Mediaboss Marketing

October 7, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

TAYLORVILLE, Ill. On a warm Friday night in the St. Marys Catholic Church parking lot, sweating men sipping cold beers dipped fish fillets into bubbling deep fryers as children played on the bouncy castle.

This down-home fish fry used to be a regular stop for U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, a moderate Republican who grew up in this former coal town in Central Illinois. But that was before new district lines drawn in 2021 pushed him into far more conservative terrain and into competition with a fellow GOP incumbent.

To keep his job in Congress, Davis had to square off with Rep. Mary E. Miller, a member of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who closely aligned herself with former president Donald Trump. In the primary campaign, she assailed Davis for his willingness to compromise with Democrats and to acknowledge Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Miller, the hard-liner, won the 2022 race. Davis, the consensus-seeker, was out.

The bitter Republican feuding was not merely a symptom of the broader civil war in the national party. Rather, it was prompted by the actions of Illinois Democrats, who used their supermajority in the legislature to redraw district lines in a way that would strengthen their already titanium-solid lock on power.

The strategy worked, adding one Democratic seat to the Illinois delegation and trimming two Republican ones as GOP voters were packed into a smaller number of districts.

The new map also accomplished what experts say gerrymandering does with ruthless efficiency, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are responsible: hollowing out the moderate political center and driving both parties further toward the ideological fringes.

Gerrymandering undermines a key element of democracy, which is competition, said Harvard University government professor Steven Levitsky.

Politicians representing more-evenly split districts fear general election competition and therefore tend to govern more moderately, Levitsky said. But those in lopsided districts worry more about primary challenges and become responsive to the extremes in their party.

The consequences were on vivid display during the past couple of weeks in Congress as a small group of hard-right Republicans drove the government to the brink of a shutdown and then expelled Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the post of House Speaker, the first speaker in the nations history to be ousted by members of his own party. The eight GOP members who voted to reject him represent districts that are safely Republican, with little to fear in general-election contests against Democrats.

Miller was not among those eight dissenters, but she was part of a larger group of hard-right Republicans that had earlier blocked McCarthys spending plans forcing him to work with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, a collaboration that helped to seal his fate.

Levitsky, a co-author of the book Tyranny of the Minority, said the push to the extremes has been particularly evident in the Trump-led Republican Party and that gerrymandering is one cause among many.

Whats really new about our politics today is that the radical fringe on the right, who are pretty authoritarian and pretty nativist, are now exercising outsize power, Levitsky said.

But for both parties, the primary election dominated by the most ideologically committed voters has become more important as districts with competitive general elections have dwindled. Over the past quarter-century, the number of House swing seats, as calculated by the Cook Political Report, has been cut in half from 164 in 1999 to an estimated 82 in next years election. Only 25 incumbents 6 percent of the Houses 435 seats were defeated in 2022. Sixteen of them lost in primaries.

Gerrymandering isnt the only factor driving that phenomenon; geographic sorting, in which cities have become bluer and rural areas redder, has contributed mightily.

Drawing lines to favor your own party also is not a new dynamic. But it has become more common and aggressive with the rise of supermajority state legislatures and a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that federal courts have no role in policing partisan efforts to rig district maps.

In recent years, Republicans have used their dominance at the state level to create highly favorable maps in large states, such as Texas and Florida, as well as smaller ones, including Tennessee and Utah. But where Democratic legislators control the process, theyve proved equally adept at creating maps advantageous to their party.

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a nonpartisan group that studies the issue nationally, gave the Illinois map an F rating and classified none of the states 17 congressional districts as competitive.

Although Democratic voters unquestionably outnumber Republicans in the state Biden defeated Trump by 17 points in Illinois in 2020 the effect is exaggerated by district lines that have helped to give Democrats a 14-3 advantage in the states congressional delegation. In a comparison with a baseline map with no partisan advantage, Princeton researchers found that Illinois Democrats had given themselves three additional seats a total matched only by Republicans in Texas.

