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Matt Grodsky, opinion contributor Published 6:00 a.m. MT May 3, 2021

Opinion: Momentum may be on Democrats' side, but Arizona Republicans still hold a voter registration edge. And that matters for 2022, especially down ballot.

Arizona delegate Martin Quezada and Cinthia Estela pose with a "Ridin' with Biden" poster during an Arizona Democratic Party drive-in night to watch the acceptance speech of their party's nominee, Joe Biden, in Mesa, Ariz. on August 20, 2020.(Photo: Patrick Breen/The Republic)

Arizona Democrats have a profound opportunity to extend their multicycle winning streak and defy history in the 2022 midterm elections. But one elusive problem looms and it threatens to dash the partys ambitions: A voter registration gap that favors Republicans.

Despite registration gains over the last several years, Democrats are some 140,000 voters behind Republicans. Therefore, Democrats remain reliant on independent and moderate Republican voters.

In 2020, Joe Biden and Mark Kellys broad appeal resulted in wins at the top of the ticket. But voters retreated to their respective parties down ballot, and thats where Republicans voter registration advantage came into play.

Unless 2022 Democratic down ballot races are as appealing as top of the ticket candidates (Im thinking the gubernatorial race), ballot-splitting and voters nescience pose a significant challenge, just as they did in 2020.

While midterms have traditionally resulted inbacklashes towardthe incumbent party, theres beenrare instances when national crisis and sound campaign tactics have helpedthe party in power prevail.

This happened in 1998 amidthe divisive impeachment trial of President Clinton;2002 saw this as well under President Bush in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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COVID-19 is the current national crisis, and a narrative is building of our emergence from the tragedy thanks to Bidens leadership. Now, coupled locally with the sound tactics Arizona Democrats have already leveraged for the past few election cycles, they can certainly achieve a history thwarting parry.

The down ballot losses in 2020? Remember, Arizona Democrats didnt sustain the kinds of losses as in other states, which speaks to their early organizing and a disciplined messaging strategy.

So, the tools are there for success, but winning the voter registration race is the key for three reasons.

1. It could combat apathy.Incumbent party enthusiasm suffers in midterms. And unlike 2018 or 2020, Donald Trump wont be in the White House or on the ballot. In 2022 he wont be in the same position to motivate turnout, and that could mean Arizona Democrats and their coalition dont turn out in droves.

Republicans, with their higher number of registered voters and their desire for 2020 vengeance, could drive a red wave. Democrats can blunt a Republican offensive if they flip the voter registration deficit.

2. It could help more progressive candidates.Center-left messaging treats the symptoms of a voter registration deficit. Math can cure it. Arizonas Democratic base wants to see progressive wins and leaders that prioritize their most fervent policies. But those arent the candidates who win statewide offices here.

As someone who volunteered for David Garcias gubernatorial campaign in 2018, I know that progressive candidates can win primaries and may hold onto already blue seats, but substantial statewide pickups in a previously red state like ours come from strategically positioned center-left Democrats who can construct coalitions with independents and Republicans.

If thats upsetting to some who would prefer to see a progressive surge, then I encourage you to overtake the voter registration gap.Democrats should always build alliances by drawing in ideologically diverse voters, but by overtaking the gap, courting friendly independents and McCain Republicans wont serve as the be-all-end-all.

3. It helps in a battleground state.Arizona is poised to be a significant swing state for the next decade with control of the Senate playing a key factor in 2022, 2024and 2028. That means media, moneyand resources will be plentiful Democrats must use every available resource to win this voter registration struggle.

It can be done. Look no further than Stacey Abrams and her amazing organizing and registration efforts in Georgia, which turned a reliably red state blue.

There are Democrats to be found across Arizona who only lack official registration, and there are unaffiliated voters who just need to be persuaded to join the ranks.

The good news is, Democrats have the state party leadership and the team in place to win this fight. But the 2022 train is leaving the station and Republicans have the registration advantage.

Mind the gap.

Matt Grodsky is vice president anddirector of public affairs at Matters of State Strategies.He is a precinct committeeman in Legislative District 28 and an Arizona Democratic Party state committee member. OnTwitter: @mattgrodsky.

Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2021/05/03/arizona-democrats-must-close-voter-registration-gap-win-2022/7373843002/

The rest is here:
Democrats could win more of Arizona in 2022. But they'll need to do this first - The Arizona Republic

Many Democrats, including some who ran for president in 2020, say Iowa and New Hampshire shouldnt hold the nations first nominating contests because their majority-white populations dont reflect the Democratic electorate. Those debates are taking place behind the scenes at the Democratic National Committee, as party leaders including former Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina both say states like theirs should appear sooner on the primary calendar, and Nevada state lawmakers have filed a bill to move to the front of the line.

We definitely see a need for more diversity in states that are scheduled at the beginning of the election, to properly reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of our country, but also [because] it impacts the issues that are being discussed, said Yadira Sanchez, co-executive director of the advocacy group Poder Latinx. Our diversity demands that we see ourselves reflected in the primary process and not at the end, when decisions have already been made.

But for New Hampshire politicians in both parties, keeping the first-in-the-nation primary is mission critical.

Its the holy grail, said Tom Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney general who spent 10 years on the Republican National Committee. When he served, he said, It was clear I had one mission: Keep the primary.

Why should it stay in New Hampshire? One, its tradition, and two, we do a great job, said Bill Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democratic National Committeeman and the husband of Senator Jeanne Shaheen. The primary is to New Hampshire what oranges are to Florida, he said; each state has its bragging rights for a reason.

Shaheen dismissed the argument that New Hampshires demographics should disqualify it, arguing it is a good early testing ground for candidates of any background because its small and comparatively inexpensive, allowing even little-known contenders to prove themselves.

We create a level playing field. It doesnt matter what the color of your skin is. We judge people by the content of their character, Shaheen said.

The debate over which states deserve the political attention and economic boost of an early nominating contest is hardly new. But political experts say that this year, Iowa and New Hampshire face fresh vulnerability, owing to a number of factors: a fiasco at the Iowa caucuses in 2020, the Democratic Partys increasing attention to its diverse electorate, and the relatively small role the states played in crowning the partys current leader, President Biden.

Jim Roosevelt, longtime leader of the Democratic National Committees Rules and Bylaws Committee, said he anticipates discussing the order of the early states at two public meetings this spring, though the decisions will not be finalized for at least a year.

In the meantime, New Hampshire politicians are going on offense to keep the primary at home, and Republicans are getting ready in earnest for it to begin. Pompeo and Cotton have appeared recently at virtual fund-raisers for Republicans in the state, and Haley campaigned for Republicans there last fall.

On the Democratic side, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the state last month, promoting the Biden administration jobs plan and expanded broadband access, though her visit could have more to do with Senator Maggie Hassans upcoming reelection fight; shes considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats up in 2022.

Longtime Secretary of State Bill Gardner, known as the guardian of the primary, has pledged to bat away any attempts to threaten New Hampshires first-in-the-nation status.

The state GOP and Gardner, a Democrat, have taken aim at a sweeping federal voting rights bill that would automatically register new voters and ease the process of voting by mail, claiming without specific evidence that due to its reach, the bill could threaten the primary. Gardner testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue in April.

New Hampshires Democratic congressional delegation supports the bill, and Shaheen said the Gardner attack is a red herring, since it is the national party and the states themselves that determine the primary calendar, not Congress. But the debate has nonetheless drawn in more than one 2024 Republican candidate, with Cotton and Pompeo both siding with Gardner.

As an early battleground, New Hampshire may make more sense for one party than the other, some political analysts said.

New Hampshire is a white state, it is a rich state, it is an old state, it is a privileged state, said Arnie Arnesen, a radio host and former Democratic candidate for governor. What we saw in 2020 was that what delivered for the Democratic Party was basically none of those things.

But why would the Republicans not want to be in a white, privileged, wealthy state? she questioned.

New Hampshire state law dictates that it must hold the nations first primary, but the national parties set the primary calendar for states. More than a decade ago, when Florida and Michigan did not follow the Democratic Partys calendar, they were penalized at the convention by having the voting power of their delegates limited.

If New Hampshire rejected a later spot in the calendar, and the national party stripped its delegates power, presidential candidates would have to decide whether it was worth coming to the state just for a symbolic victory and some maple syrup.

New Hampshire has never been about the delegates, said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. Its been about the publicity that winning here means for a candidate. Would candidates be willing to give that up? That becomes the question.

