Desperately Needed: Election Protection-- Otherwise Expect "Street-Level Violence And Political Impasse" In November

Never Waste A Serious Crisis by Nancy Ohanian

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a story about the extreme dysfunction NYC has experienced in trying to run an election. There is still no determination who will represent NY-12, a district that includes Yorkville, the Upper East Side, Midtown (including Trump Tower), Gramercy Park, Turtle Bay, Tudor City, Union Square, Roosevelt Island, Kips Bay, the East Village and the Lower East Side in Manhattan; Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside in Queens; and Greenpoint and northern Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Wall Street hack and establishment liberal Carolyn Maloney represents the district now but on election night (June 23) the results were too close to call. With tens of thousands of mail-in ballots, they still are.

• Carolyn Maloney- 16,473 (41.6%)
• Suraj Patel- 15,825 (39.9%)
• Laura Ashcraft- 5,268 (13.3%)
• Peter Harrison- 1,933 (4.9%)

"Just 648 in-person votes are separating them," wrote Jada Yuan, "with 65,000 mail-in ballots still being counted. And an entire district of 718,000 people across three boroughs have no idea who their next representative will be-- a full month after Election Day... At the center of this mess is a massive influx of mail-in ballots-- 403,000 returned ballots in the city this cycle vs. 23,000 that were returned and determined valid during the 2016 primary-- and a system wholly unprepared to process them. It’s not just delayed results that are at issue: In the 12th district and in the primaries across the country, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots were invalidated for technicalities like a missing signature or a missing postmark on the envelope."

All across the state, other close primaries were also plagued by the same problems. "None of this," continued Yuan, "bodes well for November’s federal election in which President Trump has refused to say whether he will accept the results. Turnout is expected to skyrocket because of the presidential race. Another covid-19 spike in the fall could lead to more mail-in ballots from people who fear crowded polling places. Add in slowed mail delivery because of the pandemic, while Trump constantly threatens to dismantle the U.S. Postal Service. Meanwhile, Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly attacked the integrity of mail-in voting, making unfounded claims that the method is susceptible to widespread fraud."

Enter New York’s 12th as an extreme, but not isolated, case study. On Tuesday, the race even caught the eye of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who cited “the absolute catastrophe for New York City” in her news briefing while answering a question on election security.

“It’s a dark omen for November,” said a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the race, warning against voter fraud.

“Let’s fix this dumpster fire before it burns down the country in November,” the New York Daily News, a liberal tabloid, wrote in its op-ed on the race, warning about voter disenfranchisement through ballots that are invalidated because of missing postmarks.

...But the invalidation rate is concerning to many who are watching the race. According to data from the Board of Elections first published by The Intercept, up to 1 in 5 mail-in ballots were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes. The majority of mistakes are due to missing or late postmarks, and missing signatures. Preliminary numbers from the Board of Elections show an invalidation rate of 19 percent in both Manhattan and Queens and 28 percent in Brooklyn, just in this district. That rate, if applied to all of Brooklyn, would equate to 34,000 ballots thrown out, in a borough with the city’s largest population of black residents.

...Election Day was on June 23. The Board of Elections, by law, waited a week for all the mail-in ballots to arrive, and then waited until July 8 to start the count because of the sheer volume of ballots to sort through and the July Fourth weekend. A week after that, still no absentee ballots had been counted in the 12th District.

...All the action in their contest is focused on the count, and it is something out of a dystopian thriller about office tedium. At the Manhattan canvassing spot, numbered folding tables are scattered throughout a cavernous space. Two BOE employees sit on one side of a plexiglass sneeze guard.

On the other side are the watchers. Each campaign gets one watcher at each table. The BOE employees open the envelopes and show the ballots through the sneeze guard so the watchers can contest a ballot’s validity and compile chicken-scratch tallies. The pace is equivalent to watching a sloth eat bark.

Back in his office, Patel is worrying over “the postmark issue.” It was all he could think about: The 13,000 invalid ballots across three boroughs in his race. Based on photocopies of envelopes his campaign received from the Board of Elections, he estimated half of those were not counted because of a missing postmark.

