State Legislative Races-- Big Disappointment As GOP Gets Ready To Gerrymander Like Mad

 

The National Conference of State Legislatures released this before-and-after graphic showing legislative control yesterday (bottom) and what it will look like starting in January (top). The only changes appear to possibly be in Arizona and New Hampshire, two non-gerrymander states.

NCSL executive director Tim Storey reported that "Democrats look like they will win the Arizona House for the first time since 1966. Republicans are poised to win back the New Hampshire Senate that went Democratic just two years ago." There are still enough votes being counted now to possibly change control in one or two chambers (including the Arizona state Senate and the New Hampshire House)-- but don't count on it. Also undetermined right now is who will control the Michigan House, the Pennsylvania House (both of which could flip blue) and both chambers in Nevada (where one or both could flip red).

Storey: "[T]his appears to be a remarkably status quo election in the U.S. states. It looks like this will be the least party control changes on Election Day since at least 1944 when only four chambers changed hands. It’s still possible that there could be even fewer than four flips as a result of Tuesday’s voting. In the 1926 and 1928 elections, only one chamber changed hands. And 2020 could conceivably match that."

Even adding in the governors’ races leads to hardly any change in the state partisan landscape. There was only one party change among the chief executives, and that was in the open governor’s race in Montana. Term-limited Democratic Governor Steve Bullock ran for the Senate, and Republican candidate Greg Gianforte took the mansion back for the GOP.

That win led to the only new trifecta in the nation, in Big Sky Country.

It is possible that Republicans will lose their unified control in Arizona, meaning the number of D, R and divided states stays exactly the same. No other changes are expected in the trifecta unless late returns in New Hampshire’s 400-member House, notoriously always hard to pin down, plus a GOP pick-up of the Granite State Senate leads to a new GOP trifecta there.

As it stands now, the lack of partisan change in the states is jaw dropping.

There were, however, some good results in a few places. Early in the cycle, Blue America endorsed progressive Democrat Heidi Campbell in her race to replace the last member of the Tennessee state legislature in the Nashville area, state Senator Steven Dickerson. Yesterday Heidi beat him 51.7% to 48.3%.

And up in Green Bay, Wisconsin Kristina Shelton won the Wisconsin Assembly seat to represent the 90th district with 60.2% of the vote. You may recall that last month this progressive leader told us that her personal politics align with AOC and that "We need all Democrats to get comfortable being courageous." Wisconsin needs a solid Democratic bench. She's part of it now.

Florida was the nexus of pain-- particularly Miami-Dade. Democratic turnout in red counties was through the roof while in Miami-Dade, it completely fell apart, possibly because of the tireless efforts of Trump crony Louis DeJoy and his team at the USPS. 67,385 requested Democratic absentee ballots that were sent to voters never made their way to the counting stations. Not a single legislative seat changed hands-- so Florida!

Writing for Rolling Stone, Tessa Stuart reported that "Despite months of polling that suggested Biden was a slight favorite to win the Sunshine state, Florida has slipped out of Democrats’ grasp once again... There have been clear signs in recent weeks that Republicans were turning out in higher numbers in a part of Florida where Democrats need to run up the score in order to win: Miami-Dade County... Around 55 percent of Florida’s Cuban-American vote went to Donald Trump, according to exit polls, giving him huge gains over his 2016 performance in the county, swinging some 200,000 voters into his column. But it wasn’t just Cubans breaking for Trump-- he won 30 percent of Puerto Ricans and 48 percent of 'other Latinos' in the state."

On Election Day, Rolling Stone spoke to Maria Elena Lopez, first vice chair of the Miami Dade Democrats to get a sense of the situation on the ground. Democrats had a fragile, roughly 100,000 ballot lead in the early vote, and volunteers were still out knocking doors, frantically trying to get out the vote. At the time, Lopez said turnout was on track to match 2016-- a problem, considering Hillary Clinton lost the state and the election that year. Still, Lopez was hopeful Tuesday morning that Biden might do better than Clinton did in other parts of the state, like the I-4 corridor, home to a growing Puerto Rican population.

“My worst fear would be that our Latin community believes the bullshit that Biden is a socialist and communist, and doesn’t vote for him,” Lopez said bluntly on Tuesday. “That is my main fear. It is very hard to fight misinformation, and that has been the most frustrating part for us as a party. How do you go out there and try to have a logical conversation with people that do not believe what you’re saying?”

This afternoon, Kathy Lewis, the Democrat we were hoping would flip the state Senate blue, told her followers in an e-mail that she ran the campaign she wanted to run despite the Florida Democratic Party. "Many people 'in the know'-- party leaders, consultants, people in our community-- told me this was an unwinnable race, she wrote. "They said it was especially unwinnable without the support of big money donors who would have censored my voice. Over 115,000 voters disagreed. Though we have lost this race, we have proved what is possible for future elections. We have shown that it is possible to run a truly grassroots campaign and fund it with small, individual donations-- we have raised more than $133,000 with an average donation of $80.  Considering this was a special election with a short lead time, this is a phenomenal achievement!"

In thanking her supporters, she noted that "As the late, Honorable John Lewis said, we make progress by making good trouble. That’s what we did together. Together, we have shown that it is possible to put the interests of people first, before big money and big business... This race and our campaign have focused the bright Florida sunshine on the problems so many hardworking Floridians face. We have raised the flag, bringing attention to the problems facing so many Florida families:

• to the difficulties obtaining disability and medical benefits;
• to the disenfranchisement of voters brought by poverty and race;
• to the problems workers and families have gaining equal access to quality and affordable health care;
• to women’s right to have control over their own bodies;
• to the issues of marriage equality and equal and fair employment and housing practices for the LGBTQ+ communities and for people of color;
• to the need for a realistic living wage—Amendment 2 on the ballot does not go far enough soon enough;
• to the issue of gun violence which affects too many people each and every day;
• to the problems we have in our criminal justice system with inequitable practices in our state law enforcement, the hiring of unqualified and disqualified applicants, and the need to invest in mental health services and education in law enforcement and in schools
• to the unfair burden put on our teachers to be all things to our children while being paid far less than they deserve;
• to the concerns of the environment and climate change that disproportionately affect Floridians, Florida tourism, small businesses, and people of color; and
• to our state’s haphazard, patchwork response to the pandemic, needlessly endangering millions of people, and especially our first responders, and needlessly sacrificing the lives of loved ones in the process.

She concluded that "Future Democratic candidates have a new playbook for how to run an honest, people-first campaign with sustainable grassroots support and without having to answer to corporations, special interests, or powerful, self-interested politicians."