MAGA at work

Isaac Arnsdorf's Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy is a fascinating piece of election journalism, perhaps most especially to a practitioner of campaign mobilization like me. But it's also a book for anyone who, confronted by the spread and endurance of the MAGA movement, finds themselves asking, "what's wrong with these people?"

Arnsdorf is billed as "a national political reporter' for The Washington Post, but in this volume he goes local, looking at the on-the-ground antics of MAGA in Arizona and Georgia.

He explains his project: 

... The movement now called MAGA has long existed in the American political bloodstream ...this movement's ideology was and is loosely defined by nationalism and tradition social values, fierce opposition to liberalism as a slippery slope to communism, and a tendency toward paranoia and conspiratorial thinking....

... In the story of the mass radicalization of the Republican Party, Trump is a singular, indispensable actor. But his perspective is not where the drama and tension unfold. This book turns the camera around from its usual focus on politicians and operatives, focussing instead on the faces in the crowd: what makes them believe, what motivates them, what stirs them to action. ...

Arnsdorf's story has two main protagonists;

• in Cobb County, Georgia, Salleigh Grubb, previously a casual suburban Republican, was so thrown off center by the convergence in 2020 of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and Trump's loss in November, that she became a vehement "Stop the Steal" activist.

On Facebook she posted an upside-down flag, widely recognized in right-wing circles as a distress signal.

Her energy was unabated despite repeated Georgia setbacks.  Eventually she was elected county chair and even met her orange-coiffed cult leader in person.

• in Maricopa County, Arizona, Kathy Petsas had served as a district chair for the Republican Party for decades, laboriously turning out voters for GOP nominees whether she thrilled to them or not. A post-2020 influx of new MAGA militants found her leadership too accommodating and practical for their virulent politics. They voted her out and overwhelmed party old-timers.

Behind both these stories in Arnsdorf's telling lurks Steve Bannon, the podcast proponent of burning the whole country down and MAGA's evil wizard. Bannon is clearly a bad dude, but I am not sure I would ascribe quite as much agency to him as Arnsdorf does. He is, after all, a mercenary con man who grabs onto whatever looks like a good thing with showy pomposity. A very American type. Plenty of MAGAs thrill to his style.

Bannon discovered one Dan Shultz, another familiar sort of rightwing crackpot, who had found his obsession in what he called the Precinct Strategy. If he could just convince MAGA true believers that political parties needed thousands of local precinct activists to turn out their neighbors and that these precinct chairs would then participate in intra-party elections for party office, MAGA could take over the Republican apparatus and elect its candidates to public office. Shultz, through Bannon, enjoyed good timing for his nostrum; Biden had won in 2020, Trump refused to concede, and MAGAs needed something to do. Riding Bannon's cred, pretty soon the Precinct Strategy was all the rage among MAGAs.

What Dan was offering was so pure, so simple -- seventh-grade civics. Bannon knew there was a hunger out there for that. ... The Precinct Strategy could help restore that missing [social] connective tissue. ... There was already a structure, an organization, a hierarchy. ...

For Kathy Petsas in Arizona, this new crop of enthusiasts (and fantasists) engulfed her district leadership.

.. she started getting deluged with applications to become precinct committee members ... It was an obscure role and Kathy was used to getting two or three people a month who might express interest in become a PC. ... she invited the applicants to meet for coffee. ... if these strangers were asking to represent her party in her district, and she was going to exercise her discretion as chair to appoint them, then Kathy wanted to get to know them a little first. She had 132 coffees. ...

.. It was clear to Kathy from the start that Donald Trump was many things, but he was not a conservative. ... It wasn't just the Trump was rude, he brought out the rudeness in his followers; they were not winning anybody over by standing on street corners with Trump signs and guns. Kathy believed that elected officials were supposed to represent everyone, not only the people who voted for them. But everything Trump did was for his base. ... He didn't stand for anything but himself.

But she wasn't the sort of Republican to become a Never-Trumper (unfortunately). She been around long enough to suspect she might have to reconstruct the party if the fever passed. Still ...

... she wasn't going to go door to door for candidates she couldn't defend. .. [the new PCs etc] were like living, breathing manifestations of all the conspiracy theories and misinformation that had been swirling and spreading for two years now.

Neither of these two state parties -- not Georgia nor Arizona -- came out of the 2022 cycle successful. In Georgia, Trump-promoted Senate candidate Herschel Walker proved too crazy for the electorate. The Arizona party seems still fully MAGA-fied having nominated the batshit loony Kari Lake for the Senate in 2024. Trump is running again.. This story is not finished. Isaac Arnsdorf does a useful job of introducing some grassroots combatants.

• • •

I do have a major to bone to pick with this journalist however. He would have written a better book if he'd done some research into how precinct level party organization of all variants of U.S. parties have worked for decades -- perhaps even back to William  L. Marcy in New York in the mid-1840s. Smart party leaders have long known that neighbors engaging neighbors was the gold standard of electoral organizing. Dan Schultz' idea was no novelty.

My mother was Republican precinct leader in Buffalo, NY, in the 1950s and '60s; she kept a card file on every voter, recording whether she'd gotten them to vote yet! Such people were then and always the backbone of civic engagement. And she was a Nelson Rockefeller-Republican, not any kind of insurgent!

