ARE YOU READY FOR SOME ELECTIONS
… okay yes also professional football.
That starts tonight.
But professionals are already hard at work this fall in state legislative races in New Jersey, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, of course, Virginia.
Campaign Action
Post-Labor Day politicking in the Old Dominion can legitimately be considered election season’s second half—the game, so to speak, hasn’t yet been won or lost, but both sides already have plenty of points on the board in the form of dollars, polling, digital buys, TV and radio spots … well, you get the idea.
But there’s still plenty of game left, and the stakes are higher in this stretch.
So let’s take a look at the field.
All Kinds of Time: … air time, that is.
- Virginia Democrats have dropped TV spots in six key Republican-held districts in their quest to end the one-seat majorities the GOP holds in each legislative chamber.
- Democrat (and Daily Kos endorsee) Sheila Bynum-Coleman is tackling the nothing-to-sneeze-at task of ousting the Republican House speaker, Del. Kirk Cox.
- House District 66 went for Hillary Clinton (50-46) and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam (52-47), but Speaker Cox has served in the House of Delegates for 29 years and brings all the savvy and money that comes with that kind of experience and power with him to this race.
- Bynum-Coleman’s ad, “Kirk Cox Sold Out,” (the title pretty much says it all, but you can watch it here), works to use Cox’s connections to corporate influences against him.
- Meanwhile, Cox would rather talk about … baseball?
- Yes, baseball.
- His latest ad doesn’t even mention that he’s a Republican—not even in the disclaimer at the end (“Friends of Kirk Cox” doing a lot of work here), and claims he prefers being called “Coach Cox.”
Here’s hoping Bynum-Coleman returns him to the dugout full time.
- Democrat Larry Barnett is waging a longer-shot bid to oust Roxann Robinson in HD-27, which went for Trump 48-46 but flipped to Northam 51-48 a year later.
- Barnett almost ousted Robinson two years ago, coming in just 128 votes short of flipping the district.
- In his TV spot, Barnett talks about how to “Get It Done,” leaning into his experience in the mental health field to demonstrate his ability to make progress on difficult issues.
- Dan Helmer’s TV spot, sadly, does not involve him singing or engaging in any other sort of classic film parody.
- Rather, “Command Center” is SUPER SERIOUS and discusses his military experience and his commitment to progressive priorities like education funding and reproductive rights.
- His opponent, GOP Del. Tim Hugo, squeaked by with a 106-vote win two years ago in HD-40, which went for Clinton 53-42 and Northam 55-44.
- But Hugo’s been around for 16 years, and he has the campaign war chest to prove it.
- Even in an increasingly Dem-leaning district, Hugo will be hard to oust.
The other three ads Democrats dropped this week are in Senate Districts 7, 10, and 12, where three Democratic women are vying for seats Clinton won in 2016 (though with less than 50% of the vote in SD-07 and SD-10).
- One of the Republican incumbents in these races, Sen. Glen Sturtevant, is understandably nervous about holding on to his 53-40 Clinton district.
- But he’s handling that nervousness … poorly.
- In what may be a shameful effort to motivate racist voters (who tend to vote Republican), Sturtevant has waded into efforts to diversify schools in Richmond, despite the fact that his district intersects just small sections of the city.
- The Richmond School Board has been working with the community for months on rezoning plans to potentially combine two of the city’s whitest schools with nearby schools with higher percentages of students of color.
- Sturtevant, a former school board member, is circulating a petition titled “Save Our Neighborhood Schools,” a slogan used by opponents of school integration in the 1970s.
- He’s also promising to introduce legislation that would effectively usurp the authority of school boards statewide to draw school attendance zones.
Fun fact! In 2013, back when Sturtevant was actually a member of the Richmond School Board, he was sued by a parent who accused board members of holding “secret talks” to protect white enrollment at certain schools during rezoning.
- Current Richmond board members aren’t fans of Sturtevant’s bright idea, either; they’re calling on him to provide schools with more resources instead of meddling with boards’ ability to do their jobs.
All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight: As the hottest game in town this fall, Virginia’s getting all kinds of high-profile visits—some from humans, some from cash money.
