Monthly Archives: August 2021

HOUSTON For weeks, Democratic lawmakers in Texas were hearing that select members would be breaking ranks and returning to the Capitol.

But as they gathered on Thursday morning for their daily Zoom call, there was no indication their 38-day walkout was about to fall apart.

More than 50 Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives fled Austin for Washington last month to prevent a quorum and effectively kill a sweeping election overhaul bill that would have introduced new restrictions to voting. Just one member, Garnet F. Coleman, had been expected to return to the Capitol on Thursday, still leaving Republicans two Democrats short of a quorum.

Later that same day, however, many Democratic legislators were shocked and disappointed when they saw two other members enter the House chamber with Mr. Coleman enough to call the House to order and begin work on a lengthy list of conservative goals set by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

By Friday, the tenuous alliance among Democratic House members split into open confrontation, as 34 of them released a joint statement criticizing their colleagues who returned to the Capitol. The caucus chairman, Chris Turner, did not sign on.

We feel betrayed and heartbroken, the Democratic members wrote in their joint statement. But our resolve is strong and this fight is not over.

State Representative Jessica Gonzlez, a Democrat from near Dallas, said she was particularly frustrated with the suddenness of the decision, with no advance warning that the other Democrats would be returning.

Whats most disheartening, Ms. Gonzlez said, is that so many of us have stuck together on this, so many of us have made sacrifices, and the least that people can do is just at least have a conversation as a caucus, as a whole. That way people can make their own decisions, too.

The return of the three absent Democrats on Thursday injected a new wave of uncertainty into the national battle over voting rights, one that will most likely be felt as far as Washington. The sudden crumbling of the Democratic blockade opened the door to passage of a new voting law containing restrictions Texas Democrats considered so strident they broke quorum twice.

But with passage of federal voting legislation still a long shot in Washington, Democrats in Texas find themselves with no clear path forward, and divisions remain on the best course of action.

The Texas House remains adjourned until Monday afternoon with no planned activity over the weekend. The voting bill, known as S.B. 1, passed the State Senate last week but has not advanced at all in the House. It was scheduled for a committee hearing on Monday, and would still need to go through another committee before it could come to the floor for a vote, setting up a potential showdown next week.

Some Republican representatives were not physically present in the Capitol on Thursday, despite being counted toward the total number there, leading many Democrats to claim the quorum was illegitimate.

But Rafael Ancha, a Dallas Democrat who is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said he believed the Republican leadership would rally their members by Monday and that it made sense for him to return to Austin now.

There are a lot of bad bills, Mr. Ancha said. In no particular order, Ive got a large L.G.B.T. population that I need to go fight for. I need to go fight for the parents of school-aged children who are unvaccinated.

With a quorum in the House, Republicans could try to vote to suspend the normal rules and speed through a vote on the election bill and other bills on Monday. He said that in order to prevent that from happening, Democrats would be needed to vote against it.

We need a core group of members there to make sure there is no vote to suspend the rules, Mr. Ancha said.

Yet other Democrats held out hope that they could again prevent a quorum, given the thin margins involved.

There is a core of us, myself included, who still want to continue this fight, and still want to hopefully bring enough Democrats back into our coalition of holding the line, Ms. Gonzlez said. And so we havent given up.

The anger some Democratic lawmakers felt toward their colleagues was palpable on Friday. But for John Whitmire, a long-serving Houston state senator, such a reaction was a waste of time.

You cant stay gone forever, even if some members would suggest such a move, said Mr. Whitmire, who was among 11 breakaway Democrats who denied a quorum to the State Senate in 2003 to halt a redistricting bill by Republicans. After five weeks, he returned to Austin the first among his colleagues to do so.

Mr. Whitmire said he had spoken with several of the absent House members about whether or not to return.

I told them to do what they thought was best, to think for themselves and represent their districts, Mr. Whitmire said.

