That’s fine. But the time to "raise hell" – or, more accurately, to get out the effing vote – was in 2020. That year, NC Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, who was our incumbent, lost by a mere 401 votes out of 5,391,501 cast, a difference of 0.008 %.
Beasley’s loss was very costly! Amongst other things, if I recall correctly, her loss enabled North Carolina’s extreme Congressional district gerrymander, without which I believe Democrats would now enjoy control of the House of Representatives.
Moral of the story: State Supreme Court races really, really matter! That includes upcoming election in Wisconsin, and this November’s Supreme Court election in Pennsylvania.
We didn’t have good party leadership until Anderson Clayton got the reins in 2023. Anderson would’ve worked hard to keep the progressive NCSC majority in 2020 and 2022 and keep Ted Budd out of the Senate.
Anderson Clayton has been amazing! Democrats need good party chairs and strong party organizations everywhere. Time to revitalize the 50 State Strategy!
That NC Supreme Court election isn't the only election that single-handedly gave Republicans control of the House right now. The same is true for Colorado's 2018 referendum giving it an independent redistricting commission. If not for that commission, Dems (who have a trifecta in CO) could've drawn a 7D-1R congressional map instead of the 4D-4R delegation they have now. Those three additional seats that Democrats threw away by voting for the independent redistricting commission would've given Dems the majority in the House.
True enough! I was ignoring the possibility of tit-for-tat, including Democrats changing the election systems and/or drawing up extreme gerrymanders in states that they do control. In addition to Colorado, this includes California and New York.
Except that independent commissions are good governance and helped us in other states. You can push for them in Michigan, for example, and then against them in Colorado.
Screw good governance. Democrats should never be in support of them at this point. Sure it could help us at times in MI but I’d rather Dems get a trifecta and then gerrymander themselves into a permanent majority.
Well, if you are eager to screw good governance, then DJT would like you to hold his soda.
And time proves that parties or party labels leave their constituents and standards behind. Would I be a Democrat in the 1880s? I would not. Would I be a Democrat in the 1960s? I would not, since I live in SC.
In classic Democratic Party fashion we get "outraged" and "raise hell" -after- the results of our complacency and disorganization bear fruit.
As another commenter said above, Democratic lack of foresight and strategy resulted in us losing a critical race four years ago that today would have been deciding in our favor as these people try to steal this election from Riggs.
It would be unethical but frankly Riggs should not recuse herself from this case. It's time to start playing hardball. We all know if the shoe was on the other foot the conservative would not recuse. Her conservative colleagues have every incentive to want more substantial majority in their own court. She is not facing impartial people anyway.
Then there is the bizarre fact that NC voters turned away Mark Robinson and handed the AG and LTGovs office to Democrats but failed to do so in the same numbers for a liberal incumbent SC Justice all the while voting for Trump and defeating the Democratic Auditor incumbent.
NC is a very strange state electorally.
Add this to another race where Democratic engagement may have not handed us enough of a margin to overcome such obstacles. Or how about the ones that we outright actually lost by close margins and have come back to haunt us?
2016 Missouri senate
2018 Florida senate.
2018 Florida Gov
2018 Texas senate
2022 Wisconsin senate
2024 Pennsylvania senate
And then the king of them all:
2016 Presidential which would have given us liberal control of the Supreme Court (or in the event of Republican obstruction likely at least a much more moderate one if compromise had to be made between Clinton and McConnell)
At every turn Democratic complacency results in future failure. We are reaping the results of those seeds now in NC.
There is one thing I disagree with you on: a Republican majority in the Senate would have blocked all Supreme Court nominations, just like they blocked Garland's nomination.
As far as I recall, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has a perfect 7–7 split between Democratic-appointed and Republican-appointed justices.
Schumer and Durbin never could get their act together to whip the votes necessary to confirm to confirm Ryan Park, nor did President Biden get around to finding an alternate nominee that would have sufficient support. Because of this malpractice, Trump gets to appoint the 15th judge to the Fourth Circuit, making it a Republican-appointed majority. (For the same reason, Trump gets to fill three other circuit court judgeships as well.)
