Elaine Thompson/AP Photo
Campaign volunteers for Seattle City Council candidate Kshama Sawant, October 23, 2019. Sawant is being targeted by Amazon after she supported raising taxes on large corporations in the city.
Today, voters in a number of states will head to the polls to weigh in on everything from ballot measures to city council members to governors. Off-year elections are notorious for lower turnout than midterm election years, which themselves lag far behind presidential election years, which turn out around 60 percent of the voting-age populace. In other words, participation is going to be low.
Still, in the Trump era, these elections have taken on an increased importance, with some races carrying national implications and drawing outsize spending and scrutiny compared to previous rounds. A handful of races in particular, in both liberal cities and red states, will serve as a test of the endurance of the progressive movement that made big gains just a year ago.
Progressives Seek Gains in City Races
At the local level, there are a handful of noteworthy races. The city of San Francisco is voting on a new district attorney, the seat once held by tough-on-crime prosecutor turned Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (this is a snap election caused by the departure of San Francisco DA George Gascon, who decided to move to Los Angeles to take on pro-police incumbent Jackie Lacey). For a liberal stronghold like San Francisco, the race has been surprisingly contentious. The highest-profile candidate is Chesa Boudin, a progressive, judicial-reform candidate and public defender (and child of radicals), hoping to join the ranks of the progressive prosecutors who have won office in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and elsewhere.
But police, law enforcement, and tech entrepreneurs have poured more than $2 million into the race to prevent that. The San Francisco Police Officers Association has launched a last-second media blitz of nearly $700,000 opposing Boudin; the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association has spent $232,953 on mailings and billboards in support of Deputy Attorney General Leif Dautch; and tech investor Chris Larsen has spent $500,000 to boost Interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus, a protégé of Kamala Harris and Mayor London Breed’s candidate of choice.
Seattle, another liberal garrison, will vote on seven of its nine city council seats, in a race that has revealed Amazon’s aspiration as its own political party. The company has pumped an unprecedented $1.5 million into PACs seeking to ouster progressive and socialist candidates who once advocated for an “Amazon tax” to help mitigate the city’s runaway homelessness problems. Kshama Sawant, the socialist council member who helped implement a $15 minimum wage in the city, has been the candidate most squarely in the crosshairs of Amazon’s newly zealous politicking.
On the flip side, the Philadelphia City Council looks primed for a progressive insurgency. Because of the structure of the city’s charter, the council guarantees two at-large seats to a minority party. Philadelphia is one of the most Democratic cities in the country, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 7 to 1 (there are also more registered independents than registered Republicans). Republicans have held those two minority posts since the 1950s. But now, Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourke, challengers from the Working Families Party, a progressive third party, have mounted a bid for those seats. If they win, they would drag the council dramatically to the left, a possibility that has chagrined the leaders of Philadelphia’s Democratic machine. One high-ranking Philadelphia Democrat has instead encouraged voters to back Republican candidates in those races, while local party bosses have threatened to remove Democratic committee members who back Brooks and O’Rourke. The race has drawn an unprecedented amount of fundraising money, as well.
The Deep South Governor Battles
At the state level, three governorships are up for grabs, in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Those might not seem like states where progressives would compete, but Democrats have a fighting chance in all three. In Mississippi, Attorney General Jim Hood is running for the state’s top job. He’s currently the only Democrat holding a statewide office in the Magnolia State, and he’s used a heterodox blend of cultural conservatism (Hood is vocally anti-choice) and economic populism to mount a surprisingly competitive campaign in what would otherwise be, by any account, a long-shot office for Democrats.
In Kentucky, the governor’s race between Democrat Andy Beshear and fulsome, Trump-loving Republican Matt Bevin has been identified as a bellwether for the impact of the impeachment inquiry on both parties’ national lot. Bevin, an incumbent, is one of the most loathed governors in the country. But he’s been running ads seeking to tether Beshear to the impeachment inquiry, even though a state governorship has nothing to do with congressional process. Bevin hopes this will rouse the rural, pro-Trump base to overcome their distaste for him as an actual candidate and muster enough party loyalty to push him over the finish line. With only 31 percent of registered voters expected to cast votes, a small nudge from Trump may be all that’s needed. The two have a colorful history: As Kentucky’s attorney general, Beshear sued Bevin over modifications to education board memberships, the abolishment and reorganization of state boards, and education budget cuts that he enacted after the state’s teacher strikes. Beshear is running on expanding consumer protections in health care, while Bevin is running on instituting Medicaid work requirements.
Finally, in Louisiana, incumbent Democrat John Bel Edwards is up for re-election against Republican challenger Eddie Rispone. Edwards managed to secure the only current Democratically held governor’s mansion in the Deep South in 2016, in what was, in some part, a repudiation of termed-out Republican predecessor Bobby Jindal and scandal-plagued opponent David Vitter. That victory made Edwards the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Louisiana since 2008. Edwards has been polling comfortably ahead, though Trump will be traveling to Louisiana to rally for Rispone ahead of the general election date of November 16.
Virginia’s Democratic Opportunity
The other major state-level elections are happening in Virginia. Republicans currently hold narrow, two-seat majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. With a number of competitive races, including suburban districts where Democrats had no shot not long ago, Virginia’s legislative makeup could be the most powerful referendum on the toxicity of Trumpism in purple states (other policy issues, like gun control, will factor in as well). There are also several interesting individual races. Lee Carter, the socialist from Manassas who won a shock election two years ago and has made a name for himself cutting against Democratic pro-business orthodoxy by opposing corporate tax giveaways in his district, is up for re-election. Meanwhile, progressive prosecutor Steve Descano is running for Commonwealth’s Attorney in Fairfax County, the district that current Attorney General William Barr calls home.
Also on the Ballot
There are also a number of important ballot measures. In Colorado, the state will vote to repeal the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (or TABOR), an arcane holdover from the state’s Republican past which caps state and local revenues and mandates refunds to taxpayers if those revenues grow faster than the rate of inflation plus the rate of population growth. That provision has prevented the state from addressing a panoply of infrastructure needs that persist despite a booming economy. And in New York City, voters will decide on whether to implement ranked-choice voting. If it passes, the city would become the most populous area in the United States to adopt that electoral method, which has been vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom in localities across California.
Reflexively, many if not all of these election results will be interpreted as a referendum on Trump. And while enthusiasm or revulsion for Trumpism may goose turnout, Tuesday’s races provide an opportunity for progressive forces to make deeper inroads in safely Democratic regions of the country, while chipping away at the Republican stranglehold on local and state governments in the South. For Democrats, winning sustained victories, cycle over cycle, has proven elusive in recent years. But even minor, off-year gains at lower levels of government could prove crucial for establishing the framework necessary to implement the policy ambitions of a Democratic president, an election which is now just a year away.
