New York is failing as a blue state
Hochul and Jeffries try to push Democrats right, while progress comes in Michigan
Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.
It’s official: Republicans are beyond parody.
I kicked off Wednesday evening’s edition of this newsletter by declaring that “God, guns, and gas stoves” were the new holy trinity of birthrights of all patriotic Americans. It was a dumb joke about the Republican outrage du jour, and a comment on the right-wing’s outrage machine’s eagerness to spin even the smallest and most inconsequential comment into an attack on the fundamental freedoms enjoyed by white, non-”woke” Americans.
Less than 24 hours later, the very dumb joke became a very dumb reality courtesy of a very dumb Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan.
It was momentarily surprising to see something that I’d said with stinging contempt, something that was so obviously a joke, become a slogan for Republicans. But it quickly became obvious that this was always going to be the next step in their attempt to add another front in their relentless culture war. Now I just find it depressing, because they have surpassed the concept of parody itself.
On that note, we’ve got a lot to cover tonight, which counts as the first installment of what should be a dedicated weekly look at the political and policy action happening in state capitols and city halls across the country.
New York
Gov. Kathy Hochul used her State of the State address this week to outline her priorities for her first full term in office. As expected, it was filled with grandiose-sounding but ultimately modest proposals for a state that needs big solutions.
The most significant of Hochul’s proposals was the housing plan that she cooked up with outrageously corrupt NYC Mayor Eric Adams. The central goal of the New York Housing Compact is the construction of 800,000 new units of affordable housing over the next decade.
It’s an ambitious goal, and one that she hopes to accomplish with a mixture of zoning law changes and tax incentives to real estate developers (who happen to make up a significant chunk of her most generous donors). It’s a carrot and stick plan, as the state will take over housing approval plans in towns that don’t produce the prescribed number of new units. The plan would require towns with MTA access to increase units by 3% over three years, with a lower number for those further away from high-speed public transit.
What the plan doesn’t include is any protections for renters, even as calls from the legislature continue to escalate alongside rent prices.
Hochul also proposed indexing the state minimum wage to annual inflation, with the caveat that there would be “guardrails” that would likely limit the wage’s annual growth. It’s a modest proposal, but a far cry from the projected impact of State Sen. Jessica Ramos’s staggered raise proposal that would take the minimum to $21.25 in NYC and $20 elsewhere by 2026. Still, people involved in the Ramos effort told me that they were happy that Hochul put a semi-concrete minimum wage proposal in the speech, because it gives them something solid to build on.
Hochul’s agenda has been overshadowed, though, by her insistence on trying to force Democrats to confirm her terrible choice for Chief Justice of the state’s highest court.
After more than a week of jousting, it’s starting to get really, really ugly, and as of tonight, pulling major national Democrats into the battle.
There have already been 14 Democrats to come out against the nomination of Hector LaSalle, a former prosecutor with a track record of anti-worker, anti-abortion rulings, and the State Senate Majority Leader has said there’s no path for this guy’s confirmation, but Hochul persists on doing her best Andrew Cuomo impression.
She held a rally for LaSalle in the Bronx tonight, where Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on the legislators to allow LaSalle’s nomination to sail through with avid Republican support. It’d be odd for him to get involved in any circumstances, but it’s particularly galling here.
The previous Chief Justice of the appellate court, also a conservative, was responsible for ordering a conservative-drawn Congressional redistricting map that was so awful that Jeffries himself compared it to a Jim Crow gerrymander. It ultimately cost Democrats four Congressional seats, which gave Republicans their majority. Jeffries has always been a two-faced corporate Democrat, but going to the mat for the conservatives that denied him a turn at being Speaker of the House? That’s next level.
New York’s Democratic Party has long been a front for business-bought conservatives. Andrew Cuomo worked hard to keep it that way for many years, and it was only in 2018, when progressives ousted turncoat members who allied with Republicans, that the the conservative grip on the party started to loosen. While much has changed since, the party is still chaired by Jay Jacobs, a Cuomo ally and obnoxious and condescending corporate goon who continues to enjoy Hochul’s support even after Democrats’ disastrous November election. This fight could prove decisive in that larger war.
Michigan
Democrats have total control of the state government for the first time in 40 years, and they’ve wasted no time in beginning to address a decades-long backlog of policies and priorities. The legislature’s first list of proposed bills does not lack for ambition.