Though the current election bill in Texas resembles the version from May that first sparked a Democratic walkout, Democrats did win some concessions and Republicans altered or removed some of the most restrictive provisions. Sunday voting hours remain protected, and Republicans added an extra hour of mandatory early voting for weekdays. A provision that was designed to make it easier to overturn elections was also completely removed.

But the bill still bans voting advancements from Harris County, home to Houston, that were enacted in the 2020 election, including drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, and it bans election officials from proactively sending out mail ballot applications, or promoting the use of vote by mail.

The bill also greatly empowers partisan poll watchers, weakening an election officials authority over them and giving them greater autonomy at polling locations, and creates new barriers for those looking to help voters who require assistance, such as with translations.

The voting bill is far from the only item on Mr. Abbotts agenda. The list also included a host of conservative goals, like restricting abortion access, limiting the ways that students are taught about racism, restricting transgender student athletes and tightening border security.

As Democrats fretted, Republicans celebrated, racing to the Capitol to fill ranks and give Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, enough members for a quorum.

The rush was enough to pull one member, Steve Allison, a Republican from near San Antonio, from isolation after he tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this week. He remained by himself in a side room of the House chamber but was counted as present.

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End of Walkout Splits Texas Democrats on Voting Rights - The New York Times

Earlier this month a coalition of progressive groups announced they were going to spend upwards of $100 million on television and digital ads to boost President BidenJoe BidenBiden to address nation on Afghanistan evacuation Sunday afternoon Pelosi says House working to pass infrastructure bills by Oct. 1 Facebook report finds top link in 3-month timeframe was about doctor who died after getting COVID-19 vaccine MORE and the Democrats. When in doubt, flood the airwaves. What a waste!

I have a serious confession: For decades I have specialized in doing television and radio ads for Democratic candidates and groups. From the 1980s to the early 2000s our firms primary method of delivering a message and communicating with voters was paid ads. In a course on campaign advertising that I taught at George Washington Universitys Graduate School of Political Management for 20+ years, and in counseling candidates, I used to hold fast to the notion that 70-80 percent of most candidates budgets should be devoted to paid ads.

No more.

Is paid media important? Of course, but these ads dont do what they used to in the era of three major networks, very limited cable and no such thing as the internet. Not to mention when Amazon and Netflix and a myriad of other ways to watch programming without advertising came on board.

Yet we are stuck in the practices of yesteryear and instead of using our funds to enhance political organization, personal door-to-door campaigning, sophisticated targeting and communication, we throw what we have against the wall and see what sticks.

Democrats have tended more than Republicans to focus on the shiny objects of TV ads, instead of organizing and motivating our base to reach out and convince potential voters on the ground.

To be blunt: Democrats are not putting nearly enough of the billions raised into early, hard-core organization and way too much into glitzy TV ads.

How much of that $100 million goes to organizing? How much PAC money or candidate money goes to hiring staff and paying people to contact voters? How much goes to identifying voters interests and learning about what interests them?

Look what is happening to rural voters. Trump won rural voters with 59 percent of the vote in 2016; he won with 65 percent in 2020, despite losing the overall popular vote by over 7 million votes. Have you driven through rural America lately? Have you seen the signs and the barns painted TRUMP, the caravans during opening day of fishing season in Minnesota with flags flying and horns honking, even the t-shirts being worn at Target and Walmart?

Where are the Democrats? Where are the yard signs and supporters outside metro areas? Where are the local neighborhood headquarters in peoples living rooms? Have we given up on independent minded, less politicized citizens who may not always vote in every election? That is a big mistake.

An important recent Pew poll shows that of those who did not vote in the high-turnout election of 2020, Biden was favored over Trump by 15 points. Many of these were voters under 50 years of age and are not obviously committed voters by any means. These are critical voters for Democrats to target.

Many pundits and prognosticators have written the Democrats political obituary for the 2022 off-year elections. They are usually a disaster for the party in power, losing on average 26 House seats and 4 Senate seats. Their other reasons are many: the razor thin margin of less than a half dozen Democratic seats in the House and an even count of 50 in the Senate; redistricting that will cost Democrats seats, as Republicans game the system in southern and western states; a polarized nation where President Biden hovers around 50 per cent popularity.

