- Flip the court in January 2027 by replacing Justice Kelsey whose term is up.
- File a petition sometime in 2027 to rehear the case and hope the liberal justices now in the majority have some fire in them to open this back up.
- The new majority rules favorably for Dems with a 4-3 vote and no new referendum is necessary.
It sounds outlandish but the same thing happened in NC a couple years ago when the GOP flipped the Supreme Court and the new majority overturned the ruling that mandated a 7-7 map.
A little different. Overturning a previous ruling is not a big deal. But when the ruling involves an election, a year prior there may be a reluctance to rely on it.
I agree with this. This is exactly what Democrats should do. If DeSantis can ignore the Fair Districts Amendment in Florida, then Dems can ignore four assholes trying to override the will of the voters.
Difference is DeSantis never explicitly defied his own state's supreme court. Dems should not ignore the ruling for two extra house seats in a wave environment they'll likely win in anyways. Just wait for next year.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I just can't see Spanberger going along with that and if she's not on board then its hard to see that happening. We are 9 months away from decisively flipping the court so I think most VA Dems see the light at the end of the tunnel in that regard.
Here’s a question I have regarding the fallout from VA and the VRA: what effect, if any, will this have on Dem primaries? Will any ideological factions of the Dems benefit? If so, who might benefit, the left, the center, or both? Or will there not be any particular benefit? If turnout surges from the backlash to this I’ll be curious to see the effect on primaries — which I don’t think anyone is talking about.
I did a quick search and didn't see anything from him on expanding SCOTUS, but he does seem to favor playing hardball. He basically said that Virginia dems should ignore the ruling because Ohio republicans ignored their own courts previously.
I'd like some analysis of OH-7, held by Max Miller (R). In 2024, Matt Diemer was the Democrat running in the race and got 36%, but Dennis Kucinich ran as an Independent and took nearly 13% of the vote. A lot of analysis ranks this district as a lot redder than I think it actually is.
Not to mention the fact that Miller has been accused of domestic violence by the daughter of GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno.
This district was altered by redistricting, although it traded heavily-GOP turf in southern Wayne and northern Holmes counties for all of Ashland County, which is also strongly Republican.
I've been thinking about how Dems could go about fixing how congressional districts are drawn if we have a trifecta after 2028. Banning (or at least greatly reducing the impact of) gerrymandering is not so easy as to simply pass a bill that says "Gerrymandering is hereby prohibited". Nobody is going to agree on what exactly gerrymandering is, and so every state's map would ultimately end up in court. And if there's one thing that should be obvious to everyone now, THE COURTS ARE OUR ENEMIES, NOT OUR FRIENDS. The best way to do this is to write a law that is so incredibly specific that it is literally impossible to misinterpret. This way, the maps won't go to the courts in the first place because it will be obvious whether they are legal or not.
Here's the idea behind what the bill should say:
1) The VRA is re-established, and it should be specifically mentioned that it requires and protects coalition districts too.
2) Counties larger than the ideal district population for its state (IDPS) cannot have more than one district split between it and other counties. This basically means that if a county has 2 million people, it must have two districts entirely within it, and then the remainder of the county must be entirely contained in another district (that will also include areas outside the county, to ensure population equality, of course).
3) Counties whose population is larger than 2/3 (this number is flexible, but IMO 2/3 is the best option) of the IDPS cannot be split. (This provision would prevent places like Nashville from being cracked.)
4) After a district has been drawn in a county larger than a district, the district containing the remainder of the county must be drawn to include the most densely populated county (MDPC) (calculated using land area only) bordering the first county (that has less than 2/3 the population of a district). (The purpose of this provision is to try to keep metropolitan areas together by putting suburban counties with their neighboring urban counties instead of with rural counties.)
4a) Specific conditions for when that MDPC can be split (which goes a bit in the weeds)
5) A county that "borders" another at a single point does *not* count as a bordering county for purposes of these rules
6) Above requirements can be waived if all of a county's bordering counties, in the same state, have at least 2/3 of the ideal district population. (I have a list of counties for which this would apply - interestingly, they are all in blue or purple states, none in red states.)
7) Above requirements can be overriden if necessary to draw VRA districts. (A good example of this is Jefferson County, Alabama - rule #3 above would force it to be kept whole, but creating the necessary VRA districts in Alabama requires it to be split.)
