Leading Off
NY-03
Rep. Tom Suozzi is facing an onslaught of GOP money, yet his fellow Democrats are behaving as though he has little to worry about.
Newsday reported Friday that Republican groups have spent more than $11 million to help former Assemblyman Mike LiPetri win his rematch against Suozzi for New York’s 3rd District, a sum that may include future reservations. The FEC had tracked close to $7 million from GOP groups as of Monday, with most coming from Donald Trump’s No Going Back PAC.
The National Journal, citing data from AdImpact, also reported Friday that LiPetri and his allies have spent roughly $9 million more than Suozzi’s side. Democrats, though, don’t sound at all concerned that they may need to step in to help Suozzi, who has spent a quarter century as one of the most prominent politicians in populous Nassau County.
“Explained to a Senior Democratic Strategist today that Republicans are spending $11+ million to try to beat Suozzi and I think they thought I was on drugs,” Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin tweeted Wednesday. “Two parties just seeing entirely different races.”
Recent history gives both sides reason to feel optimistic about their prospects in the 3rd District, which includes northern Nassau County and small portions of neighboring Queens and Suffolk County.
Ever since his 2001 victory in the race for county executive that marked the end of Nassau’s once-all-powerful Republican machine, the centrist Suozzi has experienced many electoral ups and downs, but he remains a powerful political force.
Still, just a few years ago, he seemed to be finished in politics following his disastrous 2022 primary campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul, when he finished a distant third. But he got the chance to reclaim the 3rd District after Republican George Santos, who flipped this seat just before his history of lies and scandals became the subject of international attention, was expelled by his colleagues.
In an expensive and closely watched special election in February of 2024, Suozzi blew past Republican Mazi Pilip by a comfortable 54-46 margin, a showing that left few Republicans eager to take him on again. LiPetri eventually became the GOP’s pick to retake the 3rd, which became slightly bluer after the Democratic-led legislature made minor tweaks to the congressional map, but just about no one gave him much of a chance.
It was therefore a major surprise when Suozzi defeated LiPetri just 52-48 on a night that also saw Trump become the first Republican presidential nominee to carry Nassau County since George H.W. Bush in 1988. That breakthrough allowed Trump to score a 51-47 win in the 3rd District, a sea change from Joe Biden’s 55-44 victory in 2020.
And while Trump’s weak approval ratings nationally have Republicans struggling to hold on in areas that swung toward him in the last presidential election, the Nassau County GOP has been on the upswing.
County Executive Bruce Blakeman won reelection by a wide 56-44 margin last November as fellow Republicans across the country suffered severe losses. The rest of the GOP ticket also convincingly turned back Democratic attempts to regain influence in an area that just a few years ago seemed lost to Republicans.
Blakeman quickly set out to capitalize on his success by launching a campaign against Hochul and nailed down the GOP nomination before 2026 even began. And though Blakeman remains the underdog in this heavily Democratic state, he could give LiPetri a lift back on Long Island.
Suozzi, for his part, is framing his own race as a choice between an independent-minded moderate and a partisan Republican.
“It’s OK for [LiPetri] to be supportive of his president, of the president and the party, but not 100% about everything,” the congressman told CBS New York. “Not when everybody’s prices are going through the roof, when people are unhappy about things that are happening in the country.”
The Downballot is proud to make our flagship Morning Digest newsletter paywall-free, but only a small fraction of our 64,000+ readers have signed up as paid subscribers:
If you’re in a position where you can afford to support The Downballot—and especially if you rely on us for your work—we hope you’ll upgrade today so that we can keep making our work available regardless of ability to pay. Thank you.
