We're now in the second week of election overtime, and there are still plenty of major races yet to be decided—as well as tons more great news for Democrats to exult over on this week's episode of The Downballot. On the uncalled-races front, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard dive into a pair of House races in California and several legislatures that could flip from red to blue, including the Pennsylvania House. Speaking of legislatures, the Davids also go deep on what the astonishing flips in Michigan will mean for progressives—and particularly, for organized labor.
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And there's more! The hosts explain why New York's court-drawn congressional map did indeed undermine Democrats (despite some claims to the contrary) and wrap up with a recap of interesting ballot measures across the country, including an Arizona amendment to create the post of lieutenant governor for the first time; minimum wage hikes in multiple states; and, in several more states, the legalization of weed, plus—in Colorado—psychedelic mushrooms.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Embedded Content
And there's more! The hosts explain why New York's court-drawn congressional map did indeed undermine Democrats (despite some claims to the contrary) and wrap up with a recap of interesting ballot measures across the country, including an Arizona amendment to create the post of lieutenant governor for the first time; minimum wage hikes in multiple states; and, in several more states, the legalization of weed, plus—in Colorado—psychedelic mushrooms.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I am 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. We've mentioned recently on the show that we were closing in on 1000 subscribers on Apple Podcasts. We are actually at 992 as of this moment. We would be particularly grateful if you would hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts to help support the show and get us past that 1000 mark.
David Beard:
So we've had another week to digest these surprisingly good election results. So which of them are we going to talk about today?
David Nir:
Well, we still have a number of elections where we don't know the answers. So we are going to be talking about some House races in California, and the state of affairs regarding some state legislatures in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Alaska. We also are going to talk about New York's congressional map, which caused one of the rare dark spots for Democrats this year. There are also some state legislative flips that we actually have confirmed, so we are going to be chatting about those, especially in Michigan. And lastly, we are going to do a roundup of some interesting ballot measures that passed across the nation on a variety of topics. We have so much more to discuss as the election overtime season continues. Let's get started.
We are now entering week two of election season; I guess we can't really call it Election Night anymore. And there are still a number of uncalled races and we obviously have to start with the battle for the House. It looks all but certain at this point that Republicans are going to win a very narrow majority, but there are still a few races, especially out in California, that are up for grabs.
David Beard:
Yeah. So, as anybody who's followed congressional elections and recent cycles knows, California takes a long time to count their ballots. And so often the results are not finalized for over a week, sometimes up to two weeks if a race is close, which has clearly happened in a number of races. We've got pretty clear indications of who is going to win, I would say, in all but two races, which—obviously, unusual things can happen. There could be a recount, et cetera, but let's assume that 433 races are pretty much settled with 220 Republicans and 213 Democrats. That would give Republicans two more right now than the minimum majority of 218. And so if they win another seat, that would be a three seat majority. And then if they were to win both of these seats, that would be a four seat majority. So that's sort of the area in which we're talking about for the House.
The two races that I want to highlight that we really are not sure at this point who is going to win, is California 13 between Democrat Adam Gray and Republican John Duarte, and California 22 between Democrat Rudy Salas and incumbent Representative David Valadao, the Republican. So in 13, it is narrow, narrow, narrow. The margins have flipped back and forth, usually under a thousand votes for each side. Gray is currently ahead as of this recording, but that could change tomorrow. That race is super narrow and if the last ballots are slightly democratically and you think that Gray might be probably a slight favorite, but the margin is just so close, there's very little confidence that you could say right now about who's going to win.
In the other race in California 22, that's a question of how many ballots are outstanding in the more Democratic county of Kern County, and if the Democrat, Salas, is going to make up enough votes. Because right now, he's down four percentage points, 52 to 48, so he's got thousands of votes that he needs to make up in Kern County with the remaining vote. So that's an outstanding question. If I had to pick one of the two people to be, I would probably say Valadao, but it's definitely way too close to know for sure.
David Nir:
It's worth noting though that in the predecessor to this district, which was at the time numbered the 21st in 2018, we saw one of the biggest upsets of that election night. Well, it wasn't that Election Night; it was several weeks later. And in fact, the Democrat who was on the ballot that year, T.J. Cox on Election Night was down by seven points and he wound up coming back to win. Rudy Salas, the Democrat this time, was down by eight points on Election Night. Again, he still could come back. I agree with you, Beard, it feels like more of a longer shot. But given the recent history in this district, I would not want to rule it out.
