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Florida Republicans bested Democrats in the blocking and tackling of running campaigns last year, leading to victories up and down the ballot for the GOP. Now the states top Democrat is bringing in outside help to prevent a repeat in 2022.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and the National Democratic Training Committee are announcing a new initiative to train local county Democratic leaders in organization and strategizing. The goal is to strengthen the Democrats closest to the voters and activists on the ground.

Organizing has historically been the Democratic Partys strong suit and after Floridas 2020 election results, its clear that an initiative to strengthen party efforts from the ground up, prioritizing the local level, will be crucial for future success, Fried, the states only statewide Democrat, said in a statement.

The training will take place over four sessions that will begin in April.

This series is the latest effort by Fried to help the party rebuild from the ground up. Fried recently announced the hiring of Abigayil Yisrael as engagement and outreach director for her political committee. Yisrael is coming off the successful campaign of Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, in which Democrats flipped the southern state blue to take control of the Senate.

This refocus on the ground will be a familiar tune to local county parties, who for years have heard such promises from state Democratic Party leaders only to watch them abandon those efforts as elections approach.

After widespread losses in 2018, Florida Democrats spent months assessing what went wrong and concluded that they needed to give more resources to local Democratic parties and engage with their activists all year, not just election season.

By the time the 2020 election rolled around, there was a steady drumbeat of angst and frustration from local Democratic leaders, who said they were being stepped on by national Democrats. Many sounded the alarm that Joe Bidens campaign wasnt doing enough to engage with Black and Latino Floridians and that these outside strategists didnt understand the intricacies of operating in such a large, diverse state.

The National Democratic Training Committee partners with labor unions, trade groups, state parties and progressive organizations. Its Florida series will focus on training local precinct committee people, membership recruitment and building a successful organization.

When our local party infrastructure is organized, we get more people involved, recruit more candidates and ultimately win more races. We are thrilled to be teaming up with Commissioner Fried to train Democratic leaders across the state, said Kelly Dietrich, founder and CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee.

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Florida Democrats lost the ground game in 2020. Training is on the way. - Tampa Bay Times

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference in Los Angeles, Calif. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

SACRAMENTO Gov. Gavin Newsom's camp has one message for Democrats considering a California recall bid: Don't even think about it.

The mere hint of a candidacy draws immediate condemnation from Newsom attack dog Sean Clegg, while other Newsom surrogates are making clear publicly and privately that any Democratic challenger will become persona non grata in the party.

Minutes after POLITICO reported Tuesday that former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer was surveying voters on his recall chances, Clegg tweeted that Steyer doesnt want to be the cynical, vulture-investing billionaire who bet against Democratic unity so Trump Republicans can take CA."

After former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for California schools to reopen immediately amid talk of a potential candidacy, Clegg last week fired off a clear rebuke: My old friend Antonio will embarrass himself and forever poison his legacy if he runs, he wrote.

Thats how you lose," Clegg, a strategist for Newsom, said in an interview. We need to hold our base."

It is all but certain that California will have its second gubernatorial recall ever, likely this fall, based on an official state signature tally released last week. The state's unique recall system lends itself to a delicate intraparty dance. California asks two questions: first, do you want to recall Newsom, and second, who should replace him if the recall is successful? The rules don't allow Newsom to appear on that replacement list of contenders who would take his job.

As the prospect of a Villaraigosa candidacy gained steam in recent weeks, other Newsom allies tried to blunt that momentum. Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nez declined to share his private conversations with Villaraigosa and stressed that he does not speak for the former mayor, but Nez predicted that at the end of the day, all of the Democratic establishment and Democratic activists are going to be on the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

We cant make the same mistake twice, Nez said, invoking the ill-fated entry of Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante in the 2003 recall won by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. I dont see Democrats repeating that exercise again.

If Democrats play their cards wrong and Newsom is recalled without a leading Democrat on the ballot as an option, a high-name ID Republican could take the top job with a quarter of the vote in one of the nations bluest states.

The only time I worry about a Republican [not] winning this seat is if one credible Democrat gets in, said Anne Dunsmore, who runs one of the recall committees that are on the verge of qualifying the election.