Here is a chart that shows the composition of America’s Appeals Court when Biden entered office, as well as at the end of his term.
The 4th is actually 9 D-6 R, with no current vacancies. After Park failed to win confirmation, Dem appointee James Wynn rescinded his intention to retire. (Republicans cried foul, but piss on them since they effectively created the problem.) There is one likely D-R flip in the next four years with Robert Bruce King of WV which now has 2 GOP senators, unless King hangs on until at least 2029 when he'll be 89.
That chart may be counting Roger Gregory as a GOP appointee. Actually Clinton gave him a recess appointment, and Bush 43 then a permanent one that was confirmed. I count him as a Dem nominee.
I am excited about Benson(Emily will help raise tons),not excited about Bottoms though, black, female, politician from Atlanta is just a mistake in Georgia atm, though I sincerely wish it weren’t so
Yeah the current Mayor Andre Dickens would be more viable than her imo. Personally I think the best options are Lucy McBath, Jason Carter, or a wild card option like Sally Yates
Stacy Abrams almost pulled it off, and the state's trends haven't been particularly red over the last eight years. Her weaker performance in 2022 was probably a mix of Kemp's incumbency and her own errors.
Add the prefix "suburban" to Atlanta and you have Lucy McBath who may also be considering and could be a strong candidate.
Umm I know quite a few folks who worked in both the Reed and Bottoms administrations. . She was not a good executive and made a lot of poor decisions. She'd be a terrible statewide candidate.
Before Tim Burchett shocked the nation with his revelation that space aliens are hiding underwater, he might have been best known for introducing a bill in the Tennessee state legislature to legalize the eating of roadkill.
It was also at the bottom of the digest which I missed too, I usually go through the email at 6 AM and sometimes the things don't stick or my eyes go right by something but it does help adjust them for the day hah.
Sounds like Tim Burchett would be a perfect fit for the Roadkill Section of RFK Jr’s Disease Efficiency Advancement Department (DEAD).
PS. Did Burchett’s bill also cover whether you could eat road-killed aliens? (Just to be clear, I am not referring to Tennessean proclivity, whether real or rumored, for eating undocumented migrants or their pets.)
Sonya, I simply used my ordinary VISA credit card for The Dowballot, as well as to support other worthwhile substacks and great independent journalism:
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This is a bombshell: Griffin voted in the 2019 and 2020 elections via absentee while serving in the military. Trying to get rid of legal ballots cast in the method HE used himself.
At worse, the NCSC can order the votes retabulated or order a new election. But I would rather the 4th Circuit overrule them and order NCSBE to certify Riggs’ victory.
Marlinga is also 78 years old. Realistically speaking, the probability of him being elected is greater than the odds probability of him holding on to the seat for a long time.
And if elected in 2026 would turn 80 his first week in office.
Third times are seldom the charm. (Or fourth ones; he first ran for Congress in 2002 and lost to Candice Miller, after being Macomb County Prosecutor since the 1980s). It's possible that a blue wave or opinion shift in 2026 could do the trick, but even if it did he likely wouldn't hold it for too long.
There are two other races in the country where we don't know who will get seated.
First one is MN-40B where 20 ballots were lost. A court has chosen dem Tabke as the winner. Though that still can be overturned in the state house or on appeal.
Second one is House District 128 in Georgia. Where dem Mack Jackson won by 48 votes. Problem here is that election officals assigned voters wrongly that were on the border between two districts. About 60 voters likely voted in the incorrect district.
Besides the NYC Mayoral Race and the Oakland, CA Mayoral Special Election, are there any mayoral races this fall that are particularly worth paying attention to?
He's not going to be a serious, credible candidate.
Wu has avoided the major pitfalls that incumbent mayors face. She's not insanely popular to my knowledge, but she's not unpopular at all. The only approval poll I found has her at 57-38 positive/negative. I'd hazard a guess that a solid chunk of that 38 is disapproval from the left — people that will never vote for Kraft and will ultimately vote for Wu when they're forced to note the opposition.
Kraft is just a rich son of someone else. Yeah, Boston loves its sports but it's not going to vote for someone because that someone is the son of the person that owns one of those sports teams.
