The Biggest Elections That Nobody’s Discussing

They’ll shape education, affordable housing, and power, among other things

Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.

First off, thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion around this weekend’s newest piece on the Israel/Gaza war and the Democratic Party’s growing divide. The comments (and emails directly to me) were heartfelt, illuminating, and no matter where people stood on the issue, they participated in good faith. That’s an exceedingly rare occurrence anywhere on the internet right now and I’m both grateful and proud that this community made it happen.

The piece was ultimately about whether President Biden can find a way to unify the Democratic coalition in time to win in 2024; just a few hours later, The NY Times posted that horrendous Sienna poll that showed the president getting creamed by Donald Trump in four of five major swing states that will likely decide the next federal elections. I guess I was on to something.

We’ll talk briefly about that poll and its implications later in tonight’s newsletter. The main story tonight is about some of the coolest and most significant local ballot initiatives in the country.

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Ballot initiatives

The biggest initiatives and amendments on the ballot this fall have been well-established and thoroughly covered — both reproductive rights and marijuana legalization seem well-positioned in Ohio based on polls and early voting — but there are plenty of other important measures, especially at the city and county level, that either we haven’t covered or just haven’t gotten much shine nationally.

Here are some of the most notable initiatives, each of which would be transformative — for better or worse (but mostly better) — if approved by voters.

📚 In Virginia’s Hanover County, a grassroots campaign is seeking to democratize the board of education. At the moment, the rural county’s school board is appointed by the County Board of Supervisors, which is vestige of the Jim Crow era when local governments worked hard to keep schools segregated. Most of Virginia has already moved away from appointed school boards.

Parents in Hanover began organizing to get the switch on the ballot after the appointed members of the Hannover County BOE moved to expedite book bans and passed a gross new bathroom policy meant to humiliate trans kids. In a conservative county, it became clear that only way to really replace these school board members was through direct elections.

Hanover Citizens for an Elected School Board, which has the backing of state NAACP and ACLU chapters, collected over 9,000 petition signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and raised over $10,000 for its campaign. A group opposing democratic elections, Keep Hanover Students First, has since sprung up and raised more than $50,000, in large part through the largesse of the local Republican Party.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin rode the bigoted “parents’ rights” movement into the governor’s mansion, and with every seat in the legislature up for grabs on Tuesday, battles over school policy will help dictate which party winds up in charge.

🏠 😌 After vigorous debate, Tacoma, WA is on the verge of passing the most significant renter-protection initiative in years.

The proposed law contains an expansive list of tenant protections, made up of provisions from neighboring cities as well as some fully new ones:

1. Longer lead times on rent increase notifications. Landlords would be required to give tenants a six-month heads up before they planned to raise their rent, as well as a second notification three months before the price hike. Right now, landlords have to give tenants a four-month heads up before raising their rent.

2. Eviction protections. Tenants would receive protection from evictions for late rent during the winter months (November through April). Landlords would also be unable to evict teachers or families with children enrolled in Tacoma public schools during the school year for late rent.

3. Rental assistance for tenants priced out of their buildings. If a landlord hikes the rent more than 5% and a tenant decides to split, the tenant is entitled to request that the landlord provide them with financial assistance on a new place to live. There are exemptions and protections for smaller landlords.

4. A limit on move-in fees. Security deposits, for example, would be limited to one month.

The unique thing here is how the law delivers rental assistance for people priced out of their buildings; Seattle also offers assistance in some circumstances, but it’s provided by the city, not paid directly by the landlord.

🏘️ In Portland, Maine, landlords are backing a rollback of the city’s new rent control law. Question A would exempt owners that control nine units or fewer.

⚡🔌 Voters throughout Maine will decide whether to create a state-owned power company. The proposed non-profit company, Pine Tree Power, would replace the two existing private utility companies in one of this year’s most intriguing and exciting initiatives.

Pine Tree Power would theoretically be able to deliver cheaper and cleaner energy because it would only answer to taxpayers, not shareholders or investors. It would be governed by a board made up of a mix of elected and appointed officers.

The plan would face a number of serious obstacles, including lawsuits from the two private companies, who have poured $40 million into a campaign to stop the initiative. The activists seeking to pass the initiative have raised around $1.2 million.

💵 ✊ Residents of Cleveland could soon directly control part of the city’s annual budget, pending their approval of the People’s Budget ballot initiative on Tuesday.

The initiative would earmark 2% of the budget — it would have been $14 million this year — for use on neighborhood improvement projects throughout the city. Suggestions from the public would be collected and fleshed out by a steering committee and then put up for a ranked choice vote.

Mayor Justin Bibb and the city council each oppose the initiative, as it would usurp a tiny bit of their spending power. Republican state legislators are naturally against anything that resembles local democracy, and thus want to make the referendum irrelevant with a preemption law that blocks voters from having any say over spending.

