Scrub From Your Mind: "Any Blue Will Do"

Good video, right? I had to get it up as soon as I could! Cute. But... Remember when you didn't vote for Mitt Romney in 2012? Would you vote for him now if it was between him and Trump? He voted good-- one time... and a few minutes later voted to find Trump not guilty on another charge. Still, it was kind a a half a profile in courage that day. And what about if he tagged a "D" next to his name the way Bloomberg has? I know there are plenty of people who would vote for him-- even gladly so-- and more so if he went the Bloomberg route. Trump's that horrible and that much of an existential threat. Still... then we'd be stuck with Romney... or Bloomberg. Or Biden. Or Mayo Pete. Or some garbage candidate the DCCC picked to be in Congress. 

In his New York Magazine column this week, Eric Levitz noted that the Virginia Democrats who were just made a majority in both houses of the state legislature killed crucial pro-union legislation after learning CEOs are opposing it. It felt great banishing the neo-fascist Republican Party of Virginia from the levers of power in that state late last year. But... now the legislature is run by a pack of corrupt status quo Democrats who will, through their innate cowardice and conservatism, discourage voter participation and lose control once again. "Virginia," wrote Levitz, "isn’t for workers. Old Dominion is currently one of only three states to explicitly bar all public-sector employees from bargaining collectively. It was also one of the first states to enact a “right to work” law-- a policy that undermines organized labor by allowing workers who join a unionized shop to enjoy the benefits of a collective-bargaining agreement without paying dues to the union that negotiated it. This encourages other workers to skirt their dues, which can then drain a union of the funds it needs to survive."

Virginia’s labor policy doesn’t just hurt the union movement, or the minority of Virginians who would gain access to collective bargaining under more liberal laws; it also undermines labor standards across the state’s economy. In 2018, the anti-poverty organization Oxfam America set out to identify the best and worst places in the U.S. to work. They judged all 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) on the following criteria:

Wage policies: Has the state raised the minimum wage to help workers earn a living wage? Do localities have capacity to raise the minimum wage to accommodate higher costs of living?

Worker protection policies: Does the state provide protections at work for situations such as paid sick leave, pregnancy, and equal pay?

Right to organize policies: Does the state guarantee that workers have the right to organize and sustain a trade union? Virginia came in dead last.

In 2019, the Democratic Party won the power to change that. For the first time in a quarter-century, every branch of Virginia’s government is now true blue. And last week, the state’s General Assembly passed a bill establishing a right to collective bargaining for Virginia’s public-sector employees. If signed into law, that legislation should have a significant impact on the state’s unionization rate.

But the right-to-work repeal did not fare so well. After gaining some momentum in recent weeks, the bill ultimately lost support after a fiscal estimate predicted it would cost the state millions of dollars. As the Virginia Mercury reports:

Del. Lee Carter, D-Manassas, had proposed a full-scale repeal of the law, legislation unanimously endorsed by Democrats on the Labor and Commerce Committee. But the bill was sent to appropriations to weigh the potential impact on the state’s budget, which the Virginia Economic Development Partnership estimated at between $9 and $25 million a year as a result of projects lost to other states.

You might be wondering how the VEDP went about calculating those figures. As it happens, the primary basis for its estimate appears to be a poll taken of corporate executives and consultants who-- in a shocking turn of events-- said that they actually like it when states suppress the bargaining power of their workers:

Area Development annually surveys corporate executives and site consultants on factors that impact location decisions. In their most recent survey published in 2019, more than 70% of corporate executives and more than 78% of site-selection consultants indicated it is “important” or “very important” for a state to have “right to work” for location decisions.