These are ballots that fell into a kind of black hole of election law. Ballots that arrived to the BOE before or on June 23, Election Day, with or without a postmark are valid. Ballots that arrived by the cutoff of June 30 with a postmark of June 23 or earlier are valid. Ballots that arrived before June 30 but have no postmark or a postmark of the 24th, which many had, likely due to what the BOE called “USPS error,” Patel said-- those are invalid, automatically.

“It’s a question of timeliness. We are constrained,” said Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, the BOE’s spokeswoman.

That third category of ballots are the one Patel is fighting to have counted. The lawsuit he filed calls on Gov. Cuomo to fix the issue with an executive order.

In his Tuesday news conference, Cuomo punted the issue to the state legislature.

What Patel argues is that the law isn’t taking into account how much the pandemic changed the election. In the midst of the state’s shutdown in April, Cuomo signed an executive order mandating that the BOE send an absentee ballot application to every New Yorker, who in the past could only obtain an absentee ballot for very narrow reasons, such as illness or disability.

The BOE, with limited staff allowed in its offices, sprung to action, setting up an online portal and a phone line for absentee ballot requests and preparing a mailing for the city’s 3million registered primary voters. That didn’t go out until mid-May.

Every ballot request needed to be approved by a bipartisan set of staffers, then entered into the voter rolls. Then a court dispute about the presidential primary delayed the finalization of the ballot, which the BOE didn’t begin sending out until three weeks before the election.

That’s where the U.S. Postal Service comes in. Mail-in ballots are in the hands of a federal agency on the brink of bankruptcy that had to sideline 17,000 workers on quarantine because of exposure to the virus. Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor recently appointed as postmaster general, has announced cost-cutting changes that will likely further slow mail delivery.

At every turn, the governor’s executive orders and the BOE’s deadlines were out of touch with the Postal Service’s abilities. The final date for voters to send in absentee applications was June 16, an impossible seven-day turnaround for the application to get to the BOE and a ballot to get to the voter in time to cast it.

But in New York, there was another issue. The governor’s executive order called for the ballots to have business-class postage-paid return envelopes. In a normal year, voters provide their own stamp, which is considered first-class mail and always postmarked. The USPS said it is also their policy to postmark all ballots. It is not standard, however, as voter advocacy groups have said, to postmark the type of business-class mail used in New York’s primary election. If you drop it off in a mailbox it is simply sent to its destination. It seems as though the postage class created confusion among some USPS employees.

The only way for a voter to guarantee a postmark would have been to stand in line at a post office and watch a teller do it, rather than drop it in a box, which defeats the public-health benefit of mail-in ballots.

Upon review of what happened in New York, USPS spokeswoman Martha Johnson said, “We are aware that some ballots may not have been postmarked and have taken actions to resolve the issue going forward.”

On Wednesday night, Cuomo and New York Attorney General Letitia James responded to the lawsuit Patel joined by saying that allowing un-postmarked ballots was “not in the public interest because it would upend the rules... after the election has already taken place.”

Patel quickly looked into a new legal strategy and has secured an expedited hearing that may happen as early as Thursday.

“This is not the fault of vote by mail,” he said. “I’ve always been an advocate of vote by mail. It increased participation to astronomical rates for a congressional primary. But man is New York unprepared to have the procedures in place to count these ballots in a timely fashion.”

Of course, he still wants to know the outcome.

“It might be that we open up those ballots and they all go to Maloney. It’s not my job to decide who gets to vote,” he said. “At least we’d know what the actual intention of New York-12 was.”

OK, want to imagine the worst-- that it isn't just a couple of Wall Street-friendly Democrats, one old and one young,  fighting over postmarks-- but Trump and Biden in November? Jess Bidgood, reporting for the Boston Globe wrote that "On the second Friday in June, a group of political operatives, former government and military officials, and academics quietly convened online for what became a disturbing exercise in the fragility of American democracy. The group, which included Democrats and Republicans, gathered to game out possible results of the November election, grappling with questions that seem less far-fetched by the day: What if President Trump refuses to concede a loss, as he publicly hinted recently he might do? How far could he go to preserve his power? And what if Democrats refuse to give in?"

“All of our scenarios ended in both street-level violence and political impasse,” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and former Defense Department official who co-organized the group known as the Transition Integrity Project. She described what they found in bleak terms: “The law is essentially... it’s almost helpless against a president who’s willing to ignore it.”

