The Book Ban Backlash Begins

Election shockers, legislative cheaters, and weird puppy laws

May 17, 2023

We come to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.

I’ve got a lot of things to say about news that came out of DC today, but since there were so many elections and big, important policy developments tonight, let’s jump right into the news. It was a real roller coaster of a day!

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Elections

Florida: Donna Deegan pulled off a somewhat shocking upset in the Jacksonville mayoral race, defeating Republican Daniel Davis to become just the second Democrat to win the city’s top job in more than three decades.

Deegan led an unexpected blue wave in an election that now seems like a referendum on hometown boy Ron DeSantis and his cabal of right-wing freaks. Davis embraced DeSantis’s racist, transphobic, and fear-mongering rhetoric, and DeSantis, in turn, embraced his candidacy, providing his official endorsement at the end of March.

Save this one for posterity:

Davis went all-in on DeSantis’s culture war schtick, allying with the school board terrorists at Moms for Liberty and continuously accusing Deegan, who used to work as a TV news anchor and now runs a charity, of supporting the Defund the Police movement and attending Black Lives Matter marches after the murder of George Floyd (perish the thought).

Davis raised more money for any political race in Jacksonville's history, no surprise given his position as the head of the business lobby in the 12th largest city in the United States. He had four times the amount of cash as Deegan, who was nonetheless able to convince plenty of Republicans to cross party lines and vote against DeSantis’s guy.

Chalk up another L for the man who never learned to laugh. I won’t hold my breath, but there should be weeks of stories to come about what a disaster this is for DeSantis, who seems to be waiting until he’s polling in the negatives to officially announce his campaign. Voters in his home turf, in Florida’s most conservative city, vigorously rejected his chosen candidate and everything he represents, and crossed party lines to do so.

It’s worth noting that Jacksonville has been hit repeatedly by neo-Nazi demonstrations over the past nine months, with swastikas regularly projected onto stadiums and other major buildings. Given the white nationalist love for Ron DeSantis, and his refusal to disavow them, there’s a very real possibility that he scored an antisemitic own goal there.

The fact that DeSantis won by 20 points last fall wasn't so much an expression of his political strength so much as the weakness of the Florida Democratic Party. All the media hype about him, despite his clear personality defects and sociopathy, was clearly a desperate projection.

Polls have long showed that his pet obsessions with banning books, abortion, and civil rights are wildly unpopular. Now that he has spent the entirety of this year inflicting such cruelty on people, while allowing quality of life in Florida to crumble in deference to corporate donors, is catching up with him.

Pennsylvania: Some good news and bad news for progressives.

Let’s start with the good news: State Rep. Sara Innamorato, a progressive lawmaker from the Pittsburgh area, won a four-way primary for the Democratic nomination for Allegheny County Executive. Innamorato, 37, ran a grassroots campaign from the left against several centrist white guys with much higher campaign bank accounts.

Endorsed by the Working Families Party and the SEIU, progressive Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, and Rep. Summer Lee, Innamorato ran on a platform that included improving mass transit, easing the cost of housing for working families, ending the massive county’s racial disparities, and taking better care of the environment in a post-industrial county.

Progressive public defender Matt Dugan cruised to victory in the Democratic Party for District Attorney over the regressive incumbent, Steven Zappala. Usually, that’d all but guarantee someone the job in this part of Pennsylvania, but Zappala seems primed to run as a Republican in the general election. Dugan will have to work hard to keep the coalition that delivered him to victory, while also continuing to appeal to the suburbs.

The other bit of good news came from over in the state legislature, where Democrat Heather Boyd won a special election

OK, now for the not-so-great news: Helen Gym, the progressive city council member endorsed by Bernie Sanders, fell short in the Philadelphia mayoral primary. Gym, who has been popular throughout her time in office, was bombarded with vicious attack ads, paid for by a Republican billionaire, over the final weeks leading up to election day.

Gym was beaten out by Cherelle Parker, a former state legislator and city council member who was backed by the city’s Democratic establishment machine. She’ll be the first female mayor of Philadelphia, which is cool.

