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Friday, March 11 was the last day for republicans to get their names on the May primary ballot.

Folks were bringing in and dropping off candidate petitions at the Brewerie at Union Station.

A candidate needs a petition with a specific number of signatures in order to get on the ballot. They are important for any candidate, regardless of party.

Congressional candidates need at least 1,000 signatures to be on the ballot.

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We have got some committee people and we have other folks who are just here because they feel passionate about one candidate. We have over 30 candidates running for U.S. Senate, Pennsylvania Governor or Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor, said Melanie Brewer, Campaign Manager for Congressman Mike Kelly.

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Last day for republican candidates to have their names on primary ballot - YourErie

That was probably the first thing that Chuck did that showed him as a national political leader, recalled Kessler. With Scotts plan, he said of Schumer, Im sure he sees it and says to himself, Ive taken this apart before.

Privately, Democrats are realistic about their chances of hanging onto the Senate, and say they must seize the gift Scott has given them to force Republicans onto the defensive. On the day of the State of the Union, for instance, Senate Democrats ran an ad accusing McConnell of fighting for the same wealthy insiders who get rich by keeping prices high.

During their own retreat on Wednesday, Democrats heard a presentation by Geoff Garin, a pollster, that impressed many of the senators present. Garins surveys have found that more voters blame the coronavirus pandemic, China and foreign supply chains and large corporations raising prices to increase their profits than they do President Biden for inflation.

The bottom line here is that Democrats have a very strong case to prosecute on rising costs, Garin said.

Republicans see the attack on Scott as a desperation play in what could be a difficult election for Senate Democrats, who must defend incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire while trying to pick up seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If I were them, I would try to use it, too, said Justin Sayfie, a Republican consultant who runs an influential Florida political news website. But theyre going to have to put a lot of money behind it. How much penetration are they going to be able to get with a message about Rick Scott?

McConnell and Scott have a fundamental difference of opinion about how to win the Senate, people who have studied both men say.

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Why Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell Are Feuding Over Midterm Elections - The New York Times

At its peak in 2016, the Republican structural advantage was daunting. Just 195 districts tilted toward Hillary Clinton in that years presidential election, compared to 240 that tilted toward Mr. Trump. The median congressional district voted for Mr. Trump by nearly four percentage points, six points more favorable to the Republicans than Mr. Trumps two-point deficit in the national popular vote. The outcome raised the possibility that Democrats could only win the House in a national landslide.

But the Republican advantage crumbled, even before this cycles redistricting began. A string of court rulings in North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia eroded or eliminated some of the partys most valuable gerrymanders, cutting the chambers Republican edge down by one-third before the 2020 election.

What is redistricting? Its the redrawing of the boundariesof congressional and state legislative districts. It happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect changes in population.

How does it work? The census dictates how many seats in Congress each state will get. Mapmakers then work to ensure that a states districts all have roughly the same number of residents, to ensure equal representation in the House.

Who draws the new maps? Each state has its own process. Eleven states leave the mapmaking to an outside panel. But most 39 states have state lawmakers draw the new maps for Congress.

If state legislators can draw their own districts, wont they be biased? Yes. Partisan mapmakers often move district lines subtly or egregiously to cluster voters ina way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.

Is gerrymandering legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.

At the same time, unfavorable electoral trends eroded the Republican Partys longstanding geographic advantage: the tendency for the party to more efficiently translate its votes into seats than the Democrats, who win lopsided margins in urban areas but tend to lag in less populous areas. Mr. Trumps weakness in traditionally competitive suburbs along with his relative strengths in less competitive rural and urban areas made his coalition somewhat less effective at winning House seats than for prior Republicans. It cut the Republican advantage down by half.

Together, the diminishing Republican geographic advantage and weakened gerrymanders were just enough for Democrats to narrowly win the House with a modest win in the popular vote in 2020.

