Bad Moon Rising edition

The month of March is rapidly drawing to a close, and in some parts of the country, maybe it’s “going out like a lamb,” as the kids say.

But no matter where you are, March is definitely ending with a full moon. A blue moon, to be precise, and the second one this year.

Also, it’s the last blue moon (a second full moon within a single calendar month) we’ll see until 2020 (on Halloween night, to be precise—oooOOOooo spooky!).

It’s super fun to blame the full moon for all kinds of things, from exacerbated medical conditions and increased births to car accidents and lycanthropy.

But studies have shown that the notion that full moons produce these and other effects to be false and likely the product of good old-fashioned confirmation bias—when we focus on data points that confirm our beliefs and ignore those pesky facts that don’t fit.

He Sees Trouble On The Way: For all his myriad flaws as a governor and a politician, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker can’t be considered guilty of such an unrealistic way of looking at the current state of politics. He identified the consistent trend of Democratic special election wins and over-performances in state legislative races this cycle and decided that maybe he didn’t so much want to hold any more special elections to fill vacant Republican seats.

• Wisconsin judges shut that nonsense down for good this week when they stymied a GOP plan to outlaw these elections altogether and forced Walker to finally call these specials to avoid violating a court order.

Some background:

• When Walker quietly declared—in that week between Christmas and New Year’s when normal folks are less likely to pay attention to political news—he was going to leave two Republican seats empty for over a year, the special election trend line was obvious, and it indisputably favored Democrats.
  • In the 70 Democrat-vs.-Republican special elections held (by that point) since Trump’s election, Democrats in 2017 were outperforming Clinton’s numbers by 10 percent, on average, and they were even outperforming Obama’s 2012 numbers by an average of 7 percent.
  • Democrats had flipped 12 seats from red to blue in statehouse specials in 2017, and Democrats had flipped another 19 seats in the Virginia and New Jersey general elections.

So yeah, it’s not hard to see why Walker didn’t want to hold these special elections.

Losing seats sucks!

• Walker got even more scared when Democrat Patty Schachtner flipped the historically and solidly Republican SD-10 in January (as demonstrated by his little Twitter freakout right after the election). And it’s pretty easy to figure out why.
  • Both seats Walker refused to fill (SD-01 and AD-42) voted for Trump, 56-39 and 55-40, respectively.
  • But in 2012, Romney carried SD-01 only 52-47, and Obama actually won AD-42 by a 51-48 margin.
    • For frame of reference, that SD-10 seat Democrats flipped in November? Trump won 55-38 there. 
    • These seats aren’t going to be easy pickups by any means, but they’re quite solidly within the realm of electoral possibility for Democrats this cycle.

Not being represented in your state capitol for over a year is extremely lame.

• So a couple of voters teamed up with the well-moneyed and well-lawyered crew at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and sued to force Walker to hold special elections to fill these seat and get these good Wisconsinites some representation.
• Late last week, Walker-appointed Judge Josann Reynolds told the governor he was in violation of the very plain meaning of state law and ordered him to call the special elections by high noon on Thursday, March 29.

Well, we all know what Republicans do when a court rules against them.

• They cry foul or attack the judges or attempt to undermine the decision or the court itself or all of the above.
• In this case, Walker and his GOP cohorts in the state legislature called a special session, set to convene Tuesday, April 4, to pass a bill that would effectively nullify the court’s order and prevent special legislative elections from being held in even-numbered years ever again.
  • The whole scheme was a pretty obvious and egregious end-run around both democracy AND the rule of law.
    • And Wisconsinites knew it: Over the course of just three days, over 3,300 Wisconsin members of the Daily Kos community sent more than 6,500 letters to their own Assembly members and state Senators denouncing this move.
• But Republicans had a timing problem.
  • Once the special elections were called, outlawing all even-year specials in the future wouldn’t matter—there’s no un-ringing the election bell, so to speak.
  • And the court’s ruling demanded Walker call those special elections Thursday, well ahead of the legislature’s special session to pass their bogus anti-democracy bill on Tuesday.
• Walker asked the judge—whom Republicans publicly trashed after she ruled against them—to pretty please extend his deadline for calling the specials to next Thursday, April 6, so the legislature would have plenty of time to outlaw them.
  • Another judge, substituting for Reynolds, issued a pointed rebuke as he refused the governor’s request.
  • Walker then appealed to a higher court, which issued a pointed rebuke as it refused the governor's request.
  • Walker, likely fearing yet another pointed rebuke, decided against appealing the decision to the state Supreme Court and called the special elections a few hours in advance of Thursday’s deadline.
    • The special elections for Assembly District 42 and Senate District 1 will be held on June 12, with primaries on May 15.