This is how functional elements of political parties have long organized themselves and their voters. Such organization is the strongest form of civic engagement this democracy knows; door-to-door canvasses from strangers, phone and text contact, and mass media don't hold a candle to year round persuasion by your neighbors. Where it exists, deep precinct organization is the way to go. Parties can seldom achieve it or maintain it over time. People get exhausted. The tone deaf MAGA antics Arnsdorf describes don't seem likely to age well ... but prediction is still foolish.

And if your door-to-door outreach is by an offensive MAGA nut ... perhaps not an attractive strategy as people like Kathy Petsas understand.

Donald Trump did this

Jessica Valenti thinks Arizona will be seen as a tipping point.

... It’s like they’re rubbing our noses in it.

Gone is the pretense that Republicans want to pass abortion bans to protect women’s health, or that they’re enacting laws in service of some grand morality. With this ruling, the GOP made clear what their end goal is: forcing women back to a time when we weren’t full citizens, and when we could be married off as children to any 50-year-old lech who decided he wanted us.

To endure that insult, after two years of watching stories about little girls forced into childbirth and women mandated to deliver dead babies, is too much for anyone to take. Especially women. 

And that’s the thing that Democrats would do well to remember as we close in on November: The danger abortion bans pose to women’s health and lives makes us afraid, but what makes us furious is the affront to our humanity.

It’s that anger that politicians campaigning on abortion rights need to tap into. The foremost feeling driving American women on abortion rights isn’t fear—it’s humiliation. It is demeaning, incredibly so, to watch as statehouses full of men decide that women were better off in a time when we had no choices, about anything.

If Democrats want to motivate women, they should talk less about how dangerous abortion bans are, and more about what that danger means: that to Republicans, our lives don’t matter. Instead of talking about how women are losing their rights, remind voters why that is: because Republicans don’t want women to have any.

If we learn anything from the Arizona tipping point, let it be that.

Let's make Valenti correct in November.

Yet another piece of very good news from the 2022 election

Did you know that Arizona -- otherwise known as home to xenophobic politicians like Kari Lake and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio -- just voted for a ballot measure that will allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at their public universities? 

The best evidence of Arizona’s shift away from Republican policies was the passage of a ballot measure reinstating the right of undocumented Arizonans to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

At 2.48 percentage points, the margin of victory for “yes” on Proposition 308 was bigger than the margin that secured the governor’s seat for Democrat Katie Hobbs over Kari Lake and broke 13 years of Republican dominance in Arizona.

How did this victory come to be? As usual, the answer was organizing, combined with building the broadest coalition possible. Dreamers even lined up the Chamber of Commerce for this effort, convincing the business group and moderate Republicans that an educated Arizona Latinx population was in their interest.

A voter-approved in-state tuition ban had made college three times more expensive for the last decade, putting it out of reach for many undocumented students. But Arizona has demonstrated it can move on from a season of fear of the newcomer.

2022 Elections: Senate contests Democrats should and must win

In many states, Republican gerrymanders make it hard for Democrats to win a fair share in state legislatures. For example, Democrats, including Governor Tony Evers in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, won the majority of all Wisconsin votes. But the state legislature is completely controlled by Republicans. Their dominance is bolstered by geographical sorting, rural and urban, as well as gerrymandering. In some states where this pattern prevails, Democrats can be quite competitive statewide and so have opportunities to win or hold onto U.S. Senate races. 

Here's a run down of the most competitive states.

• Georgia: Incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, elected to a short term in 2020, will be running against Trump-cult adherent and Georgia football hero Herschel Walker. Since Walker is pretty close to certifiably nuts, violent, the acknowledged father of four children by four different women whose paternity he at first concealed, and a serial fabricator, this shouldn't be much of a contest. But that assumption disregards the heft of college football in the Peach State. Warnock has been a strong voice for voting rights and for the people of Georgia.

• Pennsylvania: This open Senate seat attracted a wild cast of characters in both party's primaries. TV-doctor Mehmet Oz won the Trump endorsement and squeaked through for the GOPers. Apparently he actually lives in a mansion in New Jersey which may not go down well with Pennsylvania voters. John Fetterman, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, is a 6'7", tattooed, shorts wearing, giant straight shooter, a bit of a breath of fresh air in the staid political class. Let's hope he can overcome some health challenges.

• Wisconsin: Republican Ron Johnson, the Senate's dumbest anti-vaxxer and an apparent Trump co-conspirator who tried to prevent the 2020 transfer of power to Joe Biden, is up for re-election. If Dems were not so well organized, as the sitting Senator, he'd probably be a shoo-in; the primary for the Dems is late, August 9 and the winner may have a shot in a state usually quite evenly divided.

• Arizona: Incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly will face off against one of several Republicans to be chosen on August 2. The leader among them, a man who needs another vowel, sitting Attorney General Mark Brnovich, figured out his own advancement meant he had to support Donald Trump's Big Lie against his own Republican election officials in this battleground state. Trump has endorsed Blake Masters, a hard right libertarian and tech-bro Peter Thiel protege, who wants to privatize Social Security.