The purpose of these rules is to outlaw the cracking techniques that Republicans have been using for their latest gerrymanders.
Does anyone have any more suggestions for specific rules on how districts should be required to be drawn?
This is all very intelligent, but the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't have to have a logical pretext to overrule something that benefits democrats and goes against the corrupt individuals who are paying them off. They are happy to treat the Constitution as a dead letter and invent shit. Expansion of the court is absolutely essential!
Coalition shifts have made it such that anti-gerrymandering criteria is a lot simpler than it would have needed to be in the Obama years. GOP maps used to rely on relatively compact suburban seats and packing urban districts. Now all their maps draw multiple split tendrils from urban cores out to rural counties a hundred plus miles away. You're on the right track setting guidelines for allowable county splits given their population. The one thing that's actually constrained the GOP somewhat in Ohio is the fact that they can't split Cincinnati proper, so while they do still connect the city to the reddest turf they can instead of its own inner suburbs, they're not able to chop the city up into safely red seats. Setting basic rules like this would save a bunch of Dem seats all on its own, without even having to talk about more subjective criteria.
Sadly the VRA is gone. No bill should include it, SCOTUS will strike it down and we’ll be right back where we started. Focus on achievable, simple goals: define compactness, outlaw mid-decade drawing, can’t favor incumbents, and things of that nature. All stand-alone so there’s no severability bullshit.
Explicit, quantifiable requirements is exactly the right way to go. If we put in place subjective requirements that require a court to opine on whether a map violates that requirement, the courts have shown they will not rule consistently or fairly.
My approach would be different than yours, but yours is the more realistic option.
If I was in charge of it my solution would be:
(1) Reintroduce floating house seats
(2) Expand the house by 1/3
(3) Require each state to place 1/4 of seats (the new seats added to the house) in a floating statewide district that is awarded such that the total house seat distribution lines up as close as possible to the statewide popular vote
This doesn't do much for states with fewer than 3 seats right now, but for everywhere else it effectively eliminates gerrymandering in all but the most extreme of scenarios. The reason the house is explicitly expanded for this is so that no currently elected official has to risk voting for themself or a colleague to lose reelection.
With this system there is no longer any incentive to gerrymander, as the proportionally awarded seats will undo any practical gerrymander.
As an example: Texas in 2024 the vote was 58-40 and the seats were 25-13. The outcome was roughly 2/3 to 1/3 in awarded seats, with a purely proportional outcome being 23-15 or 22-16 depending on the exact rounding. Under my system, Texas' delegation would expand out to 51 seats, with up to 13 of those seats being awarded to maintain proportional balance. From the original 13 seats democrats won, they would gain 7-8 of the proportional seats to get a total of 20-21 seats to match the two party vote share in 2024. If the republican re-gerrymander this year shifts it from 25-13 to 30-8, then democrats would have been awarded 12-13 of the floating seats to correct the proportionality.
It is not 100% perfect but it makes gerrymandering a waste of time in all but the most extreme of scenarios and I suspect gerrymandering would consequently go away due to its inefficacy as a result. There is no dependence on the courts at any point in the process, so their bias is irrelevant. The US has already implemented multi-member districts historically, so the legality of the system itself is sound too.
After the events of the last week (Callais, VA, FL, Reform sweeping in the UK, etc) has me very depressed and fatalistic about the future. Hopefully things will look better in coming weeks.
Don’t give up yet. The possibility of counter gerrymanders is still there, the country is red hot angry at Trump in ways that have yet to materialize and I think will shock observers, and if Orban losing is any indication, even authoritarian governments can fall.
I’ll say what I said in the other thread again: if we fight, they might win. If we don’t fight, they will win.
How permanent would these counter gerrymanders be for us be though? What do we do after the 2030 census? We’d have to pass another statewide referendum in CA and in VA things get very complicated if an R is elected governor in 2029 (very possible if a D is President). Meanwhile, the R gerrymanders in FL, TX, MO, TN, etc basically have no avenue to be stopped other than with a Dem trifecta federally passing an anti-gerrymandering bill.
This is what the referendums should've done in the first place - reciprocity. California's redistricting commission is suspended until Texas implements a similar one. Etc.