Fun fact! There’s already a Democrat running in SD-01! His name is Caleb Frostman, and he enjoys hunting. Like, a lot.

But wait, there’s more good news on the Republicans-pissed-off-about-a-judicial-ruling-so-they-want-to-burn-it-all-down front!

• Twelve Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania jumped on the impeachment bandwagon last week and introduced resolutions in the state House to impeach four of the five Democratic justices on the state Supreme Court—the same four justices who ruled the state’s congressional district map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and required it be replaced with fairer lines.
  • This threat was quite real, too.
    • Republican need a simple majority to pass impeachment resolutions in the House, and they need two-thirds supermajority to actually impeach those justices in the Senate—both of which they have, thanks to their extremely gerrymandered state legislative maps.
• But Pennsylvania’s House majority leader—who determines which bills are and aren’t heard in that chamber—has effectively doused that fire for the time being, asserting that, while he sure wasn’t a fan of the court’s gerrymandering decision, “disagreement over the outcome of any particular case should not be grounds for impeachment.”

You don't say!

We’ll see what happens when the state House reconvenes on April 9, but assume GOP impeachment effort dead—at least for now.

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Spring, Sprang, Sprung edition

Happy spring!

… she said as she made a small snowman somewhere in the middle of the Eastern Seaboard.

Well, whether it seems like it or not, it’s definitely technically spring. Which is, like, a time for renewal or whatever.

But statehouse action is seasonless. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call…

… out Republicans for doing Very Bad Things. Like a judge just did in Wisconsin.

Spring BREAKING: A Wisconsin circuit court judge has ordered Gov. Scott Walker to call special elections to fill two vacant state legislative seats.

• The seats became vacant in December 2017, when Walker appointed two Republican lawmakers to his administration.
• Walker wanted to delay filling the seats until “special” elections could be held concurrent with general elections this November.
  • This plan would have left voters in these state Assembly and state Senate seats unrepresented for more than a year.

Fun fact! The judge who ordered Walker to hold special elections to fill the seats before November was appointed to the bench by Walker himself in 2014.

• Walker’s refusal to hold these special elections predates an epic special election upset in Wisconsin’s SD-10 in January, but Democrats had already flipped 34 state legislative seats from red to blue at that point in the cycle—a stark fact someone as politically adept as Walker was certainly aware of.

And if you’re worried about losing special elections, what better way to prevent that than not having them at all?

• Walker’s little Twitter freakout in response to Democrat Patty Schachtner flipping this deeply and historically Republican Senate seat further supports a sense of dread that extends beyond just one special election upset.
  • Calling this red-to-blue flip a “wake up call,” Walker gave voice to the extremely reasonable fear Republicans are feeling about Democrats’ down-ballot electoral success this cycle.

Okay, so we’re going to have special elections. Can Democrats flip these seats? 

• Both seats (SD-01 and AD-42) voted for Trump, 56-39 and 55-40, respectively.
• But in 2012, Romney won SD-01 only 52-47, and Obama actually won AD-42 by a 51-48 margin.
  • For frame of reference, that SD-10 seat Democrats flipped in November? Trump won 55-38 there.

So yeah, no wonder Walker wasn’t eager to fill these seats in special elections.

But Wisconsin isn’t the only GOP-led state that’s balking at special elections these days.

• Florida Gov. Rick Scott is also refusing to fill two vacant legislative seats: state House District 33 and Senate District 16.
  • The open Senate seat alone leaves more than half a million Floridianswithout representation for almost a year.
  • And if you’re wondering why Scott might be afraid to hold those specials ... well, Trump won SD-16 by a 56-42 spread—in other words, the kind of turf that's been in reach for Democrats this year. (Trump carried HD-33 by a much more comfortable 69-29 margin, but Scott can’t possibly justify holding a special for one seat and not the other.)
• While we’re talking about Republicans refusing to hold special elections for fear of losing them, let’s revisit Alabama, where Republicans are upping the anti-democracy ante by basically trying to do away with ALL THE SPECIAL ELECTIONS.
  • First, Republicans pushed a measure that would eliminate special elections for U.S. Senate seats; a gubernatorial appointee would instead occupy the seat until the next general election.
    • This measure passed the state House along party lines.
    • It’s currently poised to pass out of a Senate committee.
  • Republicans also want to eliminate most special elections to fill vacant state legislative seats.
    • If a vacancy occurs after the first two years of a lawmaker’s term, a special election would not be called to fill the seat. (Fun fact: state representatives and senators all serve four-year terms in Alabama.)
    • Instead, the governor would appoint someone to the post until the next general election.
    • This measure has passed both chambers of the legislature, but it still must be approved by a majority of the state’s voters in November as an amendment to the state Constitution.
• GOP lawmakers claim that both proposals are aimed at saving money.