3Q Fundraising
SC-Gov: Jermaine Johnson (D): $700,000 raised
TX-Gov (from July 1 to Sept. 24):
Greg Abbott (R-inc): $20.3 million raised, $17.3 million cash on hand
Gina Hinojosa (D): $13.3 million raised, $4.1 million cash on hand
IA-03: Zach Nunn (R-inc): $800,000 raised
MI-04: Sean McCann (D): $1.8 million raised
NJ-07: Rebecca Bennett (D): $3.9 million raised, $1.6 million cash on hand
VA-06: Beth Macy (D): $1 million raised
Senate
KS-Sen
People Over Politics, a group backing Democrat Adam Hamilton, will spend an additional $3 million on TV and digital ads, Politico reports, a move that brings its total investment to $6 million. Data from the FEC shows that People Over Politics is responsible for the majority of independent expenditures boosting Hamilton against Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
The additional outlay comes just days after the Senate Leadership Fund began airing ads to help Marshall win another term in Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in close to a century. Punchbowl News reported Monday that SLF intends to spend $14 million to help the incumbent.
MT-Sen
Steve Bullock, the last Democrat to serve as Montana’s governor, has endorsed independent Seth Bodnar’s bid for the Senate. Bodnar faces both Republican Kurt Alme and Democrat Alani Bankhead, who previously secured the support of Bullock’s predecessor, Democrat Brian Schweitzer.
House
CA-48, NE-02
Two Republican-held House seats that were reportedly “almost cooked” now seem closer to well-done.
On Monday afternoon, Punchbowl’s Ally Mutnick reported that the House Majority PAC had pulled $1.1 million from its ad reservations in Nebraska’s open 2nd District. Just an hour later, she added that HMP had likewise cut more than $200,000 from California’s 48th District, another open seat. Both reports were based on data from AdImpact.
Late on Monday night, HMP’s Republican counterpart, the Congressional Leadership Fund, followed suit in Nebraska and cut $1.1 million in planned advertising, according to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.
Last week, Mutnick included both districts in a catalog of nine races where operatives in both parties “privately agree” that Republicans “are in deep, deep trouble.” Nebraska’s 2nd and California’s 48th were both included in a category she labeled “almost cooked already.”
Days later, CNN placed the Nebraska race on a list of three contests where “Republicans are discussing pulling money from once-competitive races they see as too difficult to win.”
The Omaha-based 2nd District was one of Democrats’ top pickup targets from the very start of the cycle. Kamala Harris carried it by a 52-47 margin in 2024, making it the bluest district won by Republicans in 2024. But it moved even further up the ranks after five-term GOP Rep. Don Bacon announced his retirement last year.
Earlier this year, HMP said it had booked almost $2.9 million in fall ad time for the 2nd, while CLF reserved $2.2 million. HMP’s move shows it has confidence in Democratic nominee Denise Powell, while CLF’s retreat suggests it feels exactly the opposite about Republican Brinker Harding.
HMP’s cuts in California were less dramatic, but the San Diego-area 48th District became a much tougher hold for Republicans after voters approved a new Democratic-drawn congressional map at the ballot box last year. While the previous version of the district had backed Donald Trump 56-41 two years ago, Kamala Harris would have carried the new iteration 50-47, according to calculations from The Downballot.
Following that transformation, longtime Rep. Darrell Issa said that he, too, would retire, leaving the task of defending the seat to fellow Republican Jim Desmond. CLF never reserved ad time here, though, while HMP booked more than $4.8 million. Its cutback is therefore small, but presumably the PAC feels good about Democrat Marni von Wilpert’s chances of flipping the district.
We’ve added both races to our continually updated House triage tracker, which now features four elections where one or both parties have pulled back from their planned spending. All have favored Democrats so far.
CO-05
Jessica Killin and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a joint ad Monday featuring two relatives of Virginia Giuffre, who accuse Republican Rep. Jeff Crank of ignoring them as they tried to secure the release of files related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
“My sister Virginia was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims,” Sky Roberts tells voters in Colorado’s 5th District. “She spent her life trying to expose the truth. After she died, we promised to carry on her fight.”
