Can you believe that Thanksgiving was only a week ago?
I mean, in the Trump era, that’s the equivalent of two months, but still.
Campaign Action
It took me all of two days to polish off leftover potatoes and pie, but maybe you’re still repurposing some of last Thursday’s meal.
I already have cause to revisit a bit of last week’s missive, because WOW the gun lobby is in overdrive stoking fears over firearm safety legislation filed in Virginia.
- As of my last writing, only a couple handfuls of rural Old Dominion localities had approved resolutions proclaiming themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” though one pro-gun group claims the number is north of 40 now.
- While these resolutions may be largely symbolic, they do, in fact, include a provision directing law enforcement to not enforce any law thought to be “unconstitutional.”
- I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the drafters of these resolutions aren’t interested in waiting for an actual federal court ruling on what is or isn’t actually constitutional.
- One Democratic member of the House of Delegates is sufficiently concerned about the possibility of localities selectively ignoring gun laws they don’t like that he’s requested a formal opinion on the matter from Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring.
And just what are these anti-gun safety nuts so scared of?
Glad you asked!
- The stuff they’re freaking out about includes a bunch of broadly popular measures like
- Pre-election polling indicated that both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly favored improving gun safety in Virginia, and new polling from Roanoke College indicates that the public is firmly behind
- Universal background checks (84%),
- Banning the sale of assault rifles (57%), and
- A “red flag” law allowing a family member to seeks a court order temporarily taking away someone’s guns if they’re a danger to themself or others (76%).
That’s not all, though.
- Virginians strongly favor a host of other Democratic legislative priorities, too, including
- Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (73%),
- Passing stronger environmental protections to combat climate change (68%),
- Reforming prisons (59%),
- Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (66%), and
- Reducing barriers for women seeking abortions (53%).
Hopefully the new Democratic majorities in Virginia’s House and Senate will take these numbers to heart when they convene in Richmond next month.
- After all, they won power in the General Assembly by running as progressives; they’re not going to stay in power by tiptoeing around the issues that got them there.
So, speaking of Democrats doing really well in this November’s elections—specifically, flipping both chambers in Virginia, preventing Republicans from winning a supermajority in the Louisiana House (which means they can sustain Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ vetoes, since he just won reelection), and Democrat Andy Beshear ousting Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in Kentucky—Republicans are understandably a bit trepidatious about state-level elections going into 2020.
- And given the current situation at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), they really should be.
The RSLC is the Republican Party organization tasked with electing GOP state legislators, secretaries of state, lieutenant governors, judges and justices, and agriculture commissioners/secretaries/etc.
- The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is often regarded as its counterpart, but that’s just incorrect.
- DLCC exclusively elects Democrats to state legislatures.
- Democrats have no umbrella organization equivalent to the RSLC (though arguably they should—funders, call me!).
- The RSLC gained deserved notoriety in 2010, when they had their act together in ways Democrats absolutely did not in the final election before the 2011 round of redistricting.
- Republican money poured into the RSLC and its redistricting-focused project, REDMAP (REDistricting MAjority Project—get it?).
- GOP spending on winning majorities in state legislative chambers—where congressional and legislative district maps are drawn in the vast majority of states—outpaced Democratic spending by more than three-to-one.
- After election night 2010, Democratic majority control of state legislative chambers fell from 60 chambers to 40, and as a result, Republicans completely controlled the drawing of 193 congressional districts (vs. just 44 completely drawn by Democrats).
- The consequence felt largely academic to most political observers until election night 2012, when Democrats running for U.S. House seats won more than a million more votes than Republicans—and yet Republicans came out of the election with a 33-seat majority in the chamber.
- Much of the credit for the GOP statehouse wins in 2010 deservedly goes to then-chair Ed Gillespie and then-president Chris Jankowski.
- And while the redrawing of state legislative maps set the RSLC up for continued success over the past decade, the organization’s leadership was generally regarded as talented and capable.
But then earlier this year, a lad (I don’t mean to necessarily use the word pejoratively, but seriously, the dude is currently 24 years old) named Austin Chambers took the helm of RSLC.
- Chambers’ previous gigs included working on the campaigns of Brian Kemp (GA-gov), Kay Ivey (AL-gov), and Eric Greitens (MO-gov).
- Chambers also served as a senior adviser to then-Gov. Greitens, who, if that name rings a bell, is a real piece of garbage.
- Now, back to Chambers, Greitens’ then-senior adviser.