Funny how Alabama Republicans didn’t care about election costs until they got their butts handed to them in one of those special elections they suddenly want to do away with.

ImPeachy Keen: A month and a half or so ago, a Republican lawmaker had a totally reasonable response to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling the GOP’s severely gerrymandered congressional maps unconstitutional: IMPEACH!

• But this wasn’t just some crazy backbencher screaming into the void; Rep. Cris Dush received tacit approval from GOP legislative leadership, and a GOP members of the U.S. House and Senate voiced their support.
• And now that a new, fairer map is definitively in place for Pennsylvania’s congressional elections this fall, Republicans are moving to make good on this impeachment threat.
  • On Tuesday, Dush filed impeachment resolutions against four of the fiveDemocratic state Supreme Court justices—the same four justices who ruled against the GOP-gerrymandered map and required a replacement map to be used starting this year.
  • A dozen of Dush’s fellow Republicans have also signed on, and key GOP House leaders say they’ll consider the impeachment resolutions.
• On Thursday, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court—notably, one of the members not targeted for impeachment, and a Republican, to boot—took the unusual step of issuing a statement denouncing the GOP’s move to impeach his fellow justices.
  • Chief Justice Thomas Saylor rightly called out the threats as retaliation for the justices’ “decision in a particular case” and as “an attack upon an independent judiciary.”

Of course, we know that “attacking an independent judiciary” is something Republicans are super hot for.

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Red Carpet Blues edition

On Sunday, actors and celebrities and luminaries of all stripes will don their finest duds and traipse along a long scarlet rug before settling in to their seats at the Oscars. All that finery will then spend several hours scrunched up in theater seats as small golden statues are doled out to various “bests”—picture, actor, director, etc.

But with 40 legislatures in session this week, there’s plenty to recognize state lawmakers for in the meantime. Behold—the Staties!

Best Special: This category had three contenders this week, with special elections to replace Republicans in a deep-red KentuckyHouse seat, a Connecticut House seat that had been held by the GOP for 44 years, and a New Hampshire House seat.

• Democrats won two of these races, making them the 38th and 39th red-to-blue flips of the cycle.
  • The Connecticut House win was impressive in that it ended decades of Republican control of House District 120, but the New Hampshire victory in House District Belknap-3 is definitely the winner in this category.
  • Democrat Phil Spagnuolo won this race 54-46 percent—a 19-point swing from Trump’s performance in this district in 2016.
  • Also, this was Democrats’ fifth pickup in the New Hampshire House this cycle.

Best Swan Song: Speaking of special elections, the member of the Wisconsin Assembly who lost the Senate District 10 special election to Democrat Patty Schachtner in January (in Democrats’ 34th red-to-blue flip of the cycle) has decided not to run for reelection to the seat he currently holds.

• In his retirement announcement, he compared himself to a diaper full of human excrement, for some reason:

Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often, and for the same reason.

Okay!

Best Picture: Okay, it’s the worst picture, actually, since Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens took it without the consent of his mistress and threatened to make the nude photo public if she failed to keep mum about their affair.

… But it might qualify as Most Powerful Picture, in that this little photo has resulted in Greitens’ indictment on a felony charge and arrest.

• Now members of his own party have launched an investigation that could lead to the Republican’s impeachment and removal from office.
• On Monday, the GOP House speaker created a seven-member committee (five Republicans, two Democrats) to investigate the charges against Greitens.

Best Timing: But Missouri Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time, in that they can investigate their governor AND work to screw working families at the simultaneously.

• The state’s new so-called “right to work” law is set to appear on the ballot this November, when voters will have the chance to repeal it.
• But now GOP lawmakers want the “right to work” repeal measure to appear on the ballot for the August primary instead—an election that is sure to bring fewer voters to the polls than the general election.
• The GOP sponsor of the bill to move the RTW repeal from November to August claims that she just wants to give voters a chance to weigh in as soon as possible.

Sure.

• What Republicans really want to do is shrink the size of the electorate voting on this measure—a move that tends to reduce Democratic turnout and will likely result in fewer progressive voters showing up to cast ballots against this union-busting law.

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