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto is running for a second term. Her opponent is Adam Laxalt -- whose own family considers him an unworthy usurper of a proud Nevada name -- a far right wingnut and failed governor candidate. Not going to be easy for Cortez-Masto though; the Democratic registration advantage in the state is declining.

• North Carolina: This open seat is an attractive long shot prize for Democrats as their nominee for the state's other Senate seat only lost by 1.8 percent in 2020 while Trump won the state. The sitting governor is a reasonably popular Democrat, so Dems see a chance. Democrat Cherri Beasley, a former judge of the state Supreme Court, is running against Republican Ted Budd, a Congressman who doubles as a gun range owner. Early polls give Beasley a chance to pull this one out.

• I'll be watching also New Hampshire, Ohio and Missouri where the vagaries of electoral contests might shake up Senate prospects -- though probably not, as party polarization is such a strong force.

What goes around comes around

Having yesterday introduced the subject of the wack-doodle Republican kook Kari Lake, who Donald Trump has endorsed for governor of Arizona, I can't resist passing on this one.

 

There's the lady herself, on the left, posing with her drag queen (former) friend, Richard Stevens. 

Can't have that kind of friend if you want a Republican electorate to vote for you. 

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post reports: 

Lake, like so many Republicans at the moment, has sought to use the new right-wing sex panic in her primary, accusing President Biden of promoting “this perverted sexual agenda of grooming our children.” And like other Republicans, she has taken particular aim at drag queens.

So much for old friends. Steven says they've known each for 20 years.

Waldman, as he often is, is insightful about Republican behavior:

First, until recently, even most conservatives had come to a place where they regarded drag not as a terrifying threat to the innocence of children but as a whimsical and amusing corner of the culture. Maybe you liked it (as Lake clearly did) or maybe it made you a little uncomfortable, but it was harmless. Nobody was terrified by “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

But now Republicans are supposed to say that drag is worse than satanic cults, the water fluoridation conspiracy, and the Garbage Pail Kids put together. So that’s what party leaders claim to believe.

Second, a key factor in the political normalization of gay rights was that by and large, Republican elites are okay with gay people. That is true to an extent of the Republican masses as well (or at least more true all the time), but party leaders move in circles where there’s a reasonable amount of acceptance of equality. ...

Go read it all -- it's worth it for this Pride Month.

2022 elections: governor contests that Dems need to win

Republicans are pushing hard to win races for governor this year in states where support for the two parties hangs on a few votes. And Democrats are doing everything they can to win, block, or hold governor's offices in the same states. These states deserve governors who give a damn about the well-being of their residents -- Democrats usually care more for that work. But furthermore, who holds these offices will matter in 2024 if there is another close national election and GOPers are running around screaming that the vote was "stolen." We're seeing all too much of what that can be like. A Democratic governor can help shut down a lot of bullshit.

So here's a rundown of some of the most critical governor races in 2022.

Arizona: Donald Trump has a favorite in the August 2 primary: GOPer Kari Lake, a Phoenix TV anchor. Lake is leading in the primary polls. She has advocated jailing Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, her opponent in the governor's race, so as to overturn the 2020 vote count. 

“Frankly, I think she should be locked up,” Lake told the crowd in Cave Creek, which responded by starting a Trumpian chant of, “Lock her up!”

Her campaign could not explain what crime she's charging Hobbes with. Lake asserts that, if she had been governor, she would not have certified Joe Biden's 2020 Arizona victory.

Pennsylvania: Republicans have nominated one of the most looney-tunes characters around in the Keystone State. According to the Washington Post, Doug Mastriano is an insurrectionist who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 investigation. There's video showing him crossing Capital police lines, though what else he did inside is not known.

He’s a first-term state senator who was relatively unknown — until Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, in large part by narrowly losing Pennsylvania to Joe Biden. ... [He] rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election by falsely claiming Trump won the state. Mastriano also helped commission an unauthorized audit of voting machines in a rural county ...

The Democratic Party nominee for Governor is the state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro. The winner will get to name Pennsylvania's secretary of state, the official who oversees elections.

Michigan: Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has been a stalwart supporter of the rule of law against right wing mob pressure. Dogged by pushback against public health rules and mask mandates, she was even the intended target of a militia plot, according to the FBI. Two conspirators convinced a jury that they were just being blowhards (seems likely a role they know well); two more are awaiting a second trial.

Well known Republicans aspiring to run against her made a mess of their campaigns, hiring paid signature collectors who made up false voters on their papers. So their names will not appear on the August 2 primary list which now consists of a smaller field of also-rans.

GOP hopefuls who qualified for the Aug. 2 primary ballot include a conservative media personality, two COVID-19 lockdown protesters, a pastor and a wealthy businessman. 

None has held an elected office before but are seeking to bring a fresh perspective to Lansing and unseat Whitmer, who has built up a big campaign war chest as she seeks re-election to a second term.

Let's hope Whitmer can overcome whoever comes out of this odd scrum.

Wisconsin: The Republican frontrunner in the August 9 primary was former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch who fully supported Trump’s recount requests based on baseless claims of election fraud in 2020. That wasn't good enough for Trump; he liked construction executive Tim Michels better. He dropped an endorsement in his inimitable style. Here's why Trump liked Michels:

"Wisconsin needs a Governor who will Stop Inflation, Uphold the Rule of Law, strengthen our Borders (we had the strongest borders in history just two years ago, now we have the weakest!) and End the well-documented Fraud in our Elections," read a written statement from Trump ... "Tim Michels is the best candidate to deliver meaningful solutions to these problems, and he will produce jobs like no one else can even imagine."

