This district is a very good investment
This district is a very good investment
It's a juicy flip chance
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere! Today, you’ll read about:
A super-tight race in Texas
Ballot initiative battles for progressive change
Good poll updates
Thank you to donor supporters: Sandra, Matthew, William, Alan, Caroline, Marie, Gloria, Jerry, and Bimp.
This Texas District Is Ready to Flip
Politics can be complicated, issues can be nuanced, and choices in elections can be unclear… but none of those things are true about this uber-close Texas House race between incumbent Republican Matt Shaheen and his Democratic challenger Sharon Hirsch.
He: A devout member of the fringe-right Republican Freedom Caucus who takes gobs of corporate special interest money, posts endless “Blue Lives Matter” memes, trolls the libs on Facebook, votes against public schools and special needs children, and once said “I will die on this issue politically” about passing a grossly bigoted anti-LGBTQ bathroom bill.
She: A long-time Democratic Party activist and Executive Committee member and public school employee who relies on small-dollar donations, is focused on funding schools and expanding healthcare access, and lost to Shaheen by an excruciatingly small 391 vote margin in 2018.
The two candidates for State House District 66 are a microcosm of the kind of politicians who have dominated Texas for 25+ years and the new wave of activists and lawmakers who are entirely remaking the state’s political culture. Democrats are now just nine seats from flipping the State House and Hirsch can claim a fair amount of credit for this ongoing transformation — she’s been involved in both the Plano and state Democratic Party since 2007 and co-founded an organization called Women Organizing Women Democrats. For a while, it was an uphill struggle — then Trump came along and changed everything.
To illustrate the contrast, Hirsch notes that before late 2016, the volunteer intake system was “a process of sticky notes and notes that said, ‘Call John at this number’ and ‘Called Mary at this number’ and it was a mess,” Hirsch tells Progressives Everywhere. “And then Trump won and it was the most remarkable thing that ever happened. All of a sudden, it was standing room only in the office and people just coming in droves wanting to do something. Some ran for office, some became super-volunteers who knocked on thousands of doors. There was a rallying cry.”
Hirsch decided to run again almost immediately after her razor-thin loss in 2018, knowing that momentum was on her and Democrats’ side. Texas’s GOP leadership didn’t really get the hint, introducing divisive (and crappy) legislation like the anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill and still refusing to expand Medicaid in the state with the highest uninsured rate in the country. There was plenty on the line by this March’s primary election — Hirsch easily won the Democratic nomination — and then COVID-19 happened, which pushed seemingly everything else off the table.
Not that you’d know it from the way Shaheen or other Texas Republicans have been acting. Shaheen has actually been worse than Gov. Greg Abbott — he signed a letter asking that the state to reopen almost as soon as it shut down; fought in June to end the state’s attempt at contact tracing; and then in July, as the virus began spiking in Texas, he was one of several lawmakers who demanded Abbott end the state of emergency and any lockdown measures.
Hirsch, on the other hand, suggests that Abbott should have declared a state of emergency and mandated masks far earlier while also developing a clear plan to contain and eradicate the virus. Instead, they chanced it let nearly 450,00 people get infected and nearly 8,000 people die.
She’s now mostly focused on the matter of reopening schools; her husband worked for decades as a teacher, she worked in public schools for decades (unable to afford it out of high school, she graduated college at age 55), and her daughter-in-law is a teacher in her district. Discussing the issue with Hirsch is enlightening because she has a clear understanding of how the school systems are operated and the many factors that must be considered — a far more nuanced approach than Abbott’s demand for in-person instruction.
“We have 53,000 kids in the Plano school district, teachers are vulnerable, and then half the staff is support staff, and custodians are frequently contracted services,” Hirsch explains. “They're not even district employees, so you don't know what kind of reporting and protocols their employers have going on. And then there’s trying to keep the kids distanced on the bus. As an assistant principal friend told me, you can’t stop kids from touching each other.”
