Why do vulnerable House Republicans keep voting for a sure-loser speaker candidate who opposes all their priorities and might just drown them at the ballot box? Beats us! But we just can't resist a delicious GOP disaster on this week's episode of "The Downballot." David Valadao voted to impeach Trump—and also supports Jim Jordan, known insurrectionist. Brian Fitzpatrick represents a heavily Ukrainian district—and also supports Jim Jordan, known Putinist. And there are many more like them. Make it make sense! Well, we shall try our best.
Embedded Content
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard are also joined by Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer to recap the (dismal) results of Louisiana's gubernatorial election. The Davids then dissect the GOP's new ultra-extreme gerrymanders in North Carolina before discussing a welcome poll on Ohio's abortion amendment and very heartening developments in Poland, where pro-democracy forces just ousted the country's far-right authoritarian government.
It's also the end of the quarter, so we've published charts rounding up all of the new federal fundraising reports for both the House and the Senate.
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a five-star rating and review.
Beard: David, welcome back. The Davids are reunited.
Nir: Yes, we are. Thank you, Beard. I hope things have gone very well with Joe Sudbay over the last few weeks.
Beard: Yes, he was a great guest host. We had a number of topics that just kept popping up in the three weeks you were gone, but I think we covered them pretty ably. But we're very glad to have you back.
Nir: I was going to ask if I missed anything at all while I was away.
Beard: One or two things may have happened in American politics over the past three weeks, in case you missed them.
Nir: Well, I have done a lot of catching up, and I am very eager to talk about the fallout from Kevin McCarthy's historic ouster. So, today on “The Downballot,” we are going to be discussing the vulnerable House Republicans who keep voting for insurrectionist Jim Jordan as their next speaker, despite the fact that he is certain to lose.
We are updating the unfortunate result in the Louisiana Governor's race that went down this past Saturday.
There are also new ultra-extreme Republican gerrymanders out of North Carolina that just dropped on Wednesday afternoon.
But then there is some great news out of Ohio, where a new poll finds the November measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution passing by a wide margin.
And then there were some very heartening developments abroad. Polish elections resoundingly rejected the country's authoritarian government and ushered in a new pro-democracy majority.
We have so much to discuss, and I am very glad to be back, so let's get rolling.
Well, Beard, I picked a good time to come back, because I can hardly believe it, but today, Thursday, the day that this episode of The Downballot is coming out, is also the 20th anniversary of Daily Kos Elections. I can't wrap my head around the fact that we have been at this for as long as we have.
We started life as the Swing State Project back in 2003 when I was a first-year law student. I can't believe that I decided to take time away from my studies to blog about elections that I barely knew anything about.
Beard: And I hear that law school is hard, but clearly you proved that wasn't the case if you could run this blog at the same time, right?
Nir: You know what? I guess you must be right. Law school actually was pretty hard. It was harder than undergrad, that's for sure. But I needed an outlet, I guess, in the Bush years, and writing about elections proved to be a really good outlet.
And then, about eight or so years later, Daily Kos beamed us up, and the Swing State Project became Daily Kos Elections, and we have just been cranking ever since. And it's just been such an immense privilege, among many other things, thanks to the DKE community. I got to know you, and here we are. Look at us, doing “The Downballot.”
Beard: Yeah. I haven't been here quite as long. I started reading Swing State Project before it became Daily Kos Elections. I think that was somewhere in the 2005-2006 range. So long, long-time reader.
Nir: That's OG. That's OG.
Beard: Yeah. Not quite 2003, but pretty darn close. But then, of course, joined and became a contributing editor somewhere in the mid-2010s. I think maybe 2015. But it's been a great eight years doing it on my end, and here's to many more.
Nir: Yeah, absolutely.
Beard: Well, as great as it is to celebrate that, a few things may have happened while you were gone. Most notably, of course, we still don't have a House speaker. Who knows if we'll ever have a House speaker? But one thing that has changed is who at-risk Republicans are voting for for House speaker, right?
Nir: Oh man. I deleted Twitter off my phone when I went on vacation, but people were clowning on Kevin McCarthy on Facebook.
Facebook is not a place where I go for political news, but it was so embarrassing for him that I wound up hearing about it while I was in a different country. And now I come back two weeks later, and still no House speaker, and it's got just even better.
I hope all of our listeners to The Downballot have been enjoying this escalating GOP meltdown because watching Jim Jordan subject himself to nonstop punishment and humiliation is one of the great joys of my life.
But the amazing thing, and Beard, I think this is what you're getting at, it's not just Jim Jordan who's suffering. I mean, fuck that guy, obviously. But as we have mentioned many, many times on this show, there are 18 House Republicans who sit in seats that were won by Joe Biden, and a dozen of them, a dozen of these vulnerable House Republicans, have now voted for Jim Jordan not once, but twice. And what makes it even more astonishing is that they voted for him even though they knew he was going to lose. Even though they knew he would not become speaker. Beard, make it make sense.
Beard: Yeah. I really have no idea why they would do something like this. You can tell the smarter ones. Like Mike Lawler. I think that he's probably willing to be the vote that gets Jordan over the top to actually resolve this, but he's clearly not stupid enough to sit around and just vote for Jordan while he doesn't have enough votes, and just keep the process going over and over again.
It seems crazy, but a lot of them are anyway. I have no idea why. I guess it's just the sense of loyalty, the fear of a primary? But it's great. I will be more than happy to sticky this vote to their foreheads for the rest of the year.
Nir: If you haven't watched these actual roll call votes on C-SPAN, the way it works is they actually call out each member's name one at a time. This is not like a normal vote on a piece of legislation where everyone votes electronically. We saw this all happen in January, 15 freaking times, with Kevin McCarthy.
And so, by the time you have five votes for any candidate not named Jim Jordan, five Republican votes, then you know he's lost and he can't get to a majority, because he needs 217 votes.
And what's even funnier about it is, if they call your name and you don't answer, they'll come back around to you at the end. It's not like you miss your turn in line, and you're done. So, even if you're early in the alphabet, even if your name is like Beard, you can hide in the bathroom and come back at the end, and play it safe.
But that's not what these bozos are doing. And there are just some incredible head-scratchers.
Like David Valadao. I cannot wrap my mind around this one. He's from California's 22nd district, another Biden seat that Democrats have won in the past, and he voted to impeach Trump for trying to foment a coup.
But now he's backing Jim Jordan, who is such an extreme far-right election denier, of course, he voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. David Valadao almost lost his job in Congress because he nearly lost his primary last year to a far-right maniac just like Jim Jordan, for the sin of impeaching Donald Trump.
So, what the hell's going on here? Because he also still has to worry about winning a general election, and this is not a good look.
Beard: Yeah. I can only assume that he's still worried about that primary coming around for 2024 because that's the only thing that makes any sense. As you mentioned, Jim Jordan has voted to overturn the 2020 election. He has also introduced legislation to ban abortion, all abortion, federally. No six weeks, no 15 weeks. All abortions. So, this is an extreme, extreme position that none of these swingy Republicans are going to want to defend.
So, the idea that they're going to vote to put him as the most front-facing Republican member of the house is just wild. It almost feels like they're voting yes and hoping that he doesn't get it, because I can't imagine they actually want him to be speaker.