Now, those are serious head winds. But one way to counter them is to increase our focus as Democrats on voter identification, turnout, and serious persuasion. We have the right messages for many of these voters child care and early childhood education, expanded community college, child tax credits for struggling families, direct care worker help for seniors, expanded Medicare coverage for dental care and prescription drugs. This is a pro-work, pro-families and pro-community agenda. And, by the way, solve COVID, pass the infrastructure and budget legislation before Congress that truly helps people and show ourselves to be the party that gets the job done.

If we organize around these messages and go after voters with sophisticated targeting, starting early, and go back to the future with person-to-person and door-to-door engagement, we might find ourselves maintaining the majority. This means real political money for rural areas, tracking our base, keeping a focus on less-likely voters and convincing them of what is at stake in 2022 and, yes, not wasting so much on expensive and less impactful TV ads.

Peter Fenn is a long-time Democratic political strategist who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was a top aide to Sen. Frank Church and was the first director of Democrats for the 80s, founded by Pamela Harriman. He also co-founded the Center for Responsive Politics/Open Secrets. Follow him on Twitter@peterhfenn.

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How to prevent Democrats from digging their own grave in 2022 | TheHill - The Hill

A Republican investment analyst who narrowly won a vacant state Senate district in the heart of Connecticuts wealthy suburbs this week has some Democrats nervous about their partys standing ahead of crucial off-year and midterm elections.

Ryan Fazio, 31, claimed 50.1 percent of the vote ahead of Democrat Alexis Gevanter, a gun safety advocate making her first run for public office in the Greenwich-based district. A former Democrat running as an independent claimed another 2.3 percentage points.

It is the first special election held since President BidenJoe BidenBiden to address nation on Afghanistan evacuation Sunday afternoon Pelosi says House working to pass infrastructure bills by Oct. 1 Facebook report finds top link in 3-month timeframe was about doctor who died after getting COVID-19 vaccine MORE took office in which a Republican won a seat formerly held by a Democrat.

Fazio presented himself as a typical Republican who opposed the tax hikes that are a constant presence in Connecticut politics. But Blake Reinken, Gevanters campaign manager, told The Hill on Friday that Fazios real edge came from an excited Republican base.

Turnout was high, for a special, and turnout was much higher than we thought it was going to be. It was much higher than anyone thought it was going to be because their base turned out, and we had to push our base to turn out as well. But it was clear there was a lot more enthusiasm, not among the activists necessarily, but among the voters than there was on our side, Reinken said.

Reinken said the race could be a harbinger for other contests both this year, when Virginia voters head to the polls to elect a new governor and legislators, and in next years midterms. Republican activists loudly protested against mask mandates and critical race theory at several events Gevanter attended in the weeks before Election Day.

I saw a preview of what may be coming in 2021 and 2022, and I just want to warn other Democrats just to not take anything for granted, he said. Now that Trump is gone for the most part, we have to fight double as hard to make sure that we protect our gains.

Fazio will reclaim a seat that Republicans held from Franklin Roosevelts administration to the 2018 midterm elections, when opposition to then-President TrumpDonald TrumpDemocrats sound alarm over loss in Connecticut suburbs Abbott Laboratories directs employees to dispose of rapid COVID-19 test materials Sunday shows preview: Chaos in Kabul mars US evacuation efforts MORE drove a Democratic tide in suburban districts across the country. Trump lost the district to President Biden by more than 20 percentage points in 2020.

The fact that this seat that Biden won by about 20 points should be scaring people, Reinken said. It could be really scary this time.

Voters in the area were no Trump fans to begin with Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonDemocrats sound alarm over loss in Connecticut suburbs GOP senator calls on Biden to fire Sullivan, national security team Jake Sullivan becomes public face of Biden's crisis on Afghanistan MORE won the district by 18 points in 2016, four years after Republican nominee Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyDemocrats sound alarm over loss in Connecticut suburbs Lawmakers flooded with calls for help on Afghanistan exit Bipartisan group of lawmakers call on Biden to ensure journalists safe passage out of Afghanistan MORE carried the district by9 points over then-President ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaDemocrats sound alarm over loss in Connecticut suburbs Powell reappointment to Fed chair backed by Yellen: report Five takeaways from Biden's week of chaos in Afghanistan MORE.