This is largely how she operates — collect the information, consider all the angles possible, and make an informed decision. That hasn’t been the case in Texas for a long time, but 2020 can change all that. Democrats have a great chance to flip the State House and even turn the state blue in the presidential election. Helping candidates on this level is a huge part of making that happen — their voters tend to vote blue up and down the ballot.
Hirsch’s race is incredibly flippable and any and all donations help!
Big News You Need to Know
Here are some of the big headlines you may have missed over the long weekend and late last week.
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Elections (and Future Elections) and Voting Rights
Lots of big ballot initiative news for you today!
On Tuesday, voters in Missouri will vote on whether to finally expand Medicaid. It’s been a long slog to get to this point, but hopefully Missourians will continue the trend of voting for progressive ballot initiatives — in 2018 they voted to repeal the anti-union right to work law, legalize medical marijuana, limit lobbying, end gerrymandering, and raise the minimum wage. They’re still voting for Republicans, but at least the policy outcomes are starting to go the right way. If it passes, 230,000 working Missourians would qualify for government healthcare.
The pandemic has made it impossible for activists to collect signatures for initiatives throughout the country, and in states such as Colorado and Ohio, state and federal courts have ruled that they could not collect signatures online.
But in Idaho, it looked as if activists trying to get signatures for an initiative that would raise taxes on corporations and the rich to fund public education would be able to collect e-petitions. A federal court ordered the state to either just put the initiative on the ballot or permit the group Reclaim Idaho to collect them online. Republican Gov. Brad Little’s administration fought that ruling tooth and nail, appealing all the way to the Supreme Court. Surprise surprise, the Roberts Court sided with the state, blocking the order.
Roberts wrote that “reasonable, nondiscretionary restrictions are almost certainly justified by the important regulatory interests in combating fraud and ensuring that ballots are not cluttered with initiatives that have not demonstrated sufficient grassroots support.”
That’s not untrue, but it is a bit misleading here. First, online petitions would not be some Change.org petition — they’re much more secure. And Reclaim Idaho is no fringe organization — it led the initiative that successfully expanded Medicaid in Idaho in 2018. It’s a damn shame… and not the last of the bad ballot initiative news today.
In Arizona, a similar initiative that would raise taxes on the wealthy to fund public education, was thrown off the ballot by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge. Why? He called the description of the initiative too “vague” because it didn’t specifically note that some of the money would go to raising teachers’ salaries or that lawmakers wouldn’t be able to overrule it and cut education spending again. Never mind the fact that teacher pay has been a huge issue in Arizona over the last few years (remember the 2018 strikes?) and that groups like the Arizona Education Association, the state’s big teacher’s union, turned in 435,000 signatures, far more than necessary.
Despite a few wins in 2018, things are still a disaster in Arizona schools. Check out this ridiculous story:
Tavious Peterkin, a teacher in Arizona, decided with a heavy heart that he had to his job last month. He just doesn’t feel comfortable going in to teach in a flaming COVID-19 hotspot and couldn’t find childcare even if he was up for it. His school district, however, is trying to charge him $2000 to quit his job— and apparently, that’s a common practice in Arizona!
TIL: Because the state pays teachers so poorly, they have a massive shortage, and so any further reduction is so damaging that school districts actually charge their departing teachers to cover the cost of finding someone willing to work for pennies. It’s fucking disgraceful and a cheap parody of a functioning society.
Activists in Boulder, CO found a novel and effective way to collect signatures for their initiative, an affordable housing amendment that would increase the number of unrelated people allowed to live in a single house:
Coronavirus didn’t stop the YIMBYs from following through with their ballot push, though. The campaign changed course. Instead of striking out to hunt for signatures, the organizers instead asked people to sign up online for an in-person visit. When enough people in a given ZIP Code signaled their interest, the campaign dispatched a masked volunteer with a clipboard, who drove to each address to collect a signature. To get over the finish line, the campaign redefined what it means to pound the pavement — essentially mounting a petition via delivery.