Illinois new district lines for 2022 made the few GOP districts that remained even redder, which created a problem for two moderate Republicans. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an outspoken Trump critic who was certain to have drawn a strong primary challenge in 2022, opted to leave Congress. Davis fought to stay but found his moderate record used against him in his reelection bid against Miller.

His willingness to reach across the aisle had made him a favored partner of Democrats and had helped him win general elections in his politically balanced district. But that instinct for compromise, he said in an interview, became a liability under the new Democratic-drawn map.

Davis said he was hammered in the primary for pictures with Biden. Pictures with Obama. Not Trumpy enough. Voted for common sense immigration reform, etc., etc., etc.

Davis called the gerrymandering and Millers attacks on him unsurprising.

At the Taylorville fish fry, some of Daviss former constituents were more pointed.

Rodney got screwed, said Bob Davis, 88, a retired school administrator having dinner with his family at a picnic table. I think it should be illegal. When you intentionally draw the lines for political reasons, I think thats wrong.

Manipulation of voting districts has been around since at least 18th-century England. It became known as gerrymandering in 1812 when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry approved a district whose odd shape reminded people of a salamander.

The new 13th District in Illinois more closely resembles a snake. It squiggles across 175 miles of lightly populated and Republican-leaning farmland and connects the more urban and Democratic-leaning areas of East St. Louis, Springfield, Decatur, Champaign and Urbana.

It is a safely Democratic district, which was won in 2022 by first-time candidate Nikki Budzinski, a longtime labor union official who also served in the Biden administration.

Taylorville had been part of the old 13th District, which was split fairly evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with just a four-point GOP advantage, according to the Cook Political Report. Davis won the district first in 2012 and was reelected four times, serving 10 years largely as a center-right moderate.

Then, in the most recent redistricting, Taylorville was moved into a new 15th District, a largely rural and conservative bloc that almost completely surrounds the 13th and that had been made significantly more Republican by the shifting lines, giving it a 22-point GOP edge.

As Davis fought to stay in Congress last year, he stressed his Republican bona fides: Campaign materials reminded primary voters that he had been proud to work with President Trump, and he sought the former presidents endorsement.

But his opponent, Miller, was quick to note that Davis had also voted to certify Bidens 2020 election victory, which she called tainted, and supported the creation of a congressional commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a matchup of Republican incumbents, it wasnt even close: After Trump came to the district to campaign for Miller, she cruised to a primary victory, 57 percent to 43 percent.

In sharp contrast to Daviss approach, which he describes as principled compromise, Miller is rated by Voteview, a nonpartisan research group that tracks congressional voting and ideology, as more conservative than 98 percent of current House members.

She has called for the impeachments of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a ban on further funding for Ukraines defense against Russias invasion.

Miller did not vote to remove McCarthy when he was ousted from the job Tuesday, explaining in a statement that she wants her party to be focused on stopping the radical Democrats. But she has repeatedly sided with a small group of hard-right Republicans that frequently sparred with McCarthy and ultimately doomed his speakership.

Miller, whose office did not respond to requests for an interview, voted against McCarthys getting the job of speaker in January. In June she voted against suspending the debt ceiling. Then she voted against the bill that averted the government shutdown.

Political scientists and analysts said that when state Democrats packed so many conservatives into a single district, they created the environment for Miller to win despite holding views that are out of step with most general-election voters in Illinois and even with most GOP House members.

Gerrymandering really disincentivizes reasonableness and bipartisanship, said Riley Berg, a senior adviser at Country First, a nonprofit organization founded by Kinzinger after the Jan. 6 attack. We end up with choices in the general election that are not representative of the vast majority of the electorate.

Davis said the impact of unchecked gerrymandering was simple and stark: The cost is Congress not working as our forefathers intended Congress to work.

You have people in Congress, in both parties, who are rewarded for not working with the other side, he said.