We obviously lived through many years of Republicans demonizing Nancy Pelosi, this liberal from San Francisco, and there are certainly potentially some places in America where that was successful. But on the other hand, we got an incredibly effective speaker who passed a ton of great legislation.
And in Jim Jordan, they're getting a loser who hasn't really done anything in Congress except throw bombs around, to his own Republicans as much as to Democrats. And in return, they get a terrible electoral drag in these more swingy or progressive areas. So, it doesn't make any sense.
Nir: Yeah. I mean, talk about a total loser. Jim Jordan not only… the Washington Post did some amazing reporting on this. Not only has he never passed a single bill, he has never gotten a bill out of committee. And it's even more extreme than that, he's never even had action on a bill in committee. I guess nothing that he's ever even put forward to the committee, they said, "Okay, we'll take a vote on this, and we voted it down." It didn't make it out of committee. His crap hasn't gotten anywhere. It could not be more different than Nancy Pelosi.
Beard: Yeah, it's really strange, almost, that he would even want this. I guess it's like the power is obviously very appealing, and being this national figure, but he's not really interested in legislating. He's not interested in working with the Democratic Senate to pass legislation. That's the opposite of what Jim Jordan wants.
So, I guess he wants to become speaker, shut down the government for a few months, to what end, who knows? And then yell about a bunch of turncoat Republicans who probably helped reopen the government. Why that's what he wants, I don't know. But it looks like he's going to keep losing these votes until he gets tired of it.
Nir: Another area where Jordan is far out of the mainstream, though, that certainly has a lot of appeal among extreme Republicans, is his opposition to funding for Ukraine, and he has voted against almost all Ukraine funding, which is why there was another name of one of his supporters who now has voted for him twice. That totally shocked me. And that's Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania's First Congressional District. This is a district with one of the largest Ukrainian American populations in the entire country. Fitzpatrick was an FBI agent. He served overseas in US war zones. I was looking him up on Wikipedia, in fact. He even served in Kyiv.
This guy, Fitzpatrick, has been one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine's war effort against Russia, and now he's backing Jim Jordan. If you're really plugged in the Ukrainian community in the Pennsylvania suburbs, if you're a leader there, you got to be looking at Fitzpatrick and saying, "What the hell are you doing? You really trust some promise from Jim Jordan to get Ukraine funding through. That's just nuts."
Beard: Yeah. First of all, it's crazy on his end to trust Jordan, but we've also seen Jordan seemingly promise a number of Republican figures, who you can describe as defense hawks who are very pro-Ukraine funding, that something like this would move, because we've seen releases from a number of these Republican Congressmen for whom that was a priority, say they've talked with Jordan and they're confident that something will pass, which imagine telling Jim Jordan of six months ago that Jim Jordan of today is going around promising people that he'll make sure Ukraine funding gets passed. It's such a wild about-face. He would be so mad at the present day Jim Jordan.
Nir: Yeah. Oh, right. Jim Jordan from six months ago absolutely would be calling the motion to vacate on Speaker Jordan's Speakership. Beard, it's instructive that you were mentioning Pelosi who did make it into a lot of GOP ads over the years. I don't know if Jim Jordan will make it into any Democratic attack ads. First off, he might never become speaker. In fact, I think he-
Beard: Probably not.
Nir: ... probably won't. Right, probably not. So, it might be just too much of a distant memory by the time we get to Labor Day of 2024. But if you are in a moderate district, why even take the chance? You can't just go YOLO and say, "Oh, well, Jim Jordan House speaker vote. That's too abstract for an attack ad." You're taking a risk. I'm trying to understand today's Republican Party, especially House Republicans; it’s just, I feel like it's almost an exercise in futility. They just don't make sense.
Beard: Yeah. And Jordan is probably also not the fundraising powerhouse that we're used to seeing, because the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, for all of his faults, raised a ton of money for a lot of vulnerable Republicans. Steve Scalise has been in the leadership for quite a while. He can raise a ton of money. Jim Jordan is, I don't think, known as somebody who raises a ton of money for swing state Republicans and makes sure they have the funding they need to run good races. You'd think they would want a Speaker who would do that, but who knows what they want. You're right. It's so hard to understand the eternally squabbling House Republican Conference.
Nir: Yeah. This is going to break my brain, if we keep talking about it any further. We got to move on. We got a lot more to hit.
Beard: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.
Nir: Sooner or later, we were bound to have some bad election news this year, and it finally happened on Saturday.
Beard: Yeah, I know. The streak couldn't go on forever. There had to be a bad election night for Democrats, but I don't want to talk about the bad election night for Democrats. So, we're going to bring on Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer, who was just here last week. We're going to let him talk about the bad election night for Democrats, so we don't have to. So, welcome Jeff.
Jeff Singer: Thanks. It's good to be back even under these circumstances.
Nir: Well, you are our resident Louisiana expert since you did, of course, live in the state for many, many years. So, we have to ask you; what the hell went wrong in the governor's race?
Singer: Yeah, so there were 15 candidates on the ballot. Almost everyone expected this would go to runoff and no one would take a majority of the vote. That's not what happened. The state's far-right Attorney General, Jeff Landry, won 52% of the vote. That's it. That's the ball game. The main Democratic candidate, former State Secretary of Transportation, Shawn Wilson, he was a distant second with 26%, but no matter how much of the vote he won, it wouldn't have been enough, because Landry cleared a majority. That's it. The governorship goes from blue to red.
In terms of what happened, part of the problem was everyone expected Landry was going to win. There wasn't much incentive to stop that. Almost no one, including Landry, expected it would be this quick. They thought he'd have to go through a November runoff with Wilson, but the ultimate outcome wasn't really in doubt, and I don't think that motivated anyone to spend money here to get Wilson to round two. I don't think it motivated the local Democratic Party, which has been the source of much, much hand-wringing about how little money they spent in their organization.
Beard, back in 2017, you wrote a great post about how Democrats who were pretty dejected after the Presidential Election, the first thing they needed to do to win the House was to believe they actually could. And the converse is if you don't believe you can actually win a race, you're probably not going to try very hard to do it or even keep it going. And I think of all the things, that's one of the big reasons Wilson underperformed, but there were also a lot of other things here. Landry just consolidated so much GOP support. Everyone who was trying to be the alternative, they just never took off. Landry had just so much money and had Trump's endorsement. It was just a perfect storm for him, and he rode it to the governor's mansion.
Beard: Yeah, no other candidate got more than 6% of the vote, I believe. So, the idea normally that in such a large candidate field, there would be divisions and no one would get to 50 didn't really apply here, because Landry scooped up so much of the Republican vote. Of course, the other problem was that turnout seemed like it was pretty bad, both in general, but specifically for Democrats in these more Democratic areas. Turnout was really bad.
Singer: Yeah. And I think a lot of people are laying the blame on the Louisiana Democratic Party. And as you said, I used to live in Louisiana. I've been railing on the party since before it was cool. After 2011, there was a whole lot of this, because Bobby Jindal, the governor at the time, just ran away with it. Democrats didn't put up any real resistance. Things seemed to be getting better for a while, then they got worse, and I don't want to discount that. But also, it is really hard to organize a strong party in the state, and that's going to be a challenge for activists who want to start winning again. It's hard to recruit talent for such a red state, but there are some great people on the ground who I know are trying, and that's one of the key first steps.
