SOURCES SAY ☕ The Hill Spill
🍹 Welcome to a special campaign trail Friday edition of the Hill Spill! We just landed back in D.C. from Florida, where we were out getting you all some lit election tea! (We find the Miami airport very chaotic, but we did get our steps in.) We’ve been getting a vibe check on the midterms and calling sources everywhere to bring you the hottest gossip.
This week, we catch up with Steve Scalise on the trail, and he has some takes on the midterms. Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad has his own party fighting, and Ilhan Omar has become a GOP campaign staple. Plus, Kirk Bado joins us on the pod.
Grab something frozen and let’s get into it. 🍹
🍸 WITH A TWIST: Scalise Says Ryan Elijah Saved Republicans a Headache in Florida’s 7th
Exclusive: We’ve been on the trail in Florida for a couple of days with Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who’s been barnstorming the country for House Republicans as leadership tries to hang on to the majority.
Republicans acknowledge they’re facing headwinds in a number of districts, given midterm history, but Florida’s 7th seems to be giving them less heartburn than it did earlier this year. That’s because their nominee is now former Fox 35 anchor Ryan Elijah and not Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.).
“Well, it was pretty clear that Cory, with the polling, was not going to be able to hold the seat, and when Ryan Elijah won the primary, it really gave us that path to keep this seat and not have to spend any money,” Scalise told us in an interview at Thursday’s event for Elijah. “By the way, doing it, I mean, there’s definitely still a lot of money being spent against him, but Ryan’s turned out to be a phenomenal candidate.”
Mills, for anyone who needs a refresher, was facing a House Ethics investigation, questions about his military record, reports that he was with sex workers during a 2021 trip to help evacuate people from Afghanistan, domestic abuse allegations and allegations that he threatened to release sexually explicit videos of her. He has denied wrongdoing.
Voters apparently weren’t on board with the laundry list of allegations, and Mills lost the primary to Elijah. That seems to have brought GOP leadership some relief during a stressful cycle for the party.
“It definitely increased our chances of winning,” another Florida GOP lawmaker told us.
Elijah is now up against Democrat Bale Dalton, a 24-year Navy veteran and former NASA chief of staff, who has the DCCC’s backing. Trump won the district by 12 points, so Democrats need a real wave to flip it.
Scalise gave a shoutout to Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-Fla.), who endorsed Elijah over his own colleague, with helping “tremendously,” and said Democrats “thought they could steal one from us, and they’re not.”
The Elijah event was popping for a Thursday afternoon. Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), RSC Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas), Reps. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) and Randy Fine (R-Fla.), Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Joe Strada, the GOP nominee for Webster’s open seat, all came out to a well-attended event near Orlando.
Mills, meanwhile, appears to have taken to trolling Elijah on X in the wake of his loss, which some of his GOP colleagues told us comes off as a little petty and sour grapes. When Elijah posted this week about having coffee with veterans at an Oviedo American Legion post, Mills replied, “Why didn’t you ever serve?” That’s a bold question from a guy whose own military record has been questioned.
Elijah told us it was a “contentious primary” but that “we’re really not worried about that.” “We have found some of his biggest supporters have helped us, have introduced us at events, and so we feel really good,” he said. “A lot of that is in Volusia County. We feel like we’ve got great support there, and the party’s united.”
He’s spending a lot of time courting independents, and claims he’s even made inroads with some Democrats. By his telling, some have told him, “Hey, I don’t know if I can pull the lever for you, but I’m considering it.” Those kinds of crossover anecdotes are common. Whether they translate into actual votes is what the returns will show.
Asked whether the primary or the general has been tougher, Elijah said, “I think I enjoyed the primary race more.” The general lets him talk to everybody, he said, but running both back to back has been “kind of a doubleheader, so to speak. You get to the point you’re just ready to be at Election Day.”
He hasn’t leaned on Trump much. “Some people are going to support the president, some are not,” he said. DeSantis has backed him, which he called “critical,” and his pitch is affordability, energy and business. “We have to not just point fingers,” he said.