There's a reason Flynn opted not to challenge Wu. He's not dumb: he knows Wu is on a strong track to reelection.
Kraft might be able to make it closer than it should be if he can get obnoxious sums of money poured into his campaign, but I struggle to imagine his pathway to victory, or to relevance for that matter.
This is an election that the media will chase as being "interesting" because they need something to cover and Kraft has a well-known last name they can use as an excuse, but it will prove to be unfounded, IMO.
Time to raise hell. Every single justice who throws out the ballots will be targeted for removal in 2028 and 2030.
That’s fine. But the time to "raise hell" – or, more accurately, to get out the effing vote – was in 2020. That year, NC Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, who was our incumbent, lost by a mere 401 votes out of 5,391,501 cast, a difference of 0.008 %.
Beasley’s loss was very costly! Amongst other things, if I recall correctly, her loss enabled North Carolina’s extreme Congressional district gerrymander, without which I believe Democrats would now enjoy control of the House of Representatives.
Moral of the story: State Supreme Court races really, really matter! That includes upcoming election in Wisconsin, and this November’s Supreme Court election in Pennsylvania.
Raising hell is more than GOTV efforts. We need to organize and do everything we can to get these frauds out.
We didn’t have good party leadership until Anderson Clayton got the reins in 2023. Anderson would’ve worked hard to keep the progressive NCSC majority in 2020 and 2022 and keep Ted Budd out of the Senate.
Anderson Clayton has been amazing! Democrats need good party chairs and strong party organizations everywhere. Time to revitalize the 50 State Strategy!
No offense, but her name is Anderson Clayton, not Clayton Anderson.
That was an unforgivable transgression, especially considering I knew better. Corrected!
Is there any chance that throwing out these 60k ballots will upset other statewide races too?
That NC Supreme Court election isn't the only election that single-handedly gave Republicans control of the House right now. The same is true for Colorado's 2018 referendum giving it an independent redistricting commission. If not for that commission, Dems (who have a trifecta in CO) could've drawn a 7D-1R congressional map instead of the 4D-4R delegation they have now. Those three additional seats that Democrats threw away by voting for the independent redistricting commission would've given Dems the majority in the House.
True enough! I was ignoring the possibility of tit-for-tat, including Democrats changing the election systems and/or drawing up extreme gerrymanders in states that they do control. In addition to Colorado, this includes California and New York.
Except that independent commissions are good governance and helped us in other states. You can push for them in Michigan, for example, and then against them in Colorado.
Screw good governance. Democrats should never be in support of them at this point. Sure it could help us at times in MI but I’d rather Dems get a trifecta and then gerrymander themselves into a permanent majority.
Well, if you are eager to screw good governance, then DJT would like you to hold his soda.
And time proves that parties or party labels leave their constituents and standards behind. Would I be a Democrat in the 1880s? I would not. Would I be a Democrat in the 1960s? I would not, since I live in SC.
In classic Democratic Party fashion we get "outraged" and "raise hell" -after- the results of our complacency and disorganization bear fruit.
As another commenter said above, Democratic lack of foresight and strategy resulted in us losing a critical race four years ago that today would have been deciding in our favor as these people try to steal this election from Riggs.
It would be unethical but frankly Riggs should not recuse herself from this case. It's time to start playing hardball. We all know if the shoe was on the other foot the conservative would not recuse. Her conservative colleagues have every incentive to want more substantial majority in their own court. She is not facing impartial people anyway.
Then there is the bizarre fact that NC voters turned away Mark Robinson and handed the AG and LTGovs office to Democrats but failed to do so in the same numbers for a liberal incumbent SC Justice all the while voting for Trump and defeating the Democratic Auditor incumbent.
NC is a very strange state electorally.
Add this to another race where Democratic engagement may have not handed us enough of a margin to overcome such obstacles. Or how about the ones that we outright actually lost by close margins and have come back to haunt us?