Using a role-playing game that is a fixture of military and national security planning, the group envisioned a dark 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day, one in which Trump and his Republican allies used every apparatus of government-- the Postal Service, state lawmakers, the Justice Department, federal agents, and the military-- to hold onto power, and Democrats took to the courts and the streets to try to stop it.

If it sounds paranoid or outlandish-- a war room of seasoned politicos and constitutional experts playing a Washington version of Dungeons and Dragons in which the future of the republic hangs in the balance-- they get it. But, as they finalize a report on what they learned and begin briefing elected officials and others, they insist their warning is serious: A close election this fall is likely to be contested, and there are few guardrails to stop a constitutional crisis, particularly if Trump flexes the considerable tools at his disposal to give himself an advantage.

“He doesn’t have to win the election,” said Nils Gilman, a historian who leads research at a think tank called the Berggruen Institute and was an organizer of the exercise. “He just has to create a plausible narrative that he didn’t lose.”

The very existence of a group like this one, which was formed late last year, underscores the extent of the fear in Washington’s political circles-- and beyond-- that Trump will take the same hammer he has used to fracture the norms of executive governance over the past three years and upend the nation’s delicate tradition of orderly political transitions of power by refusing to concede if he loses.

“We have norms in our transition, rather than laws,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program at the Carnegie Foundation, who was not part of the game. “This entire election season is something a democracy expert would worry about.”

It is a fear that has been stoked by the president himself, who has repeatedly warned, without offering evidence, of widespread fraud involving mail-in ballots-- which voters are likely to use at unprecedented levels because the pandemic has made in-person voting a potential health risk-- to cast doubt on the results of November’s election.

“I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election, I really do,” he told Fox News’ Chris Wallace last Sunday. When asked if he would accept the election results, he said: “I’ll have to see.”

Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has taken to issuing foreboding warnings of his own. “This president is going to try to indirectly steal the election by arguing that mail-in ballots don’t work-- they’re not real, they’re not fair,” he said at a fund-raiser on Thursday night. He has also mused publicly about Trump having to be escorted, forcibly if need be, from the White House.

That happened in one of the four scenarios the Transition Integrity Project gamed out, according to summaries of the exercises provided to the Boston Globe. But constitutional experts-- and the game play-- was less focused on the possibility of a cinematic, militarized intervention on Inauguration Day, which is a possibility many still consider remote, than the room the Constitution appears to leave for a disastrous and difficult transition if the incumbent does not accept a loss.

“How well is our constitutional legal system designed to deal with an incumbent president who insists that he won an election but for the presence of fraud?” said Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College who has written a book on what would happen if Trump took such a stand. “And I think the rather unfortunate answer is our system is not well designed at all to deal with that problem,” said Douglas, who was not involved in the game.

Brooks got the seed of the idea for the Transition Integrity Project after a dinner where a federal judge and a corporate lawyer each told her they were convinced the military or the Secret Service would have to escort Trump out of office if he lost the election and would not concede. Brooks wasn’t so sure. She and Gilman decided to turn the Washington parlor game into an actual exercise; they held an early meeting in Washington, with about 25 people, in December.

“When we started talking about this we got a lot of reactions-- oh, you guys are so paranoid, don’t be ridiculous, this isn’t going to happen,” Brooks said.

Two things have happened since then: Trump has displayed increased willingness to challenge mail-in ballots, and his administration has deployed federal forces to quell protests in front of the White House and in Portland, Oregon, and has threatened to do so in other cities.

“That has really shaken people,” Brooks said. “What was really a fringe idea has now become an anxiety that’s pretty widely shared.”

Brooks, Gilman, and others recruited a slate of players including a former swing state governor, a former White House chief of staff, and a former head of the Department of Homeland Security. They invited both Democrats and Republicans who they knew had concerns about Trump’s comments on the election; nearly 80 people in all were involved. The Republicans were described by participants as “never Trump” or “not Trump Republicans.”

