More and more good election news keeps piling up
What a week!
Welcome to a Saturday morning edition of Progress Report.
We’re now wrapping up what should go down as one of the most unexpectedly delightful weeks in recent history. What began under the dark cloud of an anticipated electoral bloodbath instead delivered an unprecedented Democratic victory, a crypto scam’s collapse, Elon Musk’s self-destruction, and a public reckoning for Big Pharma profiteers that was sparked by a goofy parody tweet.
The new keeps getting better, too. Late last night, national news outlets called the Arizona Senate race for the incumbent, Democrat Mark Kelly, thereby officially vanquishing Peter Thiel’s protege Blake Masters and banishing him once again to the uncanny valley. What’s more, based on new votes counted late last night, I feel comfortable projecting that Democrat Katie Hobbs will be the next governor of Arizona.
The numbers also look very good for Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, and whenever they call the race in her favor, it will give Democrats another Senate majority even before the stupid runoff in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. It wouldn’t be enough to overcome a a filibuster quite yet, but prospect of not having to win over both Manchin and Sinema on every judge appointment or cut down legislation to suit both of their (donor’s) demands is a beautiful prospect.
Tonight we’ll look at a few news items, look at some key results at both the state and national level, and then review how a whole load of important local ballot initiatives fared at the ballot box.
PS: Later this weekend and early next week, we’ll have some longer reported features that take us even further into the elections, how Democrats were able to pull off their shock victories, some exciting activist victories, and how progressives can take this week’s success to the next level.
Arizona: Katie Hobbs’s projected victory probably has less to do with her strength as a candidate than it does the sheer lunacy of her Republican opponent. Kari Lake, a former TV anchor who now acts as if an anchor was dropped on her head, isn’t just a raving election denier, but also a close friend of the Oath Keeper-type militants that would have zero compunction about violently overthrowing the state government.
The entire Arizona Republican statewide ticket — Lake, Masters, Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, and AG candidate Abe Hamade — campaigned together as a unified ticket. They spent the final stretch of the campaign on a bus tour, holding rallies and bringing out the worst in one another. Seen as a smart campaign tactic at the time, it actually just made each one of them even more toxic by association and thus very easy to vote against straight down the line.
Fair Map Flips: After years in the gerrymander-imposed wilderness, Democrats scored huge victories in Rust Belt state legislatures on Tuesday. They flipped both houses of the Michigan legislature (we’ll have a big story on how that happened on Sunday), earned a trifecta in Minnesota by nabbing the state Senate, and will likely be in control of the state house in Pennsylvania.
Both Michigan and Pennsylvania operated for a full decade under the auspices of terrible Republican gerrymanders, which locked Democrats out of legislative power despite their regularly winning statewide races. A ballot initiative (MI) and monumental state Supreme Court ruling (PA) put an end to that election fixing, but it still required some serious organizing and deft campaigning for Democrats to pull off these immediate victories.
Minnesota has been frustrating for years now, with Republicans using their paper-thin majority in the state Senate to block popular legislation. Now that Democrats have the trifecta, they’ll finally get a crack at enacting a very backloaded agenda. Legalizing weed and enshrining abortion protections look likely to be among their first priorities.
Supreme Court sadness: Disappointing losses in Ohio and North Carolina’s Supreme Court elections will make it far more likely that voters in those states will be forced to live with new gerrymanders for the next decade.
In 2018, North Carolina’s Democrat-dominated court tossed out badly gerrymandered maps and forced the legislature to redraw more equitable districts, but now that Republicans are in control of the court, it’ll likely green light whatever awful map produced by the GOP legislature for use in the 2024 elections.
Ohio’s high court was already controlled by Republicans, but retiring Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor regularly sided with the Democrats that ruled against biased maps, only to have one pushed through by a federal judge. Had Democrats picked up a seat or two, they could have probably stopped a new gerrymander in 2026. I reported and produced a report at MPU on the stakes of those elections, which you can check out above.
Here’s a round-up of how all the ballot initiatives that we’ve covered this year fared on Election Day. Overall, it’s a pretty positive picture, with the dark money campaigns by businesses terrified of regulation really presenting the only significant road block on some of these progressive initiatives.
Approved:
Charlotte, NC: Voters approved a new $226 million bond, which would include $50 million for affordable housing. The rest of the money would go to street projects and public infrastructure. The city is short 45,000 units of affordable housing.
Colorado: Statewide, Coloradans voted to approve Prop 123, which will divert 1% state income tax revenue to an affordable housing fund. Among other things, the fund will both directly pay to build affordable housing and allow the state to act as a lender for developers, who will give the government a 2% stake in the new construction in exchange for lower interest rates. Other chunks of money will go toward helping first-time homebuyers make a down payment and to combatting homelessness with housing solutions.
