April showers, etc.
But capricious springtime weather isn’t keeping your local lawmaker down.
But with only 27 legislatures in session this week (and four of those adjourning sine die), could action in statehouses be a little bit of … a washout?
Ha! Never. After all, rain makes things swell and grow. Like ego and hubris.
Don’t Rain On My Parade: Missouri Republicans continue to splash about in disarray as Gov. Eric Greitens triples down on definitely not resigning from office as he fights:
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- A felony invasion of privacy charge;
- Allegations of criminal action from his Republican attorney general; and
- A state House committee investigation that’s already brought to light potentially criminal sex acts and is still investigating other possible criminal activity.
The latest on that felony: Just this Thursday, a judge refused to dismiss the charge against the governor (Greitens claims prosecutors withheld key evidence). The trial is set to begin in mid-May.
Greitens isn’t getting much help from the home team.
- GOP Attorney General (and U.S. Senate candidate) Josh Hawley called on his fellow Republican to resign last week after a state House committee investigation released a detailed account of some non-consensual and violent acts between Greitens and a woman with whom he’d been having an affair.
- Greitens responded by demanding Hawley recuse himself from investigating Greitens—a request Hawley’s office essentially laughed off as having “no merit at all.”
- Greitens then filed a lawsuit against Hawley, alleging that Hawley’s call for the governor to resign created a conflict of interest and calling for any further investigations into Greitens and his misdeeds be conducted by a special prosecutor.
- Greitens also asked the judge to gran a temporary restraining order against Hawley to prevent further investigations in the meantime.
- Hawley clapped back by upping the ante: A day after Greitens filed this lawsuit, Hawley announced that he had evidence that the governor had—quite probably illegally—used donor and email lists from his nonprofit organization to fundraise for his gubernatorial campaign.
But don’t imagine Hawley’s doing this because of his upstanding morals. He needs to put some distance between himself and Greitens to make it harder for supporters of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill to link the two.
As this GOP slapfight unfolds, top state GOP lawmakers have finally started calling on Greitens to GTFO.
- After Hawley publicly claimed to have evidence of Greitens’ criminal misuse of his nonprofits donor lists, GOP state House Speaker Todd Richardson, joined by the House majority leader and the speaker pro tem, called on Greitens to resign.
- Republican state Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard took it a step further, saying that the legislature should “immediately start impeachment proceedings” if Greitens didn’t hustle up and step down.
Thing is, talk is cheap.
- It’s easy for Senate leadership to call for impeachment, since the process doesn’t start in that chamber.
- Democrats, OTOH, are pushing for impeachment ASAP, and in a bid to jump-start that process, they've even threatened to block the special session Republicans want to call for impeachment after the regular session wraps up on May 18.
So why are Republicans twiddling their thumbs?
- State GOPers actually have a reason—a damn lousy one— to drag their feet.
- Greitens’ trial on those felony invasion of privacy charges is set to start May 14, so Republican House members would probably prefer to let a conviction remove any potential controversy from the matter of impeachment.
- Ousting a member of your own party, even when obviously warranted, tends to be fraught with political complications that these super brave Republicans would likely rather avoid.
Stay tuned for further profiles in courage from the Missouri GOP!
Drowning Man: “What is dead may never die” isn’t even my joke but is still a pretty perfect way to revisit the Nevada state Senate recalls YET AGAIN.
- After election officials effectively declared the recalls dead last week when they found GOP petitioners had submitted insufficient signatures to trigger elections to oust two Democratic state senators, backers of the recalls asked to pretty please have the signatures on one of the petitions checked again.
- So the Clark County registrar checked again.
- Again, the signature count fell short (by a mere 21 John Hancocks) of the number required to trigger a recall Democratic state Sen. Joyce Woodhouse.
- On Tuesday, a recall organizer challenged the signature count YET AGAIN.
- The number of signatures by which Republicans fell short in their effort to recall Sen. Nicole Cannizzaro was much larger, so the GOP seems to have actually bailed on that effort for reals.
BUT WAIT—THERE’S MORE!
- On Wednesday, a district court judge officially ruled that the recall efforts against both Woodhouse and Cannizzaro had straight up, for really reals, no foolin’ failed.
November Rain: In Virginia, the debate over Medicaid expansion continues.
