SSP Daily Digest: 4/28 (Part Deux)

Other Races:

• Philly Mayor: Even though several labor organizations endorsed his crazy ex-con nobody of an opponent, Philadelphia’s largest union, the Federation of Teachers, came out for incumbent Michael Nutter earlier this week. But Nutter’s been having problems with the municipal unions, with the city’s white collar union (known as District Council 47… I’ve always wondered where they get these numbers) declining to endorse. (Several others have either backed Milton Street or no one at all.)

• Wisconsin Recall: As expected, Democrats filed signatures against Rob Cowles, making him the sixth Republican to face a possible recall election. Republicans have filed against three Dems and missed the deadline against three others. Meanwhile, the state’s Government Accountability Board asked a judge to give them more time to review the petitions, which would allow the agency to consolidate the elections on July 12. However, the MSNBC article linked first in this bullet suggests the elections may not take place until the fall.

• WI Sup. Ct.: Under state law, the Supreme Court recount must be completed very quickly, by May 9. It’s apparently only the third statewide recount in Wisconsin history. The most recent one took place in 1989… and the one before that in 1858! Unsurprisingly, things are off to a bumpy start in Waukesha, though fortunately the now-notorious Kathy Nickolaus has recused herself from the process.

Grab Bag:

• EMILY: EMILY’s List announced its first four endorsements of the cycle: Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Lois Frankel (FL-22), Christie Vilsack (IA-04), and Ann McLane Kuster (NH-02).

• Pennsylvania: PPP did something on their new PA poll that I like, and that I hope we’ll see more of: They included a statewide generic House ballot, which in this case showed respondents favoring Dems by a 42-36 margin, despite weak numbers for Obama.

• Town Halls: With Congress on recess and members back home doing town halls, we’re seeing some turnabout from the summer of 2009, with motivated liberals showing up to castigate Republicans for their votes to kill Medicare. Ordinarily, this would be the sort of topic we’d love to cover in the Daily Digest, but the good news/bad news is that there are just too many of them for us to keep track of. What’s more, other outlets are doing a great job of covering them, like ThinkProgress and the DCCC.

Redistricting Roundup:

• Michigan: We’ve been saying this for some time ourselves, but now the MI state lege is hearing it, too: In order to preserve Detroit’s VRA seats, a redistricting expert for the legislative black caucus agrees that new district lines will have to be drawn that cross the traditional “8 Mile” boundary separating the city of Detroit from its suburbs. Michigan’s maps must be complete by Nov. 1.

• Missouri: Republicans finally reached an agreement on a map at the 11th hour, sending it to Gov. Jay Nixon. (You can see the new map here.) Democrats in the state House are urging Nixon to veto the plan, where the map fell 13 votes short of a veto-proof majority. The governor has not yet said what he’ll do, but there’s also a dispute brewing as to whether the legislature will be even able to schedule an over-ride vote this session, or if they’ll have to wait until September.

• Nevada: Republicans have released their proposed maps, which you can find here. Democrats will put theirs out later today. Anjeanette Damon describes the congressional map as a 2-2 plan, but you be the judge.

• Texas: Score one for Rep. Lloyd Doggett: He snarfed up a copy of what he believes is the congressional map that Republican congressmen have proposed to leaders of the legislature. A copy is here (PDF). An unnamed source tells the Austin Statesman that they think the map is out-dated, but that Republican plans for splitting Travis County (home of Austin) four ways, as shown by the map, are in fact correct.

• Virginia: Well, it sure sounds like the Democrats have caved on the Virginia Senate map. A deal is reportedly done, and the key changes are summarized by the Richmond Times-Dispatch as follows:

Under the deal, the proposed new Democratic-leaning district in the Richmond area would be eliminated, according to Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan. Republicans would lose one of two senators in Virginia Beach and new districts would be created in Loudoun County and east of Lynchburg.

Also, the idiot Democrats in the House voted yet again for the newest Republican gerrymander (which makes mostly cosmetic changes). How stupid are these people? You don’t fucking vote for the other side’s gerrymander. I mean, it was one thing to act like this the first time around, when it appeared a multi-way deal was in place. But now these schmucks are like chickens voting to elect Col. Sanders. Hope you enjoy getting dipped in 11 herbs and spices and getting deep-fried to your doom, morans.

166 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/28 (Part Deux)”

  1. GOPers are trying to screw Horsford with their Congressional map, and they must be hoping they can either entice Ruben Kihuen or John Lee to go to “the dark side” and embrace their map. So far Ruben and the other Latino Dems are holding strong against it, and I haven’t heard anything from Lee. As I said earlier, Horsford has virtually no options under this map. NV-01 actually looks like a district John Lee can win!

  2. So it sounds like they have kept the set up in the Tidewater the same, having drawn two GOP senators together in Virginia Beach, but are caving by not drawing that new Richmond district (which sucks), and drawing what will certainly be a GOP-leaning district east of Lynchburg (God, I can only imagine) and what will likely be a somewhat GOP-leaning district in Loudon, though the demographics there mean it will be in play (hopefully), and could in the long-run be a Dem-leaning area.