The concern raised by the VEDP is hardly implausible. Capital is highly mobile within the United States and the “race to the bottom” is a real phenomenon. It’s conceivable that repealing right-to-work would cost Virginia some development projects. This said, as a magnet for investment, Virginia has plenty going for it besides subpar labor standards. The state has one of best-educated workforces in the country. Its proximity to the nation’s capital makes it a natural site for military contractors and a wide range of other businesses that benefit from ready access to D.C. Beyond the ethical question of whether the state should acquiesce to the race to the bottom rather than resisting the logic of low-road capitalism, it’s far from clear that modestly increasing Virginia workers’ bargaining power would substantially reduce corporate investment in the state. Further, to the extent that labor reform does produce higher prevailing wages for Virginia workers, this could raise internal consumer demand in the state, and thus, economic growth. In 2018, a team of economists at Princeton University published a study that examined (among other things) the relationship between state-level rates of union density and per capita GDP between 1940 and 2009. They found a small positive correlation between high unionization rates and high rates of economic growth.

Virginia would, perhaps, be an exception to this rule. But if you are going to produce a fiscal estimate of right-to-work repeal that posits a negative relationship between increasing labor rights and economic growth-- in defiance of the pattern established by a rigorous analysis of 69 years’ worth of state-level economic data-- your study should probably have a stronger empirical basis than “We asked some bosses if they prefer to operate in places where they don’t need to pay workers well and 70 percent said ‘yes.’”

Ungerrymandering The States-- One By One

The governor of New Jersey is Phil Murphy, a Democrat. Both Houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats, the Senate 26-14 and the Assembly 54-26. There's just one New Jersey congressional district that elected a Republican in 2018. It would be easy as pie for New Jersey Democrats to gerrymander the map to make Chris Smith's 4th CD go from an R+8 district to a much more winnable R+1 or 2 or even an even district that a Democratic candidate could easily win. And that is exactly what they were planning on doing-- until Eric Holder shamed them into not doing it (according to Eric Holder).

This week, Time Magazine published an essay by Phillip Elliott, The Battle Line To Draw The Battle Lines. Today Democrats are doing what Republicans have long done-- investing millions off dollars into winning state legislative seats so that they'll have a hand in redrawing post-census district boundaries that will last for the next decade. The fight gets hot in less than two months when Virginia votes on all their legislative seats. Elliott reports that there are 91 Democratic candidates for the commonwealth’s 100 house races on Nov. 5, and 35 senate hopefuls for the chamber’s 40 spots, which include three senate districts that voted for Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 but are currently represented by Republicans. 'They are running to build the party,' house caucus executive director Trevor Southerland says."

The state Senate has 21 Republicans and 19 Democrats and the House of Delegates has 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats. The governor and Lt. Governor are Democrats. It should be easy to win enough seats to flip both chambers, right? Well, the Republicans are playing the same game-- working to flip Democratic seats and working to protect their own incumbents. Please consider contributing by clicking on the legislative thermometer on the right, especially in the Virginia races.

There are virtually no races in Virginia more important this cycle than the one to reelect Lee Carter in the House of Delegates and the one to replace Trumpist Richard Stuart with Qasim Rashid in the state Senate. This morning, Rashid, a human rights attorney, told us that "Free and fair elections mandate that we have districts that are just and honest. It is a mockery of democracy when districts are drawn to keep politicians in power. We must return voting power to citizens."

Lee Carter is the best member of the House and the Republicans are targeting him while the Democratic establishment ignores his race. This Democratic Socialist is fighting for working families, not for party establishments. "The legislative elections in Virginia in 2019 and the rest of the country in 2020 will determine the direction of the country for the next decade," he told me today. "The stakes are too high for anyone to sit this one out." I agree.

The path toward Republican dominance at the state level began more than three decades ago, when Democrats, in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980, focused their energy on presidential politics in the 1984 cycle. The current dynamic dates back to 2010, when Karl Rove wrote a Wall Street Journal column laying the groundwork for what came to be called the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP). The RSLC’s REDMAP program recruited and funded state-level candidates aggressively. REDMAP spent $30 million to the DLCC’s $8 million that year. The effort netted GOP total control of 11 legislatures and a trifecta in nine additional states. In turn, the party started drawing congressional districts it liked.