The Democratic incumbent governor of Wisconsin is Tony Evers. Dems are aiming to re-elect Evers to preserve some honesty and sanity in state government.

Nevada: Democrat Steve Sisolak was elected governor in 2018 and has done a creditable job during a pandemic that crashed the state's vital hotel, casino, and restaurant industries. For months, Nevada had some of the nation's worst unemployment.

Trump offered a late endorsement to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo who prevailed in the Republican primary held June 14. The former president wanted a high profile win by backing the guy who was already leading the GOP field. The race between Sisolak and Lombardo is expected to be close.

Georgia: Democrat Stacey Abrams is taking on incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp in a re-run of their 2018 contest. This will be a very tough race, possibly turning on some of the restrictive election laws Kemp has signed. In case you have forgotten, Georgia is the state where GOPers made it illegal to give out water to people waiting in line to vote.

There's nothing easy about any of these contests.

Secretaries of State: a cascade of dangerous Republican crackpots

In most states, an elected Secretary of State administers elections; it's a lot of work and relatively low profile. For example, here in California, that's incumbent Shirley Weber who is running to stay in the job in November.

This year, in states that are expected to be battlegrounds between Dems and GOPers, some mighty sketchy kooks are trying to implant themselves in the system in anticipation of their Orange God/King (h/t Charlie Sykes) running in 2024. It's not pretty and it's dangerous. (Not all the members of this gallery of rogues have yet won their primaries, but the outlook is clear.)

Here's a rundown:

Arizona: The presumptive Republican nominee (primary August 2) is Mark Finchem. His website (I'm not linking to these nutjobs) declares:

Since my very first election, I knew something was very wrong with our elections process. Major defects such as chain-of-custody of ballots, hidden contributions, and expensive unnecessary technology have contributed to the decay of public confidence in our elections. Then on November 3rd, 2020, the unthinkable happened: Americans witnessed real-time reallocation of votes from one candidate to another, broadcast on national television.

Finchem is not only a QAnon believer, he was present at the January 6 Capitol insurrection. It's not clear whether he was among the mob breaching the building. He's Trump-endorsed, naturally.

Two normie Democrats, Reginald Bolding and Adrian Fontes, are running to oppose Finchem in the primary.

Michigan: The incumbent Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is seeking reelection despite death threats when Biden prevailed in 2020. Kristina Karamo is the presumptive Republican nominee.

... the Oak Park Republican skyrocketed to fame in conservative circles after claiming she witnessed fraud at Detroit’s absentee counting board while working as a poll challenger in November 2020. ... Karamo referred to herself as an “anti-vaxxer,” opposed the teachings of evolution in schools, likened abortion to human sacrifice and said LGBT people and those who have sex outside of marriage “violate God's creative design” and are indicative of a culture of “sexual brokenness.”

Michigan GOPers and the Donald think she's their kind of gal.

Nevada: Silver State Republicans joined the Secretary of State clown car in the June primary, nominating Jim Marchant for the office. The Nevada Independent reported:

Marchant

Telling Republicans their votes haven’t counted for diddly-squat due to rampant fraud, then asking them to go cast a ballot, seems a bit counterintuitive for a “get out the vote” campaign. And yet, among at least some Republicans, that has been the message during much of the 2022 primaries. In February, Republican candidate for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, told a crowd in Reno that their vote “hasn't counted for decades.”  

“You haven't elected anybody. The people that are in office have been selected. You haven't had a choice,” Marchant said.

Trump likes this guy too. The normie Democrat running for the open office is Cisco Aguilar.

Georgia: Brad Raffensberger, the Republican incumbent Secretary of State, unexpectedly won his May primary to keep to his office over a Trump-endorsed challenger. He withstood Trump's pressure to "find 11,780 votes" to defeat Biden in 2020. Death threats followed. He is favored to keep the job, however a state law since passed removed the position of state election board chair from the Georgia Secretary of State's duties. He no longer has as much power as he did in 2020.

Senator Raphael Warnock and governor candidate Stacey Abrams will have to win indisputably in fall 2022 to overcome the obstacles state Republicans have erected to free and fair voting.

Pennsylvania: They don't have an elected secretary of state to run elections in Pennsylvania. The job is appointed, so the issue of who runs the 2024 election will be determined by who wins the governor's race this fall. State Republicans have nominated a real doozy. Doug Mastriano is another insurrectionist who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 investigation. There's video showing him crossing Capital police lines, though what else he did in not known.

He’s a first-term state senator who was relatively unknown — until Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, in large part by narrowly losing Pennsylvania to Joe Biden. ... [He] rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election by falsely claiming Trump won the state. Mastriano also helped commission an unauthorized audit of voting machines in a rural county ...