Unfortunately, the city moved the deadline out of nowhere in July, making it June 5th instead of the original August 5th. That made it impossible to qualify their ballots, obviously, and a legal fight has ensued.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar announced that every absentee ballot sent for the general election will come with return postage already paid, thereby making it easier for people to turn around their vote as quickly as possible. Nearly 1.5 million people voted via absentee ballot during the primary election in June, which marked a 17x increase from the 2016 primary.
South Carolina also agreed to pay the return postage on absentee ballots as part of a legal settlement this week. There are 17 other states that automatically pay the return postage, but it really should be a nationwide policy.
Boockvar is also hoping that the state legislature passes a law that allows county boards of election to start counting ballots before election day; right now, they can only begin the canvassing at 7 am on election day. Waiting for days to hear the results in such a crucial swing state (which also has important legislative elections) would not be optimal — especially now that Trump is throwing a fit about potential wait times for results.
Big Polls! Big Polls!
Here’s some great news for you: Joe Biden is running up the polls in swing states and Democrats running down-ballot are ascendent, too!
There are a lot of interesting findings in these polls.
First, people still trust Trump more with the economy (47-41 in Georgia, 46-45 in North Carolina), which is truly astonishing given the fact that we’re in the worst recession since 1929 and his conduct is largely responsible.
In North Carolina, a whopping 77% of respondents think things in America are going either somewhat badly (33%) and very badly (44)%. Accordingly, 82% of people say they will definitely vote, with another 8% percent somehow saying they’ll “probably” vote — not sure what could possibly convince them at this point, but hey.
In Georgia, 72% say things are going either somewhat badly (33%) and very badly (39%). Just like in North Carolina, 82% of respondents say they’ll definitely vote in November.
Power, Corruption, and Lies
A few weeks ago, Ohio’s Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, was arrested in an FBI sting on what’s being called the biggest bribery scandal in state history. Householder took millions in dark money and distributed it to lawmakers (who also got lots of legal PAC cash) so that he’d win Speakership and they’d vote in favor of a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout. Democrats aren’t totally clean here — they voted to put Householder in power, but that’s because he promised not to try to pass “right to work” laws. It’s largely Republicans involved in the real dirty stuff here.
Householder lost his Speakership soon after, but late this week, Ohio Republicans had the audacity to vote against removing him from office. And because Democrats hadn’t fielded a candidate in the district, unless Householder withdraws, he’ll be on the ballot unopposed in November. Gerrymandering!
People are being advised to send in their absentee ballots as soon as possible, given the egregious delays that are seizing the Postal Service and slowing down the mail. The USPS was understandably deluged and stretched to the limits during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone in the country spent half their savings on online shopping; now, it’s being deliberately sabotaged by a Trump donor who really, really hates the mail (and all federal services).
Starting this month, the USPS is not paying mail carriers or other employees overtime, which has led to a massive slowdown in sorting and delivery. Many states require absentee ballots to arrive at the board of elections by election day, and beyond that, many ballots require follow-up from BOE officials to clarify signatures, addresses, and other issues. If those processes are slowed or rendered impossible to carry out, the Democrats’ big advantage in mail voting could turn into a disaster.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed an executive order to reaffirm his ban on local mask mandates today. He’s in the midst of his lawsuit with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms over his anti-mask executive order, but evidently, negotiations on a settlement are not going well.
Texas State. Rep Tony Tinderholt came down with COVID-19 after signing on to a letter by the far-right state Freedom Caucus demanding that Gov. Greg Abbott reopen the state ASAP. The Republican says he does not regret the letter and still thinks shutting down the economy was the wrong thing to do. Tinderholt has a fake aortic valve, like me, which made him extra susceptible to the viral infection — I once had the flu, which traveled down to my artificial valve and nearly killed me, so I can attest to the danger. And yet!
It’s sort of remarkable how Republicans continue to object to efforts to stop the transmission of COVID-19 even after they experience the virus themselves. Look at Louie Gohmert! It reminds me of Steve Scalise, who got shot up by an assault rifle on a DC softball field and is still rabidly pro-gun.
Wait, before you go!
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