Federal Court Unanimously Strikes Down Republicans Unconstitutional Gerrymander Of Michigan

A federal court Trump hasn't had the opportunity to pervert yet, voted unanimously to strike down the Michigan GOP legislature's grossly unconstitutional gerrymander that handed a 50/50 state over to the Republicans in the state House, state Senate and congressional delegation, even while statewide, the Democrats were kicking GOP butt. The decision will force a redrawing of congressional districts 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12; state Senate Districts 8, 11, 12, 14, 18, 27, and 36; and state House Districts 24, 32, 51, 55, 60, 63, 75, 83, 91, 94, and 95. (The Court let 7 contested legislative districts stand as they are-- three in the state Senate and 4 in the state House but will also require Michigan to conduct special state Senate elections for some seats next year, cutting in half the four-year terms those current lawmakers are now serving.)

Unless the Supreme Court-- which Trump has perverted (very much so)-- grants a stay, fairly likely with 2 similar cases pending for North Carolina and Maryland, the new boundaries will have to be approved by the court in time for the 2020 election. The court characterized the boundaries the legislature drew as a partisan gerrymander "of historical proportions."

The ruling stated flatly that the "predominate purpose" of the Republican redistricting plan (2011) "was to subordinate the interests of Democratic voters and entrench Republicans in power" violating the first and 14th Amendment rights of the plaintiffs. In the statewide races last cycle, the Republicans got just 43.7% in the gubernatorial race and just 45.8% in the U.S. Senate race.

The court ordered a super-transparent redistricting process that requires the legislature to present Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer a new map she agrees to sign by August 1. If they fail-- likely-- the court will appoint a special master, the way the court in Pennsylvania did, which was catastrophic for the Republican congressional delegation. The Pennsylvania delegation went from 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats under the illegally gerrymandered map to 9 Democrats and 9 Republicans (if the GOP holds onto PA-12 next week, as expected).

The unanimous decision was made by 3 judges, 2 Clinton appointees and one appointee of George H.W. Bush. During the process, Michigan's new Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson (D), wasn't nearly as harsh towards the GOP law-breakers as the court was. But yesterday she said that the ruling "confirms that these Michigan state House and Senate and U.S. congressional districts are unconstitutional... As the state’s chief election officer, I’m committed to working with the Legislature, citizens and the court to ensure the new districts comply with our U.S. Constitution."

When the suit began, Michigan had 9 Republicans and 5 Democrats in Congress, despite the fact that the statewide votes are around 50/50. In 2018, though, 2 red seats were flipped and the delegation now stands at 7 Republicans and 7 Democrats. The redrawing could turn the delegation bluer yet. These are the members of Congress directly impacted by the ruling, along with the PVI of each district:

• MI-01- Jack Bergman (R)- R+9
• MI-04- John Moolenaar (R)- R+10
• MI-05- Dan Klildee (D)- D+5
• MI-07- Tim Walberg (R)- R+7
• MI-08- Elissa Slotkin (D)- R+4
• MI-09- Andy Levin (D)- D+4
• MI-10- Paul Mitchell (R)- R+13
• MI-11- Haley Stevens (D)- R+4
• MI-12- Debbie Dingell (D)- D+14

As far as I can tell, a fairer map wouldn't change much. Slotkin and Stevens would probably wind up with less red districts, perhaps with an R+1 lean rather than the current R+4 leans that are usually only flippable in wave cycles. The Republican who could be in serious jeopardy is Tim Walberg in the southeast corner of the state, where his district is likely to end up with more Democratic voters from Washtenaw County in Debbie Dingell's district. It wouldn't put her in jeopardy at all to turn MI-07 into an evenly split district, which is always what courts want to see. Maybe I'm being too conservative in my thinking, but my best guess is that a new map will result in just one change in the delegation. If the DCCC runs a reasonable candidate-- like the sack of Blue Dog garbage they ran in 2018-- they would be able to retire Walberg. That's really it, other than more safety for reelection hopes for Slotkin and Stevens, who are being targeted by the NRCC now, but probably will be just targeted on paper after their districts are made more even.