David Beard:
Yeah, we'll just have to wait and see as California continues their slightly slow process to make sure they've counted all the ballots.
David Nir:
So there are also a few state legislative chambers where things are up in the air, or at least somewhat up in the air, and they all involve just absolutely amazing circumstances. The first one that I've got to talk about is the Pennsylvania State House. Democrats went into the election needing to flip 12 seats from Republicans, and a lot of operatives and observers thought that maybe they could do that over two election cycles. Very few people, at least outside the state, were thinking that Democrats could pull it off in one cycle, but it looks like they have. The state finally has un-gerrymandered maps for the first time in a very long time. And on Wednesday, Democrats declared victory in a seat in the Philly suburbs, the 151st District. Democrat Missy Cerrato was down by 12 votes, but additional votes were counted on Wednesday and she now has a lead that is over 30 votes.
And if that holds up, there could still be challenges or recounts, but if her victory stands up, that would give Democrats 102 seats in the 203 member Pennsylvania state House, the second largest state legislative chamber in the country. And it would also mean that for the first time in state history, a black woman, Joanna McClinton, would become speaker of the state House. It is a huge, huge development, not just for Pennsylvanians, but for all of us. Because Pennsylvania has emerged as the number one swing state in the country, and if there's anywhere that Republicans were really eager to prepare the groundwork for stealing a state's electoral votes in 2024 on behalf of Donald Trump or some other Republican, it was going to be Pennsylvania. And by winning the state House in such extraordinary fashion, Democrats have made sure there is almost no way Republicans can do that though. Of course, we always need to remain vigilant.
There is another chamber we also have to talk about, and this is the largest state legislative chamber in the country with 400 members, the New Hampshire State House. What is going on there is absolutely wild. Democrats made a whole bunch of gains on Election Night, but came just short of taking the majority from Republicans, or so it seemed. These races are in very small districts, often separated by just a tiny number of votes. And in two races already, Democrats have flipped the outcome thanks to recounts. So going into Wednesday, Republicans had 201 seats and 199 for Democrats with quite a few more recounts still to come. And in one of those recounts on Wednesday, it ended in a tie. So Republicans now have 200 seats to 199 for Democrats. And get this, past practice in the New Hampshire legislature when races have ended in ties, is to hold a special election for that seat. So we could wind up in a situation where the entire country is focused on a special election in a tiny New Hampshire State House district that could affect control of the entire state House.
Now things are by no means done yet. Like I said, there are still several more recounts to come. Democrats could flip one or two more seats that would be crucial to actually giving them a majority. Democrats probably are favored overall in these recounts only because these later counted votes tend to lean toward Democrats. Of course, we can't know. Recounts are an impossible beast to predict, but this is a truly exciting development and it means that Democrats could net yet one more legislative chamber on a night where they already retook several. And finally, I have to mention really quickly, both chambers in the Alaska legislature, we don't know the outcome. Things are very much up in the air. In both the state Senate and the State House, we could be looking at bipartisan coalitions with Democrats sharing power with Republicans and independents to form majority coalitions. Like I said, this could happen in both the House and the Senate.
Right now, it's currently the case in the House that we have one of these cross partisan coalitions. The Senate has had them in the past. It would be another really amazing set of outcomes, but we won't really know the final answer until at least November 23rd. That's because Alaska now uses instant runoff voting for any races where no candidate wins a majority of the vote. So a whole bunch of races have to go to runoffs. And then once that happens, there's probably going to be more wrangling about whether a coalition can be formed, who's in it, who's out. Anyway, it's real exciting stuff.
David Beard:
And important for our listeners is that there will probably be special elections in these very, very tight chambers, certainly in the New Hampshire House, given that there's 400 members. In the Pennsylvania House, we already know of multiple special elections that will be taking place. Those are going to be extremely important given how tight these chambers are. And so we'll definitely be covering those, letting you know about them as we go into 2023. There's one other race that we want to highlight that has not yet been called, and that is the Arizona Attorney General's race. Now we've had a streak of good news in the statewide races in Arizona over the past week. Of course, Senator Mark Kelly getting called for his reelection, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs winning the governor's race. And now we're waiting on a final one. The Attorney General's race where Democrat Kris Mayes currently leads by less than 1,000 votes out of more than two million cast.