Wisconsin: In this very contested state, elections are administered not by an elected official, but by a bipartisan regulatory agency, the Wisconsin Elections Commission. This supposedly neutral agency has been the location of complicated infighting over false Republican assertions that the 2020 election was fraudulent. UpNorthNews reported on the commission and former Attorney General Bill Barr's recorded testimony to the January 6 commission:

In a video played Monday during the second public hearing of a special congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection, former President Donald Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr laughs and scoffs at claims that cell phone data proves there was voter fraud in Wisconsin in the 2020 election. ... 

[In response to these claims] Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) member Ann Jacobs mentioned [in a meeting] that the drop box at one Milwaukee library is directly below an apartment building—filled with digital pings from cell phones, laptop computers, tablets, and other devices from people not physically using the drop box. 

In February, Assembly Elections Committee Chair Michelle Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) turned the committee’s time over to a presentation from someone convicted of fraud who was claiming numerous irregularities with the state’s voter database. Only a week later did Brandtjen schedule time for WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe and Technology Director Robert Kehoe to refute the baseless claims. 

“Making unverified, fantastical claims without consulting real election officials has the effect of diverting lawmakers and the public from tracking real issues in need of improvement,” Kehoe told the committee. “That could end up causing real harm to Wisconsin elections.”

Wisconsin election administrators will face constant pressure so long as Republicans are making false assertions about voting.

2022 election preview -- because democracy is on the line

The media refer to 2022 as "an election year." In fact, and probably to the detriment of citizen engagement with democracy, every year is an "election year" somewhere and in many places at some level of government. 

This is a federal midterm election year during which we'll vote on all 435 members of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and a slew of state governors. It is also a year in which the candidates of the Irresponsible Party -- a nice label for Big Lie-promoting Republicans, don't you think? -- will be seeking revenge for losses in 2020 and to win power going forward. And the history of midterm elections under a new president says they'll have the wind at their backs.

The purpose of this post is to lay out some context for the contests we're all going to live through, as much for my own understanding as any reader's, though perhaps some might find this useful. So here goes:

Gerrymandering: Because 2020 was divisible by 10 and the Census Bureau somehow completed a plausible count of us all as required by the Constitution, states are reapportioning the districts in which we vote for state reps and Congress. Republicans control all branches of government (state legislatures and governors) in 23 states; Democrats in 15; and others are divided. State laws about reapportionment allow for many variations on how districts are drawn, but who is in power has a lot to do with the results, mostly.

In a general way, the predominance of Republicans in many state governments would promise that Congressional maps would grossly favor Republicans. And in some places (looking at you, Tennessee) they do, so far in the process. And in a few Democratic Party controlled states like Illinois, Dems are shoring up their advantages in Congressional seats. But the best-informed observers including Dave Wasserman at the Cook Report and many others don't see Republicans creating many aggressive gerrymanders. Rather,

... Republicans don’t appear likely to gain a significant number of seats through redistricting. Instead, they’ve taken up a new strategy: make red seats redder.

If this is correct, it should seem familiar to Californians. In 2000, the state legislature approved what amounted to an incumbent protection gerrymander: though Dems predominated, they largely made their own members and sitting Republicans invulnerable to challenge for a decade. Only one Congressional seat (won by Democrat Jerry McNerney in the northern Valley) turned over during the '00s, despite growing Democratic margins among the electorate. The sense they'd been disenfranchised encouraged Californians to adopt our current independent Citizen Redistricting Commission to do the job. (We still get mostly Dem Reps because we are mostly Dems.)

Elections for the House of Representatives: Decades of gerrymandering and voluntary self-sorting by political preference mean that hardly any Congressional races are really competitive. As of today, the Cook Political Report points to a measly total of 13, nationally. Some others may develop because of local circumstances or candidate quality. But unless you live in or to next to one of these competitive districts, your political attention is better paid to other offices. 

Elections for Governor: Though Republicans have ridden decades of smart gerrymandering to control of many state legislatures, in quite a few of these states the electorate statewide is closely divided. These are mostly "battleground" states in presidential years. And electing Democratic governors to four year terms in 2022 will help protect an honest vote count in 2024 if the Reps try again to override the decision of the voters. 

States where elections for governor are critical and where volunteer help and any available cash might be of assistance include:

• Georgia: the inspiring Stacey Abrams will again be on the ballot. This will be very tough, but never count that brilliant organizer out. 

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Steve Sisolak will be seeking another term. 

• Pennsylvania: Attorney General Josh Shapiro is the consensus Democratic candidate. A slew of Reps are running in a primary on May 17.

• Wisconsin: Incumbent Democrat Tony Evers will face whoever wins the Republican primary on August 9. There are at least two well-funded contenders, both Trumpy. Wisconsin has the best organized Democratic Party in the country. 

• Michigan: Incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer will try to hold on for another term. A Black Detroit police chief, Jame Craig, is one of the leading Republican contenders; these will face off on August 2. 

• Arizona: the governor's office is open as the incumbent Republican is termed out. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs probably leads the Democratic aspirants, while Republicans have a slew of choices including QAnon and Trump-loving news anchor Keri Lake. The primary is August 2. 

• Another governor's race I'm watching: in Maine, Trumpish former governor Paul LePage wants to take back the job from incumbent Democrat Janet Mills.

Then there are the Senators. Again, Democrats are quite competitive statewide in places where Republican gerrymanders keep them out of power in the state legislatures.