They played using the so-called Chatham House Rules-- in which participants can discuss what was said, but not who was there; some participants were willing to be named. They included Republicans Trey Grayson, the former Kentucky secretary of state, and conservative commentator Bill Kristol, as well as Democrats Leah Daughtry, who was CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Convention Committees, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, and progressive Democratic strategist Adam Jentleson.

The game was elaborate. The participants took on the roles of the Trump campaign, the Biden campaign, relevant government officials, and the media-- generally, Democrats played Democrats and Republicans played Republicans-- and used a 10-sided die to determine whether a team succeeded in its attempted moves. The games are not meant to be predictive; rather, they are supposed to give people a sense of possible consequences in complex scenarios.

Each scenario involved a different election outcome: An unclear result on Election Day that looked increasingly like a Biden win as more ballots were counted; a clear Biden win in the popular vote and the Electoral College; an Electoral College win for Trump with Biden winning the popular vote by 5 percentage points; and a narrow Electoral College and popular vote victory for Biden.

In the scenarios, the team playing the Trump campaign often questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, which often boosted Biden as they came in-- shutting down post offices, pursuing litigation, and using right-wing media to amplify narratives about a stolen election.

To some participants, the game was a stark reminder of the power of incumbency.

“The more demonstrations there were, the more demands for recounts, the more legal challenges there were, the more funerals for democracy were held, the more Trump came across as the candidate of stability,” said Edward Luce, the US editor of the Financial Times, who played the role of a mainstream media reporter during one of the simulations. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

In multiple scenarios, officials on both sides homed in on narrowly decided swing states with divided governments, such Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, hoping to persuade officials there to essentially send two different results to Congress. If a state’s election is disputed, a legislature controlled by one party and governor of another each could send competing slates of electors backing their party’s candidate.

Both sides turned out massive street protests that Trump sought to control-- in one scenario he invoked the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use military forces to quell unrest. The scenario that began with a narrow Biden win ended with Trump refusing to leave the White House, burning government documents, and having to be escorted out by the Secret Service. (The team playing Biden in that scenario, meanwhile, sought to patch things up with Republicans by appointing moderate Republican governors, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, to Cabinet positions.)

The scenario that produced the most contentious dynamics, however, was the one in which Trump won the Electoral College-- and thus, the election-- but Biden won the popular vote by 5 percentage points. Biden’s team retracted his Election Night concession, fueled by Democrats angry at losing yet another election despite capturing the popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016. In the mock election, Trump sought to divide Democrats-- at one point giving an interview to The Intercept, a left-leaning news outlet, saying Senator Bernie Sanders would have won if Democrats had nominated him. Meanwhile, Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.

That scenario seemed highly far-fetched, but it envisioned a situation in which both sides may have incentives to contest the election.

“There is a narrative among activists in both parties that the loss must be illegitimate,” he said.

According to the Constitution, the presidency ends at noon on Jan. 20, at which point the newly inaugurated president becomes the commander in chief.

The games, ultimately, were designed to explore how difficult it could be to get there.

“The Constitution really has been a workable document in many respects because we have had people who more or less adhered to a code of conduct,” said retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, a Republican and former chief of staff to Colin Powell who participated in games as an observer. “That seems to no longer to be the case. That changes everything.”

Endorsement: Lauren Ashcraft (NY-12)

Early this month we met Lauren Ashcraft, the progressive alternative to Wall Street-friendly Upper East Side Democrat Carolyn Maloney. The district they'll be contesting is no longer just Maloney's Silk Stocking sliver of Manhattan; it also includes progressive-friendly areas like the Lower East Side, the East Village, Alphabet City, Gramercy, Kips Bay, Tudor City, Turtle Bay and then over in Brooklyn, Greenpoint and Williamsburg and in Queens, Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside.

Lauren Ashcraft is the newest Blue America endorsed candidate for Congress. We're endorsing her not just because she's on the right side of every important issue and because she's a courageous and competent candidate but because we think she will make a great and productive representative for working families in Congress. This week she sent us this note we thought we would share with you. Please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.

As I write this, I’m on a bus back to New York after meeting my fellow Brand New Congress slate-mates in Washington, D.C. I wish I had the words for the passion, dedication, and energy I witnessed among this group of amazing future members of Congress, but I could never do those moments justice. Sitting here, I feel immense hope as I think about next year’s races, and I wanted to take a moment to pen my thoughts about this journey.