Scalise is more optimistic about the broader map than most of the forecasts. He pointed to Democratic-held seats Republicans are targeting in Florida, New Mexico and Nevada, and said the race for Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) is “maybe the most expensive race in the country,” with “well over $30 million” in it. Most forecasters still have Democrats favored to take the House.
“Everybody was predicting Donald Trump was going to lose until he won,” he said. “If our folks show up and vote, we’ll win these seats.”
Anywhoo, we were working late and we’ve been up since 5:30 a.m. and are running purely on cafecito and gossip. More from the trail coming your way soon! ☕
🍹PARTY FOUL: Ramaswamy’s Ad Has Republicans Fighting With Each Other
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Vivek Ramaswamy spent Friday morning at a pancake breakfast defending an ad that has his own party at each other’s throats.
“We ran an ad about lying... They are lying about an ad that is about lying,” he said. “It had nothing to do with childhood abuse, which I will be the number one governor to prosecute.”
The ad, which The Rooster first reported late Monday, features Donna Arthur, Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged birth mother, calling her daughter “a liar,” urging Ohioans not to vote for her and hinting that she has mental health issues. Arthur’s claims haven’t been independently verified. Ramaswamy’s campaign initially wouldn’t say whether it was behind the spot, then claimed it Tuesday and put $4 million behind it.
Acton has talked publicly for years about the abuse, hunger and neglect she and her brother faced as kids. After their mother’s husband was indicted for raping Acton, the children were removed from Arthur’s custody. Acton says she hasn’t seen Arthur since they were in a courtroom together in 1978.
Trump has repeatedly defended Ramaswamy.
“Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt,’” he wrote on Truth Social, adding that Ramaswamy should “keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate.”
He also called Gov. Mike DeWine “disloyal to the Republican Party” for suggesting the ad come down.
Vice President JD Vance also took aim at Republicans for slamming the ad.
“I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” he said on Wednesday. “Politics is a tough business.”
DeWine, who endorsed Ramaswamy as his successor, strongly condemned the ad.
He told reporters in Columbus on Thursday that the ad is “deeply, deeply troubling” and urged the campaign to take it down.
“When you know the backstory, when you know that the husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury after hearing testimony, and that he took off along with the mother and that two children never saw the mother after that,” he said, “it just, to me, makes it more serious. It makes it just more wrong.” DeWine also said an earlier Acton campaign attack mentioning Ramaswamy’s mother was out of line, since family members have historically been off limits.
Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who’s in a tight race against Sherrod Brown, shared a stage with Vance and Ramaswamy in Cincinnati on Wednesday, broke with Vance and Trump telling the AP: “I would not have run that ad.”
Former Rep. Jim Renacci warned on X that “the floor may have just fallen out from under the Republican campaign for Ohio Governor.”
No shortage of Ohio GOP politicians are unhappy that the ad continues to be a focal point in the news cycle, with some noting it could have an impact down ballot, with one telling us they would like Ramaswamy to “shut the f*** up.”
Acton’s senior adviser, Justin Barasky, posted the court records on X and called Ramaswamy “the kind of person who will try and use a child’s rape against them to get what he wants.” Her brother, Philip Stearns, accused Ramaswamy of trying “to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”
We reached out to a lot of sources on both sides of the aisle and didn’t find anyone chomping at the bit to praise the move. The general take was that the ad was diabolical and could seriously backfire on Ramaswamy.
Cook shifted its race rating to Lean Democrat on Friday and most recent polls, including NYT/Siena and CNN, have Acton ahead.
We enjoyed our friend Josh Holmes’ hot take on this earlier this week.
Elisabeth Carroll contributed.
🎙️ ON TAP THIS WEEK: Kirk Bado on a “Fetterman-Proof” Senate and Who Leads House Republicans Next
This week National Journal Hotline’s Kirk Bado joined us on the pod. We chitchatted about an array of political lore and rogue stories from the reporting trenches, plus midterm hot takes and more. He says Democrats aren’t just after a Senate majority. “They want to Fetterman-proof their majority,” he told us, which means getting to 52 seats.
