The US state legislative election catch-all thread

Everybody talks about control of the US House and Senate, and of course, even three years out, the next Presidential race. But our laws are mostly made in statehouses. This is the thread where we talk about races for state legislatures. I think it's also cool to talk about other sub-gubernatorial statewide races here (state attorneys general, supreme court justices, etc.)

I'll start: what do we think about Manka Dhingra, bidding to give Democrats control of the Washington State Senate and thus full control of WA state government?

Fingers crossed for her, certainly. The senate GOP caucus are a pile of Seattle-hating little pissants

The Dems have won an impressive number of seats in state legislatures, including socialists in the South!

Tell me more!

The new mayor of Birmingham, AL was a sanders backed dem

To be clear, the mayor of Birmingham was always going to be black and Dem, but this is definitely unprecedented.

Is he officially a socialist? It would dethrone Milwaukee as the last major US city to have a socialist mayor.

in Jackson!

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12781302/democrats-alabama-mississippi-progressives/

Bumping this thread as there's a lot of state legislature news this week!

Eric Holder is suing Scott Walker over state leg. seats in Wisconsin the governor is leaving unfilled because he's afraid a Democrat will win a special election

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/26/eric-holders-group-sues-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-over-not-calling-special-elections/374278002/

I don't care if nobody updates this but me, I'm gonna keep updating it. Walker lost the suit, was ordered by judge to order elections by Friday, legislature scrambling to get back into session to change the election law before then so Walker can keep the seats empty

no keep going its cool and it matters. there is all sorts of weird WA leg stuff i could post itt but luckily they adjourned

I wish you had and I encourage you to keep it up, I would like for instance to get some fine-grained sense on how this Washington Voting Rights Act went down, what it means, whether it's a good model for other states, etc.

I mean this just gets messier and messier. Governor asserts the judge should delay the order because the legislature is going to get him out of this jam next week, judge says "it doesn't matter what the law becomes next week, i can only rule on what the law is now and what the law is now is that you have to order this election by Thursday," not clear whether this gets appealed, whether Walker orders election which the legislature then makes illegal the following week, whether Walker just ignores the order and is in contempt....

https://www.wispolitics.com/2018/judge-refuses-to-delay-timeline-for-guv-to-call-special-elections-in-1st-sd-42nd-ad/

whether Walker just ignores the order and is in contempt

either way, Walker is contemptible.

Update: Walker went to another judge in a more friendly county, got smacked down again, said he was going to appeal to his hand-picked Supreme Court but a couple of hours later decided not to risk it. Apparently rather than risk contempt of court, Walker will order tomorrow that the special elections be held, counting on the legislature to pass a law next week forbidding those elections from taking place. Then... back to court we go!

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/scott-walker-will-not-ask-supreme-court-to-overturn-ruling/article_c7693500-32d7-11e8-8487-f77a04642b10.html

Someone should murder him

Sorry, that’s just always on my mind these days.

When is his term up? I cannot be paid enough to google him right now

He's up for re-election this November and is considered likely to win, though he's fairly unpopular; so far none of the potential D challengers have really seemed to catch fire.

BTW the special elections Walker tried to halt in GOP-held seats took place; Dems flipped one (Senate District 1) and GOP held the other. Both seats will be contested in the upcoming general election.

It's almost November, there's got to be some interesting state legislative election news out there! What's going on in your state?

glad you asked! here in oregon, we have a gubernatorial election. a poll came out today showing republican knute buhler neck and neck with incumbent kate brown. this is why i don't give a shit about polls. there's also a ballot measure to revoke our sanctuary state status and, i don't know, some other republican assholery. we wanted to get a gun control measure on the ballot but the state supreme court shot it down so that's not happening.

the big state election news is mostly in bend (home to the last blockbuster video in america). the democrats are hoping to get a supermajority in office, but are hampered a little bit by the fact that their candidate in bend, which was considered a possibly winnable swing seat, is a sexual abuser. (he denies it, saying his accuser is lying and also on drugs. nobody believes him.) the state party is begging someone, anyone, to run as an independent, since this guy isn't going away quietly and they apparently have no way of forcibly removing him from the ballot, since he won the primary fair and square (before it came out that he was a sexual abuser, mind). since this is bend, however, nobody else is running. fuck, they couldn't even find somebody in clackamas to challenge noted "blue dog" shitstain kurt schrader in primaries.