If I had to summarize what it’s like to run for Congress in one sentence, I would say that it’s already the greatest privilege of my entire life. Imagine having the honor of being invited into all of your neighbors’ homes, one by one, and having them open their hearts by sharing their stories and concerns with you. And then imagine that you had a plan to improve every one of their lives, and you could actually make it happen because your community is standing with you.

Of course, this journey has its challenges. I am running against an entrenched Democrat who accepts mountains of corporate PAC money, while Team Ashcraft is deeply moved by each one of our $35 average donations. I am fighting the institutional sexism that faces women candidates. And on a personal level, my social anxiety makes asking strangers for money on a daily basis extra flavorful.

That’s where my team comes in. It includes people I have known for years, and people I met last week. All of whom are working tirelessly because they believe so deeply in our mission to bring true representation to our district and country. Some of whom have seen me during tough moments, such as in May when my beloved grandmother and hero died the day before I had to perform in my first Congressional fundraiser as a standup comedian. My team has held me, carried me, and helped me back on my feet time and time again. Someone asked me once why I keep saying “we” when talking about my campaign. It’s because I can’t separate my journey from theirs. I could not do this without them.

I should warn anyone considering running for office that you will go through some pretty difficult times (I know this and I’m not even half-way through my race). If you are doing this for the same reasons I am, you see unrealized potential for your district and country and are passionate about your ideas to improve people’s lives. But you will realize that many of the organizations you have staunchly advocated for, and people who you thought would be on your side, aren’t who you thought they were. That even within our grassroots, David v. Goliath, The Little Engine That Could movement, there is some alarming toxicity that will shock the hell out of you. And I hope you, too, refuse to give up, and stay focused on what matters most.

But when you start to lose hope, you will be moved by the kindness that people show you. You will receive donations from people who are struggling to survive but find hope in your campaign. Strangers will be willing to open their homes to host strangers for meet and greets, because they believe in you. People you have never met will get up early and go to bed late, working on your campaign, because your platform is what they want for their community. And you will never be able to thank them as much as they deserve, but you give everything you can to win. For them.

If I could tell a passerby one thing about being a candidate, it is that we are human beings, too. Boy, are we human. And we get nervous. We worry about how to grow an entire team and movement who want us so desperately to win, without letting them down. I worry about potentially causing any discomfort for my family or partner, who are holding their breath as they walk on this journey with me, and sometimes reading other people’s thoughts about me. And you will miss your partner who is probably sitting right next to you, as mine is right now.

This journey has made me MORE human, more empathetic. All people, regardless of their successes or failures, life journeys, and goals, are… people. Just as being a cater waiter in college has caused me to go way out of my way to be kind to all service industry employees, running for office has made me view all grassroots candidates with much more respect. As I saw in others on the Brand New Congress Slate this weekend, grassroots candidates put their lives on hold for the entirety of their campaign, doing everything in their power to make a difference in people’s lives. And it’s all worth it when you realize you can make a real difference.

With all of this said, I actually cannot explain what it feels like to stand up for what you believe in against all odds, and to have SO many people and organizations stand behind you, one-by-one. I am so honored that Blue America is one of the organizations that has vetted my vision and path to victory, and is fearless in backing me. And I would be incredibly honored to earn your support on my quest to bring true representation and equality to my home, New York’s 12th Congressional District.

Erica Vladimer, Another Strong Progressive Challenging Carolyn Maloney In New York

It's always tough for Blue America when more than one competent progressive runs in the same district. Several are running this cycle to represent New York's 12th district, which encompasses part of the east side of Manhattan as well as Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside in Queens. The seat is held by Carolyn Maloney, a Wall Street Democrat who may not be aware that her district includes chunks of Brooklyn and Queens-- or even the Lower East Side. Maloney is all about the Upper East Side. She represents, for example, Trump Tower. A few weeks ago we talked with Lauren Ashcraft, another super candidate running for the seat. Now let's meet Erica Vladimer. If you like what she has to say, please consider contributing to her campaign here.