The VA amendment should be the model despite the legal outcome. It basically suspended the commission and gave the legislature free reign to draw whatever if another state redrew.
California kinda screwed itself in how it wrote Prop 50, the maps are basically locked in until 2030 and the legislature cant even modify that map without another referendum.
I think the end goal has to be for the counter gerrymanders to be just enough to enable a House majority with hopefully Dem trifecta in place by 2028. From there the trifecta has to abolish the filibuster and pass an anti-gerrymandering bill. I just hope the prospect of a permanent gerrymandered GOP House majority is finally what motivates Dems to abolish the filibuster.
Fuck the filibuster. A major reason we're here is that we have historically decided that protecting the filibuster was more important than governing well. Republicans get 70% of what they want without any new legislation. We get 20% of what we want without any new legislation.
If the filibuster didn't exist, nobody would be proposing it. Note that none of its defenders want to introduce it to the house.
While the maps could give the GOP the house if Dems put in a Hillary 2016 performance, I don't think they will be able to gerrymander their way out of a 2020-esque environment and definitely not out of a 2018 one.
Even if we get the remaining VRA seats for this cycle (LA, AL, SC) the House GOP will only have the EC advantage Trump had in 2020.
Also, any environment in which more than 49 senate seats are at play will almost certanly not be close enough for the GOP to hold thh house.
AZ-5: This is a paywalled article, sadly, but former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb was attacked for his residency and election integrity by a minor Republican primary opponent, Daniel Keenan, at a debate Lamb did not attend.
NY-12: Attorney George Conway says he will only serve 2 terms in the House if elected, then pivot to legal activism in 2030.
Conway faces Assemblymen Alex Bores and Micah Lasher, journalist and Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg, scientist Nina Schwalbe and several minor candidates in the Democratic primary, but the race probably comes down to the four men.
MI-Sen - Mallory McMorrow, who had mostly been attacking Abdul El-Sayed for associating himself with leftist streamer Hasan Piker up to this point, is now attacking Haley Stevens over her vote to thank ICE, as well as AIPAC setting up a joint fundraising effort for Stevens and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
I won't get into how I feel about AIPAC itself obviously (other than to say I dislike *all* PACs and desperately want money out of politics), but that joint Stevens-Collins event and the statement from them criticizing El-Sayed and Platner is pretty crazy.
I'm worried McMorrow is doing too much to piss off both the Stevens and El-Sayed camps, and is slipping in the primary, which could create an opening for Stevens. (FWIW, I probably support her, but would prefer El-Sayed, understanding he may have some problems in a general race. I still think he could win.)
I associate myself with North Central West Virginia. I was born here and have lived here my entire life.
Here's my two cents on state and local races on the ballot this Tuesday:
U.S. Senate: Although Shelley Moore Capito has a decent primary challenge from Tom Willis, the consensus is that she'll win a third term in Washington. The Democratic nominee should be symbolic of where the state party goes from here. All 4 major candidates have progressive credentials.
-Zach Shrewsbury, the leader in fundraising and a Sanders-like organizer, would be a great pick if he didn't have a sexual harassment scandal.
-Jeff Kessler, my pick, was a pretty good state senator, and the progressive choice for governor in 2016, losing the Democratic primary to establishment candidate Booth Goodwin and then-conservadem Jim Justice. Kessler is an environmental activist, pro-choice and pro-gun, but is a bit older. My family already early voted for him.
-I don't know much about Rachel Fetty Anderson and Rio Phillips, but I do know Phillips has legal trouble and mental illness problems.
U.S. House: Like with the Senate race, Riley Moore will likely win again. However, my former teacher, Stephanie Tomana, made a solidly red Fairmont area House of Delegates seat competitive before. I am a staunch supporter of her. Iranian immigrant and progressive organizer Ace Parsi of Morgantown and 2024 nominee Steve Wendelin, a conservative, are also running.
State Senate: There's not really a primary for my seat, where Republican Sen. Mike Oliverio is set to face Del. John Williams. However, an open seat next door has an interesting Republican primary, as does a Clarksburg area seat where Ben Queen is in the fight for his political life against Joe Earley, who ran to the right of Moore for Congress in 2024.