One Democratic lawmaker said this week that California's two-question approach needs an overhaul. "The crazy thing about our system is that many more people can vote to keep the incumbent in office than the person who ends up replacing the incumbent," said Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica).

The topic of a Democrat potentially getting into the race is the prevailing obsession among elected officials, donors and political consultants in California. There are two schools of thought. In one view, not running a backup candidate would be an unforgivable oversight that could allow a Republican to waltz into office with a plurality of the vote. In the other, a Democrats entry would signal weakness and disunity when Newsom needs his allies more than ever potentially ensuring the second question is necessary.

The dance around the recall forces California Democrats to balance two elemental political motivations: self-preservation and opportunism. Any ambitious Democrat who runs and fails would topple off the career ladder into political oblivion. No one has forgotten the implosion of Bustamante after he jumped into the 2003 race. But the recall also offers a tantalizing chance to leapfrog into the governors office.

For now, Democrats have projected unity behind Newsom. At event after event, Democrats seen as potential contenders have pledged their fealty to the governor and lambasted the recall as a partisan distraction.

The governors team has also sought to squelch a challenge from the left, reaching out to progressive California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna to enlist the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and rolling out an endorsement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). They're trying to signal that Newsom may have sometimes fallen short, but he is far superior to a Republican.

I made the case [to Sanders] that he really needed to weigh in, that this is a Republican attempt to take over California, Khanna said in an interview. I understand there may be some progressive disappointment in [progressive] goals not being achieved yet, such as single-payer, but this is the time we really need to unify against the recall.

Newsom remains in a relatively strong position, with an approval rating hovering around 50 percent far better than Gov. Gray Davis had before he was ousted by voters. Democrats contemplating a run are likely to wait and see where Newsom stands closer to a likely fall candidate filing deadline.

If Im wondering, Am I going to go sailing in 90 days? Im going to wait 89 days and see what the weather is, said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who worked for Schwarzenegger.

If Newsom cant muster a majority to fend off being recalled, a Democrat would enjoy powerful advantages on the second question of whom to replace the governor. California remains an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

The larger risk-benefit calculus could favor the entry of a Democrat who doesnt currently hold public office and thus has less to lose. Political observers are closely watching Villaraigosa, who lost to Newsom in the 2018 gubernatorial primary. Villaraigosa, a public affairs partner at Mercury, has name recognition and could activate a political support network in Los Angeles, a power base that would counterbalance Newsoms Bay Area roots.

The former mayor has been coy about his intentions, criticizing the recall without explicitly ruling out a run. But he has been an outspoken critic of continued school closures, a major liability for Newsom. Education policy was a dividing line in the 2018 primary, with charter allies spending millions to boost Villaraigosa and unions rallying to Newsoms defense.

Steyer also looms. The Democratic former presidential candidate has a long history of wading into California politics, no office to lose but considerable personal wealth to fund a campaign.

And there's always a nuclear option.

If polls suggest Newsom is in serious trouble as the recall draws closer, the governor could resign from office. That would allow Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis to take over the job and short-circuit the recall tied to Newsom while undoubtedly raising the hackles of Republicans.

"In September, he could be doing great and well proceed," said Democratic political strategist Christine Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "But if hes really underwater, it may be that no Democrat could win. Then, he should step down as governor and Eleni Kounalakis should be the governor, and they should cancel the election. In that case, the Democratic Party would retain the governorship."

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Newsom swats away Democratic challengers. Will his party live to regret it? - POLITICO

Congressional Democrats are introducing legislation to transfer $1bn in funding from a controversial new intercontinental ballistic missile to the development of a universal Covid vaccine.

The Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICBM) Act, introduced in the House and Senate on Friday, would stop funding on the proposed new missile, known as the ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) which is projected to cost a total of $264bn over its projected lifespan, and discontinue spending on a linked warhead modification program.

Instead, the life of the existing US intercontinental ballistic missile, the Minuteman III, would be extended until 2050, and an independent study commissioned on how best to do that.

The United States should invest in a vaccine of mass prevention before another new land-based weapon of mass destruction, Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, co-author of the bill, said.

