So, everything is still terrible.
Women, in particular, are solidly opposed to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, but it looks like it’s gonna happen anyway.
So I’ve been casting about for some positive news regarding women to counter this depressing garbage.
And, as is so often the case, state politics came through for me (in addition to a colleague who’s a whiz at data viz). [[waves at Daniel Donner]]
Campaign Action
Let The Ballot Do The Talking: It’s not exactly news that women are running for state legislative seats in historic droves this cycle. But now we know how many of them actually survived their nomination contests and will be on the ballot this fall.
It’s … a lot.
3,379, in fact.
- This totally blows the previous record pretty soundly out of the water (2,649, set in 2016).
- And while it’ll probably shock no one to learn that most of these women candidates are running as Democrats, the extent to which the number of Democratic women dwarfs the number of women running as Republicans is pretty bananas.
- Specifically, 2,374 are running as Democrats—more than twice as many as the 984 running as Republicans.
Here’s a handy graph to drive that point home.
So cool
- Of the 46 states holding legislative elections this fall (taking Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia out of the equation), 34 will have a record number of women on the ballot.
Love In A Gerrymander: … Okay maybe it’s closer to hate, but aren’t those emotions supposed to be, like, basically next to each other on the emotional spectrum?
- Virginia’s redistricting saga continues as legislative Republicans and Democrats wrangle over new state House maps.
- You may recall that way back in June, a federal court ruled 11 of Virginia’s House of Delegates districts had been drawn to unconstitutionally diminish the impact of black voters.
- The court gave the legislature until Oct. 30 to produce new, less-racist maps.
- The Democrats produced a map.
- The Republicans produced a map.
- The Republicans’ map passed out of the House Privileges and Elections Committee last week on a 11-10 party-line vote.
- GOP leadership planned to call the legislature into session on Oct. 21 to approve the Republican map, but this week Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam very nicely tried to save them some trouble by letting them know he’d definitely veto it.
- Republican House Speaker Kirk Cox was less than thrilled by the governor’s declaration, but there’s really not much he can do.
- If a new map isn’t approved by Oct. 30, the federal court is expected to produce one itself.
- Virginia Republicans are also appealing the federal court’s decision.
Walk This Way (or else): Way back in the long-ago era of August, I wrote in this space about a bunch of hard-line right-wing Oklahoma Republicans losing their legislative primaries to more moderate challengers.
- A total of 12 Republican incumbents (11 of whom were House members) lost their primary elections, making the Sooner State’s GOP contests the biggest primary wipeout of the cycle.
- Eight of the 12 losers opposed the tax increase passed back in the spring to fund education and end the epic teacher walkout and associated statehouse demonstrations.
- Conventional wisdom at the time was that those Republicans’ losses could be laid at the feet of angry pro-education voters. But now we know that wasn’t the only reason.
- Turns out that Republicans themselves were behind the downfall of those lawmakers—with a little help from a dark money super PAC based in Virginia.
What’s the opposite of Dems In Disarray?
- A GOP House floor leader has taken credit for “helping launch” attacks on his own colleagues. His efforts received an assist—to the tune of $750,000—from the Alexandria-based Conservative Alliance PAC.
- The Republican leader claims he didn’t know who was behind the PAC, but both he and the PAC used the same Oklahoma-based consultant to produce direct mail targeting those GOP incumbents.
- The Conservative Alliance PAC also targeted some Republican lawmakers in Ohio’s primaries. (It’s actually facing some defamation suits there as a result.)
The Other Side: A late-breaking item from Rhode Island: The state House minority leader made news on Thursday when she broke with her party to endorse independent gubernatorial candidate Joe Trillo over Republican Alan Fung.
Er, make that former House minority leader.
Welp, it’s been a Crazy week, and it’s not over—I know you Don’t Want To Miss A Thing when it comes to Republicans confirming a liar and sexual assaulter to a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. So really, you deserve the rest of the week off. Just print this out and show it to your boss, I bet she won’t tell you to Dream On.