THIS IS IT, PEOPLE
… the last edition of This Week in Statehouse Action of the year, I mean.
And yes, it’s been a year.
And no, it’s not over.
And no, 2021 isn’t necessarily going to be any better.
In some ways, it’s actually going to be worse.
Oh, you thought we were going out on a sunny, hopeful note?
I am so, so sorry.
But you come here for bad jokes honesty.
So let’s take a quick look back at some of the year’s lowlights and consider what we’re staring down the barrel of in 2021.
Last Session: The year started off pretty mundanely, considering it was an election year that ends in zero (making it the final election preceding a round of redistricting).
Campaign Action
- The biggest shift was in Virginia, which, thanks to its off-off-year state elections, was the only legislature newly flipped. Democrats had control of the state House, Senate, and governorship for the first time in over a quarter century, and the party used its trifecta control to do all kinds of cool things, like
- Passing a slew of new gun safety laws,
- Decriminalizing marijuana,
- Raising the minimum wage,
- Establishing protections for the LGBTQ community,
- Expanding access to reproductive health care and abortion,
- Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment,
… and more.
And then …
Grandma Got Run Over By A Virus: COVID-19 changed everyone’s lives in March, including state lawmakers’.
- Many states’ legislative sessions don’t wrap up until Spring or Summer (or later), so legislators nationwide scrambled to finalize budgets and pass key bills as quarantines and stay-at-home orders took effect.
- But as the pandemic progressed, so did election season—and things were looking pretty pretty good for Democrats fighting to flip state legislative majorities to win influence over the upcoming round of redistricting in key states.
Whoops.
Silver Bells: Democrats took the silver, so to speak, in key legislative races in Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas on Election Day … except, as I am awfully fond of saying, there’s no second place in politics.
- While it’s legitimately great that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won, downballot Democrats took a bit of a beating—and they took that beating in the worst possible year.
- The story of 2020 isn’t what Republicans flipped
- … after all, that turned out to be a grand total of two chambers (Alaska notwithstanding/tbd): the New Hampshire House and Senate.
Republicans’ big win in 2020 was what they managed to not lose.
Let's talk about what Democrats are facing in the 2021 round of redistricting.
… and yeah, it sucks.
Things definitely got worse for Democrats redistricting-wise as a result of this year’s elections.
- Which means winning a majority in the U.S. House is going to be even harder for Democrats over the course of the next decade—to say nothing of winning power in state legislatures.
- Nov. 3 saw the GOP's redistricting edge expand from three- or four-to-one to potentially four- or five-to-one.
- Yes, Republicans may end up drawing five times as many districts as Democrats.
- This puts Democrats on footing almost as lopsided as the aftermath of the 2010 elections, when Republicans won the power to redraw five (and change) times as many House districts as Democrats.
The 2020 election results created a grave risk of another decade of minority rule by the GOP both in Congress and in statehouses nationwide.
But there’s something else at play in the upcoming round of redistricting that wasn’t a factor in 2011.
- Back then, many new maps in southern states were subject to the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act.
- … a requirement the U.S. Supreme Court killed in Shelby County v. Holder back in 2013.
My talented Daily Kos Elections colleagues have assembled a super detailed breakdown of how the election results impact the next round of redistricting, but here’s the lowdown:
- Why we still care about Arizona even though they have an Independent Redistricting Commission:
- Governor: Republican (up in 2022)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican hold
- Arizona has had an independent redistricting commission in place since 2000, but with the U.S. Supreme Court’s newly conservative configuration, the IRC is at a big of risk of being struck down.
- Republicans in the legislature have repeatedly sought to undermine the commission, so ending the GOP’s control of state government would have helped insulate and preserve it.
Welp.
- Why we care about Michigan even though they have an independent redistricting commission:
- Governor: Democratic (up in 2022)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican (up in 2022)
- In 2018, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure establishing a redistricting commission, stripping the legislature of its power to draw district maps for itself and for the U.S. House.
- Minnesota:
- Governor: Democratic (up in 2022)
- House: Democratic hold
- Senate: Republican hold
- Democrats fell just short in their bid to win trifecta control in Minnesota.
- The state currently has nonpartisan maps drawn by a court and is poised to again after 2020.
- But racial segregation in the Minneapolis area creates a “geography penalty” that harms Democrats, which means even ostensibly nonpartisan maps have the effect of functioning like GOP gerrymanders.
- Case in point: Hillary Clinton and Democratic candidates won more votes statewide than Trump and Republicans in 2016 but failed to win a majority of seats in the state Senate.
- That seems to have happened to Senate Democrats again this year and could indicate ill electoral fortunes for Dems in the state in coming cycles.