Regardless of what the national parties decide, New Hampshire may be starting to lose its sway, said Fergus Cullen, a former chair of the Republican State Committee, because the primary carries weight only as long as the candidates show up.

God bless Bill Gardner, but the candidates are going to make strategic decisions about whether it is in their best interest to compete in New Hampshire, Cullen said. Candidates in both parties are [already] starting to pick and choose which states theyre going to participate in and which states theyre going to blow off . . . if not everyones competing here, the outcome has a lot less weight.

Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emmaplatoff.

Read more:
As Democrats weigh fate of New Hampshires first-in-the-nation primary, Republicans prepare to run in it - The Boston Globe

Tim Scott, the Republican senator leading negotiations with Democrats over police reform, who insisted during his rebuttal to Joe Bidens address to Congress the US was not a racist country, said on Sunday he was hopeful a deal can be reached.

Scott, from South Carolina and the only Black Republican in the Senate, said he saw progress in talks which stalled last summer as protests raged following the killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

One of the reasons why Im hopeful is because my friends on the left arent looking for the issue, theyre looking for a solution, and the things that I offered last year are more popular this year, the senator told CBSs Face the Nation.

The goal isnt for Republicans or Democrats to win, but for communities to feel safer and our officers to feel respected. If we can accomplish those two major goals, the rest will be history.

The talks are intended to break an impasse over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House in March but is frozen by the 50-50 split in the Senate.

Negotiations have taken on increasing urgency following the high-profile killings of Daunte Wright in Minneapolis and Andrew Brown in North Carolina, Black men shot in their vehicles by officers, killings which sparked outrage.

The country supports this reform and Congress should act, Biden said on Wednesday during his address on Capitol Hill.

A panel including Scott, the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and Karen Bass, the author of the House bill and a Democrat from California, met on Thursday to discuss key elements including individual liability for officers who abuse their power or otherwise overstep the line.

Republicans strongly oppose many of the proposals but Booker said it had been a promising week.

Scott, a rising star in Republican ranks, said he was well-placed to help steer the discussion.

One of the reasons why I asked to lead this police reform conversation on my side of the House is because I personally understand the pain of being stopped 18 times driving while Black, he said.

And I have also seen the beauty of when officers go door to door with me on Christmas morning, delivering presents to kids in the most underserved communities. So I think I bring an equilibrium to the conversation.

Scott said he was confident major sticking points in the Senate version of the proposed legislation could be overcome and the bill aligned to that which passed the House.

Think about the [parts] of the two bills that are in common data collection, he said. I think through negotiations and conversations we are closer on no-knock warrants and chokeholds, and then theres something called Section 1033 that has to do with getting government equipment from the military for local police.

I think were making progress there too, so we have literally been able to bring these two bills very close together.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, placed no timeline on when a revised version of the bill would get a vote.

We will bring it to the floor when we are ready, and we will be ready when we have a good, strong bipartisan bill, she said on Thursday. That is up to the Senate and then we will have it in the House, because it will be a different bill.

On the issue of whether lawsuits could be filed against police departments rather than individual officers, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said: Were moving towards a reasonable solution.

Scott said the issue was another reason why Im more optimistic this time.

He said: We want to make sure the bad apples are punished and weve seen that, through the convictions of Michael Slager when he shot Walter Scott in the back to the George Floyd convictions.

Those are promising signs, but the real question is how do we change the culture of policing? I think we do that by making the employer responsible for the actions of the employee.

Others senators in the negotiations include Dick Durbin of Illinois and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, senior figures in their parties.

Scott also broke with Republicans who support Donald Trumps big lie that the presidential election was rigged, saying the party could only move on once it realised the election is over, Joe Biden is the president of the United States.

On CNNs State of the Union, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican senator from Maine, appeared to acknowledge Scotts rising profile.

We are not a party that is led by just one person, she said. There are many prominent upcoming younger men and women in our party who hold great promise for leading us.

Read the rest here:
Tim Scott hopeful deal can be reached with Democrats on US policing reform - The Guardian

State Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte dismissed a lawsuit by Republicans against the Schenectady County Board of Elections and 18 Democrats aiming to keep the Democrats off the Working Families Party line.

The lawsuit, filed by six Republicans who are candidates for town board and county legislator seats, alleged that the Working Families Partys paperwork authorizing Democratic candidates to appear on the ballot is invalid because it was electronically submitted to the Schenectady County Board of Elections and contains digitally copied signatures. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit were John Mertz, Megan Griffin, Anna Maria Guida, Charles Dodson, Joseph Mastrionni and Mollie Collins.