• Georgia: Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock looks to be taking on Trump-cult adherent and Georgia football hero Herschel Walker. Since Walker is pretty close to certifiably nuts, this shouldn't be much of a contest, but that assumption disregards the heft of college football in the Peach State.

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto will seek a second term. Her likely opponent Adam Laxalt -- who his family considers him an unworthy usurper of a proud Nevada name -- is a far right wingnut and failed governor candidate. Not going to be easy for Masto though; the Democratic registration advantage in the state is declining.

• Pennsylvania: This open Senate seat has attracted a wild cast of characters in both parties, including the 6'7" tattooed Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and, among the Reps, TV-doctor Mehmet Oz. Fortunately the primary is in May, so we'll get a look at the real shape of the contest here fairly early in the year.

• Wisconsin: The Senate's dumbest anti-vaxxer, incumbent Republican Ron Johnson, is up for re-election. If Dems were not so well organized, as the sitting Senator, he'd probably be a shoo-in; the primary for the Dems is late, August 9.

• Arizona: Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly will face off against one of several Republicans to be chosen in August. The leader among them, a man who needs another vowel, sitting Attorney General Mark Brnovich, figured out his own advancement meant he had to support Donald Trump's Big Lie against his own Republican election officials in this battleground state.

• North Carolina: This open seat will be an attractive prize for Democrats as their nominee for the state's other Senate seat only lost by 1.8 percent in 2020 while Trump won the state. The sitting governor is a reasonably popular Democrat, so Dems see a chance. There's a wide field of Dem and Rep candidates running in a June 7 primary (date subject to all sorts of litigation over House seat boundaries; North Carolina is Republican Congressional gerrymander ground zero.)

• I'll be watching also New Hampshire, Ohio and Missouri where the vagaries of electoral contests might shake up Senate prospects -- though probably not, as party polarization is such a strong force.

Whew!!! Gonna be a tough year -- and as much Democratic Party success as can be won matters desperately to the preservation of some remnant of U.S. democracy.

Those of us who care need to pick the most plausible contests and be ready to donate and work.

Finally, if figuring all this out is just too much, and you have some cash, consider supporting Swing Left's national fund which prioritizes smartly for us.

Who gets to vote is still up for grabs

The first time I began to understand a bit about how Native Americans' right to vote is frequently denied was in 2004. Not that what I saw that year was anything new ... but it bears remembering.

The Democratic-adjacent political consultancy we were working with in Albuquerque, New Mexico had assigned an eager young man several months before the November presidential election to try to increase the vote coming out of the state's nineteen recognized Pueblos. These tribal entities were deeply rural and isolated, mostly very poor without money jobs except perhaps at a dingy casino, and organized under Native governments. Nowadays, the state of New Mexico advertises them to tourists. Then the Pueblos were just pockets of poverty to be romanticized by whites as historic artifacts and kept out of sight.

Our organizer went to work vigorously. He drove hundreds of dusty miles on dirt roads, held numerous meetings with elders and tribal authorities, and finally persuaded several hundred eligible people to sign up to vote. Then he arranged for their registration forms to be delivered to the appropriate county governments in which their particular pueblos were located.

As Election Day approached, nobody heard anything. The new registrants were not contacted. Finally Democratic Party election lawyers made some calls and were assured that all was well.

On Election Day, our organizer returned to some of the hamlets where he'd worked so hard in order to drive voters to the polls. But his passengers were turned away; there was no record of their registrations. The election lawyers eventually determined that NONE of these 300 or so citizens were entered on the rolls. So they could not vote.

And just to rub it in -- most of the counties where the Pueblos are located were run by white and Hispanic Democrats. It seems that out there in the countryside what disqualified a voter was being a tribal citizen ...

This June, the Native American Voting Rights Coalition issued a report titled: Obstacles at Every Turn.

Not nearly enough has changed since 2004 for Native voters: too many election rules seem designed to make voting very difficult. Potential Native voters are disqualified by not having addresses recognized by the post office, by election offices and polling places which are only open limited hours, by limited numbers of polling places, and by having to take costly drives over long distances on unpaved roads in order to cast a ballot.

And then last week, the Supreme Court approved an Arizona law which strictly limits who can carry a voter's completed ballot to their polling place. This is aimed straight at impeding voting by tribal citizens living far off the beaten path. The highest court has made it abundantly clear that it will not protect against partisan, often racist, restrictions on voting.

National legislation protecting voting rights would seem the obvious remedy -- but it seems we may not get this because of the unwillingness of a few Democrats in the U.S. Senate to use their power to make it happen.

Voting rights for Native Americans still depend on the determination of the people to claim the vote.

Don't let the sponsors off the hook

Georgians struggling to preserve their access to the ballot against a deluge of state voter suppression bills know where Republican politicians' weak spots are: among their corporate funders. 

Here's Nsé Ufot from the New Georgia Project Action Fund:

Some of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away with a stunning level of deception in Georgia. 

Companies like Coca-Cola, Delta, UPS, and AT&T have made a public show of supporting voting rights, and the rights of Black voters in particular. With splashy ads and Black History Month campaigns, they’ve tried to curry favor with customers by trading on the history of the Civil Rights Movement and portraying themselves as allies of its modern-day equivalent. 