Nir: We think about this as a blue-to-red flip, and that sucks. But the reality is a Republican should win the governorship in Louisiana by all rights. And what happened in 2015, when John Bel Edwards defeated Republican David Vitter, that was the real shock. That was a real stunner of a race, especially since very few people believed in John Bel Edwards outside of his own inner circle. And so this is just really a reversion to what we can normally expect. So if I'm a Republican, I don't know that this gives me any reason to feel particularly great or any better than I've been feeling, especially given the special elections in every other part of the country.
Singer: Yeah, it's about how I feel. We're about to have a bunch of elections in November, and that's going to tell us a lot more. If those go well for the Democrats or if they're just a wash, then that's probably going to matter more. But even so, we're still 13 months out. Early signs can only tell you so much.
Beard: Were there any other notable results from Louisiana that you want to highlight from down the ballot?
Singer: There are a few. So Jeff Landry, even though he won really easily, I don't think a lot of people would've predicted that, say, 11 years ago when he just lost his US House seat after just one term, because he was thrown into the same district as another Republican Congressman. So, he managed to do the swing back from former House member to statewide elected official to now Governor. And there's someone who is sort of trying to do that now, former Republican Congressman John Fleming; he was this proto-Tea Partier. He won a really close race in 2008, was this really far-right guy for a few terms; runs for Senate, gets fourth place. That's it for him for a while. He has a junior job in the Trump administration.
Then, he comes back. He takes first place in the all-party primary for state treasurer. He's in a runoff with a Democrat. But as we just saw, Louisiana is a very tough state for the party. Fleming's probably going to win next month, and I don't know. I don't know what his ambitions are, but if he wants to run again for the Senate or for governor, well, he has Landry to look to for a role model.
Nir: And so Singer, when are those runoffs? Because it's going to be for not just the statewides, but also some legislative races as well.
Singer: Those will be on November 18th, which in Louisiana tradition is a Saturday.
Nir: Of course, Louisiana cannot hold elections on a normal day of the year like every other state. That's how it goes. Let the good times roll.
Beard: Well, this may not have been the best report we've ever gotten from you. We'll look forward to better ones in the future. But thanks for coming on and talking us through the Louisiana results.
Singer: Yeah, well thank you for having me. And well, as dejected Democrats have become used to staying in Louisiana, Mardi Gras is not that far away.
Nir: Thanks, Jeff.
Beard: So while Saturday was a pretty bad day for Democrats in Louisiana, Wednesday was a pretty bad day for Democrats in North Carolina as Republicans in the state legislature posted their long-awaited redistricting maps both for Congress and for both chambers of the state legislature. Now, these only came out a few hours before we're recording, so this is very much a first impression, but as you'd expect, these maps are gerrymandered within an inch of their lives. The current congressional districts have seven Democratic incumbents and seven Republican incumbents. That was under a court-ordered map that the North Carolina Supreme Court implemented after they struck down the previously gerrymandered maps.
Obviously, one major thing that has changed is that the North Carolina Supreme Court is now controlled by Republicans instead of by Democrats, and we expect the GOP-dominated court to let Republicans in the legislature do whatever they want with these maps, gerrymander them to their hearts' content. The Republicans posted two congressional maps, both of which target at least three Democratic incumbents, Representative Wiley Nickel, friend of the pod, Representative Jeff Jackson, and Representative Kathy Manning, it makes all three of their seats pretty much all but safe Republican. Now there's also a fourth Democrat targeted but in two different ways. In one map, it gives Democratic representative Don Davis a toss-up seat that's sort of trending Republican, but very, very narrowly went for Biden in 2020, while the other map just goes ahead and merges his seat with another Democratic representative, Valerie Foushee, and basically pretty much eliminates his district.
So one map has 10 Republican seats, three Democratic seats, and one tossup seat, and the other map has 11 Republican seats and three Democratic seats. And the shitty reality of it is there's no way to stop the GOP from passing one of these maps. The only real potential I think that could lead anywhere is maybe a Voting Rights Act lawsuit at the federal level around the first district, which is Don Davis's district. Even that I don't think has a great likelihood of succeeding, but I would expect that we might see that, but beyond that, we're going to see probably more Republicans coming out of North Carolina for Congress.
Nir: Yeah, this map is such, such, such an extreme gerrymander and if you look at the maps themselves, they look like they're drawn so prettily. They don't have any crazy appendages or tentacles or weird jagged lines. Republicans are smart. They know that this game of aesthetics affects a lot of people, but you only have to dig one layer underneath to see just how outrageous this crap is. 11 Republican seats versus three Democratic seats in what is really a 51/49 swing state is completely, completely lunatic, and there are really only two ways for Democrats to approach this.
One is on the national level. Democrats for years have advanced legislation that Republicans have to their very last member refused to support that would end gerrymandering on the congressional level in every single state and would require every state to adopt nonpartisan, independent redistricting. Democrats absolutely need to keep pushing this legislation; they need to take back the House in order to do so, and also they need to win a majority in the Senate that is ready to curtail the filibuster because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have refused to let this legislation move forward. That's one prong.
The other way is something we've talked about on “The Downballot” before, and that is also a long-term plan, which involves Democrats trying to win back the state Supreme Court because it was the state Supreme Court that ruled that partisan gerrymandering was illegal, that it violated the North Carolina state constitution, and it was only when these far-right hard-line Republican partisans took control of the court last year, they came in and they immediately overturned that ruling and that was a fucking load of bullshit. And Democrats need to pursue both of these paths and it's long; it's going to suck.
They're definitely going to feel like they are really in a beleaguered minority in North Carolina, in the legislature as well because we haven't even talked about those but the state legislative maps are also going to be gerrymandered to an incredible extreme. Those are also released on Wednesday and it's going to suck, but I have to remind folks about something else we have also talked about on the show before, and that's Wisconsin. It took 15 years for Democrats to win back the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. We can do it a lot quicker than that in North Carolina and let's not lose sight of that.
Beard: Yeah, I think Wisconsin is a great comparison for a state that suffered through a long period of Republican dominance because of entrenched gerrymandered maps and that we're hopefully going to soon see fair maps once again and let the people of Wisconsin have a voice in their state legislature and have a voice in Congress. I know it sucks to see these maps and to know these maps are going to be implemented and that North Carolinians are going to have to vote under them in 2024, but you have to look at the longer view and towards taking back control at the federal and at the state level so that you can implement fair maps for the long term. This is not just a 2024 fight; it's a years-long fight to regain democratic ideals in North Carolina and in these other states with gerrymandered maps.
Nir: It sucks to be talking about silver linings, but I think there may be one small silver lining here, Beard, in terms of you have these Democratic representatives who are probably going to look to stay involved in politics in one way or another, and sometimes you force someone out of their seat and they go on to do greater things.