In a very educated place and a very socially liberal place, Reinken said. We connected [Fazio] to Trump and we connected them to these issues and they didnt have to run from it as much as wed think.

Both Democrats and Republicans routinely downplay the importance of special elections, which are usually held away from regularly scheduled contests, feature low turnout and earn little attention from voters or the media.

Christina Polizzi, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said they did not see the Connecticut loss as evidence of any wave building on behalf of the GOP.

Democrats have had a string of special election victories in highly competitive districts across the country. In several of those races, the Democratic candidates outperformed President Biden's margin of victory. So make no mistake, we are fully prepared to challenge Republicans head-on and will continue to do so, Polizzi said in an email. This Connecticut district was previously held by a Republican for nearly a century before it flipped blue in 2018 and now its competitive. This is hardly a boon for Republican prospects in Connecticut or elsewhere.

But some special elections in recent years have foretold of trouble ahead: Two special elections in May 1994, in which Republicans won ancestrally Democratic seats in Oklahoma and Kentucky, were a preview of the Republican wave that swept Democrats out of control for the first time in 40 years. Two special elections in May 2008 when Democrats won deep-red seats in Mississippi and Louisiana hinted at the blue wave that would accompany Obama into office.

Biden won office, and Democrats saved control of the House in 2020, on the strength of his performance in suburban areas not unlike Greenwich. The narrow Democratic majority in the House means the party can ill afford any slippage in those neighborhoods.

We need to get our base fired up, Reinken said. We cant be afraid to admit that were on defense, in some ways. If you dont acknowledge the problem, it never gets addressed.

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Democrats sound alarm over loss in Connecticut suburbs | TheHill - The Hill

The view from the Nantucket Ferry. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

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Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,00 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress. The above numbers incidentally come from the Internal Revenue Service, via Bloomberg, and are likely to be more reliable than if they came from Project Veritas via theblaze.com.

We have known for some time that the dark money of Charles Koch is answered by the conspicuous money of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, George Soros, Bill Gates, and a swelling chorus of others, none of whom identify Republican. Yet it has been comforting, in a way, to continue believing that real wealth resides with the old enemy: Big Oil and Big Tobacco and the rest. They were the ultimate source of the power that distorted American society and politics.

The income of their voters aside, Democrats enjoy the active, constant, all-but-avowed support of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, all three of the old television networks, CNN, NPR, and the online mainstream of Slate, Salon, and HuffPost. Any sentient reader can easily add a dozen more outlets. But along with the benefits of this mutual understanding comes a liability. The warm handshake with a friendly media establishment can grow so familiar that you get out of the habit of seeing what it looks like when you strut your stuff in public. And no longer seeing what it looks like, you stop asking what it might look like to people not already on your side.

For Barack Obamas 60th birthday, a celebration in Marthas Vineyard was planned for 500 guests and a staff of 200. Scaled back to minimize the bad optics, the numbers still looked to be in the hundreds; and this at a time when President Biden had lately advised Americans to re-mask and not assemble in large gatherings. Tom Hanks, Chrissy Teigen, Bradley Cooper, Beyoncall were present, making the scene, trailing clouds of glitz. The birthday message couldnt have been plainer: We work so hard, we are doing so much that you are not, every exception should be made for us. The leaked pictures were of undoubtedly cool people, worthy of their very cool host. MORE FROM David Bromwich

The display, however, brought back the memory of Gavin Newsom, caught dining unmasked with some donors after he declared his mask mandate, and more recently Muriel Bowser, caught doing the same just hours before declaring hers. Another dip into the past might recall the moment when Wolf Blitzer, at the height of the budget crush last October, confronted Nancy Pelosi over her stalling tactics on an emergency package to deny Donald Trump an assist at the polls. Blitzer said that he noticed people in city streets, hungry, homeless, and in immediate need. With an air of affronted virtue, Pelosi replied that no action taken by a Democrat like herself could be questioned: We feed them!

