2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[RoseMorninStar]

Rose, who would you say is the best potential Democratic candidate. Looking from the outside, I would say Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, who is a declared candidate, but I don't know how popular he is or whether he has any potential baggage.

I dunno, I think general disgust/discouragement of politics in general is running high. Those that seem motivated are of the conspiracy theory variety. I'll let you know if I hear anything more as things heat up. I would imagine Ron Johnson was involved in Jan.6th.. I'm not sure if that will change minds for ill or nil.

[N.E. Brigand]

North Carolina generally votes Republican, but recently not by much. Here are the past six presidential election results in that state:

2000 -- 43.2% Gore vs. 56.0% Bush
2004 -- 43.6% Kerry vs. 56.0% Bush
2008 -- 49.7% Obama vs. 49.4% McCain
2012 -- 49.4% Obama vs. 50.4% Romney
2016 -- 46.2% Clinton vs. 49.8% Trump
2020 -- 48.6% Biden vs. 49.9% Trump

Today the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the gerrymandered redistricting plan that would give Republicans 70-80% of the state's Congressional seats.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is for 2024 not 2022: the Republican National Committee has informed the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates that the RNC next month will be making a rule change to require Republican presidential candidates NOT to participate in the CPD's debates.

However, it's possible that the RNC will back down if the CPD agrees to certain changes. The only specific demand I've heard about is a requirement that the first debate happen before early voting starts. That doesn't sound too unreasonable to me, although the timing could be tight. The Republican convention in 2020 ended on Aug. 27 and the first debate was Sep. 29. The earliest date for absentee voting was Sep. 4 in North Carolina. Was that due to the pandemic, or does N.C. normally allow voters to start two months before the election?

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times suggests that the reason the RNC is doing this is that Donald Trump is expected to be a candidate and he's told the RNC that won't participate in any debates, so they're looking for a way to make that technically the fault of the CPD.

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, has told confidants that she plans to run for President in 2024. It's not clear whether she'd challenge Joe Biden in the Democratic primary or would run as an Independent or both. According to that report, she is said to have told friends that she believes Republicans would vote for her over Donald Trump. However, the report seems to be based on just one source.

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. House is set to gain a member now that the seat representing Florida's 20th Congressional district, which had been vacant since the death last April of Rep. Alcee Hastings, was won in a special election on Tuesday by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat who won 79% of the vote.

Her Republican opponent, Jason Mariner, got 19% of the vote.

He has yet to concede defeat.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Apparently Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, has told confidants that she plans to run for President in 2024. It's not clear whether she'd challenge Joe Biden in the Democratic primary or would run as an Independent or both. According to that report, she is said to have told friends that she believes Republicans would vote for her over Donald Trump. However, the report seems to be based on just one source.

Unless and until that gets reported by a reliable source, I will consider it to be nonsense. A tweet by Amy Siskind is not, in my opinion, a reliable source. Of course your mileage may vary, and of course I may well be wrong about that.

However, I think it is far more likely that Sinema will be out of office and a pariah then that she ever makes any kind of serious run for the presidency. If there is any truth to this report, it might be a reflection of the fact that she doesn't have a chance in hell of winning reelection to her Senate seat in 2024 and so she might as well try to do something else.

[N.E. Brigand]

Fair about Siskind. I hesitated on citing it, but I saw that Josh Marshall, who edits Talking Points Memo, said that it broadly comported with his understanding of Sen. Sinema's position.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

North Carolina generally votes Republican, but recently not by much. Here are the past six presidential election results in that state:

2000 -- 43.2% Gore vs. 56.0% Bush
2004 -- 43.6% Kerry vs. 56.0% Bush
2008 -- 49.7% Obama vs. 49.4% McCain
2012 -- 49.4% Obama vs. 50.4% Romney
2016 -- 46.2% Clinton vs. 49.8% Trump
2020 -- 48.6% Biden vs. 49.9% Trump

Today the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the gerrymandered redistricting plan that would give Republicans 70-80% of the state's Congressional seats.