Beard: And the most obvious case is Representative Jeff Jackson. As we mentioned, he's almost certainly not going to have a seat that he can run in and win for 2024, but he's been talked about all year as a potential candidate for attorney general. Of course, that's going to be vacant because current Attorney General Josh Stein is running for governor, and so I think he would be a great candidate for attorney general. He's been talked up as a potential statewide candidate many times over the past year, so I think there's a good chance we see that. Obviously, Jackson hasn't made any comments. These maps just came out, but it wouldn't surprise me if that ends up happening and I think that he would be a great attorney general if he's able to run and win.
Nir: It's time to get back to good news, and we do have some very good news out of Ohio. The first poll that we've seen since August, of the November 7th vote that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, has Issue 1 passing by a huge 58 to 34 margin. Those numbers are from Baldwin Wallace University. They commissioned nonpartisan pollster SurveyUSA to conduct this poll, but these numbers are almost identical to every other set of data we've seen despite the heavy spending that has taken place since the summer, since that last poll on both sides. Now, as always, we have to caution that polling ballot measures is especially difficult, particularly here because Issue 1 actually would address a number of issues, not just abortion. It would also protect the right to contraception, the right to have fertility care, and other associated rights.
So when you ask a question about, "Would you vote for the Democrat or Republican in the race for Senate?" That's a very simple, straightforward question. It's one line long. If you look at these actual surveys for Issue 1, it takes a paragraph to explain it to voters and maybe respondents tune out while they're listening to it or don't exactly understand it while it's being read to them, but would understand it a different way if they're actually seeing the text in the ballot booth. But the polling has been quite consistent.
And what's more, is that the 58% figure from SurveyUSA is very similar to the 57% who voted against the previous Issue 1. Now, this is so frustrating and confusing that Ohio had these back-to-back ballot measures, both known as Issue 1, both closely related to the topic of abortion, but the previous Issue 1, which we discussed endlessly on “The Downballot,” was the GOP backed amendment to make ballot initiatives tougher to pass and it was soundly rejected by voters in August. Now, there may not be a perfect overlap between the August Issue 1 opponents and the November Issue 1 supporters, but I wouldn't be surprised if those two groups wind up being pretty similar.
Beard: Yeah, obviously, I'm sure there's some Ohioan out there who's like, "I was against changing the Constitution, but I'm also very anti-abortion." So you're going to vote no on both of these. I'm sure they're out there, but I think it's probably a pretty small percentage of the population. So it doesn't surprise me that these results seem pretty similar. It also compares very similarly to the other abortion and reproductive rights-related referendums that we saw last year in terms of having strong support, far outpacing the sort of partisan skew of the state.
So given that Ohio is a red-leaning state, but adjusting it for how we've seen these reproductive rights amendments do, I think this meets a lot of the priors that I had for how I thought this result might go down, which is good news. I feel like I hadn't heard as much about this, and of course, there are a lot of different things going on in November, whereas in August it was just that one issue, but I hadn't heard much. I knew there was advertising going on, but I was like, "I feel good about it, but I hadn't seen any data," so I was really happy to see this poll come out and confirm what I hoped and thought was probably going to be happening. So hopefully it'll continue to see these positive numbers.
Nir: I also think it's no accident that Republicans wanted to make the threshold for future ballot initiatives, 60%. And I know that sounds like a nice round number, three-fifths, supermajority, whatever. But I'm convinced that they saw tons of polling of their own that showed abortion probably getting in the mid to high-fifties if it were ever on the ballot. And they're like, ah, 60% that'll be safe for us. So I feel like it's a tell about this secret polling that we've never seen.
Beard: Yeah, I'm sure it would've been two-thirds if they needed it to be two-thirds.
Nir: Right. And there was the Missouri Republicans; they managed to screw themselves over with this one, so it hasn't gone anywhere for the moment. But they wanted to set the threshold for initiatives to 57%, which is obviously a bonkers number. You cannot find any support for that number anywhere. But again, I'm sure that they have polls showing that abortion support tops out at 56.5%.
Beard: It feels like they drew 57 out of a hat and they were like, what's a number between 50 and 70 that we'll choose, 57% threshold, but who knows?
Nir: Yeah. Though I will say we're laughing about it because it is so ridiculous and funny, but they're essentially trying a form of gerrymandering.
Beard: Yes.
Nir: And as we saw with those North Carolina maps, we'll have a chance to dig into them more in the future. But these are precision gerrymanders and they know their electorate, and they definitely know what they're doing here. So we can joke about it, but they're not joking around.
Beard: And ultimately it's about ignoring the will of the voters to prioritize the GOP's preferred policy outcomes or preferred elected officials in the case with legislative gerrymandering.
Nir: We have one final piece of very good news from abroad, Beard, that I can't wait to hear you tell us about.
Beard: Yes. A really great election took place this past week in Poland. Really one of the most important elections in that country's history. The Illiberal Law and Justice Party has governed for the past eight years. It's taken over the state-run media; it's taken over the courts. It's done a lot of things turning Poland towards an autocracy. But they had an election; they had a mostly fair election, and a very broad coalition opposed the Law and Justices' attempts to turn Poland into this right-wing autocracy. They won this election. The Law and Justice Coalition won first place with 35% of the vote, but it only has one potential governing partner who won just 7% of the vote. So they're well short of being able to form a government for a third time. Meanwhile, the three coalitions which were all running loosely together, but all opposed to Law and Justice and what it had been doing in Poland, they won to combine 54% of the vote led by this sort of big-tent, centrist, liberal civic coalition. They won 31% of the vote.
So the Civic Coalition is expected to form a government with both the left coalition and sort of a centrist center-right third-way coalition. So they're all coalitions. There's a lot of parties involved here, but they're all together and they're all united in their opposition to the Law and Justice party in what they've been doing.
Now, in the short term, the presidency is still held by a Law and Justice ally. He's got another two years to run on his term. He can delay the forming of a government by almost two months. We'll also have to keep a close eye on any shenanigans, extra-legal attempts to sort of avoid this or delay things or use the courts that have an impact with Law and Justice allies to subvert this. But the hope is that this government will be allowed to take power and will begin to start pulling back these changes that have been so bad for Poland's democracy.
Nir: And one thing that shouldn't be overlooked is, and I know this, thanks to our colleague Stephen Wolf, who also wrote about this for Daily Kos Elections. Poland is the fifth-largest state in the EU. It's a real player and has also been a huge supporter of Ukraine, so hopefully this means even more fulsome support for Ukraine. And I think the EU has been disappointing in the way that it has treated the member nations that have backslid, particularly Poland and Hungary. It hasn't covered itself with glory. Hopefully, this puts the EU, as a whole, on a more democratic direction.
Beard: Yeah, Poland is really a leader of the eastern European block in the EU. It's the largest country in that eastern European section that is part of the membership. So it's a big development on that front. Poland has been an ally, as you said, to Hungary's Viktor Orban and all of his illiberal activities in Hungary and all of the stuff that he's been doing in the EU to try to block various progressive moves. So him losing that ally is also a positive step and a great moment for the Polish people, many of whom have been fighting against this government for the full eight years.
Nir: One final note before we close out the show. It was the end of the third fundraising quarter for federal candidates, candidates for Congress, the Senate, the House, and also for the presidency. Not that we care about that here on “The Downballot,” but every three months at Daily Kos Elections, we publish charts of all of the fundraising numbers for all of the candidates in all of the races. Not every last candidate, we take out the extremely minor candidates, those who raise $5, but all the important candidates, all of the incumbents. We have separate charts for the Senate and the House. If you're interested in checking those out, we will include links to them and the show notes.
Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Jeff Singer for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcast and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Trever Jones, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.
Embedded Content
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard are also joined by Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer to recap the (dismal) results of Louisiana's gubernatorial election. The Davids then dissect the GOP's new ultra-extreme gerrymanders in North Carolina before discussing a welcome poll on Ohio's abortion amendment and very heartening developments in Poland, where pro-democracy forces just ousted the country's far-right authoritarian government.
It's also the end of the quarter, so we've published charts rounding up all of the new federal fundraising reports for both the House and the Senate.
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a five-star rating and review.
Beard: David, welcome back. The Davids are reunited.
Nir: Yes, we are. Thank you, Beard. I hope things have gone very well with Joe Sudbay over the last few weeks.
Beard: Yes, he was a great guest host. We had a number of topics that just kept popping up in the three weeks you were gone, but I think we covered them pretty ably. But we're very glad to have you back.
Nir: I was going to ask if I missed anything at all while I was away.
Beard: One or two things may have happened in American politics over the past three weeks, in case you missed them.
Nir: Well, I have done a lot of catching up, and I am very eager to talk about the fallout from Kevin McCarthy's historic ouster. So, today on “The Downballot,” we are going to be discussing the vulnerable House Republicans who keep voting for insurrectionist Jim Jordan as their next speaker, despite the fact that he is certain to lose.
We are updating the unfortunate result in the Louisiana Governor's race that went down this past Saturday.
There are also new ultra-extreme Republican gerrymanders out of North Carolina that just dropped on Wednesday afternoon.
But then there is some great news out of Ohio, where a new poll finds the November measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution passing by a wide margin.
And then there were some very heartening developments abroad. Polish elections resoundingly rejected the country's authoritarian government and ushered in a new pro-democracy majority.
We have so much to discuss, and I am very glad to be back, so let's get rolling.
Well, Beard, I picked a good time to come back, because I can hardly believe it, but today, Thursday, the day that this episode of The Downballot is coming out, is also the 20th anniversary of Daily Kos Elections. I can't wrap my head around the fact that we have been at this for as long as we have.
We started life as the Swing State Project back in 2003 when I was a first-year law student. I can't believe that I decided to take time away from my studies to blog about elections that I barely knew anything about.
Beard: And I hear that law school is hard, but clearly you proved that wasn't the case if you could run this blog at the same time, right?
Nir: You know what? I guess you must be right. Law school actually was pretty hard. It was harder than undergrad, that's for sure. But I needed an outlet, I guess, in the Bush years, and writing about elections proved to be a really good outlet.
And then, about eight or so years later, Daily Kos beamed us up, and the Swing State Project became Daily Kos Elections, and we have just been cranking ever since. And it's just been such an immense privilege, among many other things, thanks to the DKE community. I got to know you, and here we are. Look at us, doing “The Downballot.”
Beard: Yeah. I haven't been here quite as long. I started reading Swing State Project before it became Daily Kos Elections. I think that was somewhere in the 2005-2006 range. So long, long-time reader.
Nir: That's OG. That's OG.
Beard: Yeah. Not quite 2003, but pretty darn close. But then, of course, joined and became a contributing editor somewhere in the mid-2010s. I think maybe 2015. But it's been a great eight years doing it on my end, and here's to many more.
Nir: Yeah, absolutely.
Beard: Well, as great as it is to celebrate that, a few things may have happened while you were gone. Most notably, of course, we still don't have a House speaker. Who knows if we'll ever have a House speaker? But one thing that has changed is who at-risk Republicans are voting for for House speaker, right?
Nir: Oh man. I deleted Twitter off my phone when I went on vacation, but people were clowning on Kevin McCarthy on Facebook.
Facebook is not a place where I go for political news, but it was so embarrassing for him that I wound up hearing about it while I was in a different country. And now I come back two weeks later, and still no House speaker, and it's got just even better.
I hope all of our listeners to The Downballot have been enjoying this escalating GOP meltdown because watching Jim Jordan subject himself to nonstop punishment and humiliation is one of the great joys of my life.
But the amazing thing, and Beard, I think this is what you're getting at, it's not just Jim Jordan who's suffering. I mean, fuck that guy, obviously. But as we have mentioned many, many times on this show, there are 18 House Republicans who sit in seats that were won by Joe Biden, and a dozen of them, a dozen of these vulnerable House Republicans, have now voted for Jim Jordan not once, but twice. And what makes it even more astonishing is that they voted for him even though they knew he was going to lose. Even though they knew he would not become speaker. Beard, make it make sense.
Beard: Yeah. I really have no idea why they would do something like this. You can tell the smarter ones. Like Mike Lawler. I think that he's probably willing to be the vote that gets Jordan over the top to actually resolve this, but he's clearly not stupid enough to sit around and just vote for Jordan while he doesn't have enough votes, and just keep the process going over and over again.
It seems crazy, but a lot of them are anyway. I have no idea why. I guess it's just the sense of loyalty, the fear of a primary? But it's great. I will be more than happy to sticky this vote to their foreheads for the rest of the year.
Nir: If you haven't watched these actual roll call votes on C-SPAN, the way it works is they actually call out each member's name one at a time. This is not like a normal vote on a piece of legislation where everyone votes electronically. We saw this all happen in January, 15 freaking times, with Kevin McCarthy.
And so, by the time you have five votes for any candidate not named Jim Jordan, five Republican votes, then you know he's lost and he can't get to a majority, because he needs 217 votes.
And what's even funnier about it is, if they call your name and you don't answer, they'll come back around to you at the end. It's not like you miss your turn in line, and you're done. So, even if you're early in the alphabet, even if your name is like Beard, you can hide in the bathroom and come back at the end, and play it safe.
But that's not what these bozos are doing. And there are just some incredible head-scratchers.
Like David Valadao. I cannot wrap my mind around this one. He's from California's 22nd district, another Biden seat that Democrats have won in the past, and he voted to impeach Trump for trying to foment a coup.
But now he's backing Jim Jordan, who is such an extreme far-right election denier, of course, he voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. David Valadao almost lost his job in Congress because he nearly lost his primary last year to a far-right maniac just like Jim Jordan, for the sin of impeaching Donald Trump.
So, what the hell's going on here? Because he also still has to worry about winning a general election, and this is not a good look.
Beard: Yeah. I can only assume that he's still worried about that primary coming around for 2024 because that's the only thing that makes any sense. As you mentioned, Jim Jordan has voted to overturn the 2020 election. He has also introduced legislation to ban abortion, all abortion, federally. No six weeks, no 15 weeks. All abortions. So, this is an extreme, extreme position that none of these swingy Republicans are going to want to defend.
So, the idea that they're going to vote to put him as the most front-facing Republican member of the house is just wild. It almost feels like they're voting yes and hoping that he doesn't get it, because I can't imagine they actually want him to be speaker.
We obviously lived through many years of Republicans demonizing Nancy Pelosi, this liberal from San Francisco, and there are certainly potentially some places in America where that was successful. But on the other hand, we got an incredibly effective speaker who passed a ton of great legislation.
