Bright Polls, Dark Money

And some preposterous lawsuits

Welcome to a Wednesday edition of Progress Report.

There’s a lot to cover today, so I’m breaking it up into two newsletters. This one is filled with new poll numbers, election news, housing policy updates, and thoughts on the corruption taking place in primaries. Tomorrow’s edition will focus on a startling new trend in workers’ rights, corporate power, and the exploitation of youth.

By the way, any Mets fans out there? How about that Brett Baty?!

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Ohio: Republicans in the Ohio legislature are very, very greedy, and now they’re seeking to cement their ill-gotten super majorities with help from the US Supreme Court.

Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman wants to take the state's congressional map to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Ohio Supreme Court overstepped by meddling in mapmaking.

"Drawing districts is supposed to be, under the original premise of the (U.S.) Constitution, up to the state Legislature," Huffman told the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, adding that Ohio faces "similar issues" to a North Carolina case that the U.S. Supreme Court recently chose to review.

"The question that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to decide is: Does the state Supreme Court, in this case, the Ohio Supreme Court, have the authority to say this is how these are going to be drawn?" Huffman said.

Huffman is trying to cue up another opportunity for the Supreme Court’s far-right conservatives to invoke the batshit “Independent Legislature Theory,” which essentially tosses away state Supreme Courts and allows legislatures to do whatever they want. It’s legally specious on its own, but the circumstances around the Ohio lawsuit make it entirely irrelevant.

With the help of a federal judge, Republicans this summer were able to outlast an exhausting back-and-forth with the Ohio Supreme Court and force illegal gerrymanders down the throat of voters that rejected them just a few years ago. As a result, Republicans are now getting to run on their patently unfair maps this fall, and only face possibility of having to run in more competitive districts starting in 2024.

Huffman’s complaints make no sense because the Ohio state Supreme Court ultimately had no impact on the state’s new legislative and Congressional maps. What’s more, the court was only seeking to enforce a constitutional amendment that was approved by voters. The state legislature cannot unilaterally change the state constitution — logically, anyway. We’ll see how far this suit gets.

North Carolina: The Charlotte City Council will vote next week on a new zoning plan, known as the Unified Development Ordinance, that would be one of the most ambitious revisions of an American city’s development policy.

As is so often the case, the most contentious element is the provision that would permit multi-unit housing in what has been traditionally single-family neighborhoods. The NIMBYs are not happy.

Some residents fear the rules threaten the character of those neighborhoods while other housing advocates and some City Council members say the rules will help address a housing shortage.

The UDO also would help implement the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which narrowly won City Council approval last June. The 2040 plan contains lofty goals, like 10-minute neighborhoods where residents can access key amenities such as supermarkets and child care within a 10-minute walk, bike ride or transit trip.

The proposed UDO states that duplexes and triplexes (and quadraplexes if at least one unit is affordable for families earning up to 80% of the area median income) can be built in traditionally single-family neighborhoods.

When residents say they worry that housing in particular will “threaten the character of the neighborhood,” what they really mean is that they don’t want the city to incentivize housing that might be occupied by people who are not as rich as them or do not share their racial identity. They’d be better off saying that they don’t want their home value to increase more slowly; at least that’s more understandable and slightly less euphemistic, if still very selfish.

The vote on the UDO will take place on August 22nd.

Florida: Speaking of wealthy special interests protesting new housing policies, the Florida real estate lobby did the inevitable on Tuesday and filed a lawsuit against Orange County for putting a rent control initiative on the November ballot.

This all emerged in a county where there are an estimated 230,000 rental units. Occupancy levels run 95%. Rent increased an average of 25% in a year. A majority of tenant households qualify as “cost burdened.” The population has increased 25% in a decade.

The Realtors and the Apartment Association argued that Orange County not only did not prove a housing authority that severe, they also ignored advice from the County Attorney and from a consultant about what that should entail before adopting the ordinance.

I would love to see the lobbyists arguing that the county is not in a housing emergency. I’d love it even more if Ron DeSantis came out and commented on it.

Year of the Woman

When a huge surge in women registering to vote in Kansas after the fall of Roe v. Wade helped pro-choice activists turn aside the state’s anti-abortion amendment, speculation immediately turned to whether it would be a one-off phenomenon or the sign of things to come this fall.

There’s a long way to go, but at this rate, there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Now, as we move ahead through additional state primaries and toward the midterm elections, there is evidence that what happened in Kansas isn’t an outlier. In states like Wisconsin and Michigan where reproductive rights are at stake this year, we’re seeing a meaningful gender gap in registration, whereby women are out-registering men by significant margins. In states like Rhode Island and New York where reproductive rights are protected by Democratic leaders in government, no gender gap exists.

The gap in Michigan and Wisconsin isn’t nearly as wide as was in Kansas, but with a few months to go, it could and should continue growing.

Poll Numbers

Ohio: The Ohio Senate race is extremely tight right now.