Republicans still start with a leg up in the battle for the states in 2020. The GOP controls 52% of seats in all state legislatures, with majorities in 62% of state legislative chambers and total control of state government in 22 states, to Democrats’ 14. But many of the chambers have narrow GOP edges. Democrats stand to pick up majorities in seven chambers-- including those in Minnesota, Arizona and Virginia-- if they can win 19 specific races.

Meanwhile, the gains Democrats have made in recent years may be difficult to defend. President Donald Trump was a liability for Republicans in 2018, when he wasn’t on the ballot and his approval sat at 40% in Gallup’s final pre-election survey. But Trump could wind up helping GOP candidates in 2020, when the party hopes his massive political machine will boost fortunes of candidates all the way down the ballot.

It’s also possible that existing Democratic-led statehouses overstep their mandates and provoke a backlash. In typically blue Illinois, for example, lawmakers declared abortion a fundamental right, no matter what the Supreme Court may say. When Republicans in the Colorado statehouse objected to the pace of change under Democratic control, they raised procedural hurdles and demanded the measures be read aloud. Democrats responded by having five computers read a 2,023-page bill simultaneously–so quickly the text was unintelligible. The issue went to court, where the Republicans won.

The party that wins control of Richmond in November and other state capitals in 2020 has decisions to make. Republicans may want to cluster African-American voters into one district to make the rest of the area easier to win. Democrats may want to spread those voters out more evenly. In Northern Virginia, both parties may want to minimize the number of seats that have to buy ad time in the expensive D.C. market. Armed with enough data, it’s possible to draw lines that enhance the odds of winning again and again. “We were so pleased as Democrats that we won this Congress,” Post says of the 2018 elections. “But the truth is, it’s just a rental.”

Speaking of which... late yesterday, the New Yorker blew the whistle on a racist GOP gerrymanderer, Thomas Hofeller, who died just over a year ago. Before dying he trained lots of other Republican racists in his secrets. The New Yorker examined 70,000 of his files and years of his e-mails proving, that among other things, the North Carolina district boundaries were specifically drawn to disadvantage African-Americans, which even the current Supreme Court agrees is a no-no.

Hofeller’s files include dozens of intensely detailed studies of North Carolina college students, broken down by race and cross-referenced against the state driver’s-license files to determine whether these students likely possessed the proper I.D. to vote. The studies are dated 2014 and 2015, the years before Hofeller helped Republicans in the state redraw its congressional districts in ways that voting-rights groups said discriminated on the basis of race. North Carolina Republicans said that the maps discriminated based on partisanship but not race. Hofeller’s hard drive also retained a map of North Carolina’s 2017 state judicial gerrymander, with an overlay of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that these maps-- which are currently at the center of a protracted legal battle-- might also be a racial gerrymander.

Other files provide new details about Hofeller’s work for Republicans across the country. Hofeller collected data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, as far back as 2011. Hofeller was part of a Republican effort to add a citizenship question to the census, which would have allowed political parties to obtain more precise citizenship data ahead of the 2020 redistricting cycle. State legislative lines could then have been drawn based on the number of citizen voters, which Hofeller believed would make it easier to pack Democrats and minorities into fewer districts, giving an advantage to Republicans... Additional files document his work in Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia, among other states.

E-mails also connect Hofeller to redistricting efforts in Florida. Top Republican officials in the state have denied that they played any official role in drawing the state’s legislative and congressional districts in 2011. A 2010 state constitutional amendment barred partisan gerrymandering in Florida. E-mails show that Hofeller communicated with and visited top G.O.P. political operatives in Florida in 2011. The operatives helped organize or draw state legislative and congressional maps that matched the districts that were later enacted. The operatives insisted, at a trial, that drawing the maps was only a hobby. A Florida judge found that argument unconvincing, concluding that the G.O.P. conducted a stealth redistricting operation that snuck partisan maps into the public process and made a “mockery” of the state’s constitutional amendments.