His wife, Amanda Roberts, continues, “But our own congressman, Jeff Crank, refused to meet with us. Then, when he had the chance to expose the truth and release the Epstein files, he repeatedly voted to cover them up.”
“Virginia deserved better,” Sky Roberts says of his sister, who died by suicide last spring after writing a book detailing her allegations against Epstein. “Jeff Crank covered up Epstein’s crimes to protect Donald Trump. He has no business being in Congress.”
Crank, like almost every Republican in Congress, refused to sign on to an effort to compel the federal government to release the Epstein files last year and has opposed similar measures. The congressman told News5 a year ago he favored a solution that involved “the release of all documents that shed light on what occurred, while protecting the identity of the victims.”
The Roberts family, however, did not accept that response. Sky Roberts told the station during a protest outside Crank’s office in Colorado Springs last year that “the right thing to do is to come forward” and that “we will not be going away anytime soon.”
Crank ultimately voted to release some of the files in question last November after Trump relented and called on Congress to do so, but the Roberts say that both he and his staff have ignored their calls to back a new effort to mandate further disclosures.
“We met with his staff, and they promised to follow up. We got silence,” Sky Roberts said at a press conference Monday. “When we brought the petition to his office, they locked the doors.”
At that event, the couple also showed reporters text messages from a year ago that they said depicted an exchange between themselves and a Crank staffer who repeatedly ignored their inquiries. Amanda Roberts also said that the aide responded to one of those year-old texts with a “haha” reaction on Monday morning.
“It was hit unintentionally when taking screen shots to demonstrate Rep. Crank’s office set up a meeting with the Roberts family, clearly this tragedy and family grief are no laughing matters,” Crank’s team told the conservative Washington Examiner in response.
Crank’s team earlier in the day had reacted to the new Democratic ad with a statement praising the congressman’s handling of the matter and accusing Killin, a one-time chief of staff to former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, of “preying on a grieving family with the help of the Washington Democrats.”
Sky Roberts, though, used his press conference later that day to praise Killin as someone who “chose to listen” to them when their congressman ignored them.
Killin is challenging Crank for a Colorado Springs-based constituency that Democrats have never held since it came into existence following the 1970 census. Killin, though, is waging a well-funded campaign to flip a district Trump carried 53-44 in a year where many comparably red districts are also in play.
DCCC
The DCCC added six more candidates, all of whom are running in conservative districts, to its Red to Blue program on Monday:
AR-02: Chris Jones
CO-03: Dwayne Romero
FL-27: Eliott Rodriguez
NV-02: Teresa Benitez-Thompson
NY-21: Blake Gendebien
TN-09: Justin Pearson
Ballot Measures
ID Ballot
The campaign to restore abortion rights to Idaho has raised nearly double the amount of the effort to defeat the ballot initiative next month, the Idaho Capital Sun reports.
Idahoans United for Women and Families, which placed what’s now known as Proposition 1 on the ballot, hauled in $4.9 million through Sept. 29, compared to $2.5 million for its opponents, Too Extreme for Idaho. The Sun also notes that over 3,000 people contributed to the abortion rights campaign, compared to just 83 for its rival.
Proposition 1, which is statutory in nature, needs to secure a simple majority of the vote to end Idaho’s near-total abortion ban that went into effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It would be replaced with a new statute that “establishes a right to make private reproductive health care decisions, including abortion up to fetal viability and in medical emergencies.” Fetal viability, which refers to the point at which a fetus can survive outside a womb, is generally viewed by experts as beginning at around 23 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Obituaries
Dennis Hastert
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who admitted to sexually abusing his students when he was a high school wrestling coach in the 1960s and 1970s, died Saturday at the age of 84. Hastert made that admission in 2016 during his sentencing hearing after he pled guilty to paying hush money to one of his accusers. He went on to serve 13 months in prison.