- Beto O’Rouke is running for president (in a campaign fairly described as long-shot), but to his credit, he’s one of the few Democratic primary candidates to have visited the state with the most consequential elections this fall.
- And after spending Labor Day weekend in the Old Dominion, he definitely gets credit for having investing the most time there stumping for Democratic legislative candidates.
- Beto’s travels took him from the Helmer/Hugo contest in Northern Virginia down to SD-17 (which runs between Fredericksburg and Charlottesville and clear to the southwestern part of the state), where he campaigned with Democratic incumbent (and ardent gun-safety advocate) Del. Chris Hurst.
Attn: Democratic presidential primary contenders—MORE OF THIS PLEASE
- The dollars showing up in candidates’ coffers this week have come largely from both pro- and anti-gun safety groups.
- The NRA stunned observers by dropping $200,000 in Republican House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert’s leadership PAC on Tuesday—the organization’s largest single donation to a candidate or PAC in the state over the past 20 years (it’s given about $800,000 directly to various candidates over that same span of time).
- Gilbert himself does NOT need the cash.
- But watch for his Majority Leader PAC to launder this blood-soaked NRA money to Republicans at risk of losing seats in increasingly Democratic (and pro-gun safety) districts in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia).
- Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety has pledged to spend $2.5 million to flip Virginia’s legislature this fall.
- Additionally, Democratic House Minority Leader Eileen Filler-Corn announced that her own PAC would match the NRA’s donation by giving $200,000 to the House Democratic Caucus.
(In fairness, that money would have probably ended up there in the next few weeks anyway.)
White (yard) Lines: We’ve got ourselves a brand new state court decision striking down a partisan gerrymander.
- This time, a three-judge panel in North Carolina found that 21 of 50 Senate districts and 56 of 100 House districts violated the rights of Democratic voters to free and fair elections as set forth in the state constitution.
- In case you’re wondering just how bad this partisan gerrymander was, the current, GOP-drawn lines allowed Republicans to keep their majority in the House in 2018 despite winning fewer votes statewide.
But wait, you, an erudite observer of gerrymandering cases wonders, I thought SCOTUS ruled that courts couldn’t strike down partisan gerrymanders…?
Good memory! But that’s where the state/federal thing comes into play.
- Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively closed federal court doors on partisan gerrymandering lawsuits.
- But state courts interpret and apply state constitutions, and this North Carolina ruling should remind you more of the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court ruling last year that relied on that state’s constitution to strike down and replace the Keystone State GOP’s partisan congressional gerrymander with a fairer map.
- Importantly, the nature of this case should effectively insulate it from federal review.
- Also, the North Carolina GOP has declared that it won’t appeal this decision to a higher court (which is prudent of them, since they’d likely lose at the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court, and that court’s precedent carries more weight than this lower court decision).
- The court gave the GOP-controlled legislature until Sept. 18 to draw new, fair maps, but given North Carolina Republicans’ longstanding disregard for fairness and the rule of law, I wouldn’t count on them to produce plans that actually pass muster.
- Over the past six years, Tar Heel State GOPers have lost almost two dozen lawsuits surrounding their repeated efforts to usurp power from the public and other branches of government.
- More importantly, though, every single state has constitutional and/or statutory provisions similar to North Carolina’s and Pennsylvania’s that could be used to challenge partisan gerrymanders.
- But not every state has a fair-minded supreme court that can be relied on to not side with Republicans.
While we’re talking about gerrymandering, don’t let shiny happy rulings like North Carolina’s fool you.
- The next round of redistricting is right around the corner, and Democrats are nowhere near reaching the level of dominance Republicans enjoyed for the 2011 redraws across the country.
- Will Democrats get screwed as badly? No.
- Maybe more states’ congressional and legislative district maps will even resemble something fair, compared to the pitiful number that currently do.
But “fair” isn’t winning. And Republicans won’t forget that.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some football. You’ll be up late tonight, probably, watching the game or whatever. So maybe just go ahead and take tomorrow off, get an early start on the weekend. Just print this out and show it to your boss, I'm sure she won’t mind (as long as y’all’s favorite teams aren’t rivals. Then, well, you’d best show up Friday.)