Lawmakers, assemble!
… cried Speaker Steve Rogers as he summoned Earth’s Mightiest Legislators to combat the scourge conservative overreach plaguing the land.
(Y’all know Chris Evans is [basically] a Democrat, right?)
Campaign Action
Civil War: … Okay, it’s not so much a war as it is a righteous defection, but this week’s big news in Iowa was the state’s longest-serving Republican lawmaker bailing on his party and joining the Democrats.
- Rep. Andy McKean knows his way around the statehouse quite well—or at least one assumes he does, since he’s spent 29 years there (including stints in both the House and Senate) as a member of the GOP caucus.
- McKean had long been considered a moderate:
- But McKean specifically singled out Trump as a major factor in his need to leave his party and join with Democrats, saying that he’s unable to support Trump in 2020 and calling him a “bully” who is “a poor example for the nation and particularly our children.”
If you’re tapping your chin thoughtfully right now and musing to yourself, Hey, I don’t think this is the first R-to-D party switch that’s happened recently, congrats! You have a great memory and/or are a dedicated reader of This Week in Statehouse Action.
- McKean is, in fact, the sixth Republican to leave his party for Team Blue since the November 2018 elections.
- The other switches were in New Jersey (one), California (one), and Kansas (three).
- McKean’s switch leaves Republicans with an uncomfortably small 53-47 majority in the Iowa House.
- All 100 House seats are on the ballot in 2020, and yes, McKean’s running for re-election as a Democrat in his red seat.
Can’t-Man: Perhaps one of the Iowa GOP’s moves that made McKean so uncomfortable was lawmakers’ efforts to strip power from the state’s attorney general—who just happens to be a Democrat.
- The Republican-controlled legislature just passed a bill that requires the (Democratic) AG to get permission from the (Republican) governor, the (Republican) legislature, or the (Republican) Executive Council before joining lawsuits that don’t originate in Iowa (e.g., any of the many lawsuits filed by Democratic AGs to counter the hateful and regressive policy moves by the Trump administration).
Weird … seems like it was just last week I was writing in this space about GOP-controlled legislatures trying to strip Democratic statewide officeholders of power.
Oh, wait. It was just last week.
- jic you were too busy frolicking in the glorious spring weather/snow, Republicans in Kansas are trying to trip Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly of her constitutional authority to appoint replacements for the offices of attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, and insurance commissioner, should they become vacant during her tenure.
The GOP playbook: If you don’t like the outcome, change the rules so you get all the benefits of a win even if you can’t actually get the win through the other rules you already changed (i.e. making voting more difficult, gerrymandering, etc.).
Speaking of Michigan and power grabs …
The Winter Spartan: Because attempting to limit her authority legislatively wasn't enough, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey is considering impeaching Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel if she refuses to defend laws to which she objects—specifically, an existing statute that would ban abortion in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
- Nessel has already pissed GOPers off plenty by exercising the authority given to her by the state’s voters (and constitution) to withdraw from several lawsuits her Republican predecessor had signed the state on to while joining others challenging actions by the Trump administration.
- In addition to threatening the possibility of pursuing impeachment of Nessel, Republicans are exploiting the budget process to apply pressure to the attorney general’s office.
- The GOP spending proposal cuts AG funding by 10%.
Oh, and there’s more news out of Michigan …
Guardians of the Gerrymander: A federal court has struck down 34 of Michigan’s congressional and state legislative districts as partisan gerrymanders violating Democratic voters’ First and 14th Amendment rights.
- The court ordered the unconstitutional districts be redrawn by August 1, which should (hopefully) leave sufficient time to resolve any appeals or GOP legal shenanigans in advance of 2020 congressional and state elections.
- You may or may not recall me ranting in this space previously about how heinously gerrymandered Michigan’s state legislative districts are.
- To wit:
- Republican candidates for the state House haven’t won a majority of votes statewide since the last round of redistricting in 2011.
- Yet, thanks to their incredibly gerrymandered maps, Republicans managed to win a majority of seats in that chamber in every single election since then.
- Anyway, the court also ordered special elections in 2020 for the 10 affected state Senate districts (plus, presumably, others that have to be modified to redraw the offending ones), which gives Democrats one more crack at flipping that chamber before the next round of redistricting (the Senate isn’t up again until 2022).
- Alas, this isn’t unqualified good news.
- The current conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is fairly expected to issue rulings in two other gerrymandering cases that will prove … hostile, at the very least, to this federal court’s anti-GOP gerrymandering decision.
Those SCOTUS rulings should come in June—well in advance of the Aug. 1 deadline for new Michigan maps—so stay tuned!
Age of Ultra White Male Privilege: … I mean, it’s the best explanation for actual state laws being changed because a lobbyist was mad that his son got expelled from college through the Title IX process.
Note: It’s unknown whether a sexual assault accusation was behind the young man’s expulsion, but based on the nature of the proposed changes to state statute … well, you’re a thinking human; I invite you to draw your own conclusions.
- Title IX is a federal anti-sex discrimination law, and it’s the statute under which campus sexual violence is investigated.
- Missouri lobbyist Richard McIntosh’s son was “accused and subsequently expelled” from Washington University in St. Louis last year through Title IX proceedings.
- Shortly thereafter, McIntosh had a Republican legislator attach an amendment to an unrelated bill that would have made sweeping changes to the way universities all across the state handle sexual assault.
- That effort failed, so McIntosh had his pal GOP Rep. Dean Dohrman sponsor a bill this year that would
- Allow students accused of Title IX violations to appeal their hearing results to the state Administrative Hearing Commission—a commission the expelled student’s mom just happens to preside over; and
- Allow the accused to sue their school or the victims themselves—enabling lawyers to cross examine sexual assault survivors about bullshit like their sexual history, drinking habits, manner of dress … you name it.
- This part of the bill has already been killed.
- A similar version of this bill has been introduced in the Senate.
- The sponsor claims his office drafted the bill without “outside assistance.”
- Thing is, “outside assistance” is flooding the capitol, thanks to a dark money group called Kingdom Principles that McIntosh started shortly after his son’s expulsion.
- Kingdom Principles is bankrolling 29 lobbyists to push this single issue in Jefferson City, as well as funding polling and ad buys.
- University presidents, Title IX administrators, student groups, and sexual assault victim advocacy groups vehemently oppose these bills as obvious attempts to undermine Title IX protections and intimidate survivors into not reporting their experiences and seeking justice.
- The fight over these measures is ongoing.
- This week, Senate Democrats successfully filibustered the Senate version of the bill, but it could still be called up from the calendar for a vote.
- The House version of the bill recently cleared committee and was reported favorably to the floor.
Dark Phoenix: (it’s the same comic book universe come at me) More elections = more elections data, and Daily Kos Elections has started working its statewide results-by-legislative district magic with Arizona.
- We’ve taken the results from 2018’s super competitive U.S. Senate race and calculated them for each legislative district in the Grand Canyon State, and the results are … pretty decent for Democrats.
- That good news for Democrats?
By the by, you can find our master list of statewide election results by congressional and legislative district here, which we'll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2018 and past cycles here.
Welp, that’s all for this week. You should probably go ahead and knock off early, call it a week so you can get in line for that Avengers: Endgame showing I hope you already have tickets for. Just print this out and show it to your boss, I’m sure she’s already got her tickets, too.