The GOP passed a bill in the state Senate, though it seems dead in the House, at least for now. Bibb, despite opposing the budget initiative, spoke out against the Republican legislature’s plan as a violation of home rule, or local self-determination.

This isn’t a novel or radical concept. There are a number of other cities across the country with some other version of Participatory Budgeting, including New York and Los Angeles.

🎒 In Denver, voters are being asked to permanently fund the Denver Preschool Program, which provides grants to families to help them pay for — you guessed it — preschool. A surtax of 0.12% to create the program was first passed in 2006 and then increased to 0.15% and renewed in 2014.

Referred Question 2P, as it’s called on the ballot, would permanently authorize the tax and funding so that they do not need to go up for renewal in another 10 years. It could be close, as it passed with only 55% support in 2014.

Voters across Colorado will weigh in on a state preschool initiative. Prop ii is a product of a quirk in Colorado’s tax code that if approved would send $23.65 million to a universal preschool fund.

Some backstory: In 2020, voters approved Prop EE, a tax on cigarette, nicotine, and tobacco products that sent about $275 million a year to priorities such as rural schools, affordable housing, and preschool.

The state’s tax code is loaded with restrictions under something called TABOR, which in this case requires voters to authorize the state to keep the extra $23.65 in tobacco tax income beyond the projections used in Prop EE.

🌳 🛣️ St. Paul, Minnesota is asking voters to authorize a 1% sales tax that would raise money to pay for parks maintenance and a revamp of the city’s roads and highways. The tax would raise $1 billion over 20 years and take sales tax in St. Paul to a state-high 9.75%.

🐍 Voters in the Hammond, Indiana run the serious risk of being tricked into voting to fund charter schools in the area. A new law signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb earlier this year requires certain school districts to split any funding approved by voters between traditional public schools and charter schools.

Worse, there is no requirement that the ballot language explain that charter schools stand to gain taxpayer money if the initiative is passed, and voters in Hammond will not be presented with that critical information.

The public schools in the four counties targeted by the new law will lose out on $9 million in 2025 and $13 million in 2026. Hammond school leaders were willing to take the losses to ensure that the funding gets passed.

💰🤠 Speaking of right-wing grifters, Texas Republicans are attempting to pass a constitutional amendment that would prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax. Nobody’s proposed one in the heavily Republican legislature, mind you; the people who brought you the Death Star bill just like limiting democracy and helping out the wealthy as much as possible.

🗳️🔂 Voters in three Michigan cities will decide whether to switch to ranked choice voting for local elections. Kalamazoo, East Lansing, and Royal Oak could join the growing number of cities and counties that have sought to tamp down extremism with RCV.

♿ Philadelphians have the opportunity to create a permanent Office for People with Disabilities at City Hall. A version of the office, which is tasked with ensuring the city’s compliance with legal accessibility requirements, was created by Mayor Jim Kenney in 2017 via executive order. This initiative would add it permanently to the city charter, so that no future mayor could decide to disband it.

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On the Biden Poll…

The NY Times delivered a huge wakeup call to Democrats in DC this weekend.

It’s not useful to hyperventilate over one poll — I highly doubt that Trump would win Nevada by 11 points either now or in one year — but it’s also dangerous to totally disregard it or think platitudes like “messaging better” will right the ship. People have firm opinions of Joe Biden that are not likely to change, no matter how much he sells a fantastic macroeconomic recovery.

Biden entered the White House with historic challenges, and his successes have largely been overshadowed by world events and disasters he was unable to prevent. Those problems are dragging him down right now.

Price-gouging has eaten away at most family budgets, the temporary Covid-era welfare state has expired and taken away reliable income and subsidized health care, abortion was outlawed in half the states, and ultra-messy wars have broken out in Ukraine and Israel. In short, everything feels shitty right now, and people don’t seem to have faith that an 82-year-old establishment figure will be the one to solve it.

More than 70% of respondents said that Biden is just too old to be president, and nearly two-thirds say he doesn’t have the mental sharpness to do the job. He’s not getting any younger or easier to understand, either. That isn’t a values judgment, just objectively true.

Biden did suggest during his campaign in 2020 that he’d only serve one term, and many people saw him as a way to get rid of Trump more than an amazing choice himself. A non-Trump Republican beats Biden even more soundly now, while a generic Democrat wins big over Trump in the poll. You can add an asterisk to the generic candidate, because though the numbers always down once there’s a face and name to attack, but I think that Democrats would be served well by having a competitive primary challenger or two.

The challenges don’t have to go negative on Biden, but I think Democratic voters deserve a real say in who will go up against Trump in such a key election. If Biden wins re-nomination, he’ll be sharper and in shape to take on Republicans.

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