- State lawmakers are convened in a special legislative session to finalize and agree on a state budget—which is mostly ironed out except for that one big sticking point that rhymes with escapade mcmansion.
- In a dramatic reversal from their earlier stance on the issue, a whole slew of state House Republicans sided with their Democratic colleagues this week to vote 67-33 (the chamber has 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats) to approve a state budget that expands Medicaid eligibility to some 300,000 Virginians.
Why did so many Republicans change their minds? I’m no psychic, but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with the fact that they went through elections just last fall, saw a bunch of their colleagues get replaced by Democrats, and aren’t complete morons.
Fun fact! A recent Data for Progress study found that likely voters in every single state House district—yes, including those represented by Republicans—support Medicaid expansion.
- But now the GOP-controlled state Senate (21 Republicans/19 Democrats) has to approve the Medicaid-expanding version of the budget, which they refused to do during the regular session this past winter.
That Data for Progress study found that voters support Medicaid expansion in every Senate district, too. So why are those Republicans being so inflexible?
- Well, to be fair, not ALL of them have dug in their heels. Virginia Beach Republican Frank Wagner is on record saying that he’ll break with his caucus and vote with Democrats to expand Medicaid.
Fun fact! Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam won Wagner’s SD-07 last fall 54-45 percent.
- But Democrats still have to peel off one more Republican; while the lieutenant governor is a Democrat and breaks tied votes in most cases, only sitting members of the Senate can vote on the state budget.
You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard to find another GOP defector; after all, four other Republican senators also represent districts won by Northam in 2017 (SDs 8, 10, 12, and 13, by the by).
- But these folks didn’t face voters last year. They didn’t see their caucus almost lose its majority and have its power decimated just a few months ago. So maybe they’re not feeling the fear of facing voters in 2019 that’s still echoing in their House colleagues’ skulls.
Lawmakers have until July 1 to agree on a budget. We’ll see who blinks.
Speaking of the Virginia House … Democrats might have an opportunity to end the GOP’s narrow majority before the 2019 elections. Might.
- Upon the unexpected announcement of Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms’ resignation, a GOP House member who eked out a 742-vote win last year in a district Democrats didn’t even target is considering a change of scenery.
- Republican Del. Glenn Davis sure sounds like he’s going to run to replace Sessoms as mayor, and he has almost no reason not to give it a shot—the special election is this fall, and if he loses, he can just go on being a member of the House of Delegates and run for re-election in 2019.
- If Davis wins the mayoral race, Northam will call another special election to fill his House seat—a seat that Northam carried last fall (by the by).
- And if a Democrat wins the special, the Virginia House will be split 50-50 and the GOP’s majority will be no more.
That’s a lot of ifs, but hey, stranger things have happened.
Here Comes That Racist Day Feeling Again: Ah, Tennessee.
Oh, and one of my favorite GOP lawmakers OAT is making a comeback big for the Tennessee legislature.
If you’re not a longtime reader, you probably don’t remember this cat. (He got stomped in his primary in 2014.)
- Some of Campfield’s greatest hits include:
- Unsuccessfully trying to join the Tennessee Legislature's Black Caucus (he’s extremely white).
- Blaming AIDS on a gay airline pilot having sex with monkeys and saying the disease is "virtually impossible" to contract during heterosexual intercourse.
- Posting on his blog that "Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory signups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of mandatory signups for 'train rides' for Jews in the 40s."
- Also, Campfield was behind Tennessee’s infamous "Don't Say Gay" legislation.
After The Storm: It’s been a while since we’ve had new 2016-presidential-election-results-by-legislative-district maps for you, but the redraw of state House and Senate districts in North Carolina required us to revisit the Tar Heel state in advance of the 2018 elections.
(For the rest of our presidential results by legislative district, you can find our master list of states here, and you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.)
- North Carolina was home to one of the country’s more epic state legislative racial gerrymandering sagas, which finally shook out last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that had struck down 28 of North Carolina's 170 state legislative districts.
- However, the GOP legislature still got first crack at drawing remedial maps, and they took the —highly questionable, and apparently prohibited by the state constitution—opportunity to shore up a number of Republican districts mid-decade.
Bottom line: Democrats’ goal of breaking GOP supermajorities in the North Carolina state House and Senate is no easier now than it was on the old maps. Womp womp.
Such a sunny note to end on. Until next week, don’t forget your umbrella!