In a news statement, Democratic candidates in Niskayuna applauded the decision and called the suit meritless.

This was the right decision, and will ensure that voters across New York will have a full array of choices in this years election, said Jaime Lynn Puccioni, a candidate for town supervisor. As a voter, and particularly as a woman of color, I was disgusted to see the Republican Party continue down the road of voter suppression, conspiracy, and MAGA tactics, rather than engaging in a fair campaign about actual issues for the voters of our community.

Lawsuits were filed by Republicans in counties across the state. The case in Saratoga County had already been dismissed by Supreme Court Justice Dianne Freestone. The case in Schenectady County by Rotterdam Republicans was part of a broad effort by Republicans in about a dozen counties statewide filed in Oswego county and consolidated into one case. The Schenectady County Republican party did not file a suit.

Electronic submission of documents with digitally copied and notarized signatures was allowed by New York as a COVID-19 safety measure, the judges found.

Justice DelConte saw this case for what it was: a frivolous lawsuit which sought to intimidate the WFPs candidates and deprive its voters of their choice at the ballot box, said Niskayuna Councilman John Della Ratta, a longtime lawyer. While I completely expect the Republicans to further pursue this meritless case, I have no doubt that the Court of Appeals will reach the same conclusion as Justice DelConte.

Categories: News, Schenectady County

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Lawsuit aiming to keep Schenectady County Democrats off Working Families Party line dismissed - The Daily Gazette

Candidate Joe Biden campaigned as the centrist exemplar of a return to pre-Trump normal, but President Joe Biden has moved swiftly to enlarge the scope of his ambitions far beyond the status quo ante. On Wednesday night, the ninety-ninth of his Presidency, Biden offered a striking vision of a country renewed by an activist government. Harkening back to the early-twentieth-century liberalism of his party forebears, Biden envisioned a new age of once in a generation federal investments in everything from child care to electric cars, while promising benefits as varied as free community college and an end to cancer. To anyone who remembered last years Democratic primaries, the Presidents first address to a joint session of Congress sounded as if Elizabeth Warren, and not Biden, had won.

For just over an hour, Biden dazzled with the prospect of an American utopiaa stark contrast to the dystopian reality of our plague year just past. He spoke of the largest jobs plan since World War II, universal preschool, of meeting the climate crisis, and of the chance to root out systemic racism that plagues America; he called for gun control and immigration reform and cutting the prices on prescription drugs. He pushed for raising the minimum wage and equal pay for women and family and medical leave. Beyond a populist promise of higher taxes on wealthy corporations and people making more than four hundred thousand dollars a year, Biden did not mention the multi-trillion-dollar price tag that would come with his proposals. Nor did he talk about the remote chance of passage that so much of this agenda has on Capitol Hill, where, despite the general popularity of many of his proposals, gridlock prevails and the political reality is a fifty-fifty Senate. For the past four years, Donald Trump used his speeches to sell alternate realities to his supporters. Here, at last, was an alternate reality that Democrats could get behind.

In a response, Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina, called Bidens address nothing more than a liberal wish list, a blunt summation about which it was hard to disagree. In many ways, there was a notable convergence in how Democrats and Republicans saw Bidens speech: as a breathtakingly ambitious set of proposals to use government as an instrument of social and economic transformationan unabashed progressive platform unseen from a President in my lifetime. Republicans hated it; Democrats, for the most part, loved it. The Drudge Report christened him Biden Hood, in honor of a program it summed up as tax the rich, give to the poor. We cannot stop until its done, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leader of the Democratic Partys activist left wing in the House, enthused in a tweet. Keep going. Few were entirely sure how Biden, who has long been seen as an avatar of genial Beltway centrism, had got to this place.

Part of the answer, of course, is the mess that Biden inherited, an interlocking set of crises unleashed or worsened during Trumps disastrous Presidency, from the coronavirus pandemic and attendant economic damage to the attack by Trump and his supporters on the legitimacy of the election, which Biden called the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Another part of the answer is undoubtedly that Biden himself, after spending the better part of five decades in Washington, is a believer in the power and possibility of government to shape America for the better. Politically, Biden is best known as Uncle Joe, a humble son of Scranton who rode the Amtrak home to Delaware at nightbut that overlooks perhaps a more relevant truth about the forty-sixth President, which is that he is fundamentally a creature of Washington: a senator for thirty-six years, and Vice-President and thus president of the Senate for eight years after that. Its good to be back, he said, smiling broadly, as he opened his address on Wednesday night, in the building he knows so well. Congress is where he began his national political career, and now he has staked his Presidency on getting things done there, too.

