In the second half of the show, the pair chatted with guest Jessica Post, president of the DLCC, the arm of the Democratic Party that helps candidates win elections for state legislative office around the country.
What makes what the Supreme Court did especially infuriating, Nir argued, is not just what they did, but also why and when:
In terms of the why, what the far right majority on the Supreme Court is trying to do is undermine the Voting Rights Act, specifically a requirement that you can't simply divide up minority populations and try to dilute their voting strength. That if you can draw a district where in this case, black voters have the ability to elect their candidate of choice, then you are obligated to do so. And that is what the Wisconsin Supreme Court thought. But what the U.S. Supreme Court said was no, you're wrong about all of that. And you're wrong in such a way that basically makes it extremely difficult to prevail on future voting rights act claims under this provision of the law.
They did this on their so-called shadow docket, meaning there was minimal briefing, no oral argument, essentially the equivalent of doing something in the dark of night by the Supreme Court, all in the service of basically undermining the VRA. But the really galling thing is the timing of it all. In February, the Supreme Court stayed a ruling by a lower court that said that Alabama had to draw a second congressional district where black voters could elect their candidate of choice. And in that decision, staying that ruling, Brett Kavanaugh wrote this concurring opinion, saying it was simply too close to the election for a court to interfere and tell a state that it had to change the maps that it was currently using.
Nir also pointed out that at the time the court ruled in the Alabama case, it was four months away from the primary. But now, they are essentially interfering in the way that a state conducts its elections, even though it's only five months to the primary in Wisconsin. “Are you kidding me? ... The situation is really appalling,” he added. “Like I said, the implications are big because the Voting Rights Act is going to be neutered by the Supreme Court and they're going to do it however they possibly can. And they just don't care about looking like hypocrites.”
“The real fear is what comes next,” Beard agreed. “There's a real sense that almost anything, almost any conservative argument that some conservative lawyer comes up with could be accepted by this court. And that makes everything around elections districts, all of this really, really difficult and scary.”
Next on the agenda, Nir and Beard talked about another candidate who has fallen out of favor with Donald Trump. Trump has announced that he was withdrawing his endorsement of representative Mo Brooks ahead of the May Republican Senate primary to succeed retiring Senator Richard Shelby, leaving two other remaining candidates in the G.O.P primary that he could end up backing. One is army veteran, Mike Durant, who Trump has previously not been crazy about because he was a surrogate for John McCain way back in the day; and the other is Richard Shelby's choice, former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Boyd Brit.
According to Beard, Trump argued that he was abandoning Brooks because the Congressman had told attendees at an August rally that basically, they needed to move past the 2020 election — even if there was all this voter fraud and election theft that Trump and all of the others are so insistent on. But it is clear to most that Trump dumped Brooks because Brooks was losing and Trump doesn't like losers. It's very straightforward.
“We've seen this before, Trump doesn't like backing losers. So he will much rather dump them rather than stick it out with them,” Beard said. “And so in response to this, the Congressman himself responded with a statement basically admitting that Trump had asked him to rescind the 2020 elections to remove Joe Biden from the White House to put Trump back in the White House and hold a new special election for the presidency.”
Beard offered additional analysis of Trump’s lingering presence and power in the Republican party:
Trump remains a powerful force in G.O.P politics for sure, but not an all powerful one. And his own reluctance and even fear to go out on a limb for somebody shows you that you can run it in a G.O.P primary against a Trump endorsed candidate, and you can still find success … And if you can show that you're doing better than whoever endorsed, there's a good chance he'll just switch over to your side. So it's a very strange situation over in G.O.P primary world, which is not the first time that's been the case, but something definitely we want to keep an eye on.
A special election is also on the horizon in Maricopa County, Arizona — which is home to Phoenix — where Republican Attorney Allister Adel just resigned after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2019 and then going on to win a full four year term the following year by just a 51-49 margin. However, her term in office went very, very poorly. Nir unpacked this in more detail:
Last month, the Arizona Republic reported that Adel who had recently been in rehab for alcoholism had missed many meetings that she was supposed to attend and failed to weigh in on major legal issues that concerned her office, including you may recall that recent bogus attempt by Republicans to 'audit the vote' in Maricopa County, that a lot of people refer to as a fraudit. She also allegedly called a staffer 'after hours' while she was drunk and was slurring her words. This was in fact reported to the Maricopa County board of supervisors, the body that will be responsible for picking Adel's replacement.
But worst of all, her office during her tenure had to drop 180 cases, because her staff had waited too long to bring any charges. In other words, the statute of limitations ran out and these weren't minor cases. A number of them included domestic violence charges. So, people accused of domestic violence simply got off a hook due to total incompetence and mismanagement by Allister Adel. What's going to happen now, as I mentioned, the board of supervisors will pick a replacement. That replacement also has to be a Republican, but we're going to have a special election this November for the final two years of Adel's term. There'll be an election for the full four year term in 2024. Democrat Julie Gunnigle is running again. She's the one who held Adel to that two point win back in 2020.
“In that race, the key plank for Gunnigle was the county's very harsh charging and incarceration practices. Maricopa County has an incarceration rate well above the national average,” Nir added. “So, this creates a new and earlier opportunity for Democrats to try to win back one of the most important local prosecutors offices in the country this fall.”
