Senators lean on surrogates during the impeachment trial Presented by the United States Postal Service

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Quick Fix

— With four presidential candidates stuck in Washington, top surrogates have been dispatched to the early states to campaign in their stead. But how effective can they be?


— VoteVets will air television ads supporting Pete Buttigieg in New Hampshire, the organization confirmed to POLITICO. It is the first major outside group to weigh in on behalf of the former mayor.

— All voters will have the opportunity to cast their ballots online for an obscure Washington state election, the first election in which such a wide population will be able to do so.

Happy Friday! On the lighter side: VividSeats, an online ticket seller, has a fun map breaking down the fandoms of Iowa by county. Talk up the Super Bowl to the Chiefs fans in the southern area of the state, but maybe don’t mention it to the Vikings fans up north. Email me at [email protected], and follow me at @ZachMontellaro.

Email the rest of the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin and @allymutnick.

Days until the Iowa caucuses: 10

Days until the New Hampshire primary: 18

Days until the Nevada caucuses: 29

Days until the South Carolina primary: 36

Days until the 2020 election: 284

TopLine

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE — What do you do when you’re one of the four senators stuck in Washington — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet — as we inch ever closer to Iowa and New Hampshire? Dispatch your surrogates instead.

All four campaigns have sent top supporters to fill in while they stay in the Senate chamber for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. And for the campaigns, it is all hands on deck: Everyone from major political figures to the candidates’ immediate families have been called in.

Warren has leaned on the Castro brothers — former HUD Secretary Julián and Rep. Joaquín — to campaign in Iowa, while Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) is in New Hampshire and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) stakes out South Carolina. Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) spent some time in Iowa this week for Klobuchar, while Sanders called in one of his heaviest hitters: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who will be in Iowa this weekend, as will Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.).

Celebrities are also heading out to bring some starpower in the candidate’s absence. The director Michael Moore will be there for Sanders, and Ashley Judd will hit New Hampshire for Warren. My personal favorites: Phill Drobnick, the coach of the 2018 Olympics gold medal-winning U.S. curling team, will visit the Des Moines Curling Club league for Klobuchar, while Ben and Jerry (of ice cream fame) are holding events for Sanders in New Hampshire. And in every candidate’s case, family will play a role, with each saying a spouse or child will be a surrogate.

"We were all ready to do the usual things, knocking on doors and making phone calls and doing all of that. If we're called upon to do other things that we think will reach more people, I think all of us feel that we have to step up and do that," New Hampshire state House Speaker Pro Tem Lucy Weber, a Klobuchar supporter, told POLITICO’s Stephanie Murrary. "All of us are making the effort to ensure that we get the message out because she can't be here."

This, of course isn’t stopping candidates from racing back out as soon as they can, though. All four will be on the trail on Sunday (Sanders, Klobuchar and Warren in Iowa, and Bennet in New Hampshire), and events are being planned for the latter half of Saturday, with talk that the trial could conclude earlier than it has during the week.

Presidential Big Board

ON THE AIRWAVES — VoteVets is going up in support of Buttigieg, I reported. The group is set to hit the airwaves today with an ad in New Hampshire. According to data from ad tracker Advertising Analytics, the buy is at least $196,000 worth of airtime. A spokesperson for VoteVets confirmed it was a pro-Buttigieg ad but declined to share any more details.

LABOR MOVEMENT — Most national unions have sat out the primaries, which could be benefitting Sanders. “Sanders has so far racked up 11 labor endorsements, more than any of his Democratic rivals, most of which are local, regional and statewide unions. And some are among the most powerful labor organizations in early-voting and Super Tuesday states,” POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein reported. “The local endorsements are filling the political void left by national unions, still gun-shy after the acrimonious 2016 primary election”.

THE REELECT — The RNC will dispatch 300 additional field staffers to 18 states to try to boost Trump in target states, POLITICO’s Alex Isenstadt reported. “With the new wave, the committee will have over 600 staffers spread out across the nation,” Alex wrote (click through for the states).

POLLS POLLS POLLS — There are a lot of takeaways from this week’s polls, but one big one is that Sanders appears to be surging. Campaign Pro chief Steve Shepard’s breakdown: “The polls aren’t unanimous in showing a Sanders bump: Biden still leads polling averages nationally and in the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses, where there has been little public polling so far this week. But, on balance, the new survey data out this week has been some of Sanders’ best”. Click through for three other takeaways.

— A new poll out of New Hampshire has Sanders with a comfortable lead in the state. The WMUR/MassINC poll has Sanders at 29 percent. Buttigieg is at 17 percent, Biden is at 14 percent and Warren is at 13 percent. Further back, Klobuchar is at 6 percent and Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are each at 5 percent (426 likely Democratic primary voters; Jan. 17-21; +/- 4.8 percentage point MOE). This is, notably, quite different from a Boston Globe/Suffolk poll released earlier in the week, which had the top four bunched much closer together (but with Sanders at the top of the heap).

— We’ll have one more Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll in Iowa; It’ll be released at 9 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 1, just two days before the caucuses, The Register announced.

