This Week in Statehouse Action: Time of the Session edition

If there’s one universal pet peeve, it might be having your time wasted.

It’s one of my top ones for sure.

I mean, I hate it. HATE it. Gives me indigestion.

So in the interest of demonstrating the respect you and your time deserve, let’s get straight to it.

Remember The Time

First thing’s first: last week in this space, I gave a little preview of the interesting/consequential special elections that hit this week, and now we know how they shook out.

• In New Hampshire, where Republicans just barely control the 400-seat state House, the very special special shook out in Democrats’ favor.

  • As you may recall, November’s race for District Strafford 8 (also known locally as Rochester Ward 4) was a literal tie – a 970-970 vote deadlock – so the legislature voted to resolve the race via a new election.

  • Democrat Chuck Grassie not only beat Republican David Walker handily, 56-42%, but he also outperformed Biden’s 2020 showing in the district (he won it 51-47%)

    • This Democratic win shrinks the state House GOP’s slim majority to 201-198 (with one heavily Dem-leaning seat vacant) – the closest that chamber’s margin has been in state history.

• In Wisconsin, voters cast ballots this past Tuesday in two primary contests: one special, one regularly scheduled.

  • The special primary was for the 8th Senate District’s GOP nomination (with a special general to come on April 4), where three Republicans battled it out.

    • Those three Republicans: state Reps. Janel Brandtjen and Dan Knodl and Thiensville Village President Van Mobley.

      • The two sitting members of the Assembly running for this seat are both election deniers, but Brandtjen was perceived as so extreme and potentially unelectable that Democrats themselves spent money on ads supporting her, and the Republican State Leadership Committee took the unusual step of spending money in a GOP primary to defeat her.

    • The RSLC’s investment was the better deal here, though; Knodl trounced his colleague Brandtjen 57-28%.

  • Knodl will face attorney Jodi Habush Sinykin (who had no Democratic primary opposition) in the April 4 special general election, where Democrats are hoping to flip this red seat (which Trump would have won 52-47% if it had existed in its current form at the time, which it didn’t, because redistricting) to score a pickup that will deprive Republicans of the gerrymandered state Senate supermajority they secured last fall.

• Wisconsin’s regularly-scheduled primary on Tuesday wasn’t actually for a state legislative election, but the results of this race will have an outsized impact on elections, reproductive rights, and more, so it’s absolutely worth recapping here.

  • As I’ve said before in this space, arguably the most consequential election of the spring is happening in Wisconsin on April 4, and the balance of power on the state Supreme Court is at stake.

    • On Feb. 21, the four-person field in this contest – two conservatives and two progressives – was narrowed to just two contenders for an open seat on the state’s highest court.

      • Theoretically, two conservatives or two progressives could have made the final April 4 ballot, but that’s not how things shook out.

  • The liberal candidate in the spring election is Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, and the conservative candidate is former Justice Daniel Kelly.

    • Kelly’s win was a little surprising, honestly, considering how much money and name recognition Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow had coming into the primary (specifically, she’d raised $365,000 and had $267,000 cash on hand, and she became a household name in a big chunk of the state when she presided over a high-profile murder case last year).

    • But while Kelly’s fundraising numbers weren’t as impressive ($100,000 raised, $202,000 cash on hand), a number of high-powered conservatives came to his aid, including GOP megadonors Dick and Liz Uihlein and conservative super PAC Women Speak Out PAC (an affiliate of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America).

  • Kelly also benefited from a little bit of cross-partisan “ratfucking,” as those in the business are wont to call it.

    • The progressive group A Better Wisconsin Together invested $1.9 million on spots accusing Dorow of issuing too-lenient sentences in some of her cases, a tactic designed to convince conservative base voters to reject her in favor of the ostensibly less-electable Kelly.

      • Which 

        • A. makes sense, considering that voters already rejected Kelly once when they booted him from the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020 in a race he lost to liberal Justice Jill Karofsky 55-45%, and

        • B. seems to have worked.

  • But just days before the primary, an interesting new fact about Dan Kelly came to light that might have helped him on Tuesday but will hopefully bite him in the butt in the April 4 general.

    • You see, after he lost his April 2020 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Kelly went on to get paid almost $120,000 by the Wisconsin Republican Party and the RNC to work on “election issues.”

    • … which, okay, doesn’t sound all that concerning, but recently released Jan. 6 Committee testimony indicates that Kelly was involved in the GOP scheme to have fake Republican electors cast Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Trump in 2020, despite the fact that Biden won the state, which is, like, PRETTY CONCERNING.