Where Have All The Leaders Gone? Why We Need New Voices To Lead Us In Congress
by Erica Vladimer

Way back in June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly addressed where the Democratic conference stands on addressing rape allegations made against “President” Trump by E. Jean Carroll: “I don’t know what Congress’s role would be in this,” she said at a press conference, “but in any of these things, this is about what the President’s own party would do… I’m busy worrying about children not being in their mother’s arms.”

Quite frankly, that is an insulting misdirection that belies out-of-touch leadership. It is classic demagoguery, employed to evade addressing the issue at hand. And what’s behind it is worse: the idea that Congress would proactively choose to limit its role in addressing sexual violence is not only abdication of duty, it is also eerily reminiscent of a lesson that should have been learned from the recent spectacle of an out-of-control New York state legislature, one I sadly witnessed firsthand. More on that in a moment.

This feigned helplessness by elected officials is not surprising and it seems to have become a required skill on all levels of government and on so many pressing issues. Remember when the 1994 Firearms Act that banned assault weapons expired in 2004, and Congress refused to renew it-- in part because Democrats put politics over protection of the people? Or just recently, Speaker Pelosi’s pooh-poohing Medicare for All, implying that an issue polling above 70% nationally might still cost Democrats dearly on Election Day 2020? Spare us.

This is just more evidence of everything wrong with a Democratic leadership that had to be dragged to even discussing the possibility of considering impeachment proceedings, and still hasn’t gotten up the guts to really go after Trump’s cabal of stooges and third-rate grifters with the full extent of the law. It’s cowardice that extends to the Democratic establishment across state governments, too, including here in New York State.

Without true blue Democrats who espouse aggressive-progressivism, and center the voices of their constituents, we will continue to get nothing more than lip service from our status quo representatives, who have long been allowed to talk-the-talk without ever walking-the-walk.

That goes for now, but it also goes for January 2021, and even with a Democratic president in the Oval Office (which we will have). Because it’s not enough to be concerned with children being ripped from their mothers’ arms while also passing a budget that includes additional ICE funding.

It’s unacceptable to say you support the Green New Deal, like my opponent Rep. Carolyn Maloney runs around town saying, while continuing to bankroll your re-election campaign with corporate and PAC funding from the world’s largest fossil-fuel investor, Black Rock, as my opponent also happily does. Oh, by the way, she also refuses to return years of donations from one Donald J. Trump. That’s not just a tin ear, it is a slap in the face to the constituents of one of the most progressive districts in America, and it’s the biggest reason I am running-- to give a voice to those who have been ignored by their current representative for far too long.

It’s time to elect legislators who will be the change agents we expect them to be, who will fight for the long overdue reforms that have fallen to the wayside.

Two examples from New York. One: The Child Victims Act languished in limbo for over a decade in Albany, while legislators caved to powerful lobbying influences: the insurance industry and the Roman Catholic Church. It was never even brought to the Senate floor, not even when a rogue group of Democrats, known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), held a power sharing agreement with Republicans, who controlled the Senate for forty years. With the IDC caucusing with the GOP, pretending to be some kind of sentinels of true progressivism, actual progressive legislation sat on the shelf for years. Sounds a lot like the status quo Democrats on Capitol Hill going along to get along, doesn’t it?

Two, and another failed opportunity to learn: In January 2018, I spoke publicly about how Senator Jeff Klein, the leader of the IDC, abused his power over me, shoving his tongue in my mouth outside a bar one night. Along with other survivors of sexual harassment, assault, and retaliation we asked the governor and legislative leaders to include victims in a meaningful process to craft stronger protections. Known as New York’s Sexual Harassment Working Group, we pointed to Senator Klein’s mere presence in the negotiating room as blatant disregard for the dignity of all workers-- especially legislative staff. He remained, the bills were jammed into a must-pass budget bill, and the protections fell woefully short of what was truly needed.

But all of that changed in September of 2018, when New Yorkers elected representatives who ran in part on a simple promise-- to put people over profits, and human rights over politics. The New York Legislature convened in January 2019 with a fully-- truly-- Democratic Senate, with Senator Jeff Klein no longer in office, and the IDC completely disbanded.

Working in partnership with the Sexual Harassment Working Group and other workplace protections advocates, these thoughtful, bold (and mostly new) legislators also helped advocates secure two joint-legislative public hearings on sexual harassment-- the first of their kind in 27 years.