Walberg beat back wretched Blue Dog Gretchen Driskell, one of the worst candidates the DCCC was pushing last cycle, 158,730 (53.8%) to 136,330 (46.2%). In a slightly fairer district, a non-lesser-of-two-evils Democrat would probably spell the end of Walberg's political career. There are currently 8 counties in the district. The DCCC was eager to field a Blue Dog with relatively little in common with actual Democrats who live in those counties beyond Choice and other social issues. Keep in mind that Democrats in those 8 counties went overwhelmingly for Bernie-- he won all 8 counties-- rather than Hillary in 2016, a real indictment of DCCC interference in local elections. The eight counties are listed here by the size of their voter turnout, but big and small they were all Bernie territory. Democrats chose to back the populist progressive, not the corporatist status quo candidate. That didn't stop-- never stops-- the DCCC from saddling them with an even worse candidate than Hillary, a full-fledged conservative, Republican-lite Blue Dog:

• Monroe- Bernie- 48.1% (to Hillary's 47.2%)
• Jackson- Bernie- 55.0%
• Washtenaw- Bernie- 55.4%
• Eaton- Bernie- 55.6%
• Lenawee- Bernie- 53.9%
• Hillsdale- Bernie- 56.7%
• Branch- Bernie- 53.6%

In the general, Trump won Monroe (58.4%), Jackson (57.2%), Eaton (49.6%), Leenawee (57.6%), Hillsdale (70.9%) and Branch (66.9%). Clinton won only Washtenaw County, where, remember, Bernie has edged her in the primary. It's why people so often say Bernie would have won-- and will in 2020, unless the Democrats manage to run another Clinton-type candidate.

Will Michigan Democrats Allow Themselves To Be Rescued By A Progressive In A District Bernie Won Decisively?

Michigan's 7th district is the southeast corner of the state, carefully gerrymandered by the Republicans to keep Lansing and Ann Arbor residents out of it. Most of the voters live in Jackson, Monroe, Eaton, Washtenaw and Lenawee counties. The district was definitely not Hillary country. The folks there wanted change and Bernie decisively won the primary. Trump then beat Hillary just as decisively. The PVI went from R+3 to R+7. The Democrats ran an especially bad candidate against weak incumbent Tim Walberg in 2016. Despite Bernie crushng Hillary in the primary, the brain surgeons at the DCCC decided they should run an utterly worthless establishment Blue Dog, Gretchen Driskell, virtually the opposite of Bernie. So she lost badly. Walberg beat her 183,549 (55.0%) to 133,697 (40.1%). Walberg raised $2,403,861 and Driskell raised $2,554,488. Pelosi's House Majority PAC wasted another $559,314 on the race and the DCCC thew in $96,200 before abandoning her as hopeless.

She was a dreadful candidate in every way, so, of course, EMILY's List and the Blue Dogs have endorsed her again. So far this cycle Walberg has raised $654,797 and Driskoll has brought in $233,218 and the DCCC hasn't decided what to do.

An exciting new candidate just jumped into the race, Steve Friday. Sam Pernick, chairman of the Michigan Young Democrats, Liano Sharon and Sue Vasquez wrote a post for Michigan Progressive and offered DWT the opportunity to publish it. We gladly accepted.

Steve Friday, a progressive organizer from Dexter, recently launched his campaign for US Congress in Michigan’s 7th district, seeking to unseat Republican Tim Walberg. Friday is a social worker, a US Air Force veteran, and an activist with many progressive organizations, including Indivisible, Ann Arbor for Revolution, and Michigan for Revolution. Friday is the second Democrat to enter the race for the 7th. He will face off in the August primary against Gretchen Driskell, who tried to unseat Walberg in 2016. Her campaign spent over $2.5 million dollars in the 2016 race and lost by 15 points.

At his campaign kickoff event,. Friday spoke about the economic challenges many are facing in Michigan. He said, “I think everyone here at some point in their lives has struggled to make ends meet. Worried about their car breaking down. Worried about paying medical bills. How many people have used a credit card to pay a medical bill, because if you don’t pay that bill, they’re going to report you to the credit card companies and your credit score will go down?“

Friday is running on a unique slogan: “Human First.” Friday said this means setting aside partisan blinders, and letting go of the personal attacks and baggage that comes with politics. Just treating one another with respect.

“I think that no matter who you are, and no matter what you bring to the table, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, we all need to band together and work together to solve problems,” Friday said. “That’s what people are looking for.”

Friday’s first hurdle is the August primary against Gretchen Driskell. The primary pits the party’s rising progressive wing against its establishment wing.

Two years ago, Driskell’s campaign was considered one of the most promising by party insiders. She drew significant behind-the-scenes help from the Democratic Party in Michigan and nationally. A look at her recent donors this cycle shows significant establishment-democratic backing, with contributions from Loreen Powell Jobs (wife of the late Steve Jobs) and Democratic mega-donor Don Sussman. But it remains to be seen if the party establishment coalesces around her as they did in 2016. Instead, they may choose to focus on other races, like Michigan’s 8th and 11th congressional house seats.