Gerrymandering was given a boost in 2019 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that partisan redistricting is a political question that must be decided by legislators, not federal courts. The court upheld earlier precedents when it ruled this year that gerrymandering for racial reasons still violates the Voting Rights Act, even as Republican-dominated Southern legislatures, such as Alabamas, have resisted making maps that comply with the courts orders.

In most states, the legislature is responsible for drawing district maps. In many of the growing number of states where one party holds a supermajority in the legislature enough votes to override any veto by the governor the process of drawing districts for federal and state offices has become increasingly partisan.

At present, 19 Republican states and nine Democratic states have supermajorities. That includes Illinois, where the governor, both U.S. senators and two-thirds of the state legislature are Democrats.

Democrats in the state deny that the lines drawn in 2021 amount to gerrymandering.

I would say it was a fair and equitable process, said state Sen. Robert Peters (D). We took feedback from stakeholders in the community throughout the entire state. And we held hearings all over the state and followed the guidelines to create the map.

Republicans dismiss such defenses, saying that Democrats used their political supermajority to muscle through a blatant gerrymander.

Illinois Democrats will tell you they believe in gerrymandering reform, then laugh all the way to drawing districts that eviscerate Republicans, Davis said.

The parties have different stances on how to address gerrymandering. Democrats have pushed for federal legislation that would require that maps be drawn by independent commissions; Republicans have largely resisted those calls.

For the redistricting process that followed the 2020 Census, 10 states had independent or bipartisan commissions to draw legislative districts, according to the Cook Political Report. They included Democratic-dominated California and Colorado and the key swing states of Arizona and Michigan. Other states had commissions that answered to a partisan legislature.

In states that did not have commissions, Republicans controlled redistricting in 17 and Democrats in seven.

As both parties focus on shoring up their bases, fewer Americans are identifying with either. According to Gallup, close to 50 percent of Americans now consider themselves political independents, while only about a quarter identify as Republicans or Democrats. Two decades ago, independents, Republicans and Democrats each had about a one-third share of voters.

The middle in America wants its voice and choice back, said Kent Thiry, a former executive in the health-care industry who runs a group called Unite America that is fighting to reform gerrymandering and the primary voting system. Change is needed, he said, in a political system where if you cross the aisle, you are not reelected.

Davis, 53, was born and raised in Taylorville, a town of 11,000 people about 25 miles southeast of Springfield, the Illinois capital. Many storefronts along the central square are empty, but a few restaurants and shops are busy. One building still lists the office of Congressman Rodney Davis as a second-floor tenant.

When coal was king, the town was pro-union and a Democratic stronghold. But in recent decades, Taylorville has shifted further toward the Republican Party. Mayor Bruce Barry said the towns strong history with both parties made it fertile ground for a centrist Republican such as Davis.

Millers hard-line views, by contrast, dont really represent Taylorville, said Barry, whose position is nonpartisan but who considers himself a centrist Democrat in a moderate Republican town.

Were strong Republicans down here, but I dont think were out there way right, he said. We look more for common-sense decisions.

Barry said the town is feeling the sting of Daviss absence as an advocate for its interests in Washington. Davis, a longtime congressional staffer before he ran for office, was instrumental in getting a $650,000 federal grant for a new industrial park on the edge of town, as well as $2.5 million to resurface West Main Street, a key local thoroughfare, Barry said.

These are projects that we depend on. We dont have the tax base that others do, Barry explained. He expressed frustration that Miller has not applied for funding for local projects in her district.

The House Freedom Caucus, of which Miller is a member, wants a ban on such earmarks, often called pork-barrel projects. The caucus believes that government spending is out of control and that earmarks represent a lack of fiscal responsibility in Washington, according to its public statements.

Earmarks facilitate federal overreach by spending taxpayer-dollars on personal pet projects of lawmakers and lobbyists. Earmarks also extend Congresss power of spending beyond items genuinely connected to the nations welfare, according to the caucuss rules.