The ICBM Act makes clear that we can begin to phase out the cold-war nuclear posture that risks accidental nuclear war while still deterring adversaries and assuring allies, and redirect those savings to the clear and present dangers presented by coronaviruses and other emerging and infectious diseases.

Arms control experts say static intercontinental ballistic missiles, of which the US has 400 in silos across the northern midwest, are inherently destabilizing and dangerous, because a president would have just a few minutes to launch them on the basis of early warning signals of an impending enemy attack, or risk losing them to a pre-emptive strike. They point to a history of near-launches based on defective data, and the risk of cyber-attacks distorting early warning systems.

With all of the global challenges we face, the last thing we should be doing is giving billions to defense contractors to build missiles we dont need to keep as a strong nuclear deterrence, Ro Khanna, Democratic congressman from California and the bills co-author in the House, said.

In September 2020, Northrop Grumman was awarded an uncontested bid for the $13.3bn engineering, manufacturing and development phase of GBSD, after its only rival for the vast contract, Boeing, pulled out of the race complaining of a rigged competition.

The Biden administrations intentions on the GBSDs future are unclear, but an early signal may come in its first defence budget expected in the next few weeks.

The new ICBM bill would transfer of $1bn in funding for the GBSD to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid) for development work on a universal coronavirus vaccine. It would also divert money from the program to modify the W87-1 nuclear warhead to fit the GBSD, and dedicate it to research and preparations to combat future bio-threats. And it would launch an independent study to explore viable technical solutions to extend the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile to 2050.

When Khanna tried to introduce a similar bill last July it was killed in the House armed services committee by a decisive bipartisan vote of 44-12. A proposed Minuteman extension study was also voted down.

Rarely is a congressional study controversial. This just shows how afraid Northrop Grumman is about the results of the independent study, Khanna told the Guardian. They lobbied to kill a simple study, to see if the Minuteman III could be extended.

The congressman said he was optimistic the new administration would support the bill.

This will remain an uphill battle. Northrop Grumman is lobbying hard against this bill, Khanna said. Given we have Democratic majorities in both chambers and a Democrat in the White House, we think our chances are better, particularly by putting pressure on the administration to pause GBSD and consider extending Minuteman III.

Jessica Sleight, the program director at Global Zero, a disarmament advocacy group, said: The US nuclear arsenal far exceeds any plausible mission requirements put forth by the Pentagon. Even in the best of times, $264bn for new nuclear missiles is money we cant spare for weapons we dont need. In the middle of a devastating pandemic, its irresponsible.

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Democrats call for $1bn shift from weapons of mass destruction to 'vaccine of mass prevention' - The Guardian

Crime tape surrounds a King Soopers grocery store on March 24 in Boulder, Colo where ten people were killed in a shooting on Monday. State Democrats now say they will consider a statewide assault weapons ban. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images hide caption

Crime tape surrounds a King Soopers grocery store on March 24 in Boulder, Colo where ten people were killed in a shooting on Monday. State Democrats now say they will consider a statewide assault weapons ban.

Colorado could be the next state to consider a ban on "assault-style" weapons, Colorado Public Radio has learned, although discussions are still in the preliminary stages at the state capitol and no legislation has been introduced yet.

Ten people were killed in Monday's mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder and state lawmakers are grappling with what else could be done to prevent these types of shootings from happening. In Colorado, Democrats control the legislative and executive branches of the state government.

"I'm devastated," says Democratic Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg. He was born and raised in Boulder and represents the state Senate district where the shooting occurred.

"This is my grocery store. This is blocks from where my wife teaches middle school and her students go on their lunch break," says Fenberg. "It is my job to solve solutions through policy. And that's why it's not too soon. It's frankly too late, especially for these 10 innocent lives."

Fenberg and other Democratic state leaders say they are eager for a federal assault weapons ban. Even though President Biden called for that on Tuesday, Fenberg isn't optimistic Congress will act. The U.S. Senate is currently considering two less sweeping measures.