And in Jim Jordan, they're getting a loser who hasn't really done anything in Congress except throw bombs around, to his own Republicans as much as to Democrats. And in return, they get a terrible electoral drag in these more swingy or progressive areas. So, it doesn't make any sense.
Nir: Yeah. I mean, talk about a total loser. Jim Jordan not only… the Washington Post did some amazing reporting on this. Not only has he never passed a single bill, he has never gotten a bill out of committee. And it's even more extreme than that, he's never even had action on a bill in committee. I guess nothing that he's ever even put forward to the committee, they said, "Okay, we'll take a vote on this, and we voted it down." It didn't make it out of committee. His crap hasn't gotten anywhere. It could not be more different than Nancy Pelosi.
Beard: Yeah, it's really strange, almost, that he would even want this. I guess it's like the power is obviously very appealing, and being this national figure, but he's not really interested in legislating. He's not interested in working with the Democratic Senate to pass legislation. That's the opposite of what Jim Jordan wants.
So, I guess he wants to become speaker, shut down the government for a few months, to what end, who knows? And then yell about a bunch of turncoat Republicans who probably helped reopen the government. Why that's what he wants, I don't know. But it looks like he's going to keep losing these votes until he gets tired of it.
Nir: Another area where Jordan is far out of the mainstream, though, that certainly has a lot of appeal among extreme Republicans, is his opposition to funding for Ukraine, and he has voted against almost all Ukraine funding, which is why there was another name of one of his supporters who now has voted for him twice. That totally shocked me. And that's Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania's First Congressional District. This is a district with one of the largest Ukrainian American populations in the entire country. Fitzpatrick was an FBI agent. He served overseas in US war zones. I was looking him up on Wikipedia, in fact. He even served in Kyiv.
This guy, Fitzpatrick, has been one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine's war effort against Russia, and now he's backing Jim Jordan. If you're really plugged in the Ukrainian community in the Pennsylvania suburbs, if you're a leader there, you got to be looking at Fitzpatrick and saying, "What the hell are you doing? You really trust some promise from Jim Jordan to get Ukraine funding through. That's just nuts."
Beard: Yeah. First of all, it's crazy on his end to trust Jordan, but we've also seen Jordan seemingly promise a number of Republican figures, who you can describe as defense hawks who are very pro-Ukraine funding, that something like this would move, because we've seen releases from a number of these Republican Congressmen for whom that was a priority, say they've talked with Jordan and they're confident that something will pass, which imagine telling Jim Jordan of six months ago that Jim Jordan of today is going around promising people that he'll make sure Ukraine funding gets passed. It's such a wild about-face. He would be so mad at the present day Jim Jordan.
Nir: Yeah. Oh, right. Jim Jordan from six months ago absolutely would be calling the motion to vacate on Speaker Jordan's Speakership. Beard, it's instructive that you were mentioning Pelosi who did make it into a lot of GOP ads over the years. I don't know if Jim Jordan will make it into any Democratic attack ads. First off, he might never become speaker. In fact, I think he-
Beard: Probably not.
Nir: ... probably won't. Right, probably not. So, it might be just too much of a distant memory by the time we get to Labor Day of 2024. But if you are in a moderate district, why even take the chance? You can't just go YOLO and say, "Oh, well, Jim Jordan House speaker vote. That's too abstract for an attack ad." You're taking a risk. I'm trying to understand today's Republican Party, especially House Republicans; it’s just, I feel like it's almost an exercise in futility. They just don't make sense.
Beard: Yeah. And Jordan is probably also not the fundraising powerhouse that we're used to seeing, because the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, for all of his faults, raised a ton of money for a lot of vulnerable Republicans. Steve Scalise has been in the leadership for quite a while. He can raise a ton of money. Jim Jordan is, I don't think, known as somebody who raises a ton of money for swing state Republicans and makes sure they have the funding they need to run good races. You'd think they would want a Speaker who would do that, but who knows what they want. You're right. It's so hard to understand the eternally squabbling House Republican Conference.
Nir: Yeah. This is going to break my brain, if we keep talking about it any further. We got to move on. We got a lot more to hit.
Beard: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough.
Nir: Sooner or later, we were bound to have some bad election news this year, and it finally happened on Saturday.
Beard: Yeah, I know. The streak couldn't go on forever. There had to be a bad election night for Democrats, but I don't want to talk about the bad election night for Democrats. So, we're going to bring on Daily Kos Elections Editor Jeff Singer, who was just here last week. We're going to let him talk about the bad election night for Democrats, so we don't have to. So, welcome Jeff.
Jeff Singer: Thanks. It's good to be back even under these circumstances.
Nir: Well, you are our resident Louisiana expert since you did, of course, live in the state for many, many years. So, we have to ask you; what the hell went wrong in the governor's race?
Singer: Yeah, so there were 15 candidates on the ballot. Almost everyone expected this would go to runoff and no one would take a majority of the vote. That's not what happened. The state's far-right Attorney General, Jeff Landry, won 52% of the vote. That's it. That's the ball game. The main Democratic candidate, former State Secretary of Transportation, Shawn Wilson, he was a distant second with 26%, but no matter how much of the vote he won, it wouldn't have been enough, because Landry cleared a majority. That's it. The governorship goes from blue to red.
In terms of what happened, part of the problem was everyone expected Landry was going to win. There wasn't much incentive to stop that. Almost no one, including Landry, expected it would be this quick. They thought he'd have to go through a November runoff with Wilson, but the ultimate outcome wasn't really in doubt, and I don't think that motivated anyone to spend money here to get Wilson to round two. I don't think it motivated the local Democratic Party, which has been the source of much, much hand-wringing about how little money they spent in their organization.
Beard, back in 2017, you wrote a great post about how Democrats who were pretty dejected after the Presidential Election, the first thing they needed to do to win the House was to believe they actually could. And the converse is if you don't believe you can actually win a race, you're probably not going to try very hard to do it or even keep it going. And I think of all the things, that's one of the big reasons Wilson underperformed, but there were also a lot of other things here. Landry just consolidated so much GOP support. Everyone who was trying to be the alternative, they just never took off. Landry had just so much money and had Trump's endorsement. It was just a perfect storm for him, and he rode it to the governor's mansion.
Beard: Yeah, no other candidate got more than 6% of the vote, I believe. So, the idea normally that in such a large candidate field, there would be divisions and no one would get to 50 didn't really apply here, because Landry scooped up so much of the Republican vote. Of course, the other problem was that turnout seemed like it was pretty bad, both in general, but specifically for Democrats in these more Democratic areas. Turnout was really bad.
Singer: Yeah. And I think a lot of people are laying the blame on the Louisiana Democratic Party. And as you said, I used to live in Louisiana. I've been railing on the party since before it was cool. After 2011, there was a whole lot of this, because Bobby Jindal, the governor at the time, just ran away with it. Democrats didn't put up any real resistance. Things seemed to be getting better for a while, then they got worse, and I don't want to discount that. But also, it is really hard to organize a strong party in the state, and that's going to be a challenge for activists who want to start winning again. It's hard to recruit talent for such a red state, but there are some great people on the ground who I know are trying, and that's one of the key first steps.