The tourist-heavy ski towns of Grand Junction, Steamboat Springs, Carbondale, Dillon, and Aspen all voted to levy taxes on short-term stay properties (ie Airbnbs) on the ballot, while Durango, Snowmass Village, Georgetown, and Estes Park all voted yes on overall lodging taxes.
Coloradans also approved Prop FF that will expand the free school lunch program to cover every child in the state and raise wages for cafeteria workers. It will be paid for by closing tax loopholes on people making more than $300k.
Finally, by approving Prop 122, voters in the first state to legalize marijuana added psychedelic mushrooms to the list of fully legal drugs and decriminalized three other psychedelic compounds, including mescaline.
Kansas City, MO: Kansas City, home to one of the most active and tenacious tenants unions, easily passed an additional $50 million bond to devote to housing construction and rehabilitation.
Sacramento, CA: Voters overwhelmingly passed Ballot Measure D, which will allow Sacramento County to continue to build affordable housing units. Voters in the city of Sacramento, meanwhile, voted to approve Measure O, which mandates that the city provide shelter to 60% of its homeless population while decriminalizing homelessness. The city’s mayor didn’t seem all that excited about the latter measure and said there was no timeline for its implementation.
Los Angeles, CA: Credit where credit is due: Angelenos voted to pass Proposition ULA, better known Mansion Tax. It will place a 4% tax on houses sold for $5 million or more and a 5.5% tax on homes sold for more than $10 million, with the revenue going to affordable housing.
Orange County, FL: Even while Republicans were romping everywhere in Florida, voters in the Orlando area ignored $650K in landlord-sponsored attack ads and voted en masse to enact a year-long rent control initiative. Of course, a judge sided with suing landlords right before the election, and as we reported last week, it’s unlikely to ever become law.
Ranked Choice Voting: A number of municipalities voted to change their form of voting. As we’ve covered somewhat extensively here at More Perfect Union, the ranked choice voting movement is picking up steam, and on Tuesday, the system could saw biggest expansion yet.
It was approved in:
Portland and Multnomah County, OR (two separate initiatives)
Evanston, IL;
San Juan County and Ojai, CA;
Fort Collins, CO;
The fate of the initiative is too close to call right now in Seattle, while it failed in Clark County, Washington.
Voters also voted in favor of the system in Nevada, but because it would require a constitutional amendment to implement, it’ll be back on the ballot in 2024.
Lansing, MI: Here’s another win for democracy and second chances: In Lansing, voters approved ballot measure that will permit former felons to hold (unpaid) seats on city boards or commissions.
Baltimore, MD: Sick of corruption, voters in Baltimore approved an initiative to enact term limits on city elected officials.
Noe: The majority owner of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing local news empire, bankrolled the initiative this initiative. His TV network had been running positive stories on the initiative without disclosing the massive conflict of interest, which is also not a sign of good government.
Connecticut: Residents voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to bring Connecticut into the modern day and establish early voting. It was one of only four states voters had to wait until Election Day to cast ballots, which is discriminatory and skews results.
South Dakota: Medicaid expansion passed with flying colors. Whether it gets implemented properly or with any urgency by the very conservative state government is another story entirely.
Michigan: Abortion rights and voting rights were enshrined in the constitution. A real banner day for Michiganders (and again, something we’ll focus heavily on soon).
Failed:
Honolulu, HI: Charter Question 1 asked voters whether the city should increase the annual appropriation given to its Affordable Housing Fund. Hawaii, which has been besieged by new hotels and billionaires buying up large tracts of land, desperately needs more affordable housing — the average single home now costs $1 million on Oahu.
Denver, CO: Measure 305 would have mandated that no resident be evicted from their homes without first being given access to legal representation. To pay for the legal representation, the city would have levied a small $75 excise tax per property on landlords.
Inyo County, CA: California has no statewide law governing taxation on visitor lodging, instead leaving it up to municipalities to regulate as they (or powerful lobbyists) see fit. In tiny, arid Inyo County, there has long been an additional tax on hotels, but up until now, that tax has never applied to Airbnb and other short-term lodging properties. That seemed to suit the community (or maybe the Airbnb management companies with large advertising budgets) just fine, as voters slammed the door on Measure Q.
Management companies have taken advantage of this loophole for years, but if voters approve Measure Q, those salad days on rentals catering to nature lovers will come to an end.
Multnomah County, OR: Voters in the most populous county in Oregon decided not to extend the franchise to noncitizens in county elections, turning down the proposal 55-45%. It’s unclear how much the proposal was damaged in the public eye by the fact that the state constitution essentially banned noncitizens from voting, but it couldn’t have helped.
Culver City, CA: The ballots are still being tallied, but it seems as if residents of this LA suburb voted against giving the right to vote in some local elections to 16- and 17-year-olds. As of yesterday, it was down and unlikely to make up the required ground.
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Sorry but I don't see the benefit of term limits in Baltimore or anywhere else. Why celebrate the change in puppets when the puppeteers remain?