In June, the Senate and Assembly passed sweeping legislation that will better protect millions of New Yorkers against workplace harassment and discrimination, passing nearly unanimously in the Assembly and unanimously in the Senate.

The Child Victims Act was also-- finally-- brought to the Senate floor, and passed. Unanimously. After years of languishing, it passed... Just ... Like ... That. Meaningful legislation passing because of the new voices and new vision of a new generation of leaders.

Grassroots efforts on issues like these, aimed at inclusion and breaking down barriers of old, launched New York forward to become the progressive capital of the country. It’s the type of movement we continue to see in states like Virginia and California, the kind of movement we need all across our country.

That means in a legislative body of 435 people, we need electeds who will embody leadership that is illustrative and respectful of where we need to go as a society. The sweeping reforms we seek will only happen with sweeping new representation, otherwise we’ll continue fighting with long-term incumbents who prioritize the status-quo (and the campaign cash behind them) over everything else.

I challenged the status quo once, shirking demands from state leaders to “shut up” and “go away” because my fellow advocates and I were making it harder for them to, you know, do their job and keep state workers safe from harassment.

And I’ll challenge the status quo once again in Congress, until our full representation governs with the forward-thinking compassion and inclusivity we all deserve.

Because I do know what Congress role is-- it’s to do just that.

Can Carolyn Maloney Be Beaten In A Primary? Meet Lauren Ashcraft

In her introductory video (above), Lauren Ashcraft noted that "in 2018 there was a wave of nominations that changed what we thought was possible. People who were funded entirely by small dollars. They got loud and stood up for their principles against all odds. These are not the people who play it safe. These are the people who are making it safer for us. They were the first wave. I'm part of the next."

Lauren is running in a deep blue district (NY-12) that spans parts of 3 NYC boroughs-- Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. People think of it is the fancy upper east side district-- what was once the "Silk Stocking District." That isn't what it is anymore, even if the incumbent, Carolyn Maloney, doesn't quite get that herself. Until Trump moved to Mar-A-Lago last month, it was his home district. There are still some Republicans on Manhattan's Upper East Side and, in fact, Around 20% of the district's votes went to McCain and Romney when Obama ran. But in 2016, the voters knew exactly what Trump is and Hillary beat him 83.3% to 13.5%. The PVI is D+31.

Carolyn Maloney is what many Democratic voters think is all they can expect from their member of Congress. She's moderately liberal, serves the interests of the wealthy people of her district and takes immense sums of money from specula interests, particularly from Wall Street. In fact, since being elected to Congress in 1992, Maloney has taken $6,884,871 from bankster-related sectors, more than anyone else serving in the House besides two notorious crooks who should both be rotting in prison-- Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy ($9,472,747) and Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer ($7,355,624). Maloney-- chair of the Financial Service Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets-- is #3. Last year, the anti-Trump electorate in NY-12 dutifully marched to the polls and reelected Maloney against a Republican, Eliot Rabin, 217,430 (86.4%) to 30,446 (12.1%). This is how the 3 boroughs performed for her:

• Manhattan (from the Upper East Side, Yorkville, Lenox Hill and Midtown to Kips Bay, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side)- D+72
• Queens (Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside) D+80
• Brooklyn (Greenpoint and Williamsburg)- D+85

The Republicans know Maloney is the best they can do in this district and so far this cycle, they're not even fielding a candidate. Maloney, though, may be in for the challenge of her life. She has 4 Democrats challenging her in the primary, Lauren Ashcraft, Peter Harrison, Suraj Patel (who took 40.4% of the primary vote in 2018) and Erica Vladimer. So far Ashcraft has managed to raise the most of the primary challengers. She's spending it all on grassroots organizing-- and while Maloney works strictly for the Upper East Side, Ashcraft's campaign is everywhere in the district, especially in the outer boroughs and in the southern Manhattan parts of the district where no one even knows Carolyn Maloney represents them in Congress. She told me on the phone that her campaign is all about prioritizing people over profit by fighting for urgent changes.