Lastly, Beard gave the audience a few updates about elections that have happened in Canada and Australia. In Australia, the Labor Party, the center left party in the country, won the south Australia state election in a pretty convincing victory and now controls all but two Australian states and territories. “This is a really good sign for the Labor Party going into the next general election. And that next general election is happening very soon. It's expected to take place sometime in May of this year,” Beard opined.
In Canada, the general election that occurred last fall returned a minority liberal government led by prime minister, Justin Trudeau, which is the same government that had been in place before the election. “So the 2021 election was really a status quo reelection of what had taken place in 2019. Now, minority governments are not uncommon in Canada, particularly because they have more than two parties that win a significant number of seats, but they also often don't last the full four years,” Beard cautioned.
He added that the left wing, New Democratic Party, and the minority governing liberals just this week announced what's called a confidence and supply agreement, that's going to help sustain the government through the four full year term until 2025. As Beard defined it, a confidence and supply agreement is where an outside party, in this case the NDP, agrees to support the minority liberal government on certain key votes, specifically on budget votes and on any no confidence votes. In return for support in these key votes that keeps the government running and functioning, the liberals agreed to move forward some key priorities of the New Democratic Party, specifically a dental care program for low income Canadians and a national prescription drug program.
Lastly, the pair welcomed Post onto the show and took a closer look at some of the crucial work the DLCC is doing to get Democrats elected at the state legislative level.
Nir let Post take it away after asking her to expound on how the DLCC goes about supporting candidates in these local races. “So let's talk specifically about the DLCC and what you guys do. You know, we might summarize it, as Beard did at the top of the show, as the organization that helps elect Democrats to state legislatures across the country. But what exactly does that mean on a practical day to day and also more strategic basis? The folks who listen to this show are definitely interested in the nitty gritty of sort of how politics comes together and where the rubber meets the road. So how does an organization like the DLCC construct itself to be able to make a difference on such a large playing field? When you're talking about obviously 50 states, 7,000 some odd state legislators across the country, you're not working on every single race or every single state, of course, but how do you guys do what you do?” he asked.
Post replied,
It takes a lot of individual funds and resources that are not involved in the business of state government to help flip a legislative chamber from red to blue. And while our democratic donors were giving significant funds at the U.S Senate, at the congressional level, they weren't as focused on unseating state legislative Republican incumbents and incumbent chambers. So we also did do a lot to build the awareness of state legislatures in the space. In 2017, we won a lot of special elections, and I think it really exciting for the party. We unveiled our flip gif, which if you haven't seen it, it's on Twitter. It's just like a moving flipping gif that shows the seat flipping. And in the 2017 and 2018 cycles, we flipped hundreds of seats, red to blue and eight state legislative chambers.
So we really dug in and I think doing that work, helping folks in the party at a really desperate moment under Trump, so I see the way back, that's how we help build. And so now, we'll be at maybe 70 plus staff at the end of this cycle and we'll raise hopefully more than $60 million. And so that allows us to provide a lot more money to state programs, to do things like candidate recruitment, to build campaign infrastructure, to raise digital funds themselves, to raise individual money themselves, to try to really get our level of the ballot funded appropriately to take out Republican majorities. And we need to do a lot. In the first quarter of this year, or I should say last year, the Republicans raised 33 million, not the first quarter going back. We raised 22 million last year. They raised 33 million last year. And that's like, they still have a significant financial advantage and we're doing everything we can to kind of overcome it.
The trio also dug into some of the specific states that are going to be on the ballot this year. Several offensive opportunities have opened up due to major changes in redistricting in Michigan, Beard noted. There is the new independent redistricting commission, which put in place much fairer maps than the previous G.O.P gerrymanders that had been used for decades. And in Pennsylvania, a similar phenomenon happened with the redistricting commission there finally having a fair minded tiebreaker appointed by the state Supreme Court, which is in turn controlled by Democrats. Thus, the maps there also broke a long string of G.O.P gerrymanders. These are also major swing states that were very close in the last few presidential elections, and Republicans control both chambers in both of these states. “So what do you see going on in Pennsylvania and Michigan in terms of the opportunities these redistricting reforms have unlocked?” he asked.
Post thinks that things are looking very good in Michigan:
Well, let me start with Michigan first, because we are definitely thrilled with the Michigan state Senate maps. Talking with the leader in Michigan who's a friend and just a wonderful duty, represents Flint in the state legislature. He told me the other day, and the data supports this, that they could win 18 seats so a near path to the majority in the Michigan state Senate, in the 2014 cycle. So it's a huge improvement. The Michigan state senate maps haven't been drawn in a fair way in about 40 years. So we're just thrilled to see the improvement in the Michigan state senate maps. So that's really huge. The Michigan state house maps still have a slight Republican bias even though they came out of this nonpartisan commission process. So huge opportunity is to change the face of Michigan.
Regarding Pennsylvania, she believes they have seen huge improvements in the state house map:
Certainly there are about 12 more seats that Hillary Clinton won, and that's certainly one way that we kind of judge the data. So that's a great possibility for us to flip that chamber red to blue. The state Senate, there was just a major retirement that happened in a seat that we almost won by about 87 votes. So it's an open Republican seat. Only half the state Senate in Pennsylvania have, so as a result, we'll have a hard time flipping it. There's just not enough seats up to flip. We see Pennsylvania as a multi-cycle play. And we know that we can flip a few seats in Pennsylvania this cycle, and then the hope is that going to 2024, we can flip enough seats to flip the chamber. So we see, in states that has staggered terms like in Pennsylvania, that's how we look at state senates.
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