...E-mails also show that Hofeller worried that his redistricting handiwork could be undone by an anti-Trump wave in 2016 that handed state legislatures to Democrats. On September 6, 2016, a Republican lawyer e-mailed Hofeller a story from The Hill about Democratic efforts down-ballot. Hofeller’s reply: “Yes, maybe our redistricting ace card will be ‘trumped’ to use a bridge analogy.”

In an August, 2016, e-mail to a consultant to California Senate Republicans, Hofeller expressed frustration about Trump’s hold over the Party, and confidence that his maps would survive any blue wave. “Meanwhile the GOP continues to bury its collective heads in the sand or in other higher places. Trump is only a product to this stupidity,” he wrote. “Do not worry about us in North Carolina in terms of redistricting. Even in the coming political bloodbath we should still maintain majority control of the General Assembly. The Governor cannot veto a redistricting map, so the Democrats hope is that the Obamista judiciary will come to their rescue.”

E-mails suggest that Hofeller’s commitment to the Republican cause never wavered. The day after receiving a grim prognosis for lung cancer and a kidney tumor, Hofeller wrote a friend that he didn’t plan to slow down. “I still have time to bedevil the Democrats with more redistricting plans before I exit,” he wrote, on May 21st. “Look my name up on the Internet and you can follow the damage.”

Democrats have neglected state legislatures and seen Republicans put themselves into position to redrawn districts and take control of Congress with far fewer votes than Democrats have won. Let me give you some recent examples. In 2012 John Boehner retained the Speaker's gavel even though 59,645,531 voters (48.8%) backed Democratic candidates and just 58,228,253 voters (47.6%) backed Republican candidates, The Republicans wound up with 234 seats and the Democrats with 201. That's how gerrymandering works. And even when Democrats do well, they have to do really well to match the GOP. Like we just saw, the Republicans won 234 seats by taking 47.6% of the vote. In the big anti-red wave of 2018, there were 60,572,245 voters (53.5%) who picked Democrats and just 50,861,970 (44.8%) and yet Democrats only won 235 seats, only one more than the GOP won in 2012. That's got to be fixed. That why we're asking you to help the progressive Virginia candidates here.

Lee Carter Demolishes The Democratic Party Establishment's Convention Wisdom About How To Win Elections-- Just As Jessica Cisneros Declares Her Candidacy Against Blue Dog Henry Cuellar In Texas

In a primary cycle that ended this week, the Democratic establishment in Virginia got the results of their efforts to run an "ex"-Republican legislator and all around piece of dog crap, Mark Wolfe, against an incumbent of their own party-- free-thinking, Democratic Socialist Delegate Lee Carter. Carter never appeared all that concerned when I spoke with him and he easily turned back the challenge, winning the primary last Tuesday 57.72% to 42.28%. The outspoken Berniecrat-- a union electrician and Marine veteran-- was first elected in 2017 by winning the red Manassas House district-- with ZERO help from the Democratic Party of course-- against Jackson Miller, the powerful Republican majority whip. It was a feat that had been considered impossible since "everyone knows" the only way to beat a Republican in a red district is to run as a lesser-of-two evils Republican-lite candidate. Just ask Rahm Emanuel or Steve Israel or Steny Hoyer or Joe Crowley or Ben Ray Lujan or Cheri Bustos or Chuck Schumer... Miller's campaign was one long screech: "Socialist!" It must have been magic but Carter beat him-- in the biggest turnout election anyone in the district can remember-- 11,366 (54.42%) to 9,518 (45.58%). The Democrats were no more celebratory of Carter's win than the GOP was.

This cycle, the establishment media was, predictably, virulently opposed to Carter again. "Carter," wrote InsideNOVA, "has proven to be interested only in pushing a far-left socialist agenda rather than listening to and addressing real issues and concerns of his district and constituents. Nothing could be a better example of this than his ill-fated attempt to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work law, which has been in place for more than 70 years and is an oft-cited reason for the state’s economic success... We’re glad Carter already has drawn significant Republican opposition in this fall’s election." Guess who won't be buying their bullshit. That's right, the voters.