(shh i have a friend i'm legit trying to convince to run against schrader in 2020)

this is a great idea and i strongly encourage it! i don't live there anymore and i'm unelectable due to my long history of saying offensive things on public internet message boards or else i'd seriously consider it myself.

this dude is a public servant, young and good-looking, recently married, a vet, & is significantly to schrader's left, volunteers with sick kids, he's like a fundraiser's dream. i just don't know if he's a politician at the end of the day

People are excited for Beto but I don't think he has a real shot, going to be a lot of heartbroken friends just like after Wendy Davis got rolled. Living in an urban part of Texas deludes people into forgetting that most of the state still has an evangelical church on every corner.

Not to be the thread police but there's too much about governors and the US Senate and House of Reps here, this is the state legislature thread!

my state (NC) is up to its typical shenanigans. the leg. passed six constitutional amendments to appear on November's ballot, some of which are just pointless pandering to groups like hunters and crime victims, but there are also amendments that would require photo voter ID, ensure the state income tax rate can never exceed 7%, and further strip power from the Dem governor. after the last session ended, someone pointed out that the actual language of these amendments as they would appear on ballots is supposed to be determined by a three-member commission, which in its current make-up includes two Democrats. can't have that. so everyone came back to session yesterday to change that law, because of course they did.

the (very relatively) good news is I think the Dems only need to flip two or three seats to break the supermajority in the senate that allows all of our Democratic governor's vetoes to get overriden.

It seems to me that the NC state legislature is actually the dirtiest in the entire US of A

Virginia's state Senate and House of Delegates flip to Democrats. In Wisconsin, GOP-majority legislature continues to act up, refusing to confirm Gov. Evers' ag secretary nominee (first cabinet official denied by the State Senate in 30 years) and refusing to undertake a special legislative session called by the Governor to debate new gun safety legislation. NC state leg scrambling to draw new district maps after theirs got thrown out by a court, keep trying to trick Dems by scheduling chicanery into being absent for votes so they can override Gov's vetoes without a supermajority. What's up in your state legislature?

Nothing good.

https://i.imgur.com/1yxd4DC.png

https://i.imgur.com/jxDjsED.png

^At least the voters know who's in charge and who gets the credit or blame for the budget. I presume the Republicans would all have to run on their record of accomplishments, because running against the Democrats would be rather obviously stupid.

MS now has zero Dems in any statewide office. Not that the Democratic House member running for Lt. Gov. was worth a damn -- he voted for that fucking fetal heartbeat bill.

The Democrat in Arkansas who represents the largest population is Barry Hyde, Pulaski County Judge. All statewide offices, U.S. Senate and Representative seats are Republican.

the best that can be said about ours is that they're in session only 40 days a year

The big headilnes were about the governor's race, but Louisiana Republicans gained 7 seats in the state house of representatives, coming just 2 short of the 70 seats they'd need to override the governor's veto. Who knew there were still that many Democratic seats in Southern state legislatures to be lost?

You think there's two Democrats out there who'd flip, if the right committee spot opened up?

Nobody ever posts in this thread but the people who get elected to state legislatures three months from now are going to be drawing the district boundaries for the elections that determine the next ten years of all of our lives, so PLEASE give money and/or time to your local state legislative race if control is anywhere close to in doubt in your state.

The Florida state legislature is trying to undo the ballot initiative restoring voting rights to ex-felons that more than 60% of Florida voters backed. The Wisconsin legislature hasn't passed a bill in three months but is reconvening in emergency session to outlaw the governor's (indoor-only) mask mandate. Come on, we can do better than these people.