Taking oversight seriously

Election news:

I worked quite a bit this fall for Proposal 2 to end gerrymandering in Michigan. We won! The victory was a big one – 61% to 39%. Proposal 3 to establish voter rights won by an even bigger margin. Even Proposal 1 to legalize recreational marijuana passed. That one will contribute to lessening minority incarceration.

The Michigan Democratic Party nominated four women for statewide races – Senator, Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. All four won. Congratulations to Debbie Stabenow for Senate (though she won by a much smaller margin than expected – something about not doing a lot of campaigning). Congrats also to Gretchen Whitmer for Governor and Garlin Gilchrist, a black man, for Lieutenant Governor. Congrats to Jocelyn Benson for Secretary of State, who prepared for the job by interviewing secretaries of state around the country and writing a book about best practices. The SoS has a role in administering the new redistricting process and Benson has said she supports the citizens commission (unlike her GOP rival). And Congrats to Dana Nessel for Attorney General. She is a lesbian and played a key role in winning marriage equality a few years ago.

Yay, Democrats took back the House! A few of the wins:

* Rashida Tlaib, my new Rep here in Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are the first Muslim women in Congress.

* Sharice Davids of Kansas and Deb Haaland of New Mexico are the first Native American women in Congress. Davids is also lesbian.

* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman elected to Congress at age 29. This is important. Previously women who entered Congress did so after raising children, giving them a much shorter chance of a political career. The young women who are entering Congress are doing so at the same age as men, giving them an equal chance at leadership positions in future years.

* Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia are the first Latinas to represent Texas.

Overall, the House added 11 women, now at 95, and the Senate added two, though the number of GOP women dropped a bit. That means there will be 118 women in the next Congress. Alas, that’s still only 22%.

A big factor in the Dem takeover of the House is the states, especially Pennsylvania, where gerrymandered district maps were replaced. A couple other states with court-ordered mid-decade redraws were Florida and Virginia.

Even with gerrymandering Michigan flipped two seats. Iowa flipped two (likely due to the soybean tariffs) and Oklahoma (!) flipped one. A few other states flipped seats.

In other races:
* Jared Polis, a gay man, will be governor of Colorado.

* Back in 2011 Zach Wahls was an internet sensation for his impassioned speech to argue against a constitutional amendment in Iowa to ban same-sex marriage. He did it because he is the son of two moms. Last night Wahls was elected to the Iowa Senate. Pretty good for a guy only 26 years old.

* Chris Pappas, a gay Democrat in New Hampshire, was elected to the US House.

* Ayanna Pressley became the first black Congresswomen from Massachusetts.

* Lesbian Angie Craig unseated anti-LGBT Jason Lewis for a Minnesota seat in the US House.

* Democrat and lesbian Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin kept her US Senate seat.

Congress is reflecting the diversity of America a bit more.

Democrats took the governor’s office from the GOP in at least seven states. The Governor’s office in Georgia is still too close to call. Brian Hemp’s efforts as Secretary of State to suppress Democratic voters is helping Brian Hemp’s efforts to be the next governor. Two governors’ races are unsettled because of voting “irregularities” – to put it mildly. The Democratic candidate in both is black – Stacy Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida.

Ballot proposals:
* A couple years ago Massachusetts passed a law protecting transgender rights. A “bathroom panic” brigade got a proposal on the ballot to overturn the law. In yesterday’s vote the law was protected!

* Redistricting proposals to end gerrymandering also passed in Missouri and Colorado. A similar proposal in Utah is ahead but way too close to call.

* Florida approved restoring voting rights to felons who have served their sentence. This overturns a highly racist policy.

Delicious defeats:
* Kris Kobach, who has worked hard in Kansas and for the nasty guy to rig elections for the GOP, lost his bid to be governor of Kansas.

* Scott Walker, who pushed through some bad anti-union laws while governor of Wisconsin, lost by just 1.2% – and after 2016 recounts he passed a law prohibiting recounts from a candidate that wasn’t within 1% of the winner.

* Kim Davis made headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples as part of her job of clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky. She was voted out.

Annoying wins:
* Greg Pence, brother of the vice nasty guy, won an Indiana seat in the US House. It’s the same seat the vice nasty guy held before becoming governor of Indiana.



Democratic House leadership is already talking about the “oversight” they intend to impose on the nasty guy. The nasty guy responded by saying if the House investigates me I’ll have the Senate investigate the House – when they’re not stuffing the federal judiciary with nasty guy clones. Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, added a few threats of his own over “presidential harassment” meaning harassment of, not by, the president.

In a Twitter thread Ally Maynard assembled a list of candidates the nasty guy endorsed and who lost. I didn’t compute the ratio of losses to wins, but it appears to be pretty high.