This tweet, below, from Carter yesterday was classic. And every Democrat running for office-- from Blue Dogs and New Dems on the right fringe of the party to actual Democratic Socialists on the left-- is going to have to figure out how best to respond to these kinds of mindless attacks. The Republicans haven't been served well in the past by this strategy-- to put it mildly-- but that isn't stopping them from trying it again, from the presidential campaigns right down to state and local offices. As a party they have nothing positive to offer so they settled for this as their message.

Up top you can hear Carter pushing back against an MSNBC talking head dullard who knows her always-wrong-talking-points inside and out. He still has to beat a Republican in November and if you like what you heard him say, please consider clicking on the thermometer above and contributing what you can to his campaign. And that brings us to... the newest candidate who has tossed her hat into the ring-- Jessica Cisneros, a 26 year old Latina attorney from Laredo. As of Thursday, she's been running for the safe blue South Texas congressional seat, TX-28, currently occupied by one of the 3 or 4 worst Blue Dogs in Congress, Henry Cuellar. Sarah Jones, writing for The Cut, also noted that Cuellar "is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He has co-sponsored anti-abortion legislation, fund-raised for a Republican congressman who went on to defeat a Democratic challenger, and supported legislation that would withhold public funding from sanctuary cities."

Cisneros is a strong candidate. A native of south Texas and the daughter of immigrants from Mexico, she’s running on a thoroughly left-wing platform that includes Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and abortion rights. On her campaign website, she writes that “every day in her work as a lawyer,” she “is reminded of what she learned as a child: The rules of the game are not fair for most Americans.” Her race will pit the appeal of her progressive platform against the power of a well-funded incumbent, and her campaign will challenge a prevailing theory: The Democratic Party supports conservative members like Cuellar in order to safeguard conservative and moderate districts.

Cisneros isn’t the only candidate to bet against that strategy. In Illinois, Marie Newman is challenging Dan Lipinski, another anti-abortion Democrat, from the left. Her first run against Lipinski, in 2018, nearly succeeded, which undercuts his central justification for holding conservative views-- that they mirror those of his constituents. But the same logic that insists it’s an unacceptable risk to pressure Lipinski and Cuellar from the left presumes that charismatic candidates can’t persuade voters with progressive rhetoric and that abortion rights are secure enough to tolerate anti-abortion representatives.

American voters are broadly in favor of access to legal abortion. But even if we accept that abortion is a fraught issue in some districts, there isn’t much reason to think that Lipinski and Cuellar represent voters who would accept only conservative Democrats. Lipinski’s district favored Hillary Clinton heavily in 2016, and he only barely defeated Newman. Cuellar told press in January that polling proves his district has a moderate tilt, but Clinton won the same district handily in 2016 and, as Roll Call reported in January, Cuellar himself won reelection with 84 percent of the vote. Republicans didn’t even mount a challenge. In fact, the district has elected only Democrats to Congress since its creation in 1993, as the Laredo Morning Times notes. If his district is really so moderate, Cuellar should at least be facing legitimate threats from the GOP. Instead, it’s the left, not the right, that senses his vulnerability.

Koch Influence On Blue Dogs by Nancy Ohanian

Even so, Cuellar will be a difficult target. He’s an eight-term incumbent, and there are two schools named for the representative in his district; two other members of the Cuellar family occupy local elected office. Cisneros will face resistance from the Democratic Party, too: Its congressional-campaign arm blacklists vendors that work with candidates who primary incumbent Democrats, a policy that cost Newman some consultants in the early days of her campaign. But that rule might not be enough to fatally damage the Cisneros campaign. In a press release, the campaign says it raised “over $80,000 from over 3,000 contributions, with an average contribution of $24,” on the day of its launch. That’s an impressive sum, and its origins contrast sharply with Cuellar’s fund-raising strategy. The Cisneros campaign says that only one percent of Cuellar’s donations in 2017 and 2018 came from small donors, while Sludge, a news site that tracks campaign finance, reported in May that Cuellar has routinely taken money from KochPAC, which is connected to Koch Industries.