House of Delegates: Olivia Miller is the frontrunner to succeed Williams, and I like her. Marion County commissioner Linda Longstreth is running against Phil Mallow, the delegate Tomana gave close races previously. Longstreth held the seat before, and there's a huge primary to succeed her on the county commission. And in Bridgeport, Del. Laura Kimble faces a contested Republican primary from a local businessman (forgot his name).
Supreme Court: Two Gov. Morrisey appointees, Gerald Titus and Tom Ewing, have to run for full 10 year terms. Titus has been everywhere over the airwaves, but I expect Ewing to fall to conservative state Del. Bill Flanigan.
The council of Cohutta, Georgia voted to reinstate the town's police department after the mayor fired everyone, including the chief. The mayor was subsequently forced out of office, with the vice mayor now the de facto leader of the town.
The way forward for Virginia Democrats should be:
- Flip the court in January 2027 by replacing Justice Kelsey whose term is up.
- File a petition sometime in 2027 to rehear the case and hope the liberal justices now in the majority have some fire in them to open this back up.
- The new majority rules favorably for Dems with a 4-3 vote and no new referendum is necessary.
It sounds outlandish but the same thing happened in NC a couple years ago when the GOP flipped the Supreme Court and the new majority overturned the ruling that mandated a 7-7 map.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/north-carolinas-supreme-court-reverses-gerrymandering-rcna81996
A little different. Overturning a previous ruling is not a big deal. But when the ruling involves an election, a year prior there may be a reluctance to rely on it.
We will see. A 4-3 decision invalidating an entire election is unprecedented and definitely seems worth revisiting.
Plan A is court.
Plan B is just do it again. Though that may take longer.
OR go the Ohio route and just ignore the ruling. What are they gonna do?
I agree with this. This is exactly what Democrats should do. If DeSantis can ignore the Fair Districts Amendment in Florida, then Dems can ignore four assholes trying to override the will of the voters.
Republicans started this race to the bottom and the flouting of norms. They can't be the only ones who do it. Dare them to do something about it.
Difference is DeSantis never explicitly defied his own state's supreme court. Dems should not ignore the ruling for two extra house seats in a wave environment they'll likely win in anyways. Just wait for next year.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Put the Legislative leadership in jail?
Spanberger can pre-emptively pardon them.
That's thinking outside of the box.
I just can't see Spanberger going along with that and if she's not on board then its hard to see that happening. We are 9 months away from decisively flipping the court so I think most VA Dems see the light at the end of the tunnel in that regard.
Here’s a question I have regarding the fallout from VA and the VRA: what effect, if any, will this have on Dem primaries? Will any ideological factions of the Dems benefit? If so, who might benefit, the left, the center, or both? Or will there not be any particular benefit? If turnout surges from the backlash to this I’ll be curious to see the effect on primaries — which I don’t think anyone is talking about.
It’ll benefit people willing to say we will pack the court, undo crooked maps, etc. Oddly the Platner profile at the moment
Has Platner been saying that? I haven't really been paying too much attention.
I did a quick search and didn't see anything from him on expanding SCOTUS, but he does seem to favor playing hardball. He basically said that Virginia dems should ignore the ruling because Ohio republicans ignored their own courts previously.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5870468-platner-republican-defiance-redistricting/
Sounds to me like Platner is a fighting Democrat.
I'd like some analysis of OH-7, held by Max Miller (R). In 2024, Matt Diemer was the Democrat running in the race and got 36%, but Dennis Kucinich ran as an Independent and took nearly 13% of the vote. A lot of analysis ranks this district as a lot redder than I think it actually is.
Not to mention the fact that Miller has been accused of domestic violence by the daughter of GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno.
This district was altered by redistricting, although it traded heavily-GOP turf in southern Wayne and northern Holmes counties for all of Ashland County, which is also strongly Republican.
Dems outright won the primary vote in this district and got the candidate they wanted, so it should be clearly on the radar.
Poindexter is gonna flip it!
Wooster (Wayne County) is a little bluer (and bigger) than Ashland, if I remember correctly. That's probably why they took it out.