So this is the part where I go on about how incredibly important this Wisconsin Supreme Court election is, so feel free to skip ahead if you’ve heard about it enough already.

• Currently, conservative justices (candidates are nominated by the parties but are ostensibly nonpartisan and appear without party labels on the ballot) have a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Republicans have used it to protect their gerrymandered legislative maps and buttress unpopular GOP policies.

• Soon, the court will hear and rule on a case that will either uphold or strike down Wisconsin’s abortion ban, and they have and will continue to hear cases on voting rights, workers’ rights, public school funding, gun safety, and more.

• These justices serve 10-year terms, so whoever wins in April is gonna be around and ruling on stuff for quite a while.

• And if Democrats don’t flip the court this year, they may not have another chance to do so until 2026 (notwithstanding retirements and other intervening factors).

Okay, enough Wisconsin for the moment. Let’s see what’s happening in some other states.

Time Is On My Side

What if we … checked in on a wee bit of good news, just as a change of pace…?

• In Colorado, where Democrats have majority control of both legislative chambers, three anti-abortion bills died in committee last week.

  • One bill would require a health care provider who performs an abortion at 20 weeks or later to administer a painkiller to the fetus.

  • Another would require doctors and other medical professionals who administer abortions to foist state-prepared information on the mother about how to reverse the effects of an abortion pill.

  • The third would just straight-up ban all abortions in Colorado.

But Colorado Dems aren’t just in the business of blocking lousy legislation; they’re pushing some policies of their own, too.

• This week, they unveiled a slate of bills that aim to curb gun violence in the state by restricting who can possess and when they can purchase firearms.

  • These Democratic measures would raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 years (from the current 18), require a three-day waiting period for gun purchases, remove the state’s civil liability immunity protections for the firearm industry, and expand who can file a “red flag” petition to remove guns from people who pose a threat to themselves or others.

    • And with healthy Dem majorities in the legislature (46-19 in the House, 23-12 in the Senate) and a Democratic governor, fans of gun safety can fairly expect these proposals to become law.

Back In Time

A extremely not fun fact: As February speeds towards its end, state lawmakers have already introduced 321 anti-LGBTQ bills this year in legislatures – six more than were proposed in all of 2022.

It’s hate, but it’s increasingly efficient hate

• In two short months, GOP lawmakers have found the time and resources to police bathrooms, suddenly give half a damn about girls’ sports, forcibly out kids to their parents, ban lifesaving medical procedures, dictate that schools pretend LGBTQ folks don’t exist, censor books, and outlaw drag shows.

It’d be kinda impressive if it weren’t so profoundly shitty.

Time After Time

But Republican lawmakers can walk and chew gum, too.

And by “chew gum” I mean “restrict voting rights.”

• This week, the Kansas Senate passed two anti-voting bills, one of which would ban drop boxes for returning ballots, and the other would reduce the time frame in which mail-in ballots can be returned.

• Meanwhile, the Arizona legislature is considering a measure that would literally just un-register everyone registered to vote in the state every ten years.

  • And only after their perfectly valid voter registration is arbitrarily canceled, voters would be notified of the cancellation and told that they need to go through the process of re-registering.

    • Not only is this proposal pretty obviously illegal under existing federal law, it’s pretty unworkable for local voting officials, who’d have to collectively process literally millions of voter registrations all at once.

      • Yes, this bill would certainly be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, should it reach her desk, but the fact that it’s even passed out of committee is pretty scary.

Time Is Running Out

Y’all, it’s almost time for the year’s very first Sine Die! 

• This week, Virginia will become the very first legislature in the country to adjourn for the year.

  • Which means that legislative news from the commonwealth will slow to near-nonexistence very soon.

  • But it also means that campaign season is about to kick off in a really big way.

    • This fall’s legislative elections in the commonwealth will become the first ones held on Virginia's redrawn district maps, which adds an extra bit of spice to an already hot election year.

Much more to come on these contests – this is mostly a warning, and maybe a halfhearted advance apology.

Welp!

While we’re talking about stuff ending, it’s, ah … Closing Time for this week!

Thank you for spending a little of your valuable time here.

And, as ever, please don’t hesitate to reach out with thoughts, questions, ideas, gripes, hopes, dreams …

Also, don’t forget to spend some of your valuable time on your valuable self.

You’re important.

We need you.

(P.S. Couldn’t resist a playlist for this one)

---