2016 Missouri senate
2018 Florida senate.
2018 Florida Gov
2018 Texas senate
2022 Wisconsin senate
2024 Pennsylvania senate
And then the king of them all:
2016 Presidential which would have given us liberal control of the Supreme Court (or in the event of Republican obstruction likely at least a much more moderate one if compromise had to be made between Clinton and McConnell)
At every turn Democratic complacency results in future failure. We are reaping the results of those seeds now in NC.
There is one thing I disagree with you on: a Republican majority in the Senate would have blocked all Supreme Court nominations, just like they blocked Garland's nomination.
looking behind is not helpful unless lessons are learned; still not sure that we have learned anything, but Trump will be helpful imo
As far as I recall, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has a perfect 7–7 split between Democratic-appointed and Republican-appointed justices.
Schumer and Durbin never could get their act together to whip the votes necessary to confirm to confirm Ryan Park, nor did President Biden get around to finding an alternate nominee that would have sufficient support. Because of this malpractice, Trump gets to appoint the 15th judge to the Fourth Circuit, making it a Republican-appointed majority. (For the same reason, Trump gets to fill three other circuit court judgeships as well.)
Here is a chart that shows the composition of America’s Appeals Court when Biden entered office, as well as at the end of his term.
https://www.acslaw.org/judicial-nominations/change-in-court-composition/
The 4th is actually 9 D-6 R, with no current vacancies. After Park failed to win confirmation, Dem appointee James Wynn rescinded his intention to retire. (Republicans cried foul, but piss on them since they effectively created the problem.) There is one likely D-R flip in the next four years with Robert Bruce King of WV which now has 2 GOP senators, unless King hangs on until at least 2029 when he'll be 89.
That chart may be counting Roger Gregory as a GOP appointee. Actually Clinton gave him a recess appointment, and Bush 43 then a permanent one that was confirmed. I count him as a Dem nominee.
Thank you for your great supplementary information and the correction!
I am excited about Benson(Emily will help raise tons),not excited about Bottoms though, black, female, politician from Atlanta is just a mistake in Georgia atm, though I sincerely wish it weren’t so
I'm just hoping Mike Duggan doesn't make the ballot as an Independent, then with Jocelyn Benson as the nominee it will be a MINIMUM rated Lean D!! 💙🇺🇲
Yeah the current Mayor Andre Dickens would be more viable than her imo. Personally I think the best options are Lucy McBath, Jason Carter, or a wild card option like Sally Yates
Stacy Abrams almost pulled it off, and the state's trends haven't been particularly red over the last eight years. Her weaker performance in 2022 was probably a mix of Kemp's incumbency and her own errors.
Add the prefix "suburban" to Atlanta and you have Lucy McBath who may also be considering and could be a strong candidate.
Keisha Bottoms has a lot of issues as a statewide candidate that have nothing to do with her gender or race
disagree
I mean i agree with the sentiment that being a black woman may handicap her too, but Bottoms is a bad candidate statewide for other reasons, too
Umm I know quite a few folks who worked in both the Reed and Bottoms administrations. . She was not a good executive and made a lot of poor decisions. She'd be a terrible statewide candidate.
That’s my point
Agree
Jen Rubin at The Contrarian just interviewed Jocelyn Benson. If you prefer to read, click "Transcript" below the video. Enjoy!
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/jen-rubin-interviews-jocelyn-benson
I wonder if KLB will ultimately run for McBath's seat instead of statewide. Maybe Jerica Richardson runs again,
I am ok with this.. Statewide???.. Nope
Before Tim Burchett shocked the nation with his revelation that space aliens are hiding underwater, he might have been best known for introducing a bill in the Tennessee state legislature to legalize the eating of roadkill.
Excuse me what
If your car hits a deer in Tennessee, you can have venison for dinner. Except that that had never been illegal.
If you missed the alien part lol. https://www.newsweek.com/tim-burchett-matt-gaetz-aliens-hiding-under-sea-2020487
Thank you!
It was also at the bottom of the digest which I missed too, I usually go through the email at 6 AM and sometimes the things don't stick or my eyes go right by something but it does help adjust them for the day hah.
Sounds like Tim Burchett would be a perfect fit for the Roadkill Section of RFK Jr’s Disease Efficiency Advancement Department (DEAD).