So it's an extremely, extremely small margin. And there are about 10 to 20,000 votes left. It's hard to tell exactly because a lot of them are provisionals. So we don't know exactly how many of them will end up being counted as the county elections boards go through this process of either verifying them or deciding that they don't count. A chunk of them are from Pima County, which is a blue leaning county where Tucson is. So that will probably be good for Mayes. But of course the majority of what's remaining is in Maricopa, the county that dominates Arizona. And the percentages that come out of that county will probably end up deciding. If Mayes stays ahead, there will probably be a recount unless one candidate takes a little bit more of a healthy lead. So this is something that we may not know the answer to for weeks.
David Nir:
And this would be a big one because it would be yet another flip in Arizona. The Attorney General post is currently held by Republican Mark Brnovich, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate this year. Trump absolutely loathes him, but this would be another really, really big pickup. So we have been talking about so much amazing news for Democrats. Beard, are you sick of winning?
David Beard:
I'm never sick of winning.
David Nir:
I am never sick of winning. I will never be sick of winning. I am so pumped and so energized in a way that I have not been in a long time, but we have to be clear-eyed as election analysts. And there were some dark spots for Democrats last week. And one of the darkest really, really sucks because it came in my home state. And that is the congressional races in New York. Beard, I know you have a lot of feelings about this.
David Beard:
Yeah, so obviously a huge factor in Republicans ending up taking the majority, however narrowly, was the New York congressional map. And the fact that the map that was passed by the Democratic legislature, which was a Democratic gerrymander, was struck down by the courts of New York and replaced by a special master's map that was more neutral. And one of the things that has now come out in the wake of Election Day and the fact that Democrats overall did pretty poorly in New York is this idea that oh, these maps didn't really matter. Democrats in New York had a terrible Election Day and so they were going to lose these seats anyway. And the fact that the map was struck down and replaced by a special master's map didn't really matter. And that is just not true. I think there's a desire among people to attribute results to candidates or to voters when sometimes results are attributed to maps.
That is just the reality. People don't like it, but it's the truth. And we can see that because we know what the partisan lean of these two different maps were. And you can get a pretty good estimate of how the results would've changed if the old map had been in place instead of the new map. So for example, in New York's 22nd District, which covers the Syracuse area, the legislative map had a district that Biden would've won by 18 percentage points, 58 to 40, while the special master's map had a district that Biden only would've won by eight percentage points, 53 to 45. Now, that is obviously a massive shift. So we can see that if this was the district that was used this year, almost certainly the Democrat Francis Conole would've won over Williams in a D +18 district versus a D +8 district.
So there's no way to think that the map didn't have a massive difference in this race. You can see similarly, particularly in the upstate districts, because we can also look at New York 19. It's a similar situation where Biden would've won the legislative map district by 10 points, but he only won the special master's map by four points. And as a result, the Republican in New York 19 won by two points. So again, you can see how that shift would've likely resulted in a different outcome if the old more Democratic districts had been used upstate. Now, there were also losses for Democrats down in Long Island, and it's true that the maps mattered a lot less in that case because the Democratic performance on Long Island was so bad that they likely would've lost these districts under most circumstances, regardless of which map was used. So there is a case to be made in those districts, specifically looking at New York 3 and New York 4, which are both districts that Democrats held and lost in 2022.
But it's just incorrect to mush those two things together. The upstate maps, which really clearly made a difference in two or three races, and the Long Island maps, which probably did not make as much of a difference specifically around 2022 outcomes. And we have to be clear eyed about this. Because these maps matter, and we can see that they matter because in other states, in a state like Florida, they got to use gerrymandered maps that were probably unconstitutional, both in terms of Florida's constitution and in terms of the Voting Rights Act. They just went ahead and used them anyway and were able to take advantage of that. That happened in other states like Ohio. And the fact that New York had their map struck down, had the special master's map and likely cost Democrats two to three seats, makes a massive difference in the outcome of this election.