Even when a dissident wing of the party succeeds in a worthy causeas with the extension of the eviction moratorium effected by Cori Bush and her congressional alliesa suggestion of deserved status appears in an unpleasant light. A CBS reporter asked Bush about spending $70,000 on private security guards while less fortunate persons would be left to fend for themselves without the police she wants to defund. Bush pointed out that in earlier years she had been evicted three times, and yet she spoke in a voice weirdly similar to Pelosis: I have too much work to do. There are too many people that need help right now. So if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend 10, 10, 10 more dollars on [private security], you know what, I get to be here to do the work. So suck it up. And defunding the police has to happen. A Missouri TV station carried widely different reactions to her stance, from a woman who approved and a man who was having none of it. The citizen opposed to defunding was Black, working-class, in his middle years; the defunder was young, white, professional.

What has drawn the most attention around the eviction moratorium is Bidens risky politics in admitting that his extension probably wouldnt pass constitutional muster, but he was going to try it anyway. Just as interesting was the fact that Bush and her allies thought of landlords as the enemy. It did not occur to them to look higher up and ask for an extension of mortgage due dates to protect middle-class landlords (who depend on rent) from predatory banks.

The partys general tone sometimes seems to disparage the mass of people it cannot patronize. The truth is that property owners and shopkeepers of the middling sort, hard hit by the past 18 months if not the past 18 years, are pretty much off the radar of the new party of the rich. Even if, under Biden, the Democrats are union-friendly to an extent unimaginable in the Clinton and Obama years, the party as a whole remains closer to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood than it is to the merchants who lost their livelihoods in the summer riots of 2020.

For all the good things they do, there are some things you can rely on the Democrats not to do. They wont push hard for a genuinely progressive income tax. They wont raise corporate taxes in a way that would darken the brow of Bezos and Dorsey, Zuckerberg and Gates, or increase the inheritance tax in a way that might make an impression on the grandchildren of the Stanford class of 1985. They have learned to talk about racism, which is good, with intellectual labor-saving devices like systemic, which is not so good. Will they ever talk so frankly aboutas Dickens put it in Our Mutual Friendmoney, money, money, and what money can make of life?

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Have Democrats Become the Party of the Rich? - The Nation

Newsoms dismissal would be painfully demoralizing to Democrats who wield total control over Californias government. It could also energize Republicans by showing they can win even in the bluest parts of the country. The GOP would inevitably frame Newsoms defeat as a repudiation of Democratic governance.

Dont think for a second this isnt also about 2022 and being able to hold the House. The consequences are profound," Newsom said at a get-out-the-vote rally in San Jose on Monday. A no vote would be heard loud and clear, not only across this state, but across the country."

The White House has contemplated getting more invested in Newsoms defense in recent days, and the governor said Saturday that the two camps are in the process of trading schedules to see when President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris would be available to join the campaign trail.

Though the outcome of the recall is still weeks away, some Democrats are already fretting about the potential knock-on effects in New Jersey and Virginia, the only other states with gubernatorial elections later this year and ones that are often viewed as weather vanes for national political currents.

Other than the Virginia governors race, this is the most important thing going on in the United States, veteran Democratic strategist Garry South who advised Gray Davis, the only previous California governor to be recalled said of the Newsom recall effort.

Newsom himself has employed that siren as he and his supporters are dialing up their rhetoric as polls show a tightening race, warning Democrats that his loss would reverberate beyond California and broadly imperil progressives agenda.

States have gained outsized influence during the pandemic through their different strategies of combating the coronavirus, and California and New York have set the tone for Democratic regions. This summer, Newsom was first to require that all students wear masks in schools and led the way on mandating vaccines for teachers getting ahead of the Biden administration.