But behind the scenes, these same corporations have been donating millions of dollars to the politicians who continue to spout racist lies about the 2020 election and who are working feverishly, right now, to roll voting laws back to the Jim Crow era and silence the voices of thousands of Georgia’s voters. 

These companies cannot have it both ways. It’s time for them to take a stand. They either support the freedom to vote or they do not. We will no longer accept empty rhetoric....

In many states where Republican legislators have believed themselves free to roll back civil rights, calling out their corporate ties is a tried and true tactic. Big national corporations often care more about their national brand and "good will" than about retrograde local politicians. 

In Georgia in 2016, LGBT activists fought off a discriminatory anti-gay bill with help from the Walt Disney Co., Marvel Studios, AMC, and Viacom. Georgia's governor decided he didn't want to face a boycott by dozens of pop culture stars.

Arizona, which also flipped from GOPer to Democratic in the 2020 presidential election, is another target for voter suppression by a Republican legislature. Arizona also has experience with corporate push back against right wing state policies. In the early 1990s, this then very conservative state refused to recognize the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday -- and the NFL removed a Super Bowl from Phoenix. In 2014, American Airlines and Marriott hotels joined the opposition to a bill allow discrimination against gays.

This year, Popular Information reports that major Arizona political donors including Union Pacific and Prudential Financial have pushed back against the current restrictive bills. Others have not taken a pro-inclusive voting stance, including Pinnacle West (the Phoenix area electric power provider), Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Farmers Insurance.  

Campaigns to expose corporate sponsors of right wing power grabs have a good track record.

And, of course, Democrats in Congress must pass the For the People Act to stop most all these anti-democratic shenanigans.

Encouraging novel voting methods will be hard work

Last week I listened in to a web presentation hosted by the Arizona Democratic Party that included Clara Pratte, presidential candidate Joe Biden's Tribal Engagement Director, and Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas, one of two Native Americans in Congress.

Ms. Pratte emphasized that no other segment of the population is more in need of a functioning U.S. administration, since the 578 tribal Indian governments depend on having a partner that listens and learns.

Rep. Davids reported that serving in Congress has required her to become adept at educating the other members about tribal sovereignty. Along with Rep. Debra Haaland of New Mexico, also an enrolled tribal member, she feels herself a bit of a novelty in Congress. There's a  Black Caucus, and a Hispanic Caucus, and an Asian-American Caucus -- where do these two women -- "the +2" -- fit in?

Both speakers emphasized that Native voting could help swing the election, especially in Arizona where 4.5% of the population is considered American Indian according to the Census. The local Navajo nation has experienced one of the most devastating outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country. So the Democratic Party and the Kansas congresswoman are urging widespread use of mail-in ballots.

An Arizona listener pointed out that the mail-in ballot push might encounter a significant cultural obstacle: historically the Navajo nation has held tribal elections the same day as the federal election, encouraging voters to gather centrally. This creates additional incentives for traveling long distances to vote -- and welcome opportunities for friends and family to socialize. Voting safely in the pandemic is going to force people to adopt a new, isolating, individualistic practice. This is tough where the internet is scarce and where postal facilities are few.

It was agreed that the most useful method for reaching out to explain mail-in voting to tribal members would be local radio.

Counties with large Native American populations with reported infection rates above 1,500 cases per 100,000 residents. New York Times

The pandemic has been brutal in Indian country. And Indian country can help make a difference for us all.

Can Donald Trump cancel the November election?

Suppose all the polls say he'll be defeated when the country votes on November 3rd? It certainly looks likely this will be where it's at: presidents who preside over apocalyptic plagues and economic plunges aren't popular. So can he intervene somehow to stop us from choosing a replacement? Given the character of the man, he is almost certain to try.

So it seems responsible to collect what we know now about this possibility so we can begin to get our minds around what we might have to raise hell about. With some luck, none of the bad stuff will happen, but we haven't had a lot of luck lately.

Some states have postponed primary elections during the last week. Without the cooperation of Congress, Trump cannot do that in November; the voting day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, was set by statute in 1845. Good thing we elected a Democratic House; I don't see Nancy Pelosi caving in on that.

Moreover, that pesky Electoral College is required by law to meet in December and it takes the results of an election to choose the electors. And the 20th amendment to the Constitution says the president's term is four years, ending at noon January 20; after that, election or no election, no more President Trump unless he's won re-election in the normal way.

What the president is more likely to try to do is scare people out of voting. There's no reason to think he'd be truthful when doing that. He might claim the Chinese had poisoned all the polling places or some such racist fantasy. Limbaugh and Hannity will be right on it. Can you see him announcing an emergency cancellation that he has no authority for? Sure, he already has used a phony emergency for his Wall. Trump's opponents need to work to be sure our folks know he doesn't have the authority to stop the vote.

One protection we might have against a phony emergency is that the people most likely to believe Trump's claims are his voters, not ours. Old Republicans are, unfortunately, some of the most credulous people around. And about that sort of thing, Trump is canny.

The best way to protect the November election now is to agitate for making mail balloting available everywhere. This is tough to achieve since voting rules are set state-by-state and most blue states already make voting easier in many ways. Its largely the GOP places that make voting so hard. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is pushing for $500 million in federal money to help states set up mail voting systems -- how about making that part of the coronavirus stimulus? And how about some more cash to set up early voting polling places so voters can practice distancing without lines? Republicans won't be eager; they believe that when everyone can vote easily, they lose more than they win.