Seth McMillan, a Taylorville native and a former chairman of the Christian County Republican Central Committee, said Davis had been positioned to rise in House leadership and could have gotten some things done for Central Illinois.

People can debate the federal budget all day long, but your job as a representative is to bring dollars back to your district, McMillan said.

Oakland is a 90-minute drive east of Taylorville on roads dotted with silos cutting through vast fields of corn and soybeans. In this town of 739 people, residents said they have to drive 20 minutes to get to the nearest large grocery store.

Many storefronts on the small central square have closed, and one features a sign that says, Pritzker Sucks, a slam on Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and a hint at the towns conservative leanings. Coles County, which includes Oakland, voted 62 percent for Trump in the 2020 general election.

The Millers, a prominent local farming and political family, have lived in the Oakland area for decades.

Mary E. Miller, 64, originally from the western Chicago suburbs, is a longtime area resident who is married to Chris Miller, a Republican state representative and fourth-generation local farmer. They raise cattle, corn and soy on the family farm.

According to her website, Mary is a wife, mother of seven, grandmother of twenty, and local farmer who serves as a voice for families and farmers ignored by D.C. insiders in the swamp.

In the most recent redistricting, Oakland was shifted from the 15th Congressional District, represented by Miller, into the 12th Congressional District, which stretches about 200 miles to the southern tip of the state.

But Hindsboro, a town six miles west of Oakland where a Miller spokeswoman said the congresswoman and her family moved earlier this year, is in the 15th.

The district is widely considered the most conservative in the state. After beating Davis in the primary, Miller crushed a Democratic challenger in the general election with 71 percent of the vote.

I have conversations with Mary quite a bit, but we cant elect her, said Oakland Mayor Jack Turner, a Republican who has known the Miller family for decades. That was taken away from us, and I think thats unfair.

Turner, 57, with a bushy gray beard and a sleeveless T-shirt that said, Stars and Stripes Since 1776, said that Millers conservative politics represented the town well and that he believed the community was harmed in losing her to a partisan gerrymander.

But he also lamented the loss of the moderate center in both parties and expressed disappointment in the Republican rebellion that ended in McCarthys removal as speaker.

Now youre either way left or way right, he said in an interview in the towns tiny municipal building. There used to be a middle road, and the middle road was fine. Why does it have to be this extreme?

Morse reported from Washington. Graphics and data by Morse. Editing by Griff Witte. Copy editing by Gilbert Dunkley. Project editing by KC Schaper. Photo editing by Christine T. Nguyen. Data editing by Anu Narayanswamy.

Continued here:
Illinois Democrats drew new maps. The changes pushed the GOP to ... - The Washington Post

Members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union are seen on a Labor Day parade float, Sept. 4, 1961. While many may associate the holiday with major retail sales and end-of summer barbecues, Labor Day's roots are in worker-driven organizing. Hans Von Nolde/AP hide caption

Members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union are seen on a Labor Day parade float, Sept. 4, 1961. While many may associate the holiday with major retail sales and end-of summer barbecues, Labor Day's roots are in worker-driven organizing.

"Labor Day" is one of those holiday names we repeat so often we stop thinking about what the words originally meant. Some people set aside time to remember the human price of war on Memorial Day. Most of us give some kind of thanks on Thanksgiving. But the only ritual for Labor Day is taking the day off, and many see it only as the three-day weekend that marks the end of summer.

Yet Labor Day is as political in its history as the Fourth of July or the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. The first Labor Day celebration on the first Monday of September was in New York City in 1882, an era when labor activism was often illegal and always dangerous. Workers and police alike were killed when a labor protest near near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned violet in 1886, and federal troops fired on strikers in that city's Pullman Strike of 1894. Later that year, in a bid to calm a rising storm, Congress made Labor Day a legal holiday, and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law.

