatrick's campaign. Fitzpatrick leads Santarsiero 50 percent to 38 percent among likely voters, per the survey from Communications Concepts. The poll found Clinton at 42 percent and Trump at 37 percent in a four-way presidential ballot test." Full story.

- More here from Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota.

STILL NOT CALLED - Biggs, Jones spar over recount in AZ-05: More than two weeks after the Aug. 30 primary, it's still not clear who won the Republican nomination to fill retiring GOP Rep. Matt Salmon's seat in Arizona. State Senate President Andy Biggs led Christine Jones, a former GoDaddy executive, by just 16 votes in the initial count, and officials are expected to announce the results of a recount today, but it's unlikely to settle the election. Lawyers for Jones filed suit on Wednesday to force officials to "inspect 577 ballots that were rejected because the voters who cast them selected more than one candidate," The Arizona Capitol Times reports. Biggs' campaign fired back on
Thursday, accusing Jones in a statement of pursuing "'Hail Mary' legal challenges" and trying "to delay the deadline to mail general election ballots to our military members serving overseas, in order to buy her more time to try and overturn the will of the voters." The suburban Phoenix seat is solidly Republican.

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WHO'S ON, WHO'S OFF - The Sierra Club is launching a new online voter guide today, highlighting the records of Senate and House candidates they've endorsed. A few Democrats conspicuously absent from the list: Evan Bayh in the Indiana Senate race, Katie McGinty in the Pennsylvania Senate races and Reps. Rick Nolan in Minnesota and Brad Ashford of Nebraska, two of the most vulnerable Democrats in the House.

PRESIDENTIAL SPEED READ - "Trump taps abortion foe to chair pro-life coalition," by POLITICO's Katie Glueck: "The head of a major anti-abortion rights group is coming on board as chairwoman of Donald Trump's pro-life coalition. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, is assuming that position on Trump's behalf, her organization plans to announce Friday. Co-chairs are slated to be rolled out later this month. Dannenfelser will seek to mobilize "national and statewide pro-life leaders, with a particular emphasis on people in battleground states," to activate their "spheres of influence" in support of the Trump campaign, said SBA List spokeswoman Mallory Quigley. The
addition of Dannenfelser to a leadership role on behalf of his campaign is the latest sign that Trump has consolidated support from socially conservative leaders who were initially skeptical of him." Full story.

- "Trump bullish as poll numbers rise, won't say Obama was born in the United States," by The Washington Post's Robert Costa in Canton, Ohio: "Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in an interview here that he remains unwilling to say that President Obama is born in the United States, that he is more bullish than ever on his chances to win and that he is not exploring the launch of a new media company in case he loses the race. ... Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii. 'I'll answer that question at the right time,' Trump said. 'I just don't want to answer it yet.'" Full story.

- Trump's campaign put out a statement hours after The Post's story ran declaring that Trump believed Obama had been born in the U.S. Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, also claimed that "Hillary Clinton's campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign" and that "Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion" in 2011 by successfully hounding Obama to release his long-form birth certificate. But that's not true. There's no evidence Clinton's campaign ever questioned Obama's birthplace; Dave Weigel thoroughly debunked the claim last year. And Trump repeatedly questioned where Obama was born long after the
president released his long-form birth certificate in 2011.

- "Gary Johnson cuts into Clinton's lead," by POLITICO's Gabriel Debenedetti in New York: Gary Johnson was never supposed to be a problem for Hillary Clinton. The low-profile Libertarian's presence on the ballot would serve as an easy out for #NeverTrump Republicans, Democrats aligned with the nominee have long figured, and that could only hurt Donald Trump. But as national and battleground polls tighten and Democrats' hand-wringing grows more urgent, operatives both within and allied with Clinton's political operation who are looking around to explain Trump's new polling strength are growing increasingly wary of the former New Mexico governor. His appeal with young and libertarian-leaning
liberals, they worry, could create a growing headache for them in western states like Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona - if not yet reason to believe he could hand the states to Trump. Full story.

- "The principal 'super PAC' supporting Mrs. Clinton's candidacy, Priorities USA Action, has concluded from its polling and other research that the reluctance to embrace the Democratic nominee among those who intensely dislike Mr. Trump is not going away and must be confronted," The New York Times' Jonathan Martin and Amy Chozick report. "'We'll be launching a multimillion-dollar digital campaign that talks about what's at stake and how a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump, who is against everything these voters stand for,' said Justin Barasky, a strategist for Priorities USA." Clinton's staff has also had conversations with aides to former Vice President Al Gore
"about bringing him onto the campaign trail to emphasize the importance of supporting Mrs. Clinton if they want to make progress on combating climate change." Full story.

CODA - QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I can assure you from personal experience that every vote counts." - Al Gore, in an email to The New York Times.

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