    I did this mentally on the back of a napkin so I could be wrong about what the new districts will be like. Still, this seems to be what has happened. Thus, having gone from a map that gave Dems a shot at 24-16 (counting the swing seat in Virginia Beach) to now risking 22-18 at best, if not dooming ourselves to actually losing the majority if the elections in November go poorly.

    Dammit.

  4. Late tonight I will complete transferring the 2008 Obama/McCain numbers for Nevada into the 2010 census voting districts used on Dave’s App (it’s mostly done, I just have about a quarter of Las Vegas to match up). Hopefully soon thereafter it can be added to the App and then y’all can just map out the proposed plans accordingly.

    I would note, however, that many Nevada precincts have clearly experienced massive growth just between 2008 and 2010 (hardly a surprise). The transferability of 2008 figures to 2012 outcomes is therefore obviously subject to debate.

  5. I do not know why the GOP is trying to split Travis county.  One can easily draw two safe Democratic seats using Hays, Travis and part of Williamson County.  One can gerrymander two safe Democratic seats and one toss-up seat out of Travis county.  If I recall the 2010 Census put the city of Austin a 790,000 people, that is more than sufficient for a single district.  If the GOP were smarter instead of trying to crack Travis county they would pack as many Democrats as possible into one district in Travis county and prevent people from calling them out on such a mess.  Based on that map it does looks like DFW is receiving a second minority-majority district that includes west Dallas and a heavily Democratic part of Fort Worth.  That is, if this map is the proposed map that makes it through.

  6. Yawn. The real action’s in the Council races — the open seats in the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 8th and GOP at-large.

  7. …than the other story citing the GAB’s July 12 target date for the elections.

    The MSNBC piece, which I saw earlier today, said “fall” as if it was informed speculation.  I bet they wrote it without awareness of July 12, or they would’ve cited that.

  8. Graeme Zielinski, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, confirms that Dems today filed 26,524 signatures supporting a recall election against GOP senator Robert Cowles, out of 15,960 required. This is the strongest signature showing by Dems yet: Against five previous GOP targets, Dems amassed signatures in the area of 140 or 150 percent.

    -The Plum Line

  10. Just a note that vote-by-mail ballots are out for the May 17 election. Sixteen names on the ballot!

    (and remember that will in all likelihood be a top-two runoff in July)

  11. Based on the vapap chart here:

    http://www.vpap.org/updates/re…

    It looks like the new map has a few more safer GOPer, a few less safer Dems, but the partisan breakdown by performance is about the same, 11 seat are d+1 or better and there are fewer highly endangered seats (R+10 or higher).

    Looks like the makings for some very exciting election in ’11, ’15 & ’19 with (by my count) 25 seats potentially in play to one degree or another in the next 10 years.

  12. http://www.theglobeandmail.com…

    An updated seat projection by EKOS predicts the NDP could win 51 of Quebec’s 75 seats.

    Meanwhile…. for the background of one of the NDP Quebec candidates

    Until last week, she’d been working in Ottawa – about three hours away from the riding – as an assistant manager of Oliver’s Pub, on the Carleton University campus.

    snip — and now given her success, in the final week of the campaign, in a move that makes David Wu look like a normal politico, she took a trip out of the country:

    “She’s actually in Las Vegas,” says her boss, Rod Castro.

  13. http://redistricting.dls.virgi…

    Changes:

    1. The district in Virginia Beach that was winnable, now isn’t. It went back to its previous status as a 37% Deeds district.

    2. The one big improvement to a district was the 10th, which went from 33% Deeds in the current map to 41% Deeds. There might be an outside shot of that one being competitive in an open seat, but I doubt it will be this year.

    3. The new seats are the 22nd, east of Lynchburg (36% Deeds), and the 13th in NoVa (35% Deeds). Both will be safe Republican.

    Aside from that, the districts’ numbers are pretty much the same as the vetoed map. The Democrats will have to somehow hold 21 of the 22 seats they currently have.

  16. OK, so that’s a stretch. It still draws some lines in ways to protect certain incumbents. However, the Democratic plan draws boundaries based on city lines and “natural boundaries”. Oh, and not only does it create plenty of Latino districts and other minority-majority seats… But it even creates 5 seats that Asian-American candidates can presumably win!

    Hmmm… I wonder who took queues from Arizona’s IRC, California’s Prop 11/20, and recent court drawn maps? 😉

  17. OMG, this keeps getting better! From The LV Sun’s always amazing Anjeanette Damon…

    Pete Goicoechea furious over Senate Repubican maps. His quote: We got pretty well bent.

    Heh. Nevada Republicans are now eating their own over their dummymander! I wonder how Brian Sandoval is now trying to defuse this. So far, this isn’t the best week for him. Hehe. 😉

  19. I doubt msot of you know or care, but there’s a move on in PA and maybe you’ve already read this, but I find it uber-ironic.

    A Pennsylvania State Senator from suburban Philly was pulled over after a motorist reported he was waving a gun at him.  The Senator is co-sponsor of a “somewhat controversila” bill to expand gun/self-defense rights to people anywhere, including their cars.  So this is gun control that just simply makes sense LOL

    http://www.philly.com/philly/b…

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