Resources:
Buzzfeed examines what laws might stop Trump from breaking the November election.

Ed Kilgore has a great rundown of which states provide mail-in ballots now. California encourages voters to sign up for permanent mail-in voting and automatically sends out ballots to the two thirds of us who want them. Happily, both our neighbors, Arizona and Nevada, do the same. In the latter case the practice is getting its first run in 2020. Voters in Arizona have to ask to their County Recorder's office to be on the Permanent Early Voter list.

The Brennan Center offers a plan to "Protect the 2020 Vote from the Coronavirus" which suggests numerous doable measures that could be taken to make voting safer and easier in a time of pandemic. They've got suggestions on all of it, from easy voter registration to healthy polling places. Activists should take note: some of our states and local authorities can implement much of this even if we can't win federal money.

Meet the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Arizona

If Democrats are going to take control of the Senate in the November election, they need to win in Arizona. Here's the guy who is on track to do the job.

If you told me when I was 16 that I’d reach my dream of being a Navy pilot and astronaut, I wouldn’t have believed you. Now, my hope for Arizona is that everybody gets a chance to achieve their own American dream.

Another fact about this retired astronaut: alongside his wife, ex-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was badly injured in a mass shooting in 2011, he's spent the last few years campaigning against gun violence. Mark Kelly seems a right candidate for Arizona.

Right now, Kelly is leading in the polls, but this will be a very tough election.

Court found Arizona voting laws discriminate on basis of race

Arizona will be one of the vital battlegrounds in this fall's presidential election. For decades it was deeply conservative, home-base to some of the country's most extreme right wingers. But these days, it's getting bluer as the population becomes less solely white and more diverse. The state's Republican legislators have responded to what they experience as a threat in the usual GOPer way: they have enacted measures to make it harder for people of color to vote at all -- and also harder to make sure their votes are counted.

In late January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals banned a couple of these dodges. According to Slate's Mark Joseph Stern the court was forthright:

Arizona Republicans’ recent crackdown on voting rights was motivated by racism. The court invalidated a law that was plainly designed to stop Native American, Hispanic, and black voters from casting a ballot—not just because it happened to burden minorities more than whites, but because it is flat-out racist.

Arizona’s “long history of race-based voting discrimination,” combined with legislators’ “false, race-based” claims of voter fraud “unmistakably reveal” an intent to discriminate on the basis of race, the 9th Circuit announced.

The law in question created a policy that if duly registered voters dropped off their ballot at a precinct other than the one to which they were assigned, their ballot would be "provisional" -- and the practice was simply to throw those votes out. All of them.

From 2008 to 2016, Arizona discarded 38,335 OOP [Out Of Precinct] ballots cast by registered voters, exponentially more than any other state.

Voters’ assigned polling places change constantly, even month to month, and those assignments can be suspiciously inconvenient. Some polling places are located at the very edge of a precinct, and many citizens live closer to a different polling place within their precinct—at which they nonetheless are forbidden to vote.

This system places a heavy burden on people of color. In 2016, for example, the rate of OOP voting in Pima County was 150 percent higher for Hispanics, 80 percent higher for blacks, and 74 percent higher for Native Americans than for white voters. Across the state, racial minorities voted OOP at twice the rate of whites.

Why so many OOP ballots in the first place? Arizona election authorities have been vigorously closing polling places since the state was released from Voting Rights Act oversight by the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County decision. This has created particular burdens for older disabled people and the residents of Arizona's extensive Native American reservations.

The number of polls in Arizona has dropped by the hundreds since 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the federal Voting Rights Act, including oversight of election laws in Arizona and eight other states. ...Arizona had 400 polling locations in 2005; today, it has only 60, said Darrell Hill, Arizona’s policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union [in a Congressional hearing].

[Stephen] Lewis, [governor of the Gila River Indian Community,] said Election Day is treated as a family tradition for Native Americans in Arizona. It is an opportunity for families to catch up on politics and demonstrate to their young ones why voting is important. ... But Native Americans living in rural areas face a slew of obstacles, whether with mail-in ballots or voting in person.

“Tribal cards do not include addresses, do not have standard county addresses, and many tribal members do not receive mail at their homes,” [Navajo Nation President Jonathan] Nez said.

“Sometimes up to five families have to share a single P.O. box.” ... “There is no public transportation here on the reservations. In some parts of the Navajo Nation, only 1 in 10 families owns a vehicle,” said Nez said.

For the moment, the federal courts have corrected some of the racial barriers that Arizona Republicans have thrown up against voting. But these decisions can be appealed to a U.S. Supreme Court now packed with justices who have shown little concern for the rights of people of color. It remains to be seen whether the 9th Circuit decision will survive review.

On a more positive note, the struggle of Arizonans of all colors for more fair election administration should have gotten a boost from the result of the 2018 election: for the first time since 1995, the state elected a Democratic Secretary of State, the officer who oversees the election system. Elections can have consequences. Step by step ...

I am working with Seed the Vote on sending California volunteers to work with Arizona community groups on the November election -- so I'll be sharing what I learn about the state's elections here.