Arizona: Voters in Tempe overwhelmingly rejected a series of ballot initiatives that would have forked over $2.1 billion in taxpayer money to build an arena and “entertainment district” for the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes. The team remains free to spend its own money, though.

What We’re Tracking

Texas: Republicans in the state Senate voted to approve the Death Star preemption bill on Tuesday, firing a superlaser straight at the heart of local democracy and anything resembling freedom in a state controlled by gerrymander-protected Christofascists.

The bill is unbelievably broad and heavy-handed, not to mention indiscriminately cruel and idiotic. It bans municipal governments from passing laws that would provide protections for workers, tenants, minorities, poor people, and even puppies. Yes, puppies. Kittens, too. Look:

Puppy mills live on in Texas!

Remarkably, the bill got even worse at the very last minute, when Texas state Sen. Brandon Creighton, a real estate agent, secretly (really!) inserted a provision that prevents a local government from passing a law that could delay an eviction. These people are shameless.

Nebraska: Republicans finally found a way to overcome months of courageous filibustering and pass their vicious anti-trans bill: just break the rules.

Frustrated by Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt’s incredible 12-week filibuster and stung by the failure of their attempt to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, Republican lawmakers last week decided to combine both right-wing atrocities into one ultra-toxic bill that bans abortion after 10 weeks. Tonight, they ignored every parliamentary rule that got in their way and rammed it through the legislature.

The process played out over three hours of gut-wrenching, nerve-wracking, and ultimately infuriating drama, motions, and speeches. I recommend reading the play-by-play, if you’ve got the stomach for it

North Carolina: Make that two unpopular Republican abortion bans to squeak through a state legislature by a razor-thin margin after a blood-boiling political saga tonight.

Remember the name Rep. Tricia Cotham, because you’ll undoubtedly be asked to donate to whoever runs against her next year. You probably won’t mind kicking in a few bucks, either, because Cotham, a turncoat former Democrat who jumped to the GOP last year, just provided the final vote required to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban.

New York: I got some pushback last month when I wrote that Kathy Hochul is the worst governor in the country, but today, I’ve been vindicated by a new poll.

According to the latest Sienna College Poll, 45% of New York voters view Hochul unfavorably, while just 40% see her in a favorable light. It’s not a fluke, either; as this is the third poll in a row that Hochul has taken a hit to her favorability rating. Her favorability rating has sunk by 11% over the course of the past five months, while her job approval rating has sunk by 14% over that time span.

The poll does find soft majority support for the new budget that Hochul signed last week, but there’s not necessarily any real friction between the two findings. When read on their own, the budget’s many half-measures, such as the tiny minimum wage increase, don’t sound objectionable. But because her budget doesn’t contain any signature accomplishments that tangibly improve the lives of New Yorkers, there’s no real reason for voters to approve of Hochul herself.

Minnesota: The state’s new paid family leave bill is just a few small steps away from becoming law… eventually.

After spending the weekend hammering out the small differences between the bills passed by the Senate and House, Democrats decided to stick with the upper chamber’s slightly more generous plan. The final bill will provide most Minnesotans with up to 20 weeks of paid family and medical leave, covering anywhere between 55 and 90% of their anticipated earnings during that time. The catch? It goes into effect in January 2026, six months later than initially intended.

Missouri: Despite being protected by a gerrymandered supermajority and a thick layer of soup in the space between their brains and skulls, Republicans in the legislature failed to pass the legislation necessary to put changes to the constitutional amendment system on the ballot this fall.

They’ll try to pass their proposal again next session, but they’ll have to be quick if they want to make it harder for Missourians to pass a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in November 2024.

New Good News

Connecticut: The Democratic legislature seems poised to tell Gov. Ned Lamont that his latest choice for the state Supreme Court is not fit to serve. That’s what happens when you publicly support Amy Coney Barett!

By the way, what’s with these Democratic governors trying to stick conservatives on their states’ highest courts?

Minnesota: A package of new gun control measures passed through the legislature on Tuesday

The proposals include a “red flag law” that would allow authorities to ask courts for “extreme risk protection orders” to temporarily take guns away from people deemed to be an imminent threat to others or themselves. The provision is part of a broad public safety budget bill that also contains expanded background checks for gun transfers.

It’s a big start!

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