David Nir:
And we've talked about this before. We have to mention exactly why New York got stuck with this court drawn map. There was new reporting quite recently that conservative billionaire Ronald Lauder spent millions in dark money to bankroll the challenge to the legislature's maps. And guess what? He also spent millions to bankroll Republican Lee Zeldin's completely tendentious, fear-mongering campaign against Kathy Hochul that resulted in a much closer governor's race than New York usually has. And almost certainly created downward pressures on a lot of these seats that Democrats were trying to win, especially on Long Island. And to top it all off, New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, issued a totally corrupt four to three ruling striking down the legislature's maps. And the reason it did so is because those four judges in the majority were all hacks appointed by disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo.
They have issued very reactionary rulings on a whole wide range of topics including tenant's rights, criminal justice, and more. The only good news is that the Chief Justice Cuomo-appointee resigned this year. She's going to be replaced by someone that Hochul will pick, hopefully a much more progressive choice. Unfortunately, I don't really see a pathway for that ruling striking down the map to be overturned. But I really hope that we have some creative lawyers thinking about a way to get a redo so that New Yorkers can get a more reasonable map, because I can guarantee you this, the majority of New York voters are obviously Democrats and I am sure do not believe in unilateral disarmament and letting Texas and Ohio and Florida completely screw us over and deprive us of the House. So hopefully there is some clever way to find a way to change all this.
David Beard:
And just to reiterate, our position, and almost universally Democrats’ position, is that we would love a national ban on gerrymandering and fair maps across the country. But unless and until Republicans are willing to do that, blue states like New York cannot afford to just give up and draw fair maps while like you said, all those Republican red states draw gerrymandered maps. You cannot allow that to happen. You have to fight back with what you have. And as long as this is the case, we're going to keep pushing that.
David Nir:
All right, it's time to get back to good news for Democrats. Wouldn't you say, Beard?
David Beard:
Absolutely. So much more.
David Nir:
All right, so much more. So we need to recap the big state legislative action from last week, and we have to start with Michigan. This is another state where thanks to a ballot measure that voters approved in 2018, finally got ungerrymandered maps. Republicans had managed to rig the maps for decades in Michigan, and Democrats flipped both the state House and the state Senate. Of course, you know that Gretchen Whitmer won reelection for a second term as governor. That means that Democrats will hold the trifecta, the state House, the state Senate, and the governorship in Michigan for the first time since 1983. And there's a big asterisk there, because in 1983, Democrats only held a trifecta for less than a year. It ended when Republicans engineered the recall of a couple of Democratic senators and they wound up taking back the Senate. The last time prior to 1983, Franklin Roosevelt was president. It was the New Deal era. And this really is a new era for Michigan, and there are so many exciting possibilities that this legislature can now tackle.
But the one that I'm most thrilled about, and Beard, I know you have to be stoked for, is this reporting that Whitmer wants to repeal, right-to-work.
David Beard:
Yeah. Michigan is such a union state, obviously. So much of the automotive industry is there. The UAW is so well known there. There's lots of other important unions there. And it's so great to see the opportunity to get rid of right-to-work. Right-to-work, as you may or may not know, is what the Republicans call this statute that allows for workers to get the benefits of the union at their workplace without paying anything into the union. Now, there's different levels here, a little bit, just to briefly explain. You can be a member of a union or not be a member of a union at your workplace. And that decides whether or not you pay into all sorts of things that the union does, including things like political activities or other charitable works, et cetera.
But everyone in a state that's not right-to-work, everyone pays in for the representational work that the union does. So negotiating your contract, representing workers in grievances, legal advice, things like that in a non-right-to-work state everybody pays into because everybody gets the benefits from. But in right-to-work ... And this is built up on the idea that somebody should have the right not to join the union. But of course in right-to-work states where people decide not to pay for these benefits, they still have to get the benefits because the union represents everybody. So what it essentially allows is free-riders to get the benefits of the bargaining, get the benefits of grievance representation, legal advice, all that. They get all those benefits for free.