Over time, Labor Day became the American version of May Day or International Labor Day, an occasion to celebrate working people and their causes, often associated with the political left. For the major U.S. political parties, it also became the unofficial starting gate for fall election campaigns of the old-fashioned kind largely done outdoors in person with no screens of any kind.

For generations, Labor Day activities organized by unions were seen primarily as Democratic affairs. Working-class voters were the heart of the coalition Franklin Roosevelt rode to four presidential victories (1932-1944). FDR rewarded them with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, enshrining in law the right to collective bargaining and giving labor unions a new level of recognition and clout.

President Franklin Roosevelt reads to his guests as he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, at table, host a Labor Day picnic at their residence in Hyde Park, N.Y., Sept. 3, 1934. AP hide caption

President Franklin Roosevelt reads to his guests as he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, at table, host a Labor Day picnic at their residence in Hyde Park, N.Y., Sept. 3, 1934.

But many of FDR voters or their descendants began drifting away from the Democrats in the economic expansion and relative affluence of the postwar era. The trend strengthened in the late 1960s as many grew disillusioned with the promises of President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War and his "Great Society" programs.

Many working-class voters turned to Richard Nixon, who built his "Silent Majority" around them in 1968 and 1972. Even more joined the ranks of "Reagan Democrats" carrying Ronald Reagan to a pair of landslide wins in the 1980s. And the demographic category provided the surprising surge that elected Donald Trump in 2016 (and came close to doing it again in 2020).

This is all part of the long postwar pattern by which the Democratic Party has departed from its traditional geographic and demographic bases. It is no longer surprising that elements of the Republican Party have eagerly embraced voters in those bases who felt the Democrats had simply abandoned them. Reagan was perhaps the most famous former Democrat who made a habit of saying: "I did not leave my party, my party left me."

The most obvious driver of this was the Democrats' move away from their historic roots as a Southern, rural party committed to states' rights. After a century of struggle among its factions, Democrats gradually followed the direction of a young speaker at the 1948 Democratic Convention. That was when Hubert Humphrey, later to be a senator and vice president and presidential nominee, called on the party to "get out of the shadow of states' and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."

Sixteen years later, Humphrey, together with other Northern and Western Democrats and some Republicans, pieced together the two-thirds majority in the Senate to overcome a filibuster by Southern Democrats and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The deep loyalty felt by many white Southerners for the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and also the party of the Lost Cause and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy began to erode.

The trend was slowed by the election of two Southern Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter of Georgia (1976) and Bill Clinton of Arkansas (1992). But even with Clinton in office in 1994, the full consequences of Dixie's defection to the GOP erupted in a single day. That November, Republicans won the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and congressional seats the first time that had happened since Reconstruction after the Civil War. Republican domination of Southern state legislatures was not far behind. And from the 1990s on, every Republican nominee for president has relied on Southern states for most of his Electoral College vote.

Local 361 iron worker Robert Farula marches up Fifth Avenue carrying an American flag during the Labor Day parade on Sept. 8, 2012, in New York. Mary Altaffer/AP hide caption

Local 361 iron worker Robert Farula marches up Fifth Avenue carrying an American flag during the Labor Day parade on Sept. 8, 2012, in New York.

That history has its parallel with regard to the votes and political loyalties of white workers who do not have college degrees. Call this voting demographic what you will, it has become the battleground in our presidential elections and in many down-ballot races as well.

That Democrats long ago lost their prior claim to this political territory is no longer surprising. Just as our political geography has changed, so have our partisan demographics. According to the source most political scientists use (the American National Election Studies Cumulative File), Republicans had an average advantage of 5 percentage points in party identification among college graduates in the 1980s. But a generation later, in the elections of 2016, 2018 and 2020, party identification among college graduates favored Democrats by an average of 14 points.

Still, with all the elements of shifting patterns in recent decades of American political life, the disconnect from the broad working class is the loss that has cost the Democrats most dearly and the one that threatens them most in the years ahead.