However, in your home state:

Ohio's high court overturns new congressional map saying it 'unduly favors' Republicans

Note that the Republican Chief Justice was the deciding vote in the case.

[N.E. Brigand]

Indeed! Although I''m a little disappointed that it was a 4-3 decision rather than a 7-0 decision, since, as that article notes, Ohio voters passed an amendment to the state constitution in 2018 requiring something more fair than what was in place before. Right now, Ohio has 16 Congressional seats, 12 of which (75%) are held by Republicans -- despite Republicans winning about 55% of the statewide vote. With population shifts taking Ohio down to 15 seats, the redistricting plan that was just tossed by the Ohio Supreme Court would have resulted in as many as 13 seats, or 87%, being held by Republicans. It's expected that the maps redrawn following this decision will favor Republicans by either 9-6 (60%) or 10-5 (67%). Still not fair. But fairer.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

GOP Rep. John Katko of upstate New York has announced that he is not running for reelection. Katko was a particular target of Trump and his allies since he not only voted to impeach Trump but also voted for the "bipartisan" infrastructure bill that was a policy priority of Trump's while he was in office, but is revised by him and his allies as a victory for Biden. New York's redistricting is not yet completed, but this represents a potential pickup for the Democrats since his district had normally tended blue, so much so that Kevin McCarthy discouraged Trump from pushing a primary challenge to Katko. Of course, one seat probably isn't going to make much difference as most likely the GOP will flip the House by a lot more than that, but who knows?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

North Carolina Supreme Court strikes down redistricting maps

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday blocked the state's new Republican-drawn congressional and legislative maps, ruling 4-3 that they violate the state constitution.

"We conclude that the congressional and legislative maps enacted ... are unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause, and the freedom of assembly clause of the North Carolina Constitution," the court wrote in an order.
>>

North Carolina's new congressional map was passed by its GOP-controlled legislature in November and would likely have helped Republicans gain at least two seats in the state's delegation.
The court gave the legislature two weeks to draw new maps and submit them to a lower court, which will select a remedial plan.
>>

The decision is the latest in a string of positive redistricting developments for Democrats. Courts recently struck down GOP-drawn maps in Ohio and Alabama (the Alabama decision is now before the US Supreme Court), while the Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania Supreme Court just took over the state's process and New York state enacted a map that could net the party several seats in November.

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed a lower court's ruling that would have required Alabama to be a little more fair in its redistricting. SCOTUS will hear the case later this year, but even if they were to rule against Alabama, that would happen too late for 2022. Statewide, Donald Trump got 62% of the vote in 2022, but Republicans control 85% of the seven Congressional districts. And in a state which is 31% African-American, given that African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, the current gerrymander has racial implications.

Many observers think the more likely outcome is that the Court will vote later this year to throw out some key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which would have implications beyond just Alabama. That ruling would come too late to affect 2022 but likely would give Republican many more opportunities to racially gerrymander in 2024 and after.

The Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965, was most recently reauthorized for 25 years in 2006. That reauthorization was passed in the House by a vote of 390-33 and passed in the Senate by a vote of 98-0, and signed into law by President George W. Bush. But in 2013, the Supreme Court weakened the VRA on the supposed grounds that some provisions were based on facts that were decades old -- never mind that an overwhelming majority in Congress and the Republican President had reauthorized the Act just seven years earlier.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And Chief Justice Roberts is the main mover and shaker in weakening the Voting Rights Act, so ... .

ETA: However to my surprise he sided with the more liberal justices in the Alabama case.

[N.E. Brigand]

Lex Wexner, the richest man in Ohio, is the founder of The Limited retail stores and until 2020 was the CEO of the company that owns not only The Limited but also Victoria's Secret, Abercromie & Fitch, Express, and Bath & Body Works. It's not surprising that an 82-year-old man would opt to retire, but an additional motivating factor seems to be the scrutiny that Wexner came under due to his decades of close friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, the serial sexual predator who was Wexner's financial manager (with power of attorney) and also a board member of Wexner's charitable foundation.