"There's no question that the real solution has to come from the federal government. A patchwork of laws is better than nothing, but clearly, if someone is intent on causing harm and we have strict regulations in Colorado, somebody can drive an hour and a half to Wyoming," says Fenberg. "The point is to not end gun violence tomorrow, but to prevent some of these tragedies from happening and making it so we can go longer than a week before the next tragedy."

Gun laws Colorado has passed so far

Colorado has already passed several gun laws within the last decade: a high-capacity magazine ban, universal background checks and a so-called "red flag" gun law. Opponents of stricter laws say those measures infringe on Second Amendment rights, placing burdens on law-abiding gun owners, while failing to prevent mass shootings.

Historically, opponents of bans on specific types of weapons have criticized them as unenforceable and often out of touch with the nuances of firearm styles.

"We haven't seen any bill text from Democrats on assault weapons, but I will say that we find bans to be ineffective and that they end up punishing good, law-abiding Coloradans," says Republican Sen. John Cooke, a former sheriff.

According to Cooke, Senate Republicans plan to respond to the Boulder shooting by pushing for a "massive investment" in mental health services.

"Something is troubled in the collective American psyche," says state Sen. Paul Lundeen, a Republican. "People are hurting and we need to do all we can to address that."

Republican state Rep. Matt Soper says that after the Boulder shooting, he started to hear chatter about a possible bill to ban certain types of guns statewide. He said there would be strong opposition from the GOP.

"We shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction to these tragedies," he says, warning such a ban would likely be unconstitutional. "The political divide has grown even wider on the issue of guns and there's a lot of emotion involved on both sides."

Colorado's own constitution protects individual gun ownership: "The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question."

However, the state Supreme Court has upheld past gun laws as legal under that provision.

Two gun bills are making their way through this year's legislative session. One proposal would require safe storage of firearms in many instances and the other would require people to report lost and stolen guns. Both have passed their first chamber, so far on almost entirely on party-line votes.

The Boulder shooting is the largest mass shooting in Colorado since 2012. The state has some of the highest numbers of mass shootings in the country, beginning in 1999 with the attack on Columbine High School.

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Assault Weapons Ban Could Be In Colorado's Future - NPR

Contents

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties in the United States, and the nations oldest existing political party. After the Civil War, the party dominated in the South due to its opposition to civil and political rights for African Americans. After a major shift in the 20th century, todays Democrats are known for their association with a strong federal government and support for minority, womens and labor rights, environmental protection and progressive reforms.

Though the U.S. Constitution doesnt mention political parties, factions soon developed among the new nations founding fathers.

The Federalists, including George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government and a national banking system, masterminded by Hamilton.

But in 1792, supporters of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who favored decentralized, limited government, formed an opposition faction that would become known as the Democratic-Republicans.

Despite Washingtons warning against the danger of political parties in his famous farewell address, the power struggle between Federalists and the Democratic-Republican Party dominated the early government, with Jefferson and his supporters emerging largely triumphant after 1800.

The Federalists steadily lost ground in the early 19th century, and dissolved completely after the War of 1812.

In the highly controversial presidential election of 1824, four Democratic-Republican candidates ran against each other. Though Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and 99 electoral votes, the lack of an electoral majority threw the election to the House of Representatives, which ended up giving the victory to John Quincy Adams.

In response, New York Senator Martin van Buren helped build a new political organization, the Democratic Party, to back Jackson, who defeated Adams easily in 1828.

After Jackson vetoed a bill renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States in 1832, his opponents founded the Whig Party, led by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. By the 1840s, Democrats and Whigs were both national parties, with supporters from various regions of the country, and dominated the U.S. political system; Democrats would win all but two presidential elections from 1828 to 1856.

In the 1850s, the debate over whether slavery should be extended into new Western territories split these political coalitions. Southern Democrats favored slavery in all territories, while their Northern counterparts thought each territory should decide for itself via popular referendum.

At the partys national convention in 1860, Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge, while Northern Democrats backed Stephen Douglas. The split helped Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the newly formed Republican Party, to victory in the 1860 election, though he won only 40 percent of the popular vote.

The Union victory in the Civil War left Republicans in control of Congress, where they would dominate for the rest of the 19th century. During the Reconstruction era, the Democratic Party solidified its hold on the South, as most white Southerners opposed the Republican measures protecting civil and voting rights for African Americans.

