This Week in Statehouse Action: I Want To Know What Law Is edition

Find someone who looks at you like this walrus looks at that other walrus

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Valentine’s Day is next week

So here’s an appropriately themed statehouse update for you

… sorry.

Love is in the air in state legislatures across the country, and by “love” I mean that 41 statehouses are currently in session, and they’re all just awash in sexy things like holding public hearings on bills and passing resolutions honoring local sports teams and voting on legislation.

Shhhhhhhhhh don’t judge my perception of sexy. Everyone’s got their own thing.

But everyone thinks winning is hot. And Democrats are positively on fire.

Burning Love: This past Tuesday, Democrats flipped yet another state legislative seat from red to blue. (It’s Democrats 35th state legislative pickup of the cycle.)

• Four open Republican seats in Missouri were in need of filling on Tuesday night, and Republicans held on to three of them—albeit by significantly smaller margins than Trump won in those seats in 2016.
• But one of those four Republican open seats gave Democrat Mike Revis the win on Tuesday with 52-48 percent, shifting 31 points from Trump’s win percentage in the district.

Want to feel the heat of more special elections? Next week features five contests on back-to-back days—two seats in Minnesota on Monday, Feb. 12, and seats in Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia on Tuesday, Feb. 13.

Draw Me Two Times: Pennsylvania Republicans did not take late January’s state Supreme Court ruling against their gerrymandered congressional maps well.

If you’re just now tuning in, yeah, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that the state’s outrageous Republican gerrymander violated the state constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections. It was rad.

• Pennsylvania’s GOP lawmakers were, shall we say, less than thrilled. Statements decrying the order flew out of Republican legislative leaders’ offices. The state Senate President pro tempore announced that he wouldn’t comply with the court’s order to draw a new congressional map.
• And then Republican Rep. Cris Dush proposed impeaching the Democratic justices on the bench, all of whom had ruled in a way that made him super mad.

Histrionics? Sounds like it. But threats are only idle until they’re not, and Pennsylvania’s Republican lawmakers have both the means and the motivation to make impeachment happen.

Here’s how they could do it:

• Articles of judicial impeachment need only be passed by a majority in the state House, which Republicans have.
• And removal from the bench requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in the state Senate—which Republicans also have.

Here’s why they could do it:

• Democrats have a 5-2 majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and Republicans have almost zero chance of flipping the court back to a GOP majority before 2021.
• In 2021, a commission of two Republicans, two Democrats, and a fifth member agreed upon by the other four create new state House and Senate maps.
• If (when, let’s be real) the two Republicans and two Democrats fail to agree upon that fifth tie-breaking member, the state Supreme Court steps in to select the member. A Democratic-majority Supreme Court is likely to select a tiebreaker who will reject any map that unfairly benefits Republicans.
• Additionally, legal challenges to the state House and Senate maps are normally handled by the state Supreme Court, placing another anti-GOP gerrymander trump card in Democrats’ hands.

The Democratic majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court thusly constitutes an existential threat to Republicans’ lopsided majorities in the the state legislature.

• Fairer maps would help undo the massive majorities the GOP enjoys in both chambers: 120 Republicans, 81 Democrats, and two vacancies in the state House; 34 Republicans and 16 Democrats in the Senate—all despite the fact that Trump carried Pennsylvania by less than a single point in 2016.
• Pennsylvania Republicans finally are grumblingly complying with the court’s order to redraw the congressional maps, but they’re also not ruling out the possibility of going after the Supreme Court justices who are making them do it.

Stay tuned!

When A Voter Loves A Woman (candidate):

...can’t give his vote to no one else

He’d trade the GOP

For the good thing he’s found

Ugh sorry bear with me

• Much (deserved) hay was made of the surge of women candidates in Virginia last year.
  • Old Dominion women came forward in actual record numbers to run for the House of Delegates.
  • And now a record number of women are serving in the General Assembly. It’s super cool.

But this phenomenon is definitely not confined to either Virginia or to 2017.

• In Arizona, Democrats will be running in every House and Senate seat for the first time in at least a decade. Of the 108 Democrats who have stepped forward to run, 50 are women, and 54 are people of color. Most are first-time candidates.
• In Ohio, one of the women who came forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual harassment is running for a state House seat. She joins a landmark number of Democratic candidates in the state’ for the first time in six years, Democrats are fielding candidates in every single House and Senate seat.
• In Connecticut, political leaders have “never seen anything like it.” Record numbers of women are showing up at candidate trainings, and many are filing to run for the legislature this fall.
  • These reports are on the heels of the record number of women running for office in Kentucky I mentioned in this space last week. Hooray!

(What’s So Funny About) Porn, Love, and Understanding: It’s a free country, and reasonable minds differ on whether pornography is good, evil, chaotic neutral, or anything else.

Porn is many things to many people. What it is not, however, is a “public health crisis.”

• But enough lawmakers in the Kansas legislature are so eager to blame it for the state’s societal problems that they wasted valuable taxpayer resources this week to pass a ridiculous resolution declaring pornography to be “potentially biologically addictive” (it’s not) and a contributor “to the rise of erectile dysfunction in young men” (also extremely not true), just for starters.
  • Too bad the supposed “science” these and other outrageous claims in the resolution are based on is hot garbage.

...wait, what if pornography is why I’m still single? According to the Kansas legislature, it’s “linked to lessened desire in young men and women to marry.”

Oh wait no actually that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard 

• Speaking of knowing it when you see it, a Republican lawmaker in Virginia wants to charge $20 to watch online pornography in the state.
• Rep. Dave LaRock has filed legislation that would prevent the sale or distribution of any internet-capable device without the capacity to filter obscene content.
  • Never mind the difficulties with administering such a restriction; this proposal obviously has major constitutional issues.

Well, that’s enough bad romance for one week. Don’t forget to tell someone you tolerate that you care!