April 1 may be set aside for pranks and tomfoolery, but, alas, political shenanigans are in no way confined to any one day. Or week. Or month. Or … well, you get it.
Fools rush in: In New York, foolishness was in full effect on Wednesday as the renegade Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) decided that, after six years of giving effective majority control of the state Senate to Republicans in one of the bluest states in the nation, it would rejoin the real Democrats.
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Clear as mud? A bit of background:
- Once upon a time, after the 2012 elections gave Democrats a majority in the state Senate (despite a map gerrymandered to benefit the GOP), IDC members—who’d been elected as Democrats—stopped caucusing with said Democrats.
- This gave Republicans—the minority party—actual control of the chamber.
- Over the subsequent years, this unholy Republican-IDC junta blocked legislation to establish a state DREAM Act, measures to protect access to abortion and no-copay birth control, implementation of early voting and automatic voter registration, and many other progressive bills broadly supported by Democrats that have had no trouble passing the Democratic-majority state Assembly.
- But since Trump’s election, real Democrats have been lining up to take on these fake Democrats in this fall’s primary, and they’re receiving real support in the form of endorsements from progressive groups and actual cash money raised to combat IDC members’ massive, special interest-funded war chests.
- The IDC is spooked, so Gov. Andrew Cuomo—who’s aided and abetted this cabal all along—just brokered a “deal” between the IDC and real Senate Democrats that brings the renegade members back into the caucus fold.
You, just falling off the turnip truck: Wait, isn’t that a good thing?
Me, experienced observer of state politics and not a fan of turnips: It might be, if it weren’t all a bunch of self-serving garbage designed to save the IDC’s (and Cuomo’s) hide.
You see, we’ve seen this “reunification” song and dance before.
- In 2014, Cuomo pulled this exact same stunt to stop the Working Families Party from endorsing his primary opponent.
- That year, Cuomo promised he’d help Democrats retake the state Senate.
- He even shook his fist at the IDC, publicly warning them that there’d be consequences if they didn’t return to the Democratic Caucus.
- Thing is, after the WFP did what he wanted, Cuomo promptly reneged on all his pledges.
- He didn’t lift a finger for Senate Democrats, and he never put an ounce of pressure on the IDC.
- Cuomo won re-election, and the IDC-GOP alliance remained intact.
- So, not only have we already been fooled once but this kind of promise, but there’s also literally nothing stopping IDC members from breaking off from real Democrats yet again and caucusing with the GOP after they’ve secured re-election in November.
- All we have is their word, and when lawmakers elected as Democrats have been giving power to the opposing party for years, it’s not the least bit unfair to suspect that word is pretty doggone useless.
- IDC members’ real goal? Defanging primary challenges from legit, progressive Democrats.
- And Cuomo’s real goal? Defanging his own primary challenge from actress and activist Cynthia Nixon, who’s made Cuomo’s support for the IDC a centerpiece of her campaign.
You know what they say: Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me—can’t get fooled again.
What a fool believes: You know who didn’t get fooled this week? Voters in Wisconsin, that’s who.
- Badger Staters went to the ballot box on Tuesday to elect a new state Supreme Court justice, and they gave the slot to progressive (fun fact! Supreme Court races in Wisconsin are ostensibly nonpartisan) Judge Rebecca Dallet.
- Dallet won this race by a super comfy 56-44 margin in this statewide contest for a 10-year term. Hooray!
- And while, as we said, this race was officially nonpartisan, the ideological battle lines were clearly drawn.
- Former Vice President Joe Biden recorded a robocall for Dallet, and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee spent at least $165,000 on the race.
- Dallet’s opponent, conservative Judge Michael Screnock, had the backing of Gov. Scott Walker and the National Rifle Association, and a notoriously anti-union business lobby had dumped in almost $1 million on ads as of last Friday.
- Dallet’s victory moves the ideological makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from five-to-two in favor of conservatives to four-to-three, positioning progressives to end the conservative court majority in the next few years—which would be super helpful in terms of placing a brake on extreme Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics.
Fun fact! Dallet’s win also means that six of the seven justices on the high court are now women, tying the Badger State with Washington for the largest number of women members of a state’s highest court.
- Dallet’s win also extended the trend of progressives’ growing strength in Wisconsin, and also also extended progressives’ streak of freaking Walker the eff out on election nights. (Check out his Tuesday night Twitter tirade for a chuckle.)
These aren’t so much the actions of a party in a position of strength, hrm?
- Anyway, with the extremely important caveat that the formally nonpartisan nature of this Supreme Court election means that comparisons to partisan races must be made cautiously, Dallet’s margin of victory represents a shift of about 12 points from Donald Trump’s narrow 47.2-46.5 win in Wisconsin in 2016.
- If Democrats can replicate anything even resembling this sweet swing in partisan races this November (not to mention in those June special elections Walker is so scared of), Wisconsin Republicans are in for pretty crappy election night.
And I’m in for more buckets of delicious Walker tears yum
Speaking of Wisconsin Republicans …
- A GOP member of the Assembly is blaming his “military training” for an act of epic
stupidity strategery last year that ended up costing the state $30,000.
- You see, Republican Rep. Dale Kooyenga military training told him a protest sign in the state capitol was SUPER DANGEROUS.
- This protest sign (which called out Trump as a “serial groper” and excoriated Republicans for supporting the president) was placed in the capitol rotunda last May.
- The creator and placer of said sign even had a permit for it, which he’d taped to its back.
- When Kooyenga spotted this sign, he found it “inappropriate” and absconded with it to his office.
- The sign-maker enlisted capitol police to help him find his missing poster, and security video revealed Kooyenga’s thievery.
