Progressives Every Day: Socialists beat Amazon, Iowa Dems get clever
And a new Kennedy rises
It’s Tuesday and I’ve got a laptop and only a mild headache, so it’s time for Progressives Everywhere!
Before we get started, here’s a fun interview with Jarvis Cocker, an underappreciated genius and one of my personal heroes.
OK, let’s get to it.
Rock the Absentee Vote
As always, plenty of voting news to report, some stories better than others. Let’s start off with some of that good stuff for once.
In Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, nearly 80,000 people voted in just the first week of early voting ahead of next week’s primary runoff. Almost 65% of those votes were cast via absentee ballot, a huge jump from the 39% of people who voted via mail in the initial primary last March (the runoff was delayed several months due to COVID-19). Much of that increase can be chalked up to voters aged 65 and over opting to vote by mail, which is especially heartening when you consider Texas’s absentee ballot laws.
This is a very good sign because, as we’ve reported here for the last few weeks, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, an actual sociopath who is facing a criminal trial for financial crimes, refuses to extend no-excuse absentee voting to the general election. Democrats sued him over the policy and after a lower court affirmed his voter suppression, the Supreme Court refused to take up the case, thereby reaffirming it. Paxton has gone so far as to threaten to arrest anyone that requests an absentee ballot and cites fear of COVID-19 as a reason.
One of Progressives Everywhere’s 2020 candidates, Akilah Bacy, is competing in the runoff in House District 138 next week and is favored to win.
In Iowa, Secretary of State Paul Pate extended early voting and sent absentee ballot applications to everyone in the state for the primary, which led to a record number of Iowans voting in a primary (go figure!). Spooked by democracy, Republicans in the legislature quickly passed a law that required him to ask their permission to send ballot applications to everyone in the general election — permission they had no intention of granting.
This is backfiring spectacularly. So far, seven counties have committed to sending absentee ballot applications to their residents anyway, covering about 43% of the state’s population. Crucially, there are 120,000 more Democrats than Republicans in those counties, and unless the GOP-controlled counties decide to send ballot requests as well, they’re going to be at an automatic disadvantage.
We’re also seeing some of the dangers of mail-in voting, especially in places where it’s not often used. As anyone who lived through the nightmare that was the Florida 2000 recount can tell you, just because someone cast a ballot doesn’t mean election officials will accept it. In New York, tens of thousands of votes have still not been counted, while many others are going to be disqualified for various technical issues, ranging from missing postmarks (which is in no way the fault of voters!) to missing signatures.
In Kentucky, meanwhile, 9% of absentee ballots in Lexington’s home county have been rejected:
Many of the races for which we’re fundraising this year are in districts that were decided by less than 500 votes in 2018; a handful of them were decided by less than 100 votes. Every single vote matters and in these races especially, partisan election officials can pretty easily put their thumb on the scale and decide the outcome.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps on lying
One by one, Republican governors have been forced to acknowledge reality and take action to contain the COVID-19 spikes in their states. Not all of their responses have been particularly useful — on Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine mandated masks in the state’s hardest-hit counties, which is like building a dam out of mesh — but they’ve at least shown that they sort of give a crap.
And then there is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose love for Donald Trump is rivaled only by his love for the coronavirus. Yesterday, his administration announced that schools would have to open in the fall should conditions allow for it, which is pretty worrisome given DeSantis’s incessant lying and obfuscation. He refuses to release daily hospitalization records, and on Tuesday, he suggested that cases in the state were “stabilizing,” which is clearly not the case — over the long weekend, they topped 11,000 new cases in a single day. Hospitals are filling up with COVID patients at a rapid clip, approaching a danger zone that doomed so many in New York in April.
DeSantis’s refusal to mandate masks and his fellow Republicans’ inability to stick to any kind of restrictions — the mayor of Miami-Dade County rolled back a gym shutdown on Tuesday — is proving increasingly deadly. The state is dealing with the worst outbreak in the country right now, its children are suffering long-term lung damage from the virus, and two-thirds of parents don’t feel comfortable sending their kids back for in-person lessons right now.
Oh, and things aren’t too peachy in Arizona right now, either. Funny story, Gov. Doug Ducey also refuses to mandate masks, leaving it up to municipalities.
Amazon defeated by socialists
After a years-long campaign led by socialists on the city council, Seattle passed a payroll tax on large corporations and their highest-paid employees on Tuesday. The city, once a cool Pacific Northwest hippie town, has been gentrified into an expanse of glass towers and Starbucks storefronts by the growth of Amazon, Microsoft, and other big tech companies. Jeff Bezos spent big on fighting both the legislators and the tax, but fell flat on his face both times.
Under the measure, businesses with at least $7 million in annual payroll expenses will be taxed 0.7% to 2.4% on the amount they pay Seattle-based employees, with tiers based on individual salary amounts above $150,000. The highest bracket targets companies like Amazon with annual payroll expenses above $1 billion. Those companies will be taxed 2.4% for employees making more than $400,000.
The money collected by the tax will go toward fighting COVID-19 and then, when that emergency has passed, will be directed toward fighting homelessness and housing shortages.
Don’t worry about Bezos, though — his net worth has increased by $66 billion this year and he’s now worth about $180 billion. Meanwhile, Seattle’s 2020 housing budget was just north of $300 million.
Quibis
New Jersey held its primary elections on Tuesday. While it looks like repugnant Dem Rep. Josh Gottheimer is going to win his primary, there was a bit of an upset in South Jersey, where Amy Kennedy — wife of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy — beat machine candidate Brigid Callahan Harrison. She will take on Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 and then promptly defected to the GOP.
Kennedy was backed by progressive groups, and though she’s probably not going to be joining the DSA any time soon, her victory is a big deal in New Jersey. The state is one of the last bastions of old machine politics and Harrison was backed by most of NJ’s elected leaders, including Sen. Cory Booker, as well as corrupt kingmaker George Norcross. Kennedy had the backing of Gov. Phil Murphy, who is battling with Norcross — who doesn’t even hold elected office — for control of the state’s Democratic Party.
With some eviction protections expiring in New York, housing courts will soon be filling up with landlords seeking to kick people out of their homes amid the pandemic. State Sen. Zellnore Myrie (who we supported in 2018) just introduced a bill to put a moratorium on evictions that would protect people for a year after Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifts his state of emergency.
This is a lot of fun:
A note about our crowdfunding campaign: Progressives Everywhere will always be a free newsletter. Together we've raised over $1 million for progressives candidates and causes and over $1.5 million for bail funds and grassroots community groups! We’ve grown so much that it costs $100 just to send this email, and there are other costs as well (like a new computer this weekend!!).
To help support the cause, you can also make donations at GoFundMe (you’ll be thanked in future public editions of the newsletter).