- After managing Greitens’ successful gubernatorial campaign, Chambers ran Greitens’ nonprofit and played a significant role in the governor’s policy, press, and political decisions.
- After trying and failing to become head of the Republican Governor’s Association (honestly why would they hire the top guy of a former governor who’d taken such a savage fall??) last winter, Chambers apparently started angling to head another national GOP organization—none other than the RSLC.
So yeah, Chambers is pretty new to the RSLC gig.
- And, what with losing both chambers of the Virginia legislature, his tenure isn’t off to a great start.
- But … maybe Republicans wouldn’t have lost as many seats if Chambers had been a little more focused on his day job.
- Chambers’ poor performance as Rispone’s general consultant was pretty thoroughly covered by local political press in Louisiana, and the RSLC’s board began sniffing around.
- Reportedly, committee officials convened an emergency conference call the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to discuss Chambers’ failed leadership—which also coincides with a recent exodus of top RSLC staff.
- Chambers claimed working for Rispone didn’t distract him from his RSLC duties, and RSLC “sources” euphemistically characterized the call as “an attempt to clarify expectations for 2020.”
Mmhmm.
- When pressed directly, RSLC chair Bill McCollum wouldn’t rule out a possible change in leadership of the committee.
- And with the final election before the next round of redistricting nigh, the timing really couldn’t be better.
you hate to see it
- Meanwhile, the DLCC continues its Trump era record-breaking fundraising, already hitting $16 million for the cycle (well ahead of where the committee was at this point in 2017, which was itself well ahead of where the committee had literally ever been in an off year) and is not discernibly at risk for any high-level turnover or high-level drama.
Speaking of stupid, unforced errors, Republicans in Texas emailed their 2020 state legislative election strategy to Democrats last week.
No, seriously.
- A doc titled “Primary/General Election 2020 [Draft]” started showing up in Lone Star State Dems’ email inboxes just before Thanksgiving.
- Texas Democrats, by the by, are just nine seats away from flipping the state House next fall—a daunting task, but far from impossible, especially considering Democrats flipped 12 House seats just last year.
- The GOP plan includes details like a list of districts Republicans hope to flip back in 2020 as well as tactics, such as
- Generating microsites for disseminating hits on Democratic candidates,
- Purchasing domains affiliated with Dem names, and
- Auditing search engine optimization results to help ensure that these hit sites appear on the first page of online search results.
- Texas Republicans are also clearly worried about possible Trump drag on their state legislative candidates, as the doc outlines ways to target GOP voters to vote in down-ticket races even if they won’t want to cast a ballot for Trump in November.
- Hilariously, the GOP plan specifically identifies the elimination of straight-ticket voting as “one of the biggest challenges ahead” for 2020.
Honestly, Texas Republicans have been on a real roll lately when it comes to doing extraordinarily stupid things.
- GOP state Rep. Rick Miller announced this week he wouldn’t run for reelection after he said, voluntarily, to a reporter, on the record, that two of his primary opponents are running against him because they’re Asian in a district with a considerable and growing Asian population: “That’s kind of racist in my mind.”
- By the by, Miller’s seat, HD-26, went for Beto O’Rourke 50.5-48.9 in last year’s U.S. Senate race.
So, with Thanksgiving behind us, we’re officially in the season of giving or whatever, I guess, but a Democratic lawmaker in Oregon has taken the concept of “paying it forward” really freaking seriously.
- State Rep. Tiffiny Mitchell underwent surgery this fall to donate her kidney.
- And because that’s not boss enough, through something called a “paired exchange chain,” five fewer people now need kidney transplants because of her gift.
Not-so-fun-fact: Eighty percent of the 125,000 people on the transplant list in the United States are waiting for a kidney.
- Mitchell had wanted to be a kidney donor for ages, ever since a friend of hers needed one ten years ago (the mom was a better match).
- Mitchell wants to encourage others to be living donors, too, and earlier this year, she spearheaded the push for a new law to do just that.
- The measure will protect living donors by including the procedure under Oregon’s Family and Medical Leave Act job security provisions and prohibiting insurers from increasing donors’ healthcare premiums or eliminating their access to coverage.
Welp, that’s a Saran wrap for this week’s edition. You should knock off early, maybe spend your Friday cleaning out your fridge and drinking that leftover Thanksgiving wine before it turns. Just print this out and show it to your boss, I’m sure she won’t mind.