- The sign was recovered, but the sign’s creator sued the legislator; the affair was eventually settled for the tidy (and taxpayer-financed) sum of $30,000.
- But now Kooyenga (who’s running for the state Senate this fall) is claiming that he only had public safety in mind when he stole this obviously extremely dangerous sign.
- In a town hall meeting this week, Kooyenga claimed that his “military intelligence” (intelligence lol) training immediately clued him into the “clear risk” presented by the sign.
- You see, Kooyenga thought someone scary might hide behind the sign (it totally offered an “opportunity to conceal,” okay?).
- But instead of, say, notifying capitol police, Kooyenga bravely removed this dangerous item himself.
- But now, instead of lauding his courage, constituents and reporters are asking why the state is footing that $30,000 bill for his sign thievery.
So ungrateful!
You know who else is ungrateful? Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky who just won’t shut up about those states’ underfunded education systems!
- In Oklahoma, the teacher walkout has run almost a full week as lawmakers scramble to find some source of funding to raise teacher pay to a reasonable level and provide resources for the state’s schools.
Because stuff’s bad in Oklahoma.
How bad? Glad you asked!
- Thanks to the GOP’s tax-slashing schemes in 2014, the Sooner State is broke as hell.
- Many state agencies’ budgets were cut by 40 percent.
- Nearly 100 of the state’s 513 schools have been forced to cut a full day out of the week, unable to afford more than four days of classes.
- Troopers on highway patrol are warned to not fill their gas tanks all the way.
- Drunk drivers have been able to keep their licenses because the state can’t afford to employ enough administrative staffers to revoke their driving privileges.
- Teachers haven’t gotten a raise since 2008.
- In Kentucky, many teachers using their spring break to rally at the state capitol (while others are calling in sick, and some school districts just decided to give teachers some time off for rallyin’).
- These teachers are swarming the state capitol to protest a bill that would threaten their retirement security by replacing their rightfully earned pensions with unpredictabe 401(k)-style accounts.
Fun fact! A record number of teachers are running for the Kentucky state legislature this fall!
- Forty of the candidates taking on incumbents in the GOP-controlled legislature are educators.
- The 34 teaches and six administrators running this fall are fighting back against the state’s “attack on education.”
Fools on the capitol hill: Let’s call it a tale of two parties: It was the best of legislatures, it was the worst of legislatures.
- At least, pretty solid and completely awful are appropriate ways to describe responses by the Colorado legislature’s Democrats and Republicans, respectively, to sexual misconduct by their own members.
- The alleged offenses were awfully similar, but the outcomes in these two situations couldn’t have been more different (and SUPER revealing about how seriously each party takes sexual harassment).
- In March, the Democratic-majority Colorado House held a tense and dramatic hearing to expel Democratic Rep. Dave Lebsock.
- The chamber voted overwhelmingly to boot Lebsock after evaluating the results of an independent investigation spurred by multiple lawmakers, staffers, and lobbyists accusing the Democrat of harassment, intimidation, and numerous unwanted sexual advances.
- This week, the GOP-controlled Colorado Senate provided a sad study in contrasts when it failed to expel Republican Sen. Randy Baumgardner, who’d likewise been accused of sexual harassment.
- Expulsion required a two-thirds supermajority vote of the chamber, but only a single Republican crossed party lines to vote with all 16 Democrats, resulting in a 17-17 tie that easily let Baumgardner keep his state Senate seat.
But Baumgardner’s GOP colleagues totally should have booted him, and here’s why.
- In November, a Senate staffer revealed to a Colorado radio station that Baumgardner had slapped and grabbed her butt four separate times during the 2016 legislative session, at the Capitol, during work hours.
- The staffer filed a formal complaint, and an independent investigation ensued.
- The investigators reportedly found the allegations credible, and another Senate staffer told the victim in January that “the evidence suggests there should be a consequence.”
- Senate Democrats introduced a resolution to expel Baumgardner in February, but the GOP-controlled chamber refused to allow debate on it.
- Republican Senate President Kevin Grantham went so far as to say that Baumgardner had already “been punished.” (Baumgardner resigned from one of his two committee chairmanships and agreed to sensitivity training and I’m sure cried his sorry gropey butt to sleep every night about it.)
- Oh, and two other investigations into separate complaints against Baumgardner are pending.
- After over a month of delays, Republicans finally deigned to consider Democrats’ resolution to expel Baumgardner on the night of the NCAA basketball championship game, which I’m totally sure was in no way timed to distract from coverage of the vote.
- The debate itself was wicked ugly, with Democratic senators reading details from the original complaint filed against Baumgardner, signaling to victims that their complaints are taken seriously—by one party, at least.
- In the end, one lonely, upstanding Republican voted to expel Baumgardner from the chamber.
Aaaaand let’s take a look back at how Democrats handled a similar situation just a few weeks prior.
- Lawmakers began calling for Democratic Rep. Steve Lebsock’s exit from the legislature in November, when multiple women—including lawmakers, staffers, and lobbyists—accused Lebsock of harassment and intimidation and unwanted sexual advances.
- Unlike Grantham, who sought to protect Baumgardner, Democratic House Speaker Crisanta Duran called on Lebsock to resign; he refused.
- An independent investigation was launched, which found sexual misconduct allegations against Lebsock “credible.”
- The Democratic majority leader introduced a resolution calling for his expulsion just days after the the investigation’s findings were revealed to lawmakers.
- Ultimately, Colorado House members voted 52 to 9 to expel Lebsock—far more than the two-thirds required for such an action.
Sexual misconduct isn’t a partisan issue (except maybe it is), and responding to it shouldn’t be, either.
On that extremely sunny note, I leave you until next week. Happy fooling!