The leading Republican recall candidate, Larry Elder, has vowed to remove those restrictions immediately and suggests he can turn California into a red state on Covid rules. Republicans are giddy at the prospect of improbable reversals in the two biggest Democratic strongholds where governors were being celebrated last year.

One down. One to go, tweeted conservative radio host Eric Metaxas about Cuomos resignation, along with side-by-side photos of the New York and California governors.

It's been a remarkable fall from grace for Cuomo, who was widely praised for his daily coronavirus briefings, which even won him an honorary Emmy Award. And it would have been difficult a year ago to imagine Newsom being ousted, given that his approval ratings early in the pandemic soared far higher than during his first year in office.

National Republicans smell blood in the water and are eager to yoke Democrats to Cuomo after he announced plans to resign following a damning New York attorney general report detailing a pattern of sexual harassment and a lingering cloud of investigations into several other matters.

While Newsoms woes and Cuomos toppling stem from different sources, both men losing their jobs could bolster a message about the larger failures of Democratic governors, said Republican Governors Association spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez. Voters have been paying closer attention to their governors as state governments lead the response to coronavirus, Rodriguez argued.

Either way, the California recall is likely to be a major test case of electoral politics in the Biden era.

The GOP would be able to convey a sense that Republicans have the wind at their back and that voters are turning against the Democrats whereas among the Democratic base, a lot of activists and contributors would be rattled, said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College and former Republican campaign operative.

Leading Democrats are warning voters that the effects would go well beyond Covid-19 and political momentum. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, at a South Central Los Angeles gathering of teachers and parents to celebrate the Biden child care tax credit, called the California recall a GOP effort at skullduggery aimed to undo the national Democratic agenda.

Our system allows it ... but we do not like it, and we will defeat it, Pelosi said, seated alongside Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), surrounded by crowds of children and mothers in a packed community room.

While Republicans have found periodic success in congressional races or various local offices, their repeated statewide failures in California and New York have often hindered their ability to generate investments from the national party apparatus.

For Republicans, it's a very difficult place to compete, so it's sometimes off the table as they look at allocating their resources, New York Republican operative Dave Catalfamo said.

The collapse of Cuomo, and potentially Newsom, could be a jolt of adrenaline to two state Republican parties that have atrophied in recent years amid a succession of statewide political losses. Arnold Schwarzeneggers 2006 victory was the last for the GOP in California; George Patakis second reelection in 2002 was the last time for New York Republicans.

Such a result might offer some silver linings for Democrats, like allowing leaders from states outside of the New York-California bipolarity to fill the void left by Cuomo and Newsom. And New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is due to become the states first female governor, has reportedly had to relocate fundraising venues because of surging donor interest, a sign of a burst of enthusiasm among Democrats eyeing a post-Cuomo life.

The flip side, of course, is that a Newsom victory would be a reassuring sign for Democrats that theyd be able to hold up as proof of the partys electoral durability, and provide a useful counter to Republican attempts to wield Cuomo as a cudgel against them.

However the larger battle in New York will not be for more than a year, when Republicans will go up against Hochul in her quest for a full term or whomever Democrats nominate. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) is the partys presumptive choice, but he is still fending off an underdog fight from Andrew Giuliani, and the GOP is having to retool its messaging with Cuomo on the outs.

Likewise the parties will also square off again for control of the California governorship in 2022, a contest whose contours will undoubtedly be sculpted by the results of the recall vote. Newly energized Republicans could lead to higher turnout and more GOP investment in the states congressional swing districts next year.

California Democrats are urging their voters to stop Republicans in their tracks now.

If they get this state, Newsom told supporters on a recent get-out-the-vote call, they can weaponize it from a national meta-narrative, the impacts are profound for Chuck Schumer, for Nancy Pelosi, for President Biden.

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Democrats stunned by prospect of losing 2 biggest governors within weeks - Politico

COLUMBUS, OhioWith just 5 months to go until Ohios primary candidate filing deadline, theres an unusual dearth of Democratic candidates for most statewide offices in 2022.