- New Hampshire:
- Governor: Republican hold
- House: Republican flip
- Senate: Republican flip
- North Carolina:
- Governor: Democratic hold (but super irrelevant in this context)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican hold
- Bonus! Supreme Court: Democratic hold
- Battles over redistricting are set to continue after Republicans not only maintained their majorities, but also unexpectedly gained seats. And although Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won reelection, it totally doesn’t matter: he’s unable to veto most key redistricting bills.
- Republicans ousted three Democratic incumbents on the state Supreme Court, narrowing Democrats’ majority to 4-3.
- This matters because state courts curtailed the GOP's gerrymanders last year and may be called on to do so again in the coming decade.
- Pennsylvania:
- Governor: Democratic (up in 2022)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican hold
- Texas:
- Governor: Republican (up in 2022)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican hold
- I mentioned in this space shortly before the election that Republicans were pumping tons of late cash into these state House races, and WOW did that effort pay off.
- Texas is arguably the most important state for Republican congressional gerrymandering, and Democrats failed to make the big gains needed to flip the state House to break the GOP’s trifecta control of the state.
- But wait, it gets worse!
- Democrats also failed to lay the groundwork for striking down gerrymanders later this decade after Republicans swept all four seats on the state’s highest court that were up this year to maintain their 9-0 Texas Supreme Court majority.
Sigh.
But I’m not done!
- It's time to talk about Iowa.
- Governor: Republican (up in 2022)
- House: Republican hold
- Senate: Republican hold (half of seats up every two years)
- Since 1980, a nonpartisan agency has proposed state and congressional maps to the Iowa legislature, which has always adopted them.
- However, since Democrats failed to break the GOP's full control over state government, next year will be the first time ever under this system that one party has trifecta control during redistricting.
- Current statute would allow the GOP to simply reject the agency's three proposals and draw and pass their own gerrymandered maps.
- Republicans could also just use their majorities repeal the statute that created the bipartisan map-drawing body, but honestly, why even bother when they can just draw their own districts?
- The only possible deterrent at play next year is fear of public backlash.
- ... but as an erudite reader of this missive, you know that Republicans just don’t care about that shit, especially when it comes to gerrymandering.
- After all, how better to protect your party from anger over gerrymandering than to … gerrymander?
Flawless
tl;dr—
- This round of redistricting might not be as bad for Democrats as [[shudder]] the 2011 round, but it’s not gonna be much better.
- And depending on SCOTUS interference, it could arguably be worse.
Slay Ride: One more thing to keep an eye on next year in all these legislatures Democrats failed to flip—especially in states with GOP governors:
- A slew of bills finding innovative ways to make voting more difficult.
Thanks to legislative pre-filing of bills permitted (encouraged! Think of all those overwhelmed legislative services staffers during session) before many sessions commence in January, we know that Republicans in many states are already drooling over the prospect of creating more barriers to the ballot box.
- In Texas, one GOP proposal seeks to prohibit sending mail-in ballot applications to any voter who doesn’t specifically request one. Another seeks to institute regular and frequent voter-roll purges, and another would broaden the definition of and increase criminal penalties for election fraud.
- In Georgia, Republican lawmakers want to implement onerous voter ID requirements for those seeking to cast absentee ballots (since those ballots tended to help out Democrats this year).
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Keep an eye out for lots more of these measures popping up in the coming months (especially in states like Arizona and New Hampshire).
- Another form of 2020 backlash to keep an eye out for next year: Lawmakers seeking to reign in the authority of governors and public health officials to exercise their power regarding things like requiring masks be worn in public, business occupancy limits and operating hours, quarantine orders, contact tracing, and more.
- Legislators in at least 20 states have already proposed bills (some this year, some queued up for next) limiting public health powers.
- And while approval and the nascent distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is giving many Americans hope for a sunnier post-coronavirus future, the reality of the situation is far more bleak.
- After all, it’s not a question of if there will be another deadly pandemic—it’s when.
… well, that’s an awfully sunny note to go out on.
But I respect you too much to pretend things are A-okay.
They’re not.
And while governments in Democratic-controlled states are going to be doing good things for their residents (albeit while making hard budget decisions amid our pandemic-induced economic downturn), GOP-run states are going to make the lives of many folks much harder.
Something I’m hopeful about, though, is the Biden presidency.
I have to believe he won’t repeat President Obama’s egregious error of ignoring the fortunes of Democrats in state legislatures.
I need to believe that Biden understands that the success of his own administration depends on his party building strength in statehouses.
Because the decade ahead is going to be challenging enough as it is.
And recovering from the damage Trump has inflicted on the nation requires more than just action in DC.
Biden can’t do it alone. Congress can’t do it alone.
We’ll see how things shake out soon enough, I guess.
Until then, though, I need one more thing:
For you to have a wonderful end to your year.
You damn well deserve it.
Do something that makes you happy. Or just do something that doesn’t make you unhappy.
Whatever you do, take care of yourself.
You’re important.
We need you.