What’s the meaning of Kansas (and Michigan)?
Can saving abortion rights save Democrats?
Welcome to a Wednesday edition of Progress Report.
Primary elections were held in a number of swing states yesterday, marking the finish line for several close races and setting the field for competitive general elections. Last night’s results also introduced several critical questions that hang over both the November elections and the future of American democracy altogether.
Let’s dive into what it all means — with the exception of the results in Arizona, which we’ll examine this weekend.
What’s the Meaning of Kansas?
Let’s start with far and away the best news of the night. Kansans voted en masse to reject a constitutional amendment that would have given the legislature permission to enact a total ban on abortion. It wasn’t even close, with 59% of voters opposing the amendment to just 41% in favor of green-lighting an assault on reproductive rights.
Republicans placed the amendment on the primary ballot in hopes of sneaking it through a low turnout election, a scheme that wound up blowing up in their faces. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, all eyes turned to Kansas, which suddenly became the first state where voters could directly weigh in on abortion policy. Instead of a sleepy summer election, over 900,000 people voted on Tuesday, more than double the number of Kansas that cast ballots in the 2020 primary election.
Still, because it took place during a primary, it’s hard to gauge the exact partisan breakdown of the vote total.
The gubernatorial primary can’t tell us much, with the token opposition to incumbent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly skewing vote totals in that race. Probably the best comparison available is in the Senate race, where GOP incumbent Sen. Jerry Moran had to deal with a primary challenge and Democrats had an open contest. There were 463,000 votes cast in that Republican primary, while there were 254,000 cast in a competitive Democratic race.
This means that about 200,000 other voters — independents or third party members — cast ballots on Tuesday, and with Kansas’ closed primary system, that means they all were there to vote on the amendment. Even if every Democrat and every third party or unaffiliated Kansan voted against the amendment, it would require about 100,000 note votes from Republicans.
It was independent voters that gave Gov. Kelly her victory in 2018, too.
Voter registration numbers make it clear that women drove this victory, while geographic analysis gives us an idea of how the trend can translate to other states.
Rural turnout was down, but among those that did vote, the anti-abortion amendment did not prove particularly popular. The license to ban abortion barely even squeaked out majorities in counties that Donald Trump won with 80% or more in 2020; in fact, 14 counties that backed Trump in 2020 actually voted against the anti-abortion amendment.
Abortion rights are broadly popular, but it’s worth examining how the pro-choice coalition targeted its campaign to different segments of the population. Most notably, the ads made for rural and more conservative audiences didn’t even use the word “abortion,” instead framing the issue as a matter of government mandates and personal freedom.
It sounds a lot like the rhetoric employed against the Covid vaccine and other precautions, a sign that the people writing the spot were at least cognizant of local politics.
So, what does this all tell us? First and foremost, it’s a positive sign for pro-choice activists in Michigan and Kentucky, where the future of abortion rights will be decided via ballot initiative in November. Nothing can be taken for granted, obviously, but there’s more reason for optimism than there was a few days ago.
Best Case Scenarios
The more daunting challenge will be in translating Tuesday’s success to victories in races between politicians seeking elected office. Right now, voters still rank inflation as their most pressing concern heading into the midterm elections, so it’ll require a quick economic turnaround and deft campaigning for Democrats to make abortion the decisive issue in November.
Should they be able to pull it off, it could give them the edge in a fair number of statewide races, including gubernatorial elections in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Arizona. If they suddenly find themselves with a real surge in support, Democrats could also flip at least one chamber of the state legislature in at least three of those states.
In Pennsylvania, a trifecta would allow Democrats to codify abortion protections, while in Arizona, flipping the entire statehouse would permit Democrats to repeal an ancient anti-abortion trigger law that the state’s AG has promised to enforce.
If you want to get really optimistic, the groundswell of motivated pro-choice voters could also lead to tighter gubernatorial races in Texas, Georgia, and Florida. Hell, because the party has relatively strong (and very well-funded) candidates going up against polarizing governors, Democrats may even be able to pull off an upset or two in those states.
Seeing any one of Greg Abbott, Brian Kemp, and (especially) Ron DeSantis go down in flames this fall would be unspeakably gratifying, to the point that I refuse to think about it for fear of being disappointed come this fall. (This is also my approach to being a Mets fan.)
Rigging Elections Has Consequences
Even if Democrats do score a few wins against those wannabe fascist governors, the party’s chances of taking back their states’ legislatures will be nigh impossible on the gerrymandered maps that Republicans passed over the winter.
Gerrymandering will also make retaining control of Congress far more challenging than it should be, and should Democrats fail to keep that majority, legislation to codify Roe nationwide will be stalled for years to come.
Harsh new voter suppression laws, which were also enabled by the filibuster failure, will likely diminish Democrats’ chances in close elections in those states. It’s maddening that there are obvious majorities in favor of abortion rights (along with many other things that Republicans are trying to criminalize) but the stubbornness of two Democratic senators (you know who) will prevent people from enjoying those rights in so many places.
The Party of Big Money
There are myriad reasons why Democrats have collapsed in rural America, some more complicated than others. Trade policy, migration patterns, manufacturing decline, and religion all play important roles, but so does the fact that Democrats quite often nominate boring, interchangeable duds.
After dealing with some serious flops in 2020, the party’s Senate slate was shaping up pretty nicely entering Tuesday night, with a roster of populist progressives such as Tim Ryan in Ohio and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. A few months ago, it looked as if former Marine and working class champion Lucas Kunce would be joining them as the choice of Missouri Democrats, but then a beer heiress decided to dip into her family’s vast fortune and buy herself a Senate nomination.