It has been some time since the Democrats could simply call themselves "the party of the working man." For one thing, women's share of the total workforce is now approaching 50%. For another, increasing numbers of working people do not regard the Democrats as their party. Donald Trump won the support of workers with less than a college degree in both 2016 and 2020 by 7 percentage points in 2016 and by 8 in 2020. Among those in the category who were white, Trump's margins were 36 points in 2016 and 32 four years later.

But gaudy as Trump's advantage was in the white subcategory, Biden got 5 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. And that improvement was critical in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the pivot on which the Electoral College turned.

That is just an illustration of how the wage-earning sector, variously defined, has become the principal battlefield in presidential elections and for many down ballot races as well. One measure of the category has always been "union households," meaning voters who report having at least one union member in their home. But as the membership in labor unions has fallen to the low teens in percentage terms,

For example, network exit polls found Biden winning 57% of union households, even as he lost the category of workers without college degrees to Trump.

It is hard to find an observer who thinks Biden could be reelected without doing at least as well among working people as he did in 2020. And he has shown keen awareness of this from the outset of his term with his open embrace of unions, support for their leadership, bargaining positions and legislative agenda. He regularly promotes his claim that 90% of the jobs created by his massive infrastructure bill (the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act) would not need a college degree.

Just this past week Biden's Labor secretary proposed a new rule by which 3.6 million more U.S. workers would be eligible for overtime pay. He has also restocked the National Labor Relations Board with appointees confirmed by the Senate, where a Republican majority had blocked three appointees of former President Obama. That board, the powerful arbiter of labor-management disputes, now has a Democratic majority.

At the same time, the GOP shows no sign of backing off its pursuit of the blue collar motherlode of winnable votes even if Trump is not the party's nominee a third time in 2024. The in-migration of former Democrats has, in fact, transformed the GOP and recast the competitions we know as campaigns.

A Gallup Poll in late August showed public approval of labor unions as an institution at 67%, with even support among Republicans at 52%. Other recent surveys have shown public support for unions as high as it has ever been since polling began in the 1930s. And that reflects a renewed courtship by both parties.

Much of the contemporary GOP has long since shed its air of country club superiority. Some Republican events have taken on the populist tone of Trump's raucous rallies, which have been media magnets of great power in the last two election cycles.

When the Republican National Committee held its first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign in August, the broadcast began with a video of country singer Oliver Anthony, whanging a banjo and singing his Billboard No. 1 hit "Rich Men North of Richmond" a blast at America's elite on behalf of its working poor. Immediately thereafter, the first question of the night from the Fox News moderator was: "Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?"

The candidates that night all seemed to know the song was a hit because it targeted Democrats such as President Biden. But the singer-songwriter posted a video of his own two days later with a very different take, saying "that song was written about the people on that stage." He said his real target was "the haves" who want "the have nots" to feel helpless. Populist, yes, to be sure. But was it Republican?

It might be said that, at 80, Biden has survived long enough to be the man of the hour. He won his first race for the Senate more than half a century ago with 50.5% of the vote and the backing of the Delaware AFL-CIO. He won the nomination for president he had sought three times when labor unions swung his way in 2020. Labor leaders and other traditional party people woke up after Super Tuesday to Biden as the de facto nominee and felt relatively comfortable with him. Not so much passion perhaps, but what the Democrats needed to defeat Trump that year.

The question going forward is whether there remains enough faith in the 80-year-old version of Biden physically and enough confidence in Biden as a candidate to beat back another assault from Trump. Or, alternatively, enough freshness and energy in him to match up against a fresh Republican face, if Trump is not the GOP nominee.

Go here to see the original:
Labor Day is now a key to Election Day for Democrats and Republicans alike - NPR

Candidates may begin circulating nominating petitions for the Tuesday, March 19, 2024 Primary Election on Tuesday, Sept. 5.