I've been thinking about how Dems could go about fixing how congressional districts are drawn if we have a trifecta after 2028. Banning (or at least greatly reducing the impact of) gerrymandering is not so easy as to simply pass a bill that says "Gerrymandering is hereby prohibited". Nobody is going to agree on what exactly gerrymandering is, and so every state's map would ultimately end up in court. And if there's one thing that should be obvious to everyone now, THE COURTS ARE OUR ENEMIES, NOT OUR FRIENDS. The best way to do this is to write a law that is so incredibly specific that it is literally impossible to misinterpret. This way, the maps won't go to the courts in the first place because it will be obvious whether they are legal or not.
Here's the idea behind what the bill should say:
1) The VRA is re-established, and it should be specifically mentioned that it requires and protects coalition districts too.
2) Counties larger than the ideal district population for its state (IDPS) cannot have more than one district split between it and other counties. This basically means that if a county has 2 million people, it must have two districts entirely within it, and then the remainder of the county must be entirely contained in another district (that will also include areas outside the county, to ensure population equality, of course).
3) Counties whose population is larger than 2/3 (this number is flexible, but IMO 2/3 is the best option) of the IDPS cannot be split. (This provision would prevent places like Nashville from being cracked.)
4) After a district has been drawn in a county larger than a district, the district containing the remainder of the county must be drawn to include the most densely populated county (MDPC) (calculated using land area only) bordering the first county (that has less than 2/3 the population of a district). (The purpose of this provision is to try to keep metropolitan areas together by putting suburban counties with their neighboring urban counties instead of with rural counties.)
4a) Specific conditions for when that MDPC can be split (which goes a bit in the weeds)
5) A county that "borders" another at a single point does *not* count as a bordering county for purposes of these rules
6) Above requirements can be waived if all of a county's bordering counties, in the same state, have at least 2/3 of the ideal district population. (I have a list of counties for which this would apply - interestingly, they are all in blue or purple states, none in red states.)
7) Above requirements can be overriden if necessary to draw VRA districts. (A good example of this is Jefferson County, Alabama - rule #3 above would force it to be kept whole, but creating the necessary VRA districts in Alabama requires it to be split.)
The purpose of these rules is to outlaw the cracking techniques that Republicans have been using for their latest gerrymanders.
Does anyone have any more suggestions for specific rules on how districts should be required to be drawn?
The courts are not our enemies, just the conservatives on them.
They are one and the same at the moment.
This is all very intelligent, but the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't have to have a logical pretext to overrule something that benefits democrats and goes against the corrupt individuals who are paying them off. They are happy to treat the Constitution as a dead letter and invent shit. Expansion of the court is absolutely essential!
Let's expand the Virginia Supreme Court while we're at it!
Coalition shifts have made it such that anti-gerrymandering criteria is a lot simpler than it would have needed to be in the Obama years. GOP maps used to rely on relatively compact suburban seats and packing urban districts. Now all their maps draw multiple split tendrils from urban cores out to rural counties a hundred plus miles away. You're on the right track setting guidelines for allowable county splits given their population. The one thing that's actually constrained the GOP somewhat in Ohio is the fact that they can't split Cincinnati proper, so while they do still connect the city to the reddest turf they can instead of its own inner suburbs, they're not able to chop the city up into safely red seats. Setting basic rules like this would save a bunch of Dem seats all on its own, without even having to talk about more subjective criteria.
Exactly. Require whole large counties to be intact and contain nestled districts.
Sadly the VRA is gone. No bill should include it, SCOTUS will strike it down and we’ll be right back where we started. Focus on achievable, simple goals: define compactness, outlaw mid-decade drawing, can’t favor incumbents, and things of that nature. All stand-alone so there’s no severability bullshit.
And require bipartisan or independent commissions to draw the maps.
Explicit, quantifiable requirements is exactly the right way to go. If we put in place subjective requirements that require a court to opine on whether a map violates that requirement, the courts have shown they will not rule consistently or fairly.
My approach would be different than yours, but yours is the more realistic option.
If I was in charge of it my solution would be:
(1) Reintroduce floating house seats
(2) Expand the house by 1/3
(3) Require each state to place 1/4 of seats (the new seats added to the house) in a floating statewide district that is awarded such that the total house seat distribution lines up as close as possible to the statewide popular vote
This doesn't do much for states with fewer than 3 seats right now, but for everywhere else it effectively eliminates gerrymandering in all but the most extreme of scenarios. The reason the house is explicitly expanded for this is so that no currently elected official has to risk voting for themself or a colleague to lose reelection.