THE SHOW WON’T GO ON — CNN has axed the town halls it had planned for next week with the leading presidential candidates due to the impeachment trial. CNN’s Kate Sullivan wrote the network is working on rescheduling them.

ENDORSEMENT CORNER — Rufus Gifford, one of the Democratic Party’s top fundraisers, is backing Biden, POLITICO’s Maggie Severns wrote in.

— Sen. Kamala Harris is considering endorsing her former primary rival Biden, The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin reported.

Down the Ballot

TECH TALK — For the first time, over 1.2 million eligible voters will be able to cast a ballot online for an election. The only catch is that it is for an incredibly obscure race: the King (County) Conservation District supervisor elections in Washington state. The Non-regulatory special purpose district (that’s a mouthful!), a quasi-governmental agency, is partnering with Tusk Philanthropies (an organization founded by Bloomberg adviser Bradley Tusk), the county election board and the National Cybersecurity Center to allow eligible voters to cast their ballot using the Democracy Live platform, which gives them the option to cast a ballot online.

Turnout for these elections in the past have been abysmal. Roughly 1.2 million voters are eligible, executive director Bea Covington told Score, but last year just 6,000 people requested a ballot and about 3,500 turned it in. “Voter turnout has been a concern of not just our conservation district, but all conservation districts,” Covington said, citing a hope for an increase in turnout.

Voters will be able to pull their ballot up on the Democracy Live platform, which is used in the state for military and overseas voters already, and have three options of turning it in: Submitting it electronically, printing it out and mailing it or dropping it at a dropbox. Voters can vote between now and Election Day on Feb. 11 (they can also vote in person on that day), and according to Tusk Philanthropies, is easiest the largest test of online balloting. The Seattle Times’ David Gutman has more (including why this election is in February).

THE HOUSE MAP — Republicans landed a big recruit in FL-26, after Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez announced he’d challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The Miami Herald’s David Smiley, Douglas Hanks and Alex Daugherty have more. (Trump endorsed Giménez in a Thursday night tweet.)

— Republican Rep. Fred Upton said in a radio interview he remains undecided on whether or not he will run for reelection in MI-06. A decision is coming in “the next couple of weeks,” he told WKZO. “If we don’t run, I want to make sure people have ample time.”

— Former Rep. Darrell Issa used a video of San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer endorsing him from a 2016 run to announce Faulconer’s endorsement of him now, the Voice of San Diego’s Scott Lewis reported. Faulconer said he still endorsed Issa but condemned a recent ad from the former congressman that referenced the sexual orientation of Issa’s opponent, Carl DeMaio.

— Republican Jim Bognet, who worked in the Trump administration as a senior vice president at the Export-Import Bank, launched a bid to challenge Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in PA-08 with an announcement video focused almost entirely exclusively on impeachment.

DONORS DO SUNDANCE — The female-led donor network Way to Win, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the advocacy group Color of Change are hosting a discussion on activism and art on Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, Maggie writes in. The event is an effort to engage with both filmmakers and wealthy attendees, said Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win. “Sundance is a coming together of power players from artists to donors, and we want to make sure we’re talking to everybody across that collective. It really is going to take all of us to win in 2020,” said Gavito.

Way to Win is growing fast: The donor group that was founded during the midterms spent $25 million in 2019 alone, Gavito said, and is aiming to raise a bigger sum heading into 2020. Way to Win was successful in 50 of the 74 races it targeted in 2019, which were in battleground states including Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to the group.

THE CASH DASH — The super PAC Senate Leadership Fund and nonprofit One Nation, along with American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, have a lot of money in the bank. The Republican Senate leadership-aligned groups raised $68.3 million last year (an off-year record) and have $68.1 million in the bank, The Washington Post’s Michelle Ye He Lee reported. Most of the money in the bank is held by SLF ($30.8 million) and One Nation ($35.5 million).

And some congressional numbers.

— TN-Sen: Bill Hagerty, the Trump-endorsed Republican running for the open seat in the state, raised $1.5 million and will report over $3 million in cash on hand.

— FL-13: Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist raised $372,000 and has $2.8 million on hand, per Florida Politics’ Janelle Irwin Taylor.

— FL-27: Freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala raised $600,000 and has more than $1.2 million in the bank, per Florida Politics’ Ryan Nicol.

— MN-02: Craig, the district’s freshman Democratic congresswoman, raised $560,000 and has $1.5 million on hand, per MPR’s Brian Bakst.

ON THE AIRWAVES — Democrat Sara Gideon, who is challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), launched a television ad highlighting her “Supper with Sara” events, in which she meets with voters.

— Democrat Christy Smith, who is running in the special election in CA-25, is up with her first television ad that’s focused on health care, saying her mother died because she couldn’t afford insulin. The Hill’s Rebecca Klar reported it’ll run on TV and digital as part of a “six-figure” campaign.

— Republican Pierce Bush, who is running in TX-22, is up with his first television ad. He says Democrats are “dangerously naive” on immigration and want “open borders.”

CODA — HEADLINE OF THE DAY: “The former lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is now doing stand-up comedy in California as ‘Mikey Stacks’” — from The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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