Note: This post was originally published on March 15, 2018.
Happy Ides of March! Watch your back.
… especially if you’re a Republican, because oof is that an unpopular profession these days.
To wit: Conor Lamb’s win in a Pennsylvania U.S. House district that voted for Trump by 20 points. That’s a pretty epic swing, and it tracks with Democrats’ ongoing over-performance in the vast majority of special elections this cycle.
Fun fact! In special and state legislative elections this cycle, Democrats are performing, on average, 8 percent better than Obama (2012) and 13 percent better than Clinton (2016).
Republican members of Congress were understandably freaked out about Lamb’s win, but they’re not the only GOPers sounding the alarm.
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It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and hungry-looking: The morning after the special election in PA-18, the political director of the North Carolina House Republican Caucus circulated an email to GOP representatives with a dire warning: Should the state’s down-ballot Democrats replicate their success in the Pennsylvania House race, Republicans stood to lose control of the lower chamber.
- The staffer listed 23 incumbent Republicans in districts that Trump won by 20 points or less.
- If Democrats flip those seats, not only would they break the GOP’s supermajority; they’d win control of the House outright.
- North Carolina Democrats knew a good idea when it fell in their laps, and they quickly produced a list of 24 Republican-held House seats and 15 state Senate seats “more competitive” than PA-18.
- Democrats need to flip just four seats to break the GOP supermajority in the House; in the Senate, they need to flip six.
- Breaking the supermajority in just one of those chambers would finally allow Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes to stick; currently they’re casually overturned by Republican lawmakers.
- Speaking of North Carolina GOP lawmakers’ antics: Gov. Cooper has filed a lawsuit to thwart the latest Republican attempt (in an absurdly long series) to remake the state’s elections board so Republican voter suppression measures established under the previous (Republican) administration can be preserved.
- First, before Cooper even took office, Republicans tried to remake the state elections board, which would have a Democratic majority under a Democratic governor, into a larger, evenly split body appointed by the GOP-controlled legislature. A court struck it down.
- So Republicans tweaked their bill and tried again. The state Supreme Court struck it down.
- So Republicans tried yet again, this time glomming the measure onto an unrelated and bipartisan bill that would reduce elementary school class sizes.
Today, just as the bill becomes law, Cooper is suing yet again, calling the GOP’s move to mutate the state elections board into something designed to support their voter suppression efforts “unconstitutional.” Good luck!
I had rather be first in a village than the minority party in the Senate: The saga around the Nevada GOP’s efforts to undo their 2016 election losses by recalling Democratic state senators has taken another turn, and it’s not a good one for Republicans.
For those just tuning in to this desert drama:
- Being the minority party sucks (Republicans lost the Nevada Senate in 2016, resulting in an effectively 12-9 chamber), and the GOP is understandably worried about flipping the chamber back this November.
- Only three of the 10 seats that are up this fall are held by Democrats, and all three went decisively blue in 2014.
- At the same time, of the six Republicans up in 2018, one represents a Clinton seat (51-43 percent), making it tough turf to defend.
- So faced with a rough general election landscape, Republicans turned to sham recalls to oust two Democrats who’d just been elected and one independent who started caucusing with them this year (and isn’t even running for re-election).
- Using lies and distortions of voting records, Republicans gathered signatures to recall these three lawmakers—who all just happen to be women.
- The recalls received significant funding support from a major national group: The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), which works to elect GOP candidates to state offices (including legislatures), was the sole donor to one of the recall efforts, to the tune of $160,000.
- That recall petition failed miserably, so Republicans shifted $118,000 from that account to the recall efforts for the two Democrats. (The RSLC may have also contributed directly to those efforts, but we won’t know until those recall committees file finance reports.)
- Two of the bogus recalls seemed poised to move forward, but Democrats sued to challenge the signature counts in both cases.
Today, a big court win paves the way for both recall efforts to fail.
- A Nevada district court judge upheld the constitutionality of a law that allow voters who signed recall petitions to change their minds and remove their names after the petitions are submitted to the state.
- Democrats have been running aggressive campaigns to urge petition signers, many of whom claim they were misinformed of the real purpose of the petitions, to ask to have their names removed.
- Since the petition to recall Democratic state Sen. Nicole Cannizzaro exceeded the required number of signatures by a margin of just 43, that recall effort seems doomed.
- The petition to recall Democratic Sen. Joyce Woodhouse exceeded the number of signatures required by about 200, so after signature removal requests—reportedly in the thousands—are processed, that one is probably done for, too.
Looks like Republicans will have to try to win back their Nevada Senate majority the old-fashioned way: via general elections.
What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind: … or in this case, seeks to govern, and voters will cast ballots with their eyes wide open this November.
- Last week, Leslie Gibson, a Republican who was running unopposed for Maine House District 57, called two of the outspoken survivors of the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting a “a skinhead lesbian” and “a bald-faced liar.”
- Members of both parties were swift to rebuke the GOP candidate, and the accused “bald-faced liar,” survivor and activist David Hogg, issued a call on Wednesday for someone to challenge Gibson for the House seat.
On Thursday, Democrat Eryn Gilchrist answered that call, filing to run in Maine HD-57.
- The race will be an uphill battle for the Democrat; Trump won this district with 61-32, and it’s been represented by a Republican since 2010.
- But Conor Lamb just flipped a seat Trump won by almost as much, so this race is not to be written off.
- What’s more, unlike Lamb's seat, HD-57 went for Obama in 2012, by a 50-47 margin. We’ve seen a lot of districts like this snap back toward Democrats in special elections all cycle long, so Gilchrist is filling an important hole.
Cowards die many times before their deaths: You’d think a resolution “to denounce and oppose white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups and their actions” would sail through any legislature, regardless of which party was in control.
- Welp, you’d think wrong: A resolution doing exactly that has failed in the GOP-controlled Tennessee House, where a committee failed to pass the measure on Wednesday.
- Republicans claim the bill’s failure was a simple procedural snafu, and it could theoretically be re-upped in the committee that just nixed it.
- The GOP’s ugly failure to pass the resolution comes just days after the white supremacist group Identity Evropa held a flash mob demonstration in Nashville.
Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion: How about husband?
Not-so-fun fact! Dix is married and has three three children.
- Dix’s resignation was followed by the swift exit of a powerful senior aide, who (along with Dix) had been under fire for months for the poor handling of a sexual harassment case in which a jury awarded a Republican staffer $2.2 million.
- But there’s an upside to Dix’s sudden departure!
Veni, vidi, vici … until next week, anyway!