Trudy Busch Valentine jumped into the race in March, framing her candidacy around her son’s tragic overdose and her early years as a nurse. The $4 million of her own money that she spent is as an accounting error on a family fortune worth more than $17.6 billion; Valentine and her husband’s net worth is anywhere between $69 million and $219 million “across 13 trusts, bank accounts, businesses, retirement accounts and brokerage accounts,” according to the Missouri Independent.
I’m not inherently against wealthy candidates — JB Pritzker may well be Democrats’ best bet in 2024 — but Busch Valentine hardly distinguished herself in any way. She released a few boiler plate policy proposals, refused to debate the other Democratic candidates, and ran ads filled with misleading statements about Kunce and his positions.
Kunce, on the other hand, gained traction as an aggressive anti-monopoly populist with a grassroots following. The polling was neck-and-neck, but as is often the case, Democratic Party officials and the leadership of local trade unions got behind the candidate with the money. That was Trudy Busch Valentine, and their support likely put her over the top, as she wound up winning by just five points.
Corporate money has grossly skewed Democrats’ primary season. The worst offender has been AIPAC, which has spent the past year rolling up donations from billionaires and business interests and pouring them into brutal campaigns against progressive candidates in House primaries. The organization’s pretense that it’s supporting “pro-Israel” candidates has always been preposterous, but it became unambiguously bullshit last night when the organization celebrated Rep. Haley Stevens’ primary victory over Rep. Andy Levin in the redrawn MI-11.
This headline, from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, says it all:
As a Jewish person myself, it’s hard to contain the anger I feel toward this right-wing organization using fears of antisemitism as a shield for this corporate bullshit when we’ve got Nazis freely roaming around the country. They targeted Andy Levin, a Jewish person, because he is a long-time union organizer and was perhaps the most worker-friendly member of Congress. That he did not fully endorse the cruel policies of Israel’s current right-wing government was a convenient excuse.
AIPAC doesn’t shoulder all of the blame; plenty of establishment Democrats also went in for Stevens, including Hillary Clinton, who has largely stayed out of this year’s primary fights.
Not all of AIPAC’s picks have won — Summer Lee, a rising star, prevailed in a Pennsylvania Congressional primary — but they’ve bought far too many elections. And Democratic leaders refuse to condemn it, even when AIPAC goes after Pelosi allies like Rep. Donna Edwards.
In covering issues that impact working people every single day, it’s become obvious to me that so many Democrats aren’t actually all that interested in helping the core of their voter base if it hurts their core donor base.
Just look at the Chamber of Commerce wet dream just proposed by Rep. Henry Cuellar, who would have been knocked off by professor Jessica Cisneros without all-hands intervention from Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn.
Two Erics, One Trump
On Monday, former President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of “ERIC” in the Missouri Republican Senate primary. The catch: there were three Erics vying for the nomination. Two of the three Erics—Schmitt and Greitens—were frontrunners in the race.
When asked to clarify, Trump’s spokespeople said only that “the endorsement speaks for itself.”
Trump decided to endorse all of the Erics after what Politico described as a “chaotic seven hours in Trump world, as the former president’s future daughter-in-law, his handpicked Republican National Committee chairwoman, Missouri’s junior senator and a host of other party operatives and Trump allies jostled over who the former president should endorse in the tumultuous Missouri Senate primary.”
The candidates Trump was torn between represent the dregs of the contemporary Republican party.
Schmitt, who ran on a platform of “taking a blowtorch to Biden’s socialist agenda” has served as Missouri’s attorney general since 2019. During his time in office, he has filed lawsuits against Missouri schools for implementing measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19; tried to get the Affordable Care Act dismantled; and prevented the Biden administration from canceling Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while applying for protection here.
Schmitt also spent tens of thousands of dollars on a dubious lawsuit against “China” for downplaying the severity of COVID-19 in the outbreak’s early days—a move which observers see as a political stunt intended to help him stand out in the field for the Republican senate nomination.
“Schmitt has definitely used his position as attorney general to file lawsuits that support his political platform and his political aspirations,” said Anita Manion, an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “It’s about publicity, showing where he stands, energizing the base.”
Somehow, Eric Greitens was even more terrifying than Schmitt.
Greitens resigned in disgrace as Missouri governor in 2018 after allegations of violence, blackmail, and sexual assault from a former mistress. At the same time, he was indicted on a felony computer-tampering charge for stealing a donor list from a nonprofit he founded to support military veterans as they readjust to civilian life.
This year, Greitens’s ex-wife alleged that he beat his children and “repeatedly threatened to kill himself unless [she] provided specific public political support to him.”
The former president called both Eric Greitens and Eric Schmitt on Monday to congratulate them without mentioning that he was also endorsing their opponent.
The non-endorsement allowed Trump and his cronies to claim that his nomination catapulted the winner to victory, no matter which Eric reigned supreme.
Schmitt safely won the primary.
Stop the Steal—Of Pens
In Arizona, Republican candidate for Maricopa County Supervisor Gail Golec directed voters to steal the pens from election sites because she believed the markings from the official pens could be changed in the ballot certification process.
The county switched to fast-drying felt-tip pens made by the company Pentel after baseless conspiracy theories during the 2020 election alleging that poll workers gave voters Sharpies in order to invalidate their ballots. Voters can use blue or black ink pens or Sharpies on their ballots, but election officials instruct voters not to use ballpoint pens because they can smudge onto voting machines’ optical readers.
Ironically, Golec has been encouraging her followers to use ballpoint pens, potentially causing issues with the count.
Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, also a Republican, sent Golec a cease and desist letter asking her to stop encouraging the thefts and to issue a retraction to her social media followers.
Golec did not secure the nomination, but she came in a close third with 22% of the vote. Even before the election she committed to challenging the results. "I still want an audit," she said. "I don't trust the results of this election."
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