In 1986, Hastert, an Illinois Republican, was elected to represent the 14th District, a longtime GOP stronghold in the western Chicago area. He went on to unexpectedly become speaker following the 1998 elections after Newt Gingrich stepped down under pressure from his party and Gingrich’s would-be successor, Bob Livingston, resigned following a sex scandal.
Hastert maintained a subdued profile compared to Gingrich but lasted twice as long in the top job and stepped down only after Democrats won control of the House following the 2006 elections. The following year, he opted to resign from Congress rather than complete his term, setting up a closely watched special election that saw Democrat Bill Foster flip the ex-speaker’s seat.
Hastert briefly was back in the news in 2010 when his son waged an unsuccessful primary campaign for the right to take on Foster, but he otherwise attracted little attention during his post-congressional life until 2015. Everything changed that spring when federal authorities indicted the former speaker for allegedly concealing almost $1 million in cash withdrawals from the IRS and lying about it to the FBI.
That indictment led to a series of events that resulted in Hastert accepting a plea deal for hiding financial transactions and acknowledging he’d abused students as young as 14. While the statute of limitations for sexual abuse had expired, Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a “serial child molester” during his sentencing.
“Some actions can obliterate a lifetime of good works,” Durkin said. “Nothing is more stunning than having ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence.”
Poll Pile
All polls must comply with The Downballot’s requirements.
ME-Sen: Maine People’s Resource Center:
Troy Jackson (D): 49, Susan Collins (R-inc): 47.
The Maine People’s Resource Center is a nonprofit that does not endorse candidates. However, the Maine People’s Alliance, which identifies itself as the MPRC’s “sister organization,” has endorsed Jackson.
ME-Sen: Marist University:
Jackson (D): 51, Collins (R-inc): 47.
MI-Sen: Mitchell Research & Communications:
Abdul El-Sayed (D): 46, Mike Rogers (R): 41, Lydia Christensen (L): 3, all others 2% or less.
NM-Sen: SurveyUSA for KOB:
Ben Ray Lujan (D): 54, Larry Marker (R): 36.
CA-Gov: David Jay Wolfson for Steve Hilton:
Xavier Becerra (D): 46, Hilton (R): 40.
Aug.: 49-41 Becerra.
CA-Gov: Independent Voter Project:
Becerra (D): 48, Hilton (R): 38.
ME-Gov: Marist:
Hannah Pingree (D): 52, Bobby Charles (R): 40, Rick Bennett (I): 6.
NM-Gov: SurveyUSA:
Deb Haaland (D): 47, Gregg Hull (R): 41.
AZ-01: FirstStrategic: Amish Shah (D): 44, Jay Feely (R): 42.
FirstStrategic tells The Downballot this poll was not done on behalf of a client
FL-16: Public Policy Polling:
Sydney Gruters (R): 43, Kelly Kirschner (D): 39.
PPP, a Democratic firm, did not say if this poll was done on behalf of a client.
CA Ballot - Proposition 39 (voter ID): IVP:
Yes: 43, No: 40.
CA Ballot - Proposition 40 (wealth tax): IVP:
No: 42, Yes: 38.
CA Ballot - Proposition 41 (new rules around audits of state spending): IVP:
Yes: 49, No: 15.
CA Ballot - Proposition 42 (bar taxing certain assets): IVP:
Yes: 48, No: 24.
No polls yet but as a Long Islander I can tell you that Suozzi is way more aligned with the demographics there; “…a relatively older suburban electorate, with roughly 1 in 5 residents 65+.”
In hyper local election news we're having two votes on school questions in Franklin county, Massachusetts. The first question would build a new vocational high school and just needs a simple majority across the 19 towns that send kids to the current one. The other question would combine two small school districts and needs to pass in five of the six towns in the combined district. (One town, Warwick, has an out out provision, so if they vote no they simply won't join, rather than blocking the creation of the new district.)
If I had to guess, the tech school will pass and the new district will fail, j if only because of the more onerous rules.