Unions Are Part Of The Democratic Party Grassroots, But How Many Working Class Men And Women Are In Congress?

It has been part of the neo-liberal movement within the Democratic Party to weaken union power inside of the party-- and even weaken unions in society. As I pointed out on Sunday, the most fervently pro-union member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Lee Carter, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, has not been supported by the state Democratic establishment. Democratic voters love him, but the House leaders who control the party purse-strings didn't back him in 2017 when he flipped a seat they thought was too red to contest and this year they are encouraging a conservative "ex"-Republican pretending to be a Democrat to primary him. They revile the consistency in his stand for working families and for unions. Guess, what-- he's a guy who works with his hands and is a union member. That's why you find him doing stuff like this:

And unions are telling Democrats that that's what they want to see more or, not less of. Maybe that's why Bernie has been steadily pulling ahead of the other candidates, who have only paid tepid and confused lip service to organized labor. An AP report yesterday from Michelle Price and Nick Riccardi ephasized that "As candidates court unions for endorsements, labor leaders say they are listening for a comeback plan. Any proposal aimed at workers 'must include ensuring the opportunity to join a union, no matter where you work, since that’s the best way to raise wages, improve working conditions, create family-sustaining jobs and begin to fix our rigged economy and democracy,' said SEIU president Mary Kay Henry. At a conference of North America’s Building Trades Unions in Washington on Wednesday, several Democratic contenders talked about outlawing so-called 'right to work' laws that prevent unions from automatically deducting dues from members, said the group’s president, Sean McGarvey."

[S]ome key labor leaders are starting to worry about the topics dominating the 2020 conversation.

The candidates are spending too much time talking about esoteric issues like the Senate filibuster and the composition of the Supreme Court and not enough time speaking the language of workers, several union officials said. Those ideas may excite progressive activists, they said, but they risk alienating working-class voters.

“They’ve got to pay attention to kitchen table economics,” said Ted Pappageorge, president of the Las Vegas Culinary Union that represents 60,000 hotel and casino workers. “We don’t quite see that.”

Terry McGowan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139, in Wisconsin, said many of the issues driving the 2020 primary so far are distractions.

“The people that are into politics, the people who like sideshows, they’re into that,” he said, citing the debates over reparations for slavery and immigration as examples. “The masses just want to feed their families.”

The unease may be an early warning sign for Democrats, who watched as many white, working-class voters, including many union members in key Rust Belt states, chose Trump three years ago. Democrats are hoping to win back some of those voters next year, a challenge that is made harder, some argue, by labor’s struggle to build its membership and influence its rank and file. Democrats’ early messages may not help, some said.

...To be sure, many unionists are excited about the presidential field. Contenders include liberal stalwarts like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign became the first in U.S. history with a unionized workforce, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who joined striking Stop & Shop workers on a picket line in New Hampshire on Friday. California Sen. Kamala Harris hired a top Service Employees International Union executive for her campaign and made her first proposal one to raise teacher’s pay... Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the competition in the crowded field has amplified workers voices and issues.

She noted that prominent presidential candidates quickly supported Los Angeles public school teachers when they struck in January. Warren, Sanders, Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have all proposed various taxes on higher-earning families, a departure from most past Democratic hopefuls who have treaded carefully on the issue.

“It feels different than at other times,” Weingarten said. “There is far more attention and focus on working people’s economic needs.”

Major endorsements are likely several months away, especially because the labor movement is treading carefully after complaints that its leadership was too quick to back Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary over Sanders.

