DeSantis gets smacked, more swing state races to watch
And everybody hates JD Vance.
Welcome to a Friday edition of Progress Report.
I intended on sending this yesterday, but I’ve been dealing with some health issues and staying up to 2 am to finish the work, as I normally do, doesn’t really help matters. I’ll figure out a new way to get this work done so that everyone’s still getting the news in a timely fashion going forward.
Today I want to dive through some news and then present the new slate of swing state legislative candidates for your perusal and potential donations. Readers kicked in around $8K for this past week’s candidates — it all went to them, I don’t get a penny — and we’re at the point where campaigns can still put new donations to use for another week or so.
Note: To make this work as accessible as possible, I’ve lowered the price for a paid subscription back down to Substack’s $5 minimum. If you can’t afford that right now, please email me and I’ll put you on the list for free. Every paid subscription makes it easier for me to comp one while becoming sustainable.
Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors:
DeSaster: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got a rhetorical smack in the mouth from a federal judge who granted a restraining order to prevent further harassment of TV stations running ads for a pro-choice amendment. The DeSantis administration’s attempts to force local TV stations to stop running ads in support of Amendment Four had escalated to threats of criminal prosecution.
“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false,’” Judge Mark E. Walker wrote in his order. “To keep it simple for the state of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”
Somebody wasn’t impressed by the “Free State of Florida” slogan.
The two sides will be back in court on October 29th. In the meantime, DeSantis continues to spend taxpayer money to campaign against the amendment, ordering one state agency after another to put out misleading material and what rights the state guarantees. The outlay is now approaching $20 million, with more likely to come.
Foiled: The Nebraska Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Secretary of State Bob Evnen was wrong to stop allowing former felons to register to vote. Evnen, along with the state’s attorney general, had issued a legal advisory claiming the right to ignore LB 20, the new law that immediately restored voting rights to former felons after they’d served their time.
The narrow ruling from a split court did not address their claim that the executive branch had sole discretion over voting rights restoration, setting up a future constitutional showdown. But that’s for another day; Evnen said that he’ll drop his blockade for this election and make sure that county registrars follow suit.
Polls: TIPP, a top-level pollster, just put out a new survey of Georgia that has some mixed news. In a head-to-head contest, former President Donald Trump is up 0.2% among likely voters, while Vice President Kamala Harris leads by 3% among registered voters. The odd part is that Trump is relying on less frequent and engaged voters.
The full field shows a similar effect, though with Harris on top of both; she leads by 0.3% among likely voters and 3.5% among registered voters.
A new survey from Howard University finds that 84% of Black voters in swing states plan on voting for Harris, while just 8% of them say they’ll cast a ballot for former Trump. Trump’s standing fell from the September edition of the poll, which found 12% of respondents saying they planned to support him.
In other polling news, a new survey from YouGov finds that people really, really hate JD Vance and there’s nothing he can do about it:
Massachusetts: In something of a predictable disappointment, Mass Gov. Maura Healy has come out against a ballot initiative that would phase out the tipped minimum wage. Question Five would raise the wage for tipped servers from $6.75 to parity with the minimum wage guaranteed to every other worker in the state.
The proposal is relatively incremental, as it would take until 2029 to fully phase out the tipped wage, giving employers plenty of time to adjust. But Healy, taking the side of the state restaurant association lobby and every other anti-worker group, claims that it would nonetheless put restaurants and bars out of business.
Virginia: In one of the better political ads I’ve seen this year, Republican candidate for Congress Derek Anderson is mercilessly mocked for trying to trick voters with images of a fake family on his website and YouTube page. Anderson, a former Green Beret, was caught posting photos of himself posing with a woman and her three daughters in a way that falsely suggested that he was part of the family.
Eugene Vindman is running against Anderson in Virginia’s 7th Congressional district, a seat being abdicated by Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanbarger, who is running for governor next year.
Bad people: This may come as a shocker, but Chris Rufo is full of shit.
A new investigation reveals that Rufo very likely lied about the video he claimed to depict a cat being cooked in Dayton, OH, which was held up as evidence to support the racist conspiracy theories about immigrants from Haiti and Congo promoted by JD Vance and Donald Trump.
I’ve spent the past six months raging against Rufo, the white nationalist pseudo-intellectual responsible for launching the right-wing hysteria over Critical Race Theory, trans kids, and the protestors on Ivy League campuses, and I’m happy to stay that I was right.
Hmmmm: I’m glad that Democrats are beginning to recognize and address their dire situation with male voters this election, as I’ve been screaming about, but I’m not sure rhetoric like this from Tim Walz, is the way to go about it.
Thanks to the generosity of Progress Report readers, we were able to raise around $8K for the first wave of critical swing state legislative candidates in less than a week, with zero SEO or social push.
I’ve updated the ActBlue with a new slate of candidates, replacing the first 11 with these eight vetted candidates (including a few sitting legislators) who would help to flip or hold key legislative chambers.
Minnesota
Kari Rehrauer, House District 35B: A long-time teacher and union member who remains vocally pro-labor, Rehrauer now serves on the Coon Rapids City Council. Democrats held on to this seat by just 1.3% in 2022 and could lose it without an incumbent.
Lorrie Janatopoulos, House District 7B: Janatopoulos works at the MN Department of Employment and Economic Development and has been deeply involved in state government for decades. She’s deeply pro-union and takes every chance she can to emphasize her mining credentials. That’s a must in Minnesota’s Iron Range, which has gone from a Democratic stronghold to voting for Trump by 4.5% in 2020 and electing Republicans in all but one legislative district. The Democratic incumbent who holds this seat is retiring.
Pennsylvania
Anna Payne, House District 142: This Bucks County district was decided by just 80 votes in 2022, underscoring just how purple and competitive the county has become. Payne was born with cystic fibrosis and survived colon cancer, and as a matter of solidarity, I will almost always root for people who grew up sick and did not let it stop them.
Wisconsin
Duane Shukoski, Assembly District 53: A longtime union worker who moved up to environmental management during a long career at Kimberly-Clark, which makes him as Fox Valley as it gets. He’s pro-public education, pro-choice, and the kind of candidate who has a great chance of flipping a district that’s been un-gerrymandered in this rural-ish area.
Christy Welch, Assembly District 88: As chair of the Brown County Democratic Party, Welch helped revive the local operation just in time for the end of gerrymandering and resumption of competitive elections. Notably, she’s running against a guy named Benjamin Franklin.
Arizona
Lorena Austin, Legislative District 9: The first non-binary person to serve in the Arizona legislature, Austin is a fifth-generation Arizonan who was first elected in 2022. The Mesa native grew up in affordable housing, which has become one of their signature issues in a state that has one of the worst housing crises in the nation.
Christine Marsh, Senate District 4: Named Arizona’s Teacher of the Year in 2016 and still working in the classroom, Marsh has become a key figure in the fight to mitigate the damage caused by school vouchers. She’s being challenged by a fringe Mom for Liberty school board member in this GOP-leaning Scottsdale district. I spoke with Marsh last month about the race, her opponent, school privatization, and the absolute insanity of Arizona Republicans.
Karen Gresham, Legislative District 4: Gresham is running in the same district as Marsh, as Arizona sends one state senator and two House members for each district. She is currently the president of her elementary school district’s governing board, so she’d be another key voice for public education in a state that is being quicly bankrupt by school privatization.
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