While there are competitive Democratic primaries on tap for the two top statewide offices U.S. Senate and governor so far the only Democrat to launch a down-ticket statewide campaign is Chelsea Clark, a relatively unknown city council member from suburban Cincinnati, for secretary of state.

No Democrats have announced or are even publicly exploring campaigns for attorney general, state treasurer or state auditor. By comparison, by mid-August 2017, the eventual Democratic nominees for all four executive down-ticket offices had announced their intention to run months earlier.

You would think that things already would be ramping up, particularly in terms of challengers to incumbents, but it just hasnt happened, said Paul Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University.

Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Matt Keyes said state party leaders are still recruiting candidates ahead of the Feb. 2, 2022 primary filing deadline, and some have expressed interest though he declined to name who those people are.

Weve had some good conversations, and were confident that were going to have a strong, diverse ticket, he said.

According to conversations with Keyes, other Democratic officials and Ohio political observers, here are three reasons that so few Democrats have thrown their hats into the ring for statewide offices so far:

In 2018, in addition to winning the governors race, Republicans swept races for attorney general (Dave Yost), secretary of state (Frank LaRose), state treasurer (Robert Sprague), and state auditor (Keith Faber). Next year, all four are expected to run for re-election, and theyre considered to be even stronger candidates this time around. Not only are they incumbents (which makes it easier for them to raise money and have a name familiar to voters), but conventional political wisdom dictates that the party controlling the White House tends to face problems during midterm elections. In 2018, Republican Donald Trump was president; this cycle, its Democrat Joe Biden. In addition, many Democratic rank-and-file members are paying more attention to the races for governor and U.S. Senate, which they see as more important and potentially more winnable.

Perhaps the biggest factor giving Democrats pause is redistricting. As Ohio like other states is launching its decennial process of redrawing its congressional and legislative districts, many Democrats are waiting to see what the new maps look like before deciding on their 2022 plans. Democrats in the state legislature (a frequent source of statewide candidates for the party) want to see if the redrawn districts put their re-election chances into jeopardy, and Democrats both in and outside of the legislature are keeping open their options of running for Congress or another legislative seat if redistricting gives them a good shot at winning.

For the past decade, Ohio Democrats have faced the same knock on their election chances: with Republicans holding control over all three branches of state government (and dominating Ohios congressional delegation), there arent as many prominent Democratic officeholders rising through the ranks to run a competitive campaign for statewide office. That often means that Democrats who do run have to spend more time introducing themselves to voters, raising money and building a statewide political campaign.

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Here are 3 reasons why there arent more Ohio Democrats running for statewide office in 2022 - cleveland.com

Nancy Pelosi is in a high-stakes game with members of her own party. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

As Washington pols and journalists were focused on the tragic developments in Afghanistan in recent days, some new drama emerged on the domestic front over the timing and content of must-pass legislation, with divisions sharpening among Democrats. For weeks now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been warning that the bipartisan infrastructure package would not be brought up in that chamber until a FY 2022 budget resolution and reconciliation bill had cleared the Senate, too. Pelosis aim has been to make sure Democratic centrists in both the House and Senate dont bail on the big prize the reconciliation bill or make unreasonable demands about its size and shape once they have their precious bipartisan symbol in hand.

Chief Senate Democratic centrist wheeler-dealers Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have been cautiously testing how far they can push Democratic progressives on the reconciliation bill before endangering the infrastructure bill, suggesting that their votes for the budget resolution capping the reconciliation bill at $3.5 trillion doesnt mean they will vote for a package of that size. But on August 12, nine of their House counterparts upped the ante significantly, demanding that Pelosi bring up and pass the infrastructure bill before even finishing up work on the budget resolution, much less beginning work on the reconciliation (which is expected to take weeks, maybe months, to put together, as you might expect from legislation implementing Bidens massive American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan).