Republicans were expected to reclaim their advantage again this cycle, as the party would draw more seats than the Democrats. But Republicans had fewer opportunities to improve over their prior maps. In some states, new court rulings and constitutional amendments limited what Republicans could do with their powers. In others, Republicans had already drawn the lines so overwhelmingly to their advantage a decade earlier that there were few opportunities for them to go much further. They chose to reinforce more vulnerable incumbents as often as they eliminated additional Democratic seats.

Democrats, on the other hand, had more opportunities to be more aggressive than they had been a decade ago. Their victories in the 2018 midterm elections gave them more influence in the redistricting process in many states, and Democrats had not adopted especially effective or extreme gerrymanders a decade earlier. Overall, Democrats eliminated 12 seats that leaned Republican in the last presidential election in New York, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada and Oregon. No state courts have acted to weaken Democratic gerrymanders in those states.

Republicans, on the other hand, have faced a string of adverse court rulings.

In Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, the courts either limited Republican gerrymanders or selected surprisingly Democratic-leaning maps. In the end, Republicans may only eliminate a handful of Democratic districts, like those in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Nashville and, perhaps soon, eastern New Hampshire.

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Why Redistricting May Lead to a More Balanced U.S. Congress - The New York Times

Bad laws get passed all the time in the United States. What makes bounty-style laws so pernicious is how they undermine the way that civil rights laws and constitutional protections are supposed to work. Section 1983, the flagship federal civil rights mechanism for lawsuits, is designed to protect private individuals from the depredations of state and local officials. In Jackson, the court effectively ruled that S.B. 8 had found a way around it in the short term. As a result, Texas and the conservative justices legitimized a too-clever-by-half way to deprive someone of their federal constitutional rights by making it much more difficult to vindicate those rights in court.

The clear purpose and actual effect of S.B. 8 has been to nullify this Courts rulings, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a partial dissent joined by the courts three liberal justices. He appeared to be keenly aware of the stakes. Indeed, if the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, he continued, quoting from one of the courts precedents. The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.

There is also a chilling strain of authoritarianism at work here. It is one thing to simply ban abortion; the states and Congress ban plenty of things, for good or for ill. If enough voters think such a ban is wrong, they can theoretically vote out the lawmakers who did it and get it lifted. Bounty-style laws diffuse that feedback loop by directly turning Americans against each other: neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member, citizen against citizen, on issues where Americans have profound and sometimes irreconcilable disagreements. Just as Warsaw Pact dictators relied on vast networks of informants to achieve their goals in the twentieth century, so too will right-wing state lawmakers pit their constituents against each other to accomplish theirs.

These tactics are proliferating beyond the abortion context. A Florida bill, described as the Dont Say Gay bill by its opponents, aims to severely restrict discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. The bill also states that school officials may not discourage or prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a students mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, a move that could compel educators to out LGBTQ students to their parents. If a parent believes that a school district is violating the law, they can sue for damages or force the state to appoint special magistrates to investigate educators at the districts expense.

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Texas's Abortion Bounty Law Is Inspiring Republican Lawmakers Around the Country - The New Republic

WILLMAR State Rep. Dave Baker has announced that he will run for re-election to the Minnesota Legislature in the new House District 16B.

Baker, R-Willmar, made the announcement Friday. He is running for his fifth two-year term in the House. He was first elected in 2014.

Dave Baker

After redistricting, Bakers district now includes more of Kandiyohi County. He previously represented northern portions of the county. Redistricting added the communities of Raymond, Blomkest and Prinsburg and the townships of Edwards, Holland, and Roseland to the district.

Baker is running for his fifth two-year term in the House and was first elected in 2014.

He owns Baker Hospitality Inc., which operates the Grandstay Hotel and Event Center located between Spicer and New London, Green Lake Cruises in Spicer and Willmars Super 8.

In a statement, Baker said he looks forward to meeting people in the communities new to his district and called the upcoming campaign his fifth job interview.

Baker and his wife, Mary, are Willmar residents.

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Willmar Republican Dave Baker running for re-election to Minnesota House of Representatives - West Central Tribune