PS. Did Burchett’s bill also cover whether you could eat road-killed aliens? (Just to be clear, I am not referring to Tennessean proclivity, whether real or rumored, for eating undocumented migrants or their pets.)
I think it's interesting that he admitted the universe was more than 10,000 years old.
Perhaps he is a budding coprolitologist?
Perhaps. But I'm not sure if you're referring to him being interested in groundhogging, or something else.
I wanted to support you, but I do not have an apple pay account and do not wish to create one. What should I do?
Sonya, I simply used my ordinary VISA credit card for The Dowballot, as well as to support other worthwhile substacks and great independent journalism:
The Contrarian, Bolts Magazine, Talking Points Memo (TPM), The Guardian, Hopium Chronicles, Heather Cox Richardson, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Lucid), Masses and Edges (Shelah Horvitz), Sam Wang (Fixing Bugs in Democracy).
You are extremely kind, Sonya! The best way to support us is to purchase an annual subscription, which can be done with an ordinary credit card (in fact, we don't accept Apple Pay): https://www.the-downballot.com/subscribe
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This is a bombshell: Griffin voted in the 2019 and 2020 elections via absentee while serving in the military. Trying to get rid of legal ballots cast in the method HE used himself.
https://www.propublica.org/article/jefferson-griffin-military-absentee-votes-north-carolina-supreme-court
It’s appalling.
I have to think the Fourth Circuit mentioned above will do something if the NC court takes this crazy step but still one step closer to the cliff.
At worse, the NCSC can order the votes retabulated or order a new election. But I would rather the 4th Circuit overrule them and order NCSBE to certify Riggs’ victory.
MI-10: Someone new this time, please.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/01/24/congress/michigan-battlegound-democrat-carl-marlinga-00200465
Marlinga is also 78 years old. Realistically speaking, the probability of him being elected is greater than the odds probability of him holding on to the seat for a long time.
And if elected in 2026 would turn 80 his first week in office.
Third times are seldom the charm. (Or fourth ones; he first ran for Congress in 2002 and lost to Candice Miller, after being Macomb County Prosecutor since the 1980s). It's possible that a blue wave or opinion shift in 2026 could do the trick, but even if it did he likely wouldn't hold it for too long.
Yes. I like him but he had two shots. Make room for someone else
Need young blood imo
There are two other races in the country where we don't know who will get seated.
First one is MN-40B where 20 ballots were lost. A court has chosen dem Tabke as the winner. Though that still can be overturned in the state house or on appeal.
Second one is House District 128 in Georgia. Where dem Mack Jackson won by 48 votes. Problem here is that election officals assigned voters wrongly that were on the border between two districts. About 60 voters likely voted in the incorrect district.
Minnesota Supreme Court rules that 68 House members are needed for a quorum. Big win for Dems.
https://bsky.app/profile/the-downballot.com/post/3lgjen5lrnc2m
Besides the NYC Mayoral Race and the Oakland, CA Mayoral Special Election, are there any mayoral races this fall that are particularly worth paying attention to?
Boston Mayoral race. The oldest son of the owner of the New England Patriots is running for Mayor.
He's not going to be a serious, credible candidate.
Wu has avoided the major pitfalls that incumbent mayors face. She's not insanely popular to my knowledge, but she's not unpopular at all. The only approval poll I found has her at 57-38 positive/negative. I'd hazard a guess that a solid chunk of that 38 is disapproval from the left — people that will never vote for Kraft and will ultimately vote for Wu when they're forced to note the opposition.
Kraft is just a rich son of someone else. Yeah, Boston loves its sports but it's not going to vote for someone because that someone is the son of the person that owns one of those sports teams.
There's a reason Flynn opted not to challenge Wu. He's not dumb: he knows Wu is on a strong track to reelection.
Kraft might be able to make it closer than it should be if he can get obnoxious sums of money poured into his campaign, but I struggle to imagine his pathway to victory, or to relevance for that matter.
This is an election that the media will chase as being "interesting" because they need something to cover and Kraft has a well-known last name they can use as an excuse, but it will prove to be unfounded, IMO.
And the Patriots suck without Brady.. That's a real thing in Boston.. Trust me