With this system there is no longer any incentive to gerrymander, as the proportionally awarded seats will undo any practical gerrymander.
As an example: Texas in 2024 the vote was 58-40 and the seats were 25-13. The outcome was roughly 2/3 to 1/3 in awarded seats, with a purely proportional outcome being 23-15 or 22-16 depending on the exact rounding. Under my system, Texas' delegation would expand out to 51 seats, with up to 13 of those seats being awarded to maintain proportional balance. From the original 13 seats democrats won, they would gain 7-8 of the proportional seats to get a total of 20-21 seats to match the two party vote share in 2024. If the republican re-gerrymander this year shifts it from 25-13 to 30-8, then democrats would have been awarded 12-13 of the floating seats to correct the proportionality.
It is not 100% perfect but it makes gerrymandering a waste of time in all but the most extreme of scenarios and I suspect gerrymandering would consequently go away due to its inefficacy as a result. There is no dependence on the courts at any point in the process, so their bias is irrelevant. The US has already implemented multi-member districts historically, so the legality of the system itself is sound too.
This is a very interesting idea that I hadn't thought of.
After the events of the last week (Callais, VA, FL, Reform sweeping in the UK, etc) has me very depressed and fatalistic about the future. Hopefully things will look better in coming weeks.
Don’t give up yet. The possibility of counter gerrymanders is still there, the country is red hot angry at Trump in ways that have yet to materialize and I think will shock observers, and if Orban losing is any indication, even authoritarian governments can fall.
I’ll say what I said in the other thread again: if we fight, they might win. If we don’t fight, they will win.
How permanent would these counter gerrymanders be for us be though? What do we do after the 2030 census? We’d have to pass another statewide referendum in CA and in VA things get very complicated if an R is elected governor in 2029 (very possible if a D is President). Meanwhile, the R gerrymanders in FL, TX, MO, TN, etc basically have no avenue to be stopped other than with a Dem trifecta federally passing an anti-gerrymandering bill.
How about putting a trigger mechanism where the legislature can draw the map if another state passes a gerrymander.
Certainly an idea.
They also need to be teeing things up in NY and this time the ballot language they write needs to be very favorable for passage.
This is what the referendums should've done in the first place - reciprocity. California's redistricting commission is suspended until Texas implements a similar one. Etc.
The VA amendment should be the model despite the legal outcome. It basically suspended the commission and gave the legislature free reign to draw whatever if another state redrew.
California kinda screwed itself in how it wrote Prop 50, the maps are basically locked in until 2030 and the legislature cant even modify that map without another referendum.
I think the end goal has to be for the counter gerrymanders to be just enough to enable a House majority with hopefully Dem trifecta in place by 2028. From there the trifecta has to abolish the filibuster and pass an anti-gerrymandering bill. I just hope the prospect of a permanent gerrymandered GOP House majority is finally what motivates Dems to abolish the filibuster.
There at least needs to be a filibuster carve out for voting rights issues. I wouldn’t blanket abolish it.
Fuck the filibuster. A major reason we're here is that we have historically decided that protecting the filibuster was more important than governing well. Republicans get 70% of what they want without any new legislation. We get 20% of what we want without any new legislation.
If the filibuster didn't exist, nobody would be proposing it. Note that none of its defenders want to introduce it to the house.
The filibuster is what saved social security from being privatized in 2005 and the ACA from being fully repealed in 2017.
While the maps could give the GOP the house if Dems put in a Hillary 2016 performance, I don't think they will be able to gerrymander their way out of a 2020-esque environment and definitely not out of a 2018 one.
Even if we get the remaining VRA seats for this cycle (LA, AL, SC) the House GOP will only have the EC advantage Trump had in 2020.
Also, any environment in which more than 49 senate seats are at play will almost certanly not be close enough for the GOP to hold thh house.
https://www.wsls.com/news/local/2026/05/08/former-congressman-tom-perriello-shifts-back-to-run-in-virginias-5th-district-after-virginia-supreme-court-decision/
VA-1: Henrico County prosecutor Shannon Taylor is still running against Republican Rep. Rob Wittman.