Joe Biden is the sixth President whose tenure I have covered. All of them, until now, operated in the shadow of Ronald Reagan. Three of these Presidentsthe two George Bushes and Trumpwere Republicans, and each resorted, at various times, to Reagans formula when speaking about the role of the federal government: as the problem, and most definitely not the solution to what ailed the country. Two were DemocratsBill Clinton and Barack Obamaand while both often gave stirring perorations about the achievements of Democratic Presidents such as F.D.R. and L.B.J., they, too, were shadowed by Reagans message when it came to outright embrace of big government, fearing to do so, politically, and often settling instead for incremental and more achievable change. Even the Obama health-care program that would ultimately bear his name represented a split-the-difference compromise between liberals, who wanted a single-payer national-health-care system, and more cautious Democrats, who feared that was never going to be politically achievable without some interim steps.

Biden may yet close out his Presidency with a record that has more in common with Obamas or Clintons than with Roosevelts, but his early decisions suggest that he is starting out by making a fundamentally different set of choices. The result was the most avowedly liberal call to action I have ever heard a President make from that congressional podium. Unlike the longtime socialist Bernie Sanders, whom Biden beat in the Democratic primaries, he does not call himself a revolutionary. Unlike the self-styled populist Donald Trump, whom Biden beat in the general election, he does not call himself a disrupter. Were Congress to enact his proposals, Biden would end up as both.

Transformation, however, requires the passage of legislation, not just words. Washington is still Washington, as Biden knows better than anyone, and if you dont have the votes you dont have the votes. Key Democrats as well as Republicans are skeptical of his costlier plans, and, so far, no G.O.P. votes have materialized for any of his major initiatives. At a hundred days, the politics are less transformed than Bidens rhetoric might suggest: in addition to the stubborn facts of a tied Senate and a House where the Democratic majority hangs on a handful of votes, the public remains as polarized and partisan toward this President as it was toward the last one. Bidens approval ratings, so far, are a straight-line inverse of those for Trump: about fifty-three per cent support Biden, which is just a percentage point or two higher than his share of the popular vote, last November. Bidens policies, however, are more popular: the $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill that was passed in the early days of his Administration has more than sixty-per-cent support, as does his over-all effort to fight the pandemic. Raising taxes on large corporations, as Biden proposes, is overwhelmingly popular, as are other ideas he offered in his addressmaking for a kind of poll-tested, policy-wonk populism that stands in contrast to the pitchforks-and-rage variant that Trump relentlessly peddled. Republican members of Congress may not like it, but Biden claims that bipartisan support from the public ought to count as bipartisanship, too.

Its early days yet, but this is where Bidens true genius as a politician may lie: he has turned his likability into a moderating asset, suggesting that an ideological agenda when offered by a relatively non-ideological salesman does not sound all that threatening. Which, come to think of it, is pretty Reaganesque. Much like the Democrats during Reagans Presidency, Republicans today are struggling with how to attack a President who seems like such a nice guy. Just about everything else about American politics has changed in the four decades since then, however, including the brute realities of Congress. Understanding that, Biden appealed to his former colleagues not with transformational rhetoric but with the pragmatism of the Senate-committee chairman who he was for so many years. He said, Its within our power to do it, and We can do it, and Lets get it done.

In reality, he probably will not get it done, at least not all of it, but is there anything all that wrong with another hour or so of political fantasy in Washington? At least this time it was not the Trumpian variant of grievance and division. Biden made no mention of culture wars or admiring references to brutal dictators; he did not gaslight the nation about criminal illegal aliens or interrupt his speech to give one of the countrys highest honors to a man famous for disparaging feminazis. On the eve of his hundredth day in office, Joe Biden never publicly uttered the name Donald Trump, but being the un-Trump means Biden has already accomplished the first and most important promise of his Presidency.

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Bidens Speech Offers an Alternative Vision for Democrats to Love - The New Yorker