Nir: We think about this as a blue-to-red flip, and that sucks. But the reality is a Republican should win the governorship in Louisiana by all rights. And what happened in 2015, when John Bel Edwards defeated Republican David Vitter, that was the real shock. That was a real stunner of a race, especially since very few people believed in John Bel Edwards outside of his own inner circle. And so this is just really a reversion to what we can normally expect. So if I'm a Republican, I don't know that this gives me any reason to feel particularly great or any better than I've been feeling, especially given the special elections in every other part of the country.
Singer: Yeah, it's about how I feel. We're about to have a bunch of elections in November, and that's going to tell us a lot more. If those go well for the Democrats or if they're just a wash, then that's probably going to matter more. But even so, we're still 13 months out. Early signs can only tell you so much.
Beard: Were there any other notable results from Louisiana that you want to highlight from down the ballot?
Singer: There are a few. So Jeff Landry, even though he won really easily, I don't think a lot of people would've predicted that, say, 11 years ago when he just lost his US House seat after just one term, because he was thrown into the same district as another Republican Congressman. So, he managed to do the swing back from former House member to statewide elected official to now Governor. And there's someone who is sort of trying to do that now, former Republican Congressman John Fleming; he was this proto-Tea Partier. He won a really close race in 2008, was this really far-right guy for a few terms; runs for Senate, gets fourth place. That's it for him for a while. He has a junior job in the Trump administration.
Then, he comes back. He takes first place in the all-party primary for state treasurer. He's in a runoff with a Democrat. But as we just saw, Louisiana is a very tough state for the party. Fleming's probably going to win next month, and I don't know. I don't know what his ambitions are, but if he wants to run again for the Senate or for governor, well, he has Landry to look to for a role model.
Nir: And so Singer, when are those runoffs? Because it's going to be for not just the statewides, but also some legislative races as well.
Singer: Those will be on November 18th, which in Louisiana tradition is a Saturday.
Nir: Of course, Louisiana cannot hold elections on a normal day of the year like every other state. That's how it goes. Let the good times roll.
Beard: Well, this may not have been the best report we've ever gotten from you. We'll look forward to better ones in the future. But thanks for coming on and talking us through the Louisiana results.
Singer: Yeah, well thank you for having me. And well, as dejected Democrats have become used to staying in Louisiana, Mardi Gras is not that far away.
Nir: Thanks, Jeff.
Beard: So while Saturday was a pretty bad day for Democrats in Louisiana, Wednesday was a pretty bad day for Democrats in North Carolina as Republicans in the state legislature posted their long-awaited redistricting maps both for Congress and for both chambers of the state legislature. Now, these only came out a few hours before we're recording, so this is very much a first impression, but as you'd expect, these maps are gerrymandered within an inch of their lives. The current congressional districts have seven Democratic incumbents and seven Republican incumbents. That was under a court-ordered map that the North Carolina Supreme Court implemented after they struck down the previously gerrymandered maps.
Obviously, one major thing that has changed is that the North Carolina Supreme Court is now controlled by Republicans instead of by Democrats, and we expect the GOP-dominated court to let Republicans in the legislature do whatever they want with these maps, gerrymander them to their hearts' content. The Republicans posted two congressional maps, both of which target at least three Democratic incumbents, Representative Wiley Nickel, friend of the pod, Representative Jeff Jackson, and Representative Kathy Manning, it makes all three of their seats pretty much all but safe Republican. Now there's also a fourth Democrat targeted but in two different ways. In one map, it gives Democratic representative Don Davis a toss-up seat that's sort of trending Republican, but very, very narrowly went for Biden in 2020, while the other map just goes ahead and merges his seat with another Democratic representative, Valerie Foushee, and basically pretty much eliminates his district.
So one map has 10 Republican seats, three Democratic seats, and one tossup seat, and the other map has 11 Republican seats and three Democratic seats. And the shitty reality of it is there's no way to stop the GOP from passing one of these maps. The only real potential I think that could lead anywhere is maybe a Voting Rights Act lawsuit at the federal level around the first district, which is Don Davis's district. Even that I don't think has a great likelihood of succeeding, but I would expect that we might see that, but beyond that, we're going to see probably more Republicans coming out of North Carolina for Congress.
Nir: Yeah, this map is such, such, such an extreme gerrymander and if you look at the maps themselves, they look like they're drawn so prettily. They don't have any crazy appendages or tentacles or weird jagged lines. Republicans are smart. They know that this game of aesthetics affects a lot of people, but you only have to dig one layer underneath to see just how outrageous this crap is. 11 Republican seats versus three Democratic seats in what is really a 51/49 swing state is completely, completely lunatic, and there are really only two ways for Democrats to approach this.
One is on the national level. Democrats for years have advanced legislation that Republicans have to their very last member refused to support that would end gerrymandering on the congressional level in every single state and would require every state to adopt nonpartisan, independent redistricting. Democrats absolutely need to keep pushing this legislation; they need to take back the House in order to do so, and also they need to win a majority in the Senate that is ready to curtail the filibuster because Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have refused to let this legislation move forward. That's one prong.
The other way is something we've talked about on “The Downballot” before, and that is also a long-term plan, which involves Democrats trying to win back the state Supreme Court because it was the state Supreme Court that ruled that partisan gerrymandering was illegal, that it violated the North Carolina state constitution, and it was only when these far-right hard-line Republican partisans took control of the court last year, they came in and they immediately overturned that ruling and that was a fucking load of bullshit. And Democrats need to pursue both of these paths and it's long; it's going to suck.
They're definitely going to feel like they are really in a beleaguered minority in North Carolina, in the legislature as well because we haven't even talked about those but the state legislative maps are also going to be gerrymandered to an incredible extreme. Those are also released on Wednesday and it's going to suck, but I have to remind folks about something else we have also talked about on the show before, and that's Wisconsin. It took 15 years for Democrats to win back the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. We can do it a lot quicker than that in North Carolina and let's not lose sight of that.
Beard: Yeah, I think Wisconsin is a great comparison for a state that suffered through a long period of Republican dominance because of entrenched gerrymandered maps and that we're hopefully going to soon see fair maps once again and let the people of Wisconsin have a voice in their state legislature and have a voice in Congress. I know it sucks to see these maps and to know these maps are going to be implemented and that North Carolinians are going to have to vote under them in 2024, but you have to look at the longer view and towards taking back control at the federal and at the state level so that you can implement fair maps for the long term. This is not just a 2024 fight; it's a years-long fight to regain democratic ideals in North Carolina and in these other states with gerrymandered maps.
Nir: It sucks to be talking about silver linings, but I think there may be one small silver lining here, Beard, in terms of you have these Democratic representatives who are probably going to look to stay involved in politics in one way or another, and sometimes you force someone out of their seat and they go on to do greater things.
Beard: And the most obvious case is Representative Jeff Jackson. As we mentioned, he's almost certainly not going to have a seat that he can run in and win for 2024, but he's been talked about all year as a potential candidate for attorney general. Of course, that's going to be vacant because current Attorney General Josh Stein is running for governor, and so I think he would be a great candidate for attorney general. He's been talked up as a potential statewide candidate many times over the past year, so I think there's a good chance we see that. Obviously, Jackson hasn't made any comments. These maps just came out, but it wouldn't surprise me if that ends up happening and I think that he would be a great attorney general if he's able to run and win.