A longtime heavy donor to Republican campaigns, Wexner declared himself an independent in 2018, but today it was reported that he's just given $250,000 to the Republican Governor's Association.

[N.E. Brigand]

According to Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is a Democrat, the three candidates vying to be the Republican who challenges her for that job in November have all said that they oppose the 1965 Supreme Court decision which ruled that married couples cannot be prohibited from using contraception.

[N.E. Brigand]

Hillbilly Elegy author and supposed man of the people J.D. Vance, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Senate here in Ohio, tweeted this today:

Want to have dinner with me and Peter Thiel? Donate $10,800 by tomorrow and I’ll send you the details.
This will be a small group, with good food and better company.
Link to donate: [link omitted]
If that's too much, see the next tweet...

The siren emojis appear in the original. Thiel, who is apparently Vance's main financial backer, is the billionaire co-founder of Paypal and the data analytics firm Palantír. (He was also Facebook's first outside investor.)

J.D. Vance has completely lost his mind. He appeared today on the podcast of former Trump advisor and Trump pardonee Steve Bannon, who asked him why America's "elites" are "obsessed" with Ukraine but "comfortable" with the "three million invasion of the southern [U.S.] border last year." Of course, the would-be immigrants from Latin America were not actually armed invaders like the Russian troops on Ukraine's border, and also they were largely apprehended and returned to Mexico). But here's what Vance said in reply: America's leaders hate Putin, the leading cause of death for American men is "Mexican fentanyl that's coming across the southern border," and recalling his own military service (he did serve four years in the Iraq War, albeit in a public affairs office), he added:

"We did not serve in the Marine Corps to go fight Vladimir Putin because he didn't believe in transgender rights."

(Ugh, I just noticed that Peter Thiel's venture capital firm is named Mithril. And worse: with Thiel's backing, Vance in 2019 launched his own venture capital firm named Narya!)

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Rick Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, today issued a plan calling for the federal government to raise taxes on the 100 million poorest Americans (including retirees) and to defund the police.

(No his plan doesn't use the words "defund the police," but it proposes large cuts to federal funding sent to the states that currently is used to fund the police.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Supreme Court denies GOP challenges to congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania

I doubt it will be enough to keep the GOP from easily taking back the House this year, but the redistricting process has been surprisingly positive for Democrats. According to 538, with 46 states having completed their new maps (including six states that only have one district and therefore don't need to create a new map) the process has led to an increase of 11 Democratic-leaning states, a decrease of 6 Republican-leaning states, and a decrease of 6 competitive seats (presumably the numbers don't add up because of rounding issues).

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/re ... id=rrpromo

[N.E. Brigand]

Nine-term Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, Republican of Nebraska, was convicted today of "three felony counts for lying to the FBI about a 2016 foreign campaign contribution." The trial was in Los Angeles, some 1,500 miles from Fortenberry's district. The jury deliberated for just two hours. Fortenberry says he will appeal and gave no indication that he would resign from Congress. I believe he's running for reelection this year. His district is overwhelmingly Republican (he won by 22 points two years ago).

(Here's a funny coincidence from the news gods: Ginni Thomas was born in Nebraska.)

[N.E. Brigand]

Nine-term Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, Republican of Nebraska, was convicted today of "three felony counts for lying to the FBI about a 2016 foreign campaign contribution." The trial was in Los Angeles, some 1,500 miles from Fortenberry's district. The jury deliberated for just two hours. Fortenberry says he will appeal and gave no indication that he would resign from Congress. I believe he's running for reelection this year. His district is overwhelmingly Republican (he won by 22 points two years ago).

(Here's a funny coincidence from the news gods: Ginni Thomas was born in Nebraska.)

After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy today called for Jeff Fortenberry to step down, Fortenberry announced he is indeed resigning.