Pelosi countered with a public offer to create a rule (the House procedural mechanism for scheduling and structuring floor votes) that would include both the infrastructure bill and the budget resolution essentially a pledge that one would pass in conjunction with the other. But that doesnt mean the infrastructure bill would necessarily come up first, and it certainly wouldnt keep Pelosi from holding back the infrastructure bill until her original demand of Senate passage of both the budget resolution and the reconciliation bill were met first. While this looked like a bid from Pelosi for talks toward a compromise, the House centrists rejected it in a statement (per Punchbowl News):

While we appreciate the forward procedural movement on the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, our view remains consistent: We should vote first on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework without delay and then move to immediate consideration of the budget resolution.

The centrists arent just circling Pelosi with demands; behind her are Democratic progressives in both chambers who grudgingly supported the infrastructure deal in order to ensure party unity on the budget resolution and the reconciliation bill. And its also important to note that Democratic factions themselves are not necessarily on the same page when it comes to the crucial reconciliation bill. Perhaps Manchin and Sinema just want a less pricey package. But as my colleague Jonathan Chait recently observed, most of the rebellious House centrists appear to want provisions (particularly tax benefits for wealthy donors and constituents) that will boost the price of the bill.

Pelosis original plan was to pass the budget resolution the minute the House returns briefly next week, and then give staff from both Houses and from the White House time to work on the highly complex reconciliation bill. While that timetable can still work from a mechanical point of view, its increasingly obvious that key Democrats need to sit down and work out everything now in sufficient detail to ensure that Bidens hopes of both an infrastructure bill and a reconciliation bill arent dashed by intraparty divisions or misunderstandings. That means a pretty clear understanding of what will be in the ultimate reconciliation bill; how much spending will be involved; and how it will be paid for in revenues. Its too late for any more delaying tactics aimed at increasing leverage for anyone.

Once House and Senate Democrats are all onboard with a comprehensive deal, Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and, yes, Joe Biden, will be in a position to threaten hell on earth for any Democrat from any faction who tries to sabotage any of the key legislation. The deal-making window will be closed, and at that point, Pelosi and Schumer can roll out the votes however they wish. Indeed, given what is happening in Afghanistan, perhaps Democrats will all agree to give Biden his infrastructure bill so he can have a Rose Garden ceremony and a kegger to celebrate the bipartisan accomplishment. But that can only happen if all the deals go down immediately. Not only will this approach simply accelerate what needs to happen eventually, it could also keep the infrastructure-reconciliation combo platter from becoming even more complicated by debt limit and appropriations cliffs in the autumn.

The key factor here is for all Democrats to realize that the success or failure of Joe Bidens presidency is at stake not next year or in 2023, but now. If either the infrastructure bill or the reconciliation bill falls apart, the already high odds of Democrats losing their governing trifecta in 2022 will go up sharply, making all those House centrists toast and emboldening Republicans to go for total power in 2024 before even thinking about any sort of positive legislative agenda of their own. The August recess can wait.

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Democrats in Congress Need to Cut to the Chase With a Deal on Everything - New York Magazine

FULTON COUNTY (WEEK) - A second candidate has come forward wanting to be the next Fulton County sheriff.

Senior Deputy Ryan Maricle, who's been with the sheriff's department for 17 1/2 years, said he's running as a Democrat to replace retiring sheriff Jeff Standard.

Maricle is the most recent recipient of the Illinois Sheriffs' Association "Deputy of the Year" award for helping save the life of a woman while he was off-duty in July 2020. Her lawn mower had rolled into a body of water, and she was trapped underneath. Maricle and the woman's husband helped keep her head above water until first responders could free her, according to a sheriffs' association news release.

Maricle spent 10 1/2 years as a patrol officer with the sheriff's office, and he was assigned seven years ago to the Illinois State Police Drug Task Force.

Maricle said in a news release that he is a union member and takes part in contract negotiations for deputies as vice president of AFSCME Local 3433.

Maricle added that he's a lifelong Fulton County resident, as is the first Republican to enter the race.

Sgt. Jon Webb is the department's chief detective and announced earlier in the week that he's running as a Republican.

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'Deputy of the Year' to run as a Democrat for Fulton County sheriff - week.com