For labor, much is at stake. Despite Republican gains, particularly with trade union members, labor remains an essential part of the Democrats’ coalition. Unions spent $169 million in 2018 on federal elections, largely on Democrats’ behalf, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Democrats won union workers by a strong 59%-39% margin in 2018, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

One of the traits we screen for when we figure out which candidates to endorse has to do with how strong their commitments are to organized labor. When we feel a candidate is just mailing it in and not really ready to take hard votes for working families... well, they can go look for an endorsement from the New Dems. These four candidates are very committed to union organizing and will be strong fighters in Congress. Blue America has endorsed each one of them and I hope you'll use the thermometer below to contribute something to any of, or all of, their campaigns.

Marqus Cole is running for a Republican-held seat in suburban Atlanta. He reiterated that his dad "is a public school teacher and union member. My wife Amanda's dad is a commercial pilot and union member. Our lives were shaped by the American idea that a community of people coming together to pool their resources and fight for better wages, quality of life and work conditions is something to be proud of. Organized labor is a partner and key part of the economic engine that makes our country great. I think it is high time that we stop handicapping and sidelining our best tool for getting Americans to access the American dream just because a few billionaires are privately financing their own laws through Republican politicians."

Audrey Denney, a progressive candidate in a rural district up where her state meets Oregon and Nevada, explained that "Workers’ rights in our country have been under attack, and intentionally eroded for the past few decades. This is directly linked to the increasing poverty in our country and the growing gap between rich and poor. Unemployment in my district is significantly higher than the national average (7.4%, compared to 4.9% nationally in 2016). Incomes in CA-01 are less than state averages, and the poverty rate in my district is significantly above the state and national average. Minimum wage has not been increased over the years at the same rate as inflation. In the last 50 years, the minimum wage has effectively decreased in value by one third! In the same fifty years, corporate profits have increased 500% and average CEO salaries have gone up 1,500%. Minimum wage is so low, that for a family of four where both parents work full-time at minimum wage, the family is still below the poverty line. In my district, poor infrastructure and inadequate career and technical education discourage businesses from coming to the area or expanding. We desperartley need a representative who will fight for working families instead and not corporate donors.

Kara Eastman is running against Trump puppet Don Bacon in Omaha. When I asked her about where she is on unions this morning she said "I come from a union family which means something to me. My mother worked cleaning apartments to put food on our table. I have worked for over 20 years in nonprofits serving working individuals and families who have had a weak voice in American politics. But that is starting to change. I am tired of seeing people who work hard, struggle to make it on one salary. I want to work on behalf of families who deserve better than representatives who cater to the interests of corporations over theirs. We need more social workers, nurses, carpenters and teachers in office. Perhaps then, it would be a no-brainer to raise the minimum wage to an actual livable wage. Or maybe then the student debt crisis would be priority one."

Eva Putzova has a different situation. Before she takes on a Republican in her vast Arizona rural district, she has to beat a "former" Republican/current Blue Dog in a tough primary battle. He's a perfect example of someone who pays lip service to unions and then votes against the interests of working families all the time. Eva, who served on the Flagstaff city council, is an organizer herself. "After World War II," she told us yesterday, "over 50% of our workforce was unionized, mostly in the private sector. As the productivity of the economy increased, so did wages. In the last 40 years, anti-union, corporate interests and their representatives in government have made a concerted effort to weaken, and in some industries, eliminate unions altogether. As unions have declined in power so have wages while profits are at an all time high. When elected to Congress I will fight to eliminate anti-labor right-to-work laws, and will support real labor law reform that makes it easier for workers at all levels to be represented by a union. A revitalized labor movement is the key to achieving greater social, racial and economic justice for all American workers."