Like many of the people in the district, she worked in the financial sector and she is well-aware that trickle-down economics do not work no matter how much our representatives keep trying! "The Trump tax cuts," she told me, "resulted in record CEO bonuses, senior executive raises, and stock buybacks, but not in decreased layoffs or increased hiring or wages for average workers." She said she realizes that "we cannot expect CEOs to stand up for what is right, so we must elect representatives who stop trying old tricks to direct money to their corporate donors." She also told me she wants "to reinstate a modern Glass-Steagall Act. We bailed out the big banks ten years ago and we’re heading down a dangerous path where once again, the people will carry the burden to help big banks. Banks shouldn’t be allowed to gamble with our savings, much less take on massively risky behavior, but then ask for government bailouts. [She] wants to utilize her experience working in the financial services industry to sit on the Financial Services Committee and improve regulations which should hold banks accountable to the people, not the other way around."

She is campaigning on making corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, and on removing corporate influence from our politics. Like almost all Democrats, she said "we need to Get Big Money Out Of Politics!  We need to end Citizens United and also introduce a Federal Tax Credit which can be used to donate to federal campaigns rejecting Corporate and Super PAC money." Her ultimate goal is public financing of federal elections. (Right now, though, you can contribute to her campaign here.)

She told me she "fully supports the Green New Deal because it recognizes urgent action is key" and calls for "a ban on single-use plastic by 2030 (and subsidizing compostable 'plastics')... and knows that we need to end subsidies to factory farms and the fossil fuel industry immediately and increase funding to research that will save our planet."

While Maloney is prepared to compromise on Medicare For All, Lauren "will specifically advocate for Single-Payer Medicare For All with immediate forgiveness of all medical debt. Nobody should be in debt for life because they got sick. Let’s remove the for-profit nature of our healthcare system completely."

I asked her to write a guest post introducing herself by talking specifically about her district and Wall Street and how her campaign is threading that needle.

What A Democratic Socialist Learned Working At JP Morgan Chase
-by Lauren Ashcraft

In my Congressional district of NY-12, 14.5% of folx are employed by the financial services industry, and over 70% of folx are employed in the private sector. My district possesses a deep understanding of what it means to work at a place that does not necessarily ideologically align with us in order to pay the bills. I am writing this blog entry from Long Island City, the former future home of Amazon HQ2, and also as a former employee of the financial services industry.

Until yesterday, I was employed by JPMorgan Chase & Co as a project manager who helped monitor banking regulation compliance. Working for multiple financial institutions since moving to New York has strengthened my already democratic socialist leanings, because I continued to see how the entire industry has been allowed [by representatives] to place its risks and burdens on the American people. That’s why I am a democratic socialist who seeks to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act and break up big banks.

Let’s look at the Trump Tax cuts as an example of why I feel this way. This legislation added $3.7 billion to JPMorgan’s profits, hence Jamie Dimon’s praise of the cuts. Dimon received $24.5 million of restricted stock tied to performance, an annual base salary of $1.5 million and a $5 million cash bonus for a 5.1% bump in pay thereafter. And the most important question: did these tax cuts trickle down to the average employee in the industry?

In addition to some hefty layoffs, according to a recent article in Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase & Co along with much of the banking industry is considering shifting jobs out of New York City. This is despite the fact that our city is the headquarters for most big banks. In other words, even with tax incentives paid for by the people, the 14.5% of the district relying on paychecks from the banking industry are probably all too familiar with “relocation” talks at their companies. Because of at-will employment in our society, if one does not accept the relocated job they may be ineligible for severance, as it is not technically a layoff. So, despite handing these banks billions of dollars in incentives, my district will be hit hard by corporate greed.

Yes, we can rightfully feel anger toward the CEOs and senior executives of large corporations, but we cannot let those in government avoid blame. Our representatives have had the power to protect the people of their districts against corporate greed, but they have lacked the will. These same representatives have accepted money from these very CEOs and senior executives who have praised Trump’s corporate tax cuts. They represent corporations, and not people.

But there is so much hope in this progressive movement building around all of us. Community leaders across the entire country are coming together with their life experience and passion for change and are rejecting all corporate PAC influence while they run for office. I feel the call to utilize my experience in the private sector to replace my current representative and sit in the Financial Services Committee. I will hold the entire industry accountable to the people, not the other way around.