That might be because despite strong backing in 2016, Driskell struggled to connect with voters. Walberg’s support of bad trade deals led her to attack him with the nickname “Trade Deal Tim” and urged voters to “Trade Him In.” The attacks fell flat.

Friday said that he and other progressive activists spoke to Driskell in early 2017 as part an organizing effort prior to the Democratic Party convention. They told her they would support her if she ran on a progressive platform and refused to take corporate money. She said “we’ll talk about it,” but the conversation never happened. When asked about her stance on taking corporate money at the 7th congressional district meeting in Adrian last October she replied, “We’ll deal with that after I get elected.”

Two New Democratic Congressional Candidates: Gretchen Driskell In Michigan, Shawn O'Connor in New Hampshire

Gretchen and Shawn

Late in November, WMUR reported that New Yorker Shawn O'Connor, founder and CEO of Stratus Prep, a test preparation and admissions counseling firm, had moved to New Hampshire to run for Kelly Ayotte's Senate seat. He's licensed to practice law in New York and Massachusetts, but not in New Hampshire. Before founding Stratus, O'Connor worked for Lehman Brothers and also for Republican Congressman James Greenwood (PA). Someone must have told young Shawn about Maggie Hassan because today he let it be known that he's running for Frank Guinta's House seat instead of Ayotte's Senate seat.

O'Connor, who is gay, is socially liberally but more conservative when it comes to the struggle working families have keeping up. He's part of the "Third Way" movement. "The leaders of both major parties, seeking political advantage, have presented voters with a dangerous false choice that has paralyzed our nation," he wrote. "House Republicans want to cut income taxes on the wealthiest Americans from 39.6% to 25% and turn Medicare into a voucher program which could leave some senior citizens without critical medical coverage. At the same time, Senate Democrats want to increase federal taxes by another $1 trillion dollars (when many in New York City, for example, already pay 54% of their income in federal, state and local taxes) adhering to an orthodoxy that more federal spending will automatically drive growth and job creation. America needs to return to its entrepreneurial roots so that we can grow our way out of this crisis. A rebirth of American small businesses will slash the unemployment rate while substantially increasing tax revenues without raising rates."

New Hampshire Democrats are counting on Carol Shea-Porter to run again and beat Guinta again.

Michigan's 7th district is in the southeast part of the state, from Lake Erie just north of Toldeo, Ohio, up to the suburbs of Ann Arbor and out to the suburbs of Lansing. Both Ann Arbor and Lansing were excluded from the district to make it safer for Republican incumbent Tim Walberg. The PVI is R+3 but Obama beat McCain in 2008, 177,638 (51%) to 165,747 (47%) and lost to Romney in 2012, 169,310 (51%) to 158,963 (48%). And in November Democrat Gary Peters bested Republican Terri Lynn Land district-wide, winning majorities in Monroe, Wayne, Washtenaw, Jackson, and Eaton counties.

In 2012, the DCCC recruited a tepid, mediocre candidate, Pam Brynes, and then abandoned her when it became apparent she wasn't gaining any traction with voters. Slavishly following Steve Israel's pointless messaging bromides, Byrnes was unable to make a case for replacing a pretty terrible and ineffective incumbent with herself. Walberg beat her decisively, 118,715 (53.5%) to 91,403 (41.2%). Although she hasn't ruled out running again, Democrats think think they found a better candidate for 2016: Gretchen Driskell, who announced her candidacy Monday. And remember, MI-07 a district that is very likely to go for Hillary Clinton.

State Rep. Gretchen Driskell was the first female mayor of Saline and hopes to also be the first female congressmember from the congressional district. The state House district she won was gerrymandered specifically to be safe for Republicans but she won it anyway. Her reputation has always been that she's good with persuadable voters. Walberg's shocking 2.31 lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is the most extreme right of any Republican in Michigan. A well-run campaign focused on the kinds of issues that appeal to middle and working class voters will go a long way towards ending his career. It's a moderate district; he's an extremist with an extremist record. Is Driskell the one to successfully fight that battle? She has a record too-- and it's very solution-oriented and has always dealt with issues important to families-- like education.

There's no doubt MI-07 will be a battleground district in 2016 and that Driskell is a serious contender. Its a district we'll keep watching and getting back to you about. And when we find out more information about where Driskell is likely to fall in the progressive/conservative continuum, we'll let me know about that too.