State Sen. Laura Murphy (D-28th), who serves as Maine Township Democratic committeeperson, will host a petition and campaign kickoff at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9 at Kappys American Grill, 7200 W. Dempster St., Morton Grove. The restaurant is owned by Niles Mayor George Alpogianis.

Murphy is expected to be joined at the kickoff by candidates running in Maine Township including U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-9th), State Reps. Marty Moylan (D-55th) and Michelle Mussman (*D-56th) along with judicial candidates and others.

Niles Township Democrats United will hold a petition launch event at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10 at Laramie Park in Skokie off Touhy Avenue, hosted by Niles Township Democratic Committeeperson Josina Morita, and Skokie School Dist. 73.5 board member Bushra Amiwala. Schakowsky is also expected to attend.

The 2024 election will include the race for president. Although the Republican field is packed, only three Democrats have announced their runs: President Joe Biden, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Marianne Williamson. Kennedy and Williamson are seen as longshots to secure the Democratic nomination.

Murphy said the Biden campaign is expected to work with local congressional representatives to name delegates to the Democratic National Convention for Biden in October. Murphy said she hopes to see Park Ridge resident Aurora Austriaco on the ballot as a Biden delegate. Austriaco is an attorney and former member of the Maine High School Dist. 207 Board of Education.

The Cook County Democratic Party has released its list of endorsed candidates, including Biden for president along with Clayton Harris for Cook County states attorney (Kim Foxx is not seeking reelection), and Mariyana Spyropoulos for clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, along with numerous supreme, appellate and circuit court judge candidates.

Read the rest here:
Maine, Niles Township Democrats Holding Campaign, Petition ... - Journal & Topics Newspapers Online

The Lincoln County Democratic Committee plans to host its annual harvest dinner from 4-6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, at Jeffersons Le Barn event center, the restored gambrel-roofed barn at 132 Waldoboro Road.

The event includes a menu of locally sourced stews and soups, and local elected officials will deliver updates on legislative initiatives.

The simple bill of fare will include a selection of soups and stews with vegan options prepared by volunteer chefs, bread, butter, locally pressed apple cider, and a selection of pies accompanied by coffee in an informal, all-you-care-to-eat, family style format.

The committee uses the money it raises through this and other fundraising initiatives to support its local efforts in Lincoln County.

There is a limited seating of 120. Reservations are available for $25 per person for the meal, with a $50 option to be listed as a host. Hosts offer additional support and are recognized at the event for their generosity.

The committee welcomes nonmembers, out-of-county visitors, or others who want to support the organization to attend. For event details, sponsorship information, and the link to make reservations before Sunday, Sept. 24, visit lincolncountydemocrats.com. Contact event organizer Valarie Johnson at 207-549-3358 with questions.

Previous

See more here:
Democrats to host harvest dinner in Jefferson Oct. 1 - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

As invading Mexico becomes a mainstream Republican Party position, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a measure on Thursday that would bar a U.S. president from unilaterally taking military action against the country.

The response to the war powers resolution from the office of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. who has led recent efforts to reduce the U.S. militarys foreign entanglements highlights populist Republicans growing pains in their emerging anti-war coalition with progressive Democrats.

At first, Gaetzs office told The Intercept that he would oppose the amendment. In a follow-up statement attributed to the lawmaker, a spokesperson wrote: Mexico is a captive narco state. I support the amendment and support passing an Authorized Use of Military Force against Mexico.

The measure was introduced by Democratic Reps. Jess Chuy Garca of Illinois; Joaquin Castro of Texas; and Nydia Velzquez of New York as an amendment to the 2024 Department of Defense appropriations bill.

The amendment draws on the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which was established to limit the presidents authority to wage war. It would bar the use of the military budget with respect to Mexico without congressional authorization, including for the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities in Mexico, into situations in Mexico where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, or into Mexican territory, airspace, or waters while equipped for combat.

Garca told The Intercept that the amendment was spurred in part by the escalating chorus of Republican calls to invade Mexico.

