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Halloween is just around the corner, and nothing says “BOO” quite as effectively as GOP state lawmakers. In states all across the country, Republican legislators have perpetrated all manner of horrors. They’re responsible for restricting voting rights, impeding access to health care, expanding access to guns, gutting environmental protections, and gerrymandering Republicans into artificially inflated majorities in states and in the U.S. House.
But Sexy Republican State Lawmaker would be the worst costume ever. Besides, Republicans are the ones acting out of fear these days.
(2)8 Elections Later: Democrats won yet another special election this week, bringing the tally of Democratic wins in contested seats this cycle to 22 (out of 42 total) and maintaining the Republicans’ ongoing failure to flip a single one of these seats from blue to red (Democrats have flipped eight seats).
- Tuesday’s win was in New Hampshire, where Democrats have won six of the eight specials held there this cycle. Three of those wins have been red-to-blue pickups.
The Exoracist: Desperation and fear go hand-in-hand, and Republicans all up and down the ticket in Virginia are clearly feeling both.
On Monday, Gillespie dropped an ad hitting Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam for his boss's work to automatically restore voting rights to those with felony convictions after they've served their time.
A little background:
Gillespie's ad not only ignores the racist history of felony disenfranchisement, but it also furthers the systemically racist trope that those who have served their time don't deserve to vote, sit on juries, or otherwise exercise their rights as citizens.
But wait, there’s more!
On Wednesday, Gillespie upped the racist ante in a big way when he dropped a spot hitting Northam for wanting to take down Virginia’s monuments to the Confederacy.
- “Ralph Northam will take our statues down,” the ad’s narrator proclaims—a telling statement in terms of specifically which voters Gillespie is appealing to with this ad.
- Identifying Confederate monuments as “our statues” explicitly excludes the sentiments of Virginia’s communities of color, for whom these statues are lurid reminders of the shameful institution of slavery and the lengths to which white southerners went to preserve the subjugation of other human beings.
- This ad is a clear attempt to hang an "us vs. them" lampshade on Gillespie's commitment to the white supremacy symbolized by monuments to the Confederacy, and it’s just more evidence of his desperation to activate an ugly segment of the GOP base.
The Silence of the Lines: Republican state legislators’ horrifying distortions of district lines are a well-known phenomenon, and courts have played the roll of monster hunter in a number of states, striking down maps in Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Wisconsin, and beyond.
- North Carolina presents a particularly notorious case, not only because of the egregiousness of the lines, but also because of the politically twisted things Republicans have done with the power afforded them by their super-safe districts and illegally obtained majorities. (Republicans Donald Trump and Pat McCrory received less than half of the popular vote in the state in 2016, but Republicans hold 74 of 120 House seats and 35 of 50 Senate seats—62 and 70 percent, respectively.)
The North Carolina GOP achieved their ill-gotten majorities through egregious racial gerrymandering, and a federal court invalidated the state’s legislative maps as a result.
But a tiny bit of sunlight might be peeking through the gerrymander clouds.
- A federal court overseeing the redrawing of North Carolina's legislative districts has appointed a nonpartisan "special master" in anticipation that the court will reject the GOP's new maps and have to redraw them itself.
- If the court rejects these new maps, it would be a major boon to black voters’ rights, and it could consequently result in Democrats winning more seats in 2018.
- While the court hasn’t formally shot down any of the GOP's redrawn districts, its order appointing the special master expressed concern that two Senate districts and seven House districts "either fail to remedy the identified constitutional violation or are otherwise legally unacceptable." It also called the possibility of such a finding "likely."
Fairer maps are critical to Democratic chances of breaking Republicans supermajorities in 2018, allowing them to sustain Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes.
Fun fact! Democrats only need to gain four seats in the 120-member House to do so.
Committee Room 237: In the wake of the initial spate of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, women in a variety of professions began speaking up about violations they’d endured from male colleagues or superiors.
The business of politics is anything but immune to the problem, and women in Congress and in statehouses across the country spoke up. Again.
- In many of these cases, women were reminding folks of issues they’d tried to speak out about before.
- A certain cycle has repeated itself in various states over the past several years:
- A scandal or series of scandals in a legislature will shine a light on the systemic sexism and harassment that occurs in so many state capitols,
- women lawmakers open up about their common terrible experiences,
- journalists document the horrors in excellent stories, and ...
- life goes on.
This is not to give short shrift to these pieces or in any way indicate they shouldn’t be written.
- Quite the contrary: The more women open up publicly about how men in powerful positions abuse that power by harassing the women they work with, the more all of us are forced to confront and deal with a serious problem that thrives in the shadows, away from light and exposure.
- But confronting sexual misconduct isn’t the same thing as fixing it. Correcting this problem requires effort and resources.
- And the nature of politics and political work presents its own set of rare circumstances and challenges: lots of after-hours and out-of-office events, a small staff and physical workspace that makes transferring away from or avoiding a harasser virtually impossible, etc.
There’s this one weird trick that would almost certainly diminish the instances of sexual harassment of women in the halls of power, though: electing more women.
- Harassment isn’t the exclusive domain of men, by any means, but men with power perpetrate the vast majority of harassment in politics. If powerful men were surrounded by greater numbers of powerful women colleagues, the men would likely feel less emboldened to exercise their power in such a destructive way.
Just a thought.
Enough thoughts. Time to get my David S. Pumpkins on. Until next week!