And while I'm sure there's somebody out there who's thinking like, "Well, that's a good deal for me," it's bad for the union in the long term. It hurts solidarity, it makes the unions weaker, and it leads towards lower wages, greater workplace risk. The studies have been done that right-to-work is bad for workplaces and for workers. And so the fact that Michigan isn't going to have the opportunity to repeal right-to-work and return to fair-share fees, as they're called, so that everybody who gets the benefit from a union is paying into to get those benefits is a great, great first step. And there's also so much more that Democrats will be able to do with decades and decades of built-up desires to make the state better and not being able to do that. There's, I'm sure, a long list that this Democratic legislature is eager to get started on.
David Nir:
And what's particularly awesome about the prospect of repealing right-to-work in Michigan, there are three things that our colleague, Steven Wolf, likes to point out, three things that Republicans do every single time they take complete control of state government. They restrict, or nowadays, ban abortion rights. They suppress the right to vote. And they implement right-to-work, which is an awful Orwellian term. In Michigan, they just passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion. They just passed yet another measure protecting the right to vote. And now they can undo right-to-work. It's unbelievable. I feel like we're really turning back the clock in the best possible way here.
And not too far away in Minnesota, Democrats also won back the state Senate. This has been the Democrats’ white whale for a number of cycles. It is extremely closely divided. Democrats went into 2020 needing just one seat to flip to take the chamber, and they couldn't do it. A couple of wayward Democrats left the party, they became independents. They caucused with the GOP. That left Democrats needing three seats to flip in the Minnesota Senate this time, and they managed to pull it off. Minnesota was the rare state where the Senate and House were in different hands. Democrats wound up holding the House. They also fairly comfortably won the governor's office again. Democrat Tim Walz won reelection over a far-right [opponent] in Scott Jensen. So Democrats now have the trifecta in Minnesota as well.
Minnesota never veered as far to the right as Michigan did because Republicans there hadn't managed to get the trifecta in quite some time. But again, the doors are open for a lot of reforms. In Minnesota in particular, I am sure that we are going to see a liberalization of marijuana laws. And that actually has an important electoral kind of knock-on effect because there are these minor marijuana parties in Minnesota that have mostly screwed Democrats in recent years. Republicans have supported candidates on those ballot lines in an attempt to peel away votes from Democrats. Now, look, these kinds of parties could shamble onwards even if marijuana is made legal in Minnesota. Hell, they could convert into cryptocurrency parties. Who knows? But hopefully that forthcoming legislation will put a stake in those two lame third parties.
David Beard:
And what's so great about both of these wins, both in Michigan and in Minnesota, is that they're chambers that the Democrats have been working on for a number of years. And they were chambers that I think people really thought that we could get to in 2018, and then people thought we could get to in 2020. And now to have finally done it in a year where really no one expected it to happen two weeks ago, to get there now is just such a fulfillment of so many people's hard work over so many years.
David Nir:
Well, I want to say, there were some folks who were believers. And I'm going to toot our own horn here. We were certainly believers in Michigan. Daily Kos endorsed a whole bunch of candidates running for the Michigan House. Most of them won. And we really stuck to our guns on saying that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. And it really paid off here.
David Beard:
And it just goes to show, you can't give up on competitive seats just because you think it's going to be a bad year or a year that's trending away from you, because it might turn out not to be. If a seat is favoring Republicans by a few points, and so you think, "Oh, there's no way we're going to be able to get this in a midterm year with a Democratic president," don't give up on it. You might not, but you might have a good year, a better year than you expect. And here we are.
David Nir:
And here we are. A couple of other legislatures that we should mention briefly. Democrats managed to fend off Republicans from winning super majorities in both North Carolina and in Wisconsin. That's really, really important, because with super majorities Republican lawmakers could easily override vetos of the Democratic governors in those states. North Carolina still looks somewhat more dicey. There are some moderate Democrats who could potentially be peeled off by Republicans to override vetos by Governor Roy Cooper. Wisconsin, I'm quite confident that Democrats will stand strong. But no matter what, Republicans were really certainly were going to steamroll and basically render the governors in those two states somewhat irrelevant. And that did not happen. So yet another piece of good news for the Dems.
David Beard:
One more topic that often gets under-covered with all of the races happening on Election Day is ballot measures. There are a ton of really important ballot measures that took place across the country. So we want to highlight a few of the key ones that happened last week.