Nir: It's time to get back to good news, and we do have some very good news out of Ohio. The first poll that we've seen since August, of the November 7th vote that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, has Issue 1 passing by a huge 58 to 34 margin. Those numbers are from Baldwin Wallace University. They commissioned nonpartisan pollster SurveyUSA to conduct this poll, but these numbers are almost identical to every other set of data we've seen despite the heavy spending that has taken place since the summer, since that last poll on both sides. Now, as always, we have to caution that polling ballot measures is especially difficult, particularly here because Issue 1 actually would address a number of issues, not just abortion. It would also protect the right to contraception, the right to have fertility care, and other associated rights.
So when you ask a question about, "Would you vote for the Democrat or Republican in the race for Senate?" That's a very simple, straightforward question. It's one line long. If you look at these actual surveys for Issue 1, it takes a paragraph to explain it to voters and maybe respondents tune out while they're listening to it or don't exactly understand it while it's being read to them, but would understand it a different way if they're actually seeing the text in the ballot booth. But the polling has been quite consistent.
And what's more, is that the 58% figure from SurveyUSA is very similar to the 57% who voted against the previous Issue 1. Now, this is so frustrating and confusing that Ohio had these back-to-back ballot measures, both known as Issue 1, both closely related to the topic of abortion, but the previous Issue 1, which we discussed endlessly on “The Downballot,” was the GOP backed amendment to make ballot initiatives tougher to pass and it was soundly rejected by voters in August. Now, there may not be a perfect overlap between the August Issue 1 opponents and the November Issue 1 supporters, but I wouldn't be surprised if those two groups wind up being pretty similar.
Beard: Yeah, obviously, I'm sure there's some Ohioan out there who's like, "I was against changing the Constitution, but I'm also very anti-abortion." So you're going to vote no on both of these. I'm sure they're out there, but I think it's probably a pretty small percentage of the population. So it doesn't surprise me that these results seem pretty similar. It also compares very similarly to the other abortion and reproductive rights-related referendums that we saw last year in terms of having strong support, far outpacing the sort of partisan skew of the state.
So given that Ohio is a red-leaning state, but adjusting it for how we've seen these reproductive rights amendments do, I think this meets a lot of the priors that I had for how I thought this result might go down, which is good news. I feel like I hadn't heard as much about this, and of course, there are a lot of different things going on in November, whereas in August it was just that one issue, but I hadn't heard much. I knew there was advertising going on, but I was like, "I feel good about it, but I hadn't seen any data," so I was really happy to see this poll come out and confirm what I hoped and thought was probably going to be happening. So hopefully it'll continue to see these positive numbers.
Nir: I also think it's no accident that Republicans wanted to make the threshold for future ballot initiatives, 60%. And I know that sounds like a nice round number, three-fifths, supermajority, whatever. But I'm convinced that they saw tons of polling of their own that showed abortion probably getting in the mid to high-fifties if it were ever on the ballot. And they're like, ah, 60% that'll be safe for us. So I feel like it's a tell about this secret polling that we've never seen.
Beard: Yeah, I'm sure it would've been two-thirds if they needed it to be two-thirds.
Nir: Right. And there was the Missouri Republicans; they managed to screw themselves over with this one, so it hasn't gone anywhere for the moment. But they wanted to set the threshold for initiatives to 57%, which is obviously a bonkers number. You cannot find any support for that number anywhere. But again, I'm sure that they have polls showing that abortion support tops out at 56.5%.
Beard: It feels like they drew 57 out of a hat and they were like, what's a number between 50 and 70 that we'll choose, 57% threshold, but who knows?
Nir: Yeah. Though I will say we're laughing about it because it is so ridiculous and funny, but they're essentially trying a form of gerrymandering.
Beard: Yes.
Nir: And as we saw with those North Carolina maps, we'll have a chance to dig into them more in the future. But these are precision gerrymanders and they know their electorate, and they definitely know what they're doing here. So we can joke about it, but they're not joking around.
Beard: And ultimately it's about ignoring the will of the voters to prioritize the GOP's preferred policy outcomes or preferred elected officials in the case with legislative gerrymandering.
Nir: We have one final piece of very good news from abroad, Beard, that I can't wait to hear you tell us about.
Beard: Yes. A really great election took place this past week in Poland. Really one of the most important elections in that country's history. The Illiberal Law and Justice Party has governed for the past eight years. It's taken over the state-run media; it's taken over the courts. It's done a lot of things turning Poland towards an autocracy. But they had an election; they had a mostly fair election, and a very broad coalition opposed the Law and Justices' attempts to turn Poland into this right-wing autocracy. They won this election. The Law and Justice Coalition won first place with 35% of the vote, but it only has one potential governing partner who won just 7% of the vote. So they're well short of being able to form a government for a third time. Meanwhile, the three coalitions which were all running loosely together, but all opposed to Law and Justice and what it had been doing in Poland, they won to combine 54% of the vote led by this sort of big-tent, centrist, liberal civic coalition. They won 31% of the vote.
So the Civic Coalition is expected to form a government with both the left coalition and sort of a centrist center-right third-way coalition. So they're all coalitions. There's a lot of parties involved here, but they're all together and they're all united in their opposition to the Law and Justice party in what they've been doing.
Now, in the short term, the presidency is still held by a Law and Justice ally. He's got another two years to run on his term. He can delay the forming of a government by almost two months. We'll also have to keep a close eye on any shenanigans, extra-legal attempts to sort of avoid this or delay things or use the courts that have an impact with Law and Justice allies to subvert this. But the hope is that this government will be allowed to take power and will begin to start pulling back these changes that have been so bad for Poland's democracy.
Nir: And one thing that shouldn't be overlooked is, and I know this, thanks to our colleague Stephen Wolf, who also wrote about this for Daily Kos Elections. Poland is the fifth-largest state in the EU. It's a real player and has also been a huge supporter of Ukraine, so hopefully this means even more fulsome support for Ukraine. And I think the EU has been disappointing in the way that it has treated the member nations that have backslid, particularly Poland and Hungary. It hasn't covered itself with glory. Hopefully, this puts the EU, as a whole, on a more democratic direction.
Beard: Yeah, Poland is really a leader of the eastern European block in the EU. It's the largest country in that eastern European section that is part of the membership. So it's a big development on that front. Poland has been an ally, as you said, to Hungary's Viktor Orban and all of his illiberal activities in Hungary and all of the stuff that he's been doing in the EU to try to block various progressive moves. So him losing that ally is also a positive step and a great moment for the Polish people, many of whom have been fighting against this government for the full eight years.
Nir: One final note before we close out the show. It was the end of the third fundraising quarter for federal candidates, candidates for Congress, the Senate, the House, and also for the presidency. Not that we care about that here on “The Downballot,” but every three months at Daily Kos Elections, we publish charts of all of the fundraising numbers for all of the candidates in all of the races. Not every last candidate, we take out the extremely minor candidates, those who raise $5, but all the important candidates, all of the incumbents. We have separate charts for the Senate and the House. If you're interested in checking those out, we will include links to them and the show notes.
Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Jeff Singer for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcast and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Trever Jones, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.