He also has a simple rule for reading the map: “What you can’t BS is money.” And he has a pick for who leads House Republicans if they land in the minority (hint: not Mike Johnson).
Grab a bev and check it 🍸
🍸 STIRRED UP: Omar’s ‘Not to My Knowledge’ Gives Republicans a Talking Point
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Republicans have started working Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) into stump speeches on the trail, using her as a stand-in when they warn voters about socialists and the DSA as part of the closing argument for keeping the majority.
After her interview this week with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes — she called the long-running claim that she married her brother “insane,” then said “Not that I, not to my knowledge” when he asked if she was related to her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, at all — they’ve been hammering that exchange and treating the federal investigation as Exhibit A on Democratic corruption.
Democrats say the timing of the search, three weeks out, looks like the Justice Department getting weaponized.
Some of the clips make it sound like she was answering the marriage question itself. She’d already denied that, though a few Democrats and Republicans we talked to still thought the wording was a little weird. Her spokesperson told TMZ she was being sarcastic.
She’s called the allegation absurd for years. It’s never been substantiated. She married Elmi in 2009 and divorced him in 2017. A federal filing lists her as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, aka Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” Her office says that’s false.
Homeland Security Investigations agents showed up at her Washington-area home around 6 a.m. on Oct. 12. Omar later told MS NOW the search lasted roughly four to five hours.
NBC News described a years-long probe built on whistleblowers and documents, looking at possible fraud and false statements in the family’s immigration paperwork — a lot of it filled out by her late father when she was a kid. CNN has reported investigators are also looking at possible age misstatements from when she became a citizen in 2000. No charges have been filed. Her sister Sahra Noor was also questioned afterward. Omar called the search political intimidation and said she won’t be silenced.
Republicans note a judge signed the warrant and senior Justice Department officials signed off after talking about how close it was to the election. Vice President JD Vance has said the administration believes she “definitely committed immigration fraud.” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) posted that nobody’s above the law and accountability’s coming. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), after Omar voted early in Minneapolis, wrote “We are STILL allowing her to vote? Oh brother…”
The search raises some institutional issues, Politico reported. Agents took her phone. That likely has official records both sides want protected. Her attorneys say the judge ordered investigators to contact House general counsel Matthew Berry. She’s refused a speech-or-debate waiver. Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t weighed in.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) called the search “deeply disturbing” and “corrupt weaponization.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and others called it an abuse of power.
She’s fundraising off it with less than two weeks left.
🍹 THIS WEEK'S COCKTAIL: Miami Vice
After some nightmarish travel delays, we just landed back in D.C. from our Florida work adventure, and we sadly did not manage to multitask on re-upping our tan. Win some, lose some. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes the grind of getting the hot goss gets in the way of our side quests. A frozen drink will have to do.
The Miami Vice is half piña colada, half strawberry daiquiri, poured into one glass so the two swirl together without fully mixing. Two very different things sharing the same space and somehow making it work. It's about as close to a functioning divided government as we expect to see after Nov. 3!
It tastes like a vacation and looks like a sunset. It's also kind of fattening, but it's fire. And while we do try to abide by the "summer bodies start in winter" mantra, it's currently fall, so happy sweater szn to everyone who enjoys a highly caloric bev!
For the strawberry daiquiri half:
1½ oz white rum
1 cup frozen strawberries
¾ oz fresh lime juice
½ oz simple syrup
½ cup ice
For the piña colada half:
1½ oz white rum
1½ oz cream of coconut
2 oz pineapple juice
1 cup ice
Blend each half separately until smooth. Pour the daiquiri into a tall glass first, then slowly pour the piña colada on top, or alternate pours if you want a swirl. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and a strawberry.
Tbh, it's probably easier to just buy one. That's a lot of blender activity, and it can get messy. 😘