Armed interventions and the humanitarian crises they inevitably engender are central reasons why people leave their home countries in the first place, Garca said. Invading Mexico would endanger a key partner, increase the chaos in which cartels thrive, and force large numbers of people to come to our border fleeing violence far from addressing the challenges that Republicans purport to care about.

Donald Trump has led the calls for war, enlisting advisers to come up with ways to attack Mexican drug cartels with or without Mexicos permission. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised he would send military forces to Mexico on day one if he is elected president. Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman-turned-presidential-hopeful, said he would use military force to decimate the cartels, Osama bin Laden-style, Soleimani-style in the first six months of his presidency. Former CIA agent Will Hurd who at one point was the only Black Republican in the House said this week that he wants to dismantle cartel and human smuggling networks by treating them the same way we treated the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile in Congress, 21 Republicans led by Reps. Dan Crenshaw and Michael Waltz introduced legislation in January to authorize the use of military force against Mexican cartels. In March, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced he would introduce legislation to set the stage for military force in Mexico. And House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said it was a mistake that then-President Trump didnt move forward with his reported hopes to shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs, and then lie and pretend the U.S. was not behind the attack.

Velzquez said in a statement that military operations in Mexico would be an unmitigated disaster. Before the idea goes any further, she added, we need levelheaded policymakers to speak up and clarify that Congress will not support this. This amendment will ensure that no funding is allocated to these extreme policies.

Over the last several years, congressional progressives have brought forward a number of war powers resolutions to force lawmakers to contend with U.S. entanglements abroad. In 2019, Congress passed a bipartisan resolution to stop U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, only for Trump to veto it. (Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders unsuccessfully tried to revive the effort.)

Earlier this year, Gaetz introduced two separate war powers resolutions, both of which garnered significant GOP support but ultimately failed. Fifty-two Republicans voted in favor of his resolution directing the president to remove all forces from Somalia, and 47 did the same with regard to Syria. The concern with the haphazard use of military force, however, may not extend to Mexico.

The Intercept contacted 18 House Republicans who have previously supported war powers resolutions. Most did not respond to questions whether Congress would need to authorize war with Mexico.

Many Trump-aligned Republicans have rightly been adamant that only Congress can authorize war and military action. Dozens of them have voted to withdraw U.S. troops from unauthorized wars in Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, said Erik Sperling, executive director of the advocacy organization Just Foreign Policy. It would be a scandal if those who want a war in Mexico would now allow a future President to violate the Constitution and wage unauthorized war. They should support this important Garcia-Castro amendment and make clear that any future president will have to come to Congress before taking us to war in Mexico or anywhere else.

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar was among the only members to respond to The Intercepts inquiry. Instead of addressing the necessity of congressional authorization for use of military force in Mexico, he attacked the Biden administration. Joe Biden and the incompetent Secretary Mayorkas are complicit in their failure to protect Americans from the invasion along the southern border. Ive repeatedly said that we must defend our border by any and all legal means necessary, including deploying our military, said Gosar, who voted in favor of the war powers resolutions for Somalia and Syria. Every member of congress should vote and be on record of supporting efforts to secure our border or continue to support this invasion.

Crenshaws office pointed to his bill from January about authorizing force against Mexican cartels and did not respond to a question about the Democrats amendment.

Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchetts office did not speak to his stance on the amendment. Since it would currently require Congressional authorization, Congressman Burchett would not support changing the status quo to give the current president more unilateral decision-making authority in this area.

New York Rep. George Santos was more cautious than his Republican colleagues. Of course we want congressional authorization for any military action, said Santos, who also voted in favor of the war powers resolutions for Somalia and Syria. However militarization of the immigration crisis should be an absolute last resort.

Congress is set to debate the appropriations bill when lawmakers return to Washington in September.

Read the original:
As Republicans Thirst for War With Mexico, Democrats Push for Vote ... - The Intercept