UPDATE: First Michigan Polls Shows Driskell Ahead

This came as a big surprise in late March:

A new Inside Michigan Politics/Revsix/Change Media poll has Michigan State Representative Gretchen Driskell up five points over incumbent tea party Republican Tim Walberg in the 7th District Congressional race. The pollsters polled a sample of voters that was 30% Democrats, 36% Republicans and 34% Independents and Driskell came in with 42%. Walberg had 37% and 21% were undecided. The 5-point lead was just inside the margin of error. Driskell did particularly well among independents, 46-27%, an astonishing 19-point gap.

Steve Israel Starts Dumping His Miserable Recruits

Steve Israel and the DCCC freaked out when they realized that a progressive grassroots candidate, George Gollin, was serious about running against freshman GOP corporate shill Rodney Davis. With Dick Durbin at their side, they did everything they could to undermine Gollin and, in the end, Israel's mystery meat candidate, Ann Callis, won the primary, with 54.65%, having significantly outspent Gollin. From the moment she won the primary, the Democrats could have written off the swing district. She stands for nothing except her own career and offers no one-- except for blind partisans-- any reason to vote for her. That didn't stop Israel from earmarking $1,753,000 in attack ads against Davis for this fall. So far he's only spent $21,700 though and their are very loud rumors everywhere that Callis is one of the nothing candidates with no chance to win that he's cutting off at the knees-- and leaving to the incompetent hands of EMILY's List, who will pick over the carcass and drain whatever money she has for themselves-- while she goes down to a horrible defeat. Too bad all her eggs were in the rotten DCCC basket and she didn't build a credible campaign that could stand on its own. Or, even worse that the DCCC didn't just stay out of it and let Gollin win the primary and fight it out with Davis.

Beltway pundits now see Davis, despite his 50/50 district as a safe bet for reelection. Obama won 55-44% against McCain and was in a 49-49% tie 4 years later that Romney won by a a few hundred votes. Alex Isenstadt, sharper than most of the Beltway pundits wrote on Tuesday that "Democrats have gradually narrowed their focus to protecting jeopardized incumbents and are likely to seriously invest in only the dozen or so candidates seen as realistic contenders for Republican-held seats. At the start of the cycle, for instance, national Democrats had been talking up the candidacies of Ann Callis, a former county judge running for an Illinois seat, and Amanda Renteria, a former Capitol Hill aide seeking a California seat. Neither candidate is now seen as likely to win, and neither is receiving as much attention." The DCCC claimed, hysterically, that he was wrong about Renteria but were less definitive about the fate they have in store of Callis, who is running into money problems as Israel's interest in her campaign wanes.

And not just Callis. Another weak EMILY's List candidate, Pam Brynes is desperately fighting to maintain her backing from the fickle Steve Israel, who has told allies he's dumping her. Byrnes released two very Beltway TV adds yesterday (below). Over the course of the next month, more and more hapless Israel recruits will become victims of his terrible recruiting agenda. Kind of sad.






And The Kochs Are Also Dumping Their Weak Links

Starting in Oregon, where their mess of a candidate, Monica Wehby, is being viewed as just a big waste of time and energy by the far right. She only has $646,831 cash on hand and the Koch-run American Partners Action SuperPac has already wasted $215,750. Carly Fiorina's shady New Republican PAC wasted another $507,076, the only electoral investment they've made this cycle, out of the $1,302,104 they've squeezed from right-wing suckers. The Register-Guard reported today that "Freedom Partners’ super PAC, the Virginia-based group affiliated with oil and gas magnates Charles and David Koch, confirmed Friday that it has canceled all the television ad time it had reserved in October to influence Oregon’s U.S. Senate race."

The cancellation wasn’t the only bad news for the Wehby campaign on Friday.

Rasmussen Reports released its latest poll for the race, which found that Wehby remains 13 percentage points behind Merkley.

…On Thursday, Weh­by said she wasn’t concerned that Freedom Partners could pull back its spending, and was focused on her own campaign.

The Kochs also pulled their ads from the hapless, sinking Terri Lynn Land campaign in Michigan, although another neo-fascist, Joe Ricketts, former CEO of Ameritrade and the owner of the Chicago Cubs, has already pumped $2,153,309 into that race on Land's behalf, through his extreme right wing Ending Spending Action Fund. Just last week Rove dumped $763,962 into the race for Land, on top of the $500,000 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already put in. So far-- even without Koch cash-- right-wing groups have spent $3,505,361 smearing Gary Peters and another $838,994 talking up Land.