Most prominently is the repeal of the state’s “right to work” law, a vicious anti-union scheme passed by a gerrymandered Republican trifecta in 2012. The law significantly weakens organized labor’s resources by allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues while still receiving all the benefits of a union’s collective bargaining agreement, workplace advocacy, and legal resources.
Originally devised as a way to kneecap the organizing efforts that were uniting low-wage Black employees in the Deep South, “right to work” is now a favorite of business lobbies everywhere. It was almost unthinkable that it would pass in Michigan, the birthplace of the post-NLRA labor movement.
A decade later, Democrats, who received immense support from unions in their successful November takeover, will seek to restore Michigan’s status as the home of a labor movement on the rise and ahead of the dawn of what should hopefully be a new industrial era.
Other proposals include a significant expansion the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit. The beefed up EITC would offer a 30% match of the federal government’s share, up from the mere 6% it is right now.
Minnesota
Another newly minted midwestern trifecta, another slate of ambitious first bills. Already, they’re making progress on legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion protections, a broad new set of voting rights, and paid family and medical leave. All of these proposals had been blocked for years by a slim GOP majority in the state Senate.
A whopping 75% of workers in Minnesota have no access to paid leave for the birth/adoption of a child or in the event that they have to care for a sick loved one. This bill would provide up to 12 weeks paid in each instance, starting as early as 2025.
The bill would levy a tax on businesses to pay for the program, but Walz said the benefits far outweigh the costs. The budget surplus may also be used to jump-start the program, potentially making paid family leave available to workers as soon as fiscal year 2025, said Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Steve Grove.
The first bill to get Gov. Tim Walz’s signature this year was actually a bipartisan proposal that will help Minnesotans avoid getting walloped by taxes on economic relief payments.
Maine
Newly re-elected Governor Janet Mills, no bleeding heart liberal, presented an annual budget that modestly expands the social safety net and keeps education funding on track.
Under the plan, Mills, pitches $30 million to expand affordable rental housing options for workers and families, one of the most pressing issues the state faces. Another policy in Mills’ plan is $101 million to maintain the state’s commitment to funding 55% of education costs, a voter-mandated obligation that Maine only met for the first time under Mills. In addition, the plan contains $58 million for continuing universal free meals in schools for kids.
Even more significant slices of the budget go toward mental health and elder care. The more progressive legislature will be eager to beef up funding for items like affordable housing and criminal justice reform, which got short shrift in the budget.
Ohio and Nebraska
Unsatisfied with total control of their respective state governments, Republicans in Nebraska and Ohio are doubling down on voter suppression laws.
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine just signed what experts are calling the strict voter ID law in the country. Voters will now be required to produce a driver’s license, state ID, passport, or military ID in order to cast their ballot. That will disproportionately impact poor and working class Ohioans, who make up a vast majority of the millions of people in the state who have suspended driver’s licenses.
Most of the suspended licenses aren’t a punishment for drunk driving or repeated other violations.
The analysis Legal Aid Society of Cleveland report shows that huge numbers of Ohioans have licenses that are suspended for debt-related reasons — and they face a steep climb in getting their licenses reinstated or to get a state-issued ID.
The researchers issued open records requests to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles to gather data showing that for each year between 2016 and 2020, more than 1 million drivers had licenses suspended because of debts related to traffic fines and fees and unpaid child support. In addition, the average suspended driver has multiple suspensions, with 3 million suspensions a year in the state, the report said.
License suspensions become a vicious cycle. Without a driver’s license, people are far less likely to be able to hold a regular job, and without steady income, they’re unable to pay off the debt that has put their license on ice. And without that license, they will in most cases be unable to cast a vote, which means that this law is essentially a poll tax much like the one in Florida that requires returning citizens to pay back all accumulated court fines and fees before recovering their right to vote.
Voters in Nebraska approved a ballot initiative in November to impose photo ID requirement at the polls. Now, one legislator is trying to gild the lily by piling on additional road blocks to casting a ballot.
Two bills introduced by state Sen. Steve Erdman, of Bayard, go beyond simply requiring government-issued photo identification to be presented to vote. While the measures would make primary and general election days state holidays and would cancel some fees to acquire IDs, they also would largely eliminate voting by mail for all except those who could show an inability to go to the polls, such as registered military members, nursing home residents and those away at college. One of his bills would also require all ballots to be counted on Election Day.
It should come as no surprise that Erdman is an avowed election denier, yet even he cannot name a single incident of voter fraud in Nebraska’s history.
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