By the mid-1870s, Southern state legislatures had succeeded in rolling back many of the Republican reforms, and Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation and suppressing Black voting rights would remain in place for the better part of a century.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the Republicans had been firmly established as the party of big business during the Gilded Age, while the Democratic Party strongly identified with rural agrarianism and conservative values.

But during the Progressive Era, which spanned the turn of the century, the Democrats saw a split between its conservative and more progressive members. As the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, William Jennings Bryan advocated for an expanded role of government in ensuring social justice. Though he lost, Bryans advocacy of bigger government would influence the Democratic ideology going forward.

Republicans again dominated national politics during the prosperous 1920s, but faltered after the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first Democrat to win the White House since Woodrow Wilson.

In his first 100 days, Roosevelt launched an ambitious slate of federal relief programs known as the New Deal, beginning an era of Democratic dominance that would last, with few exceptions, for nearly 60 years.

Roosevelts reforms raised hackles across the South, which generally didnt favor the expansion of labor unions or federal power, and many Southern Democrats gradually joined Republicans in opposing further government expansion.

Then in 1948, after President Harry Truman (himself a Southern Democrat) introduced a pro-civil rights platform, a group of Southerners walked out of the partys national convention. These so-called Dixiecrats ran their own candidate for president (Strom Thurmond, governor of South Carolina) on a segregationist States Rights ticket that year; he got more than 1 million votes.

Most Dixiecrats returned to the Democratic fold, but the incident marked the beginning of a seismic shift in the partys demographics. At the same time, many Black voters who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War began voting Democratic during the Depression, and would continue to do so in greater numbers with the dawn of the civil rights movement.

Although Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed civil rights legislation (and sent federal troops to integrate a Little Rock high school in 1954), it was Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, who would eventually sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.

Upon signing the former bill, Johnson reportedly told his aide Bill Moyers that I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.

Over the course of the late 1960s and 1970s, more and more white Southerners voted Republican, driven not only by the issue of race, but also by white evangelical Christians opposition to abortion and other culture war issues.

After losing five out of six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988, Democrats captured the White House in 1992 with Arkansas Governor Bill Clintons defeat of the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, as well as third-party candidate Ross Perot.

Clintons eight years in office saw the country through a period of economic prosperity but ended in a scandal involving the presidents relationship with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clintons conduct in the affair eventually led to his impeachmentby the House in 1998; the Senate acquitted him the following year.

Al Gore, Clintons vice president, narrowly captured the popular vote in the general election in 2000, but lost to George W. Bush in the electoral college, after the U.S. Supreme Court called a halt to a manual recount of disputed Florida ballots.

Midway through Bushs second term, Democrats capitalized on popular opposition to the ongoing Iraq War and regained control of the House and Senate.

In 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois rode a wave of popular discontent and economic concerns during the Great Recession to become the first African-American U.S. president.

Opposition to Obama and his policies, particularly health care reform, fueled the growth of the conservative, populist Tea Party movement, helping Republicans make huge gains in Congress during his two terms in office.

And in 2016, after a tough primary battle with Vermontsenator Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton captured the Democratic nomination, becoming the first female presidential nominee of any major party in U.S. history.

But against most expectations, Clinton lost in the general election that November to reality TV star Donald Trump, while Republican gains in congressional elections left Democrats in the minority in both the House and Senate.

The slate of candidates running for president from the Democratic Party in the 2020 election was historically large and diverse. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Beto ORourke, Corey Booker, Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer were among the major candidates aiming to take on President Trump.

After a slow start to his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden won his party's nomination.Biden chose California senatorKamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate, making Harris the first Black and Asian American woman to be named on a major party's ticket.Biden ran as a moderate, and pledged to unify the country after a divisive four years under President Trump. On November 7, Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election; he took office as the 46th U.S. president on January 20, 2021, alongside a fully Democratic Congress.

Political Parties in Congress, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government.Eric Rauchway, When and (to an extent) why did the parties switch places? Chronicle Blog Network (May 20, 2010).

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Democratic Party - HISTORY