This Week in Statehouse Action: Beware The Ides edition
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Note: This post was originally published on March 15, 2018. Happy Ides of March! Watch your back. … especially if you’re a Republican, because oof is that an unpopular profession these days. To wit: Conor Lamb’s win in a Pennsylvania U.S. House distrThis Week in Statehouse Action: Beware The Ides edition
Note: This post was originally published on March 15, 2018. Happy Ides of March! Watch your back. … especially if you’re a Republican, because oof is that an unpopular profession these days. To wit: Conor Lamb’s win in a Pennsylvania U.S. House district that voted for Trump by 20 points. That’s a pretty epic swing, and it tracks with Democrats’ ongoing over-performance in the vast majority of special elections this cycle. Fun fact! In special and state legislative elections this cycle, Democrats are performing, on average, 8 percent better than Obama (2012) and 13 percent better than Clinton (2016). Republican members of Congress were understandably freaked out about Lamb’s win, but they’re not the only GOPers sounding the alarm. Campaign Action It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and hungry-looking: The morning after the special election in PA-18, the political director of the North Carolina House Republican Caucus circulated an email to GOP representatives with a dire warning: Should the state’s down-ballot Democrats replicate their success in the Pennsylvania House race, Republicans stood to lose control of the lower chamber. The staffer listed 23 incumbent Republicans in districts that Trump won by 20 points or less. If Democrats flip those seats, not only would they break the GOP’s supermajority; they’d win control of the House outright. North Carolina Democrats knew a good idea when it fell in their laps, and they quickly produced a list of 24 Republican-held House seats and 15 state Senate seats “more competitive” than PA-18. Democrats need to flip just four seats to break the GOP supermajority in the House; in the Senate, they need to flip six. Breaking the supermajority in just one of those chambers would finally allow Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes to stick; currently they’re casually overturned by Republican lawmakers. Speaking of North Carolina GOP lawmakers’ antics: Gov. Cooper has filed a lawsuit to thwart the latest Republican attempt (in an absurdly long series) to remake the state’s elections board so Republican voter suppression measures established under the previous (Republican) administration can be preserved. First, before Cooper even took office, Republicans tried to remake the state elections board, which would have a Democratic majority under a Democratic governor, into a larger, evenly split body appointed by the GOP-controlled legislature. A court struck it down. So Republicans tweaked their bill and tried again. The state Supreme Court struck it down. So Republicans tried yet again, this time glomming the measure onto an unrelated and bipartisan bill that would reduce elementary school class sizes. Today, just as the bill becomes law, Cooper is suing yet again, calling the GOP’s move to mutate the state elections board into something designed to support their voter suppression efforts “unconstitutional.” Good luck! Read more