David Nir:
Yeah, so we are going to start with a couple of nerdy ballot measures that affected elections directly. In particular, we have to start in Arizona, where voters finally approved a measure to create a position of lieutenant governor. That might sound completely boring, but Arizona was one of very few states that does not have a lieutenant governor. And this was actually a really, really, really big deal about 12 years ago. After Barack Obama won the White House, he named Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano his Homeland Security director.
And this was a terrible mistake, because as a result, the person who filled Napolitano's spot as governor was the Secretary of State. And the Secretary of State, it's a name that you may well remember, Jan Brewer. And Jan Brewer was a virulent, virulent, anti-immigration zealot, a total bigot. She was notorious for spearheading an oppressive measure called SB 1070 that allowed the authorities to demand citizenship papers, as if such a thing really even exists in this country, from anyone they might happen to stop. It prompted furious calls for boycotts of the state of Arizona. And maybe the most tragic thing was that she rode this xenophobia to winning a full term in her own right in 2010.
There was a real consequence to tapping a cabinet member when you knew in advance that it would flip a governorship from Democrat to Republican. A lot of people hollered about it at the time. We certainly did. I still have strong feelings about it, as you could probably tell. And the good news is, this is never going to happen again. Starting in 2026, all gubernatorial nominees will pick running mates, who of course will be members of their own party. They will run together as a ticket in the general election. So if Katie Hobbs were to win a second term, but for whatever reason not be able to finish it out, her lieutenant governor would take over and Arizona-
David Nir:
Her Lieutenant Governor would take over and Arizona would stay blue. In the meantime, for the next four years, the news is also still good because another very important Arizona race that Democrats won was Katie Hobbs' position as Secretary of State. That race was won by Democrat Adrian Fontes. So again, in the event, should a switch at the top be necessary, a Democrat would still take over the governorship in Arizona. I am very, very pleased to finally right this wrong.
David Beard:
And it really does feel like a different era. The idea that a President would pick the Governor of Arizona of his own party and hand the governorship to the other party just seems absolutely crazy to do in this day and age. But it was just a dozen years ago that this happened, and it's just more evidence of how much things have changed.
David Nir:
Yeah, I absolutely cannot imagine Joe Biden pulling a stunt like that. And certainly, no Republican would've. You know what? No Republican would have a dozen years ago or really at any point ever, which I think is why progressives were so furious about that. But in any event, we can close the door on that unfortunate chapter.
Another ballot measure that passed on the electoral front was in Nevada, where voters approved a measure similar to the one that is now in effect in Alaska. This would create a top five primary, Alaska has a top four. The top five candidates, regardless of party, would advance to a general election, which would be decided in an instant runoff. However, it is not law yet. Voters need to approve the measure a second time. So even if they do, it'll still be several years before this comes into effect. But we've already seen the top four system upend Alaska politics, it almost certainly was a huge factor in Democrat Mary Peltola winning that summertime special election, and why she's almost certain to win re-election now. So Nevada politics could wind up changing a lot as a result if this thing becomes law, or maybe it won't. Maybe it won't.
David Beard:
I think it'll be an interesting experiment if it ends up passing again and becoming law, because Alaska and Nevada are actually pretty different states from a political perspective. Alaska, though Republican leaning, has a lot of voters who are willing to vote for independents, who are willing to vote for Democrats, when the right candidate comes along. They're very flexible in that way.
And Nevada has a very strong history of Democrats voting for Democrats, Republican voting for Republicans, the independents being relatively split, and then things like turnout or the very small number of swing voters being key. And we've seen that, and that's a big reason why Jon Ralston, a big Nevada journalist, is able to look at the early vote in this one specific state because there's so much early vote and people are so tied to their party, and actually learn some really good information from it, when you can't do that in most states because you can so well predict by registration how people will vote. So I could see a scenario where this doesn't really do much because such a large percentage of Nevada's population is dedicated to either Democrats or Republicans.
David Nir:
Yeah, you put into words exactly what I was thinking. Nevada is just so much more polarized than Alaska. But let's switch gears and talk about an issue where voters don't seem to be polarized on at all. And I'm talking about the minimum wage.