VA-5: Former Rep. Tom Perriello is still running against Republican Rep. John McGuire.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/05/07/daniel-keenan-pbs-interview/89966852007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z11xx35p119050l116050c119050e1145xxv11xx35d--51--b--51--&gca-ft=226&gca-ds=sophi
AZ-5: This is a paywalled article, sadly, but former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb was attacked for his residency and election integrity by a minor Republican primary opponent, Daniel Keenan, at a debate Lamb did not attend.
https://pix11.com/news/politics/pixonpolitics/george-conway-only-wants-two-terms-in-congress-to-thwart-trump/
NY-12: Attorney George Conway says he will only serve 2 terms in the House if elected, then pivot to legal activism in 2030.
Conway faces Assemblymen Alex Bores and Micah Lasher, journalist and Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg, scientist Nina Schwalbe and several minor candidates in the Democratic primary, but the race probably comes down to the four men.
MI-Sen - Mallory McMorrow, who had mostly been attacking Abdul El-Sayed for associating himself with leftist streamer Hasan Piker up to this point, is now attacking Haley Stevens over her vote to thank ICE, as well as AIPAC setting up a joint fundraising effort for Stevens and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYGUkHMOgcp/?igsh=MW04N3Q2cm0xOHp2Nw
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYAQoMxut7S/?igsh=cGR4MnlxbjcwNzRo
I won't get into how I feel about AIPAC itself obviously (other than to say I dislike *all* PACs and desperately want money out of politics), but that joint Stevens-Collins event and the statement from them criticizing El-Sayed and Platner is pretty crazy.
I'm worried McMorrow is doing too much to piss off both the Stevens and El-Sayed camps, and is slipping in the primary, which could create an opening for Stevens. (FWIW, I probably support her, but would prefer El-Sayed, understanding he may have some problems in a general race. I still think he could win.)
I associate myself with North Central West Virginia. I was born here and have lived here my entire life.
Here's my two cents on state and local races on the ballot this Tuesday:
U.S. Senate: Although Shelley Moore Capito has a decent primary challenge from Tom Willis, the consensus is that she'll win a third term in Washington. The Democratic nominee should be symbolic of where the state party goes from here. All 4 major candidates have progressive credentials.
-Zach Shrewsbury, the leader in fundraising and a Sanders-like organizer, would be a great pick if he didn't have a sexual harassment scandal.
-Jeff Kessler, my pick, was a pretty good state senator, and the progressive choice for governor in 2016, losing the Democratic primary to establishment candidate Booth Goodwin and then-conservadem Jim Justice. Kessler is an environmental activist, pro-choice and pro-gun, but is a bit older. My family already early voted for him.
-I don't know much about Rachel Fetty Anderson and Rio Phillips, but I do know Phillips has legal trouble and mental illness problems.
U.S. House: Like with the Senate race, Riley Moore will likely win again. However, my former teacher, Stephanie Tomana, made a solidly red Fairmont area House of Delegates seat competitive before. I am a staunch supporter of her. Iranian immigrant and progressive organizer Ace Parsi of Morgantown and 2024 nominee Steve Wendelin, a conservative, are also running.
State Senate: There's not really a primary for my seat, where Republican Sen. Mike Oliverio is set to face Del. John Williams. However, an open seat next door has an interesting Republican primary, as does a Clarksburg area seat where Ben Queen is in the fight for his political life against Joe Earley, who ran to the right of Moore for Congress in 2024.
House of Delegates: Olivia Miller is the frontrunner to succeed Williams, and I like her. Marion County commissioner Linda Longstreth is running against Phil Mallow, the delegate Tomana gave close races previously. Longstreth held the seat before, and there's a huge primary to succeed her on the county commission. And in Bridgeport, Del. Laura Kimble faces a contested Republican primary from a local businessman (forgot his name).
Supreme Court: Two Gov. Morrisey appointees, Gerald Titus and Tom Ewing, have to run for full 10 year terms. Titus has been everywhere over the airwaves, but I expect Ewing to fall to conservative state Del. Bill Flanigan.
Thoughts?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/08/cohutta-georgia-mayor-fires-police-department
The council of Cohutta, Georgia voted to reinstate the town's police department after the mayor fired everyone, including the chief. The mayor was subsequently forced out of office, with the vice mayor now the de facto leader of the town.