Randy "Iron Stache" Bryce went heavy on working class men and women feel like they have as much a right to be in Congress as an attorney or businessperson. He has a new outfit now, Iron PAC, which he's using to recruit and prepare working people to run. This morning he told me that "It’s really great to see some incredible pro-labor candidates step forward to run for president. Many of them helped our campaign out in some way, and, I’ll always be very grateful. It was incredible to see Senator Sanders be the first to ever organize a presidential campaign and voluntarily recognize a union. I know our staff appreciated that. It sent a message that those who do the work of moving a campaign along are worth taking care of. (Also thank you Rep. Swalwell for following suit.) Many voters have an issue that is important to them. I have several. In these times, we need a lot of help as organized labor has been under attack for far too long. Some people think that there are issues that aren’t as important as others. Let me just put in that this isn’t just an election. We’re building a movement. If some of those ideas advocate for equality for a gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or race and they aren’t viewed as being important then we are leaving people behind. We are turning our back on strength. This is going to take everybody to win. We can’t afford the alternative."

The Democratic Establishment Does Like SOME Primaries-- If It's Against A Progressive

Two years ago Berniecrat and Democratic Socialist Lee Carter accomplished the "impossible" in Manassas (Virginia's HD-50). He ran, with more hostility than support from the Democratic establishment, against incumbent Jackson Miller, Republican majority whip of the House of Delegates. Carter, a former Marine, was targeted and derided by the GOP as a socialist-- and voters flocked to the polls to vote for him. Although Miller got the most votes he had ever had before, Carter beat him in the long-time red district 11,366 (54.42%) to 9,518 (45.58%).

When Carter won the red seat that the Virginia Democratic establishment felt was unwinnable, they seemed more dismayed than celebratory. They largely viewed him the way the DC Democratic establishment views AOC, Rashida and Ilhan. They laugh along with the Republicans who continue to red-bait him.

Last December Carter introduced House Bill 1806, which would overturn the state's right-to-work law. It hasn't passed... at least not yet. He explained what he was trying to accomplish on Twitter:

I assume you've been reading about and hearing about the DCCC's new diktat against primaries, right? The Virginia state equivalent of the DCCC is taking it to the next step-- encouraging primaries against progressives. Their conservative, status quo candidate against Carter this cycle is Mark Wolfe, a local Republican office-holder who says he's a Democrat. Just more proof that the Democratic Party establishment always prefers a Republican to a progressive-- whether in DC or in Virginia.

The local establishment media is virulently anti-Carter, of course. "Carter has proven to be interested only in pushing a far-left socialist agenda," editorialized InsideNOVA, "rather than listening to and addressing real issues and concerns of his district and constituents. Nothing could be a better example of this than his ill-fated attempt to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work law, which has been in place for more than 70 years and is an oft-cited reason for the state’s economic success." Leave aside the typical conservative bias towards the anti-union right-to-work laws; the whole premise of the statement is completely false. Most of Carter's legislative proposals have involved solving traffic problems in clogged northeastern Virginia. "We’re glad Carter already has drawn significant Republican opposition in this fall’s election," they continued. "We look forward to hearing him explain on the campaign trail how his socialistic proposals would help the residents of Manassas and Prince William County." Sure they do! The other Republican in the race challenging Carter is Manassas City Councilman Ian Lovejoy. The Republican attitude has been that the "ex"-Republican (Wolfe) and Carter will damage each other in the primary, making it easier for Lovejoy to win the general. "Regardless of who wins, Lovejoy will face a damaged opponent going into what’s sure to be one of the top races in the commonwealth in November." Blue America has endorsed Lee Carter (again; he was our candidate in 2017 as well) and if you'd like contribute to his campaign, you can do so by tapping the ActBlue legislative thermometer above.

Another legislative candidate in Virginia endorsed by Blue America, Qasim Rashid, who's running for the state Senate and whose district, like Carter's includes part of Prince William County, is enthusiastically supporting his reelection. "Delegate Carter," he told us, "ran on a platform of combatting poverty. During his inaugural term he worked with dedication to help fulfill these promises, but that fight isn’t over yet. He continues to fight for the working class, and does so while building a strong coalition of support." Democrats are on the cusp of winning back control of the Virginia state legislature. Supporting candidates like Lee Carter, Herb Jones and Qasim Rashid is what's going to make all the difference-- especially if you want to see a legislature with progressive values, not just garden variety Democratic careerists doing their thing. The primary is June 11.