David Beard:
Yes. The minimum wage is a great thing to put on the ballot because lots of people support it, even people who, for other reasons unknown to us, vote for Republicans. They will vote for minimum wage increases, and so that is great. We saw it just this year in Nebraska, which passed a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, and we also saw it in Nevada where the minimum wage will be increased to $12 an hour. So that is great for working people in both of those states.
David Nir:
And the amazing thing about the Nebraska measure is it wasn't that long ago that the idea of Fight for $15 was seen as this almost very far left idea that maybe could take hold in a few big, really liberal cities. And now Nebraska's doing a $15 minimum wage? Amazing.
David Beard:
It's really shown, I don't know if all of our listeners will remember, but the idea of the Overton window, which is this concept that there are things that are acceptable in politics, and by introducing things that are to the left to it or to the right of it, you can shift the Overton window and make things that are previously unacceptable, acceptable.
And that's something that really happened with Fight for $15. People thought it was way out there, and over time, it's become an acceptable position, and now. You're right. We see states like Nebraska passing it.
David Nir:
Amazing.
David Beard:
And then there was one other place where minimum wage was increased, not for everyone, but for tipped workers. So in the District of Columbia, Initiative 82 passed, which ends the tipped minimum wage and raises the minimum wage for everyone to the same level. Now, for anybody who's not familiar, the tipped minimum wage is the idea that—primarily restaurant staff, but in other cases as well—that workers can be paid less than the minimum wage as long as tips can bring up their overall pay to the minimum wage and make it up.
And this is something that can often get into bad situations for the staff who are given such a low minimum wage. Wage theft is really, really common in this type of situation. You can get into other problems with how tips are split and things like that. So ending the tipped minimum wage is a good thing for workers.
Now, this is something that the restaurant industry pushes back really hard against, both because they have to change how they do some of their practices, things like adding service charges and things like that. And also, it often results in their workers getting paid more, because people in America generally will tip anyway even if there's a service charge, and so it results in these retail workers or service workers getting paid a higher wage. And the restaurant industry doesn't want that.
This actually passed four years ago, and the restaurant industry went and convinced the DC Council to override the popular will of its own voters to get rid of the elimination of the tip minimum wage and keep it instead. So supporters of this had to go back and have it pass again this year, and which is just a completely, completely ridiculous thing for the Council to do. The Council is overwhelmingly Democratic, but clearly has plenty of people on there who are willing to be more influenced by corporations and by business over the voice of the people who said very clearly, "This was not close either in 2018 or in 2022. It was not close." And the people spoke twice now, and it seems like the Council is going to hopefully let it go this time. But it was just absolutely outrageous that they overrode it the first time and forced this to be passed again.
David Nir:
It's completely maddening because we have seen so, so, so many Republican states where progressive ballot measures pass, voters approve them, and then Republicans either try to repeal them or refuse to implement them or find other ways to undermine or curtail them. And the fact that this happened in Washington, DC, of all places was absolutely appalling. And I think I saw that the council member who spearheaded the repeal last time says they're going to back off this time. Hopefully that sticks. But man, I can't imagine the fury if they dare tried to overturn this one again.
David Beard:
Yeah, it seems like there's not as much appetite this time, but I think people have to still be vigilant.
David Nir:
So we want to wrap up with one last fun topic. Weed. Marijuana legalization passed in a trio of states this year. Arizona, Maryland, and Missouri. Unfortunately, it did fail in three other states, but these were all very conservative states. North Dakota, South Dakota, and Arkansas. In all of those states, it failed by anywhere from about 6 to 12 points, which again, like with the minimum wage, that's much, much closer than Democrats could ever expect to come in your typical statewide race. So it indicates there was a lot of crossover appeal for marijuana legalization, and I suspect that activists in that last trio of states will probably try again in the relatively near future.
And there's one other interesting measure that passed on the drug front. Colorado voters approved a measure that would legalize mushrooms and other psychedelics, and this isn't only about recreational use. These drugs have tremendous therapeutic potential, particularly for treating victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, and other conditions. And hopefully, this will help pave the way for greater acceptance and greater use of things like psilocybin in the treatment of some otherwise very difficult to treat conditions. And I certainly hope that we see more states move to liberalize their rules around psychedelics as well in coming years.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. 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 Podcasts and leave us a five star rating and review. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor, Trevor Jones. We'll be back next week with a new episode.