Tag Archives: Alabama

Cut Time

By tmess2 | Published September 5, 2020

A political party serves two fundamental purposes.

First, people form and join political parties to advance policy.  (Of course, there are disagreements on the exact priorities or the specific details of policy proposals.)  In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that the Framers made was not anticipating that, once there were elections for federal offices, the groups in New Jersey that favored rural farmers over “urban” merchants would unite with similar groups in Georgia (and vice versa for the groups that favored merchants) rather than stay isolated in their own states.  Simply put, if you want a single-payer health care system, you are more likely to get it by forming a large group with other supporters of that type of proposal than working on your own.

Second, the way that political parties try to advance policy is by getting their candidates elected to office.  You can’t pass a single-payer system if the opponents of single-payer have the majority in Congress or control the White House.  And political parties win elections by finding good candidates and raising and spending money to support those candidates.   Especially in the year before the election, money tends to be spent on creating tools (like voter databases and helping state parties) that are available to all candidates that run on the party’s ticket.  And at this point in time, with the exception of the last handful of state primaries, the parties have their candidates. Continue Reading...

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Primary Day

By tmess2 | Published July 14, 2020

Today is primary day in three states.  In two of the three (Alabama and Texas), it is actually primary run-off day as the first round of voting occurred prior to COVID-19 becoming a household word.  In the other state (Maine). today is the actual primary day.  Maine uses ranked-choice voting in its primary which means that voters are casting votes for all rounds of the election today.   In all three states, there are senate primaries to choose challengers, and the results could matter in November.

In Alabama, you have former Senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions seeking to get his job back against former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville.  Besides his coaching experience, Coach Tuberville appears to have relocated to Florida until just recently and has some ties to some hedge fund fraud.  All of which makes him Trump’s type of candidate as Trump wants to stick it to Attorney General Sessions for only bending the law into a pretzel on some occasions and actually realizing that it would be unethical to head an investigation into a campaign in which he played a significant role.   Now, it’s going to be hard for Democrats to keep this seat in November, but I would rather be running against the former coach for Auburn (the “second” school in Alabama) in the hopes that some Alabama fans who would normally vote Republican might have trouble voting for somebody from Auburn.  Additionally, the scandal involving Coach Tuberville might just become a big deal by November allowing us to narrowly keep the seat over a flawed Republican candidate.  While Democrats rightly loathe the positions that Jeff Sessions took as Attorney General, Alabama is still a deep red state.  If Trump and Sessions decide that they have to make nice after the primary, I think it would be almost impossible to beat Sessions in November.

In Texas, you have almost a replay of the recent Kentucky primary.  The preferred candidate of the national party is a moderate, white, female, military veteran (MJ Hegar).  The other choice is a progressive, male, African-American, state legislator (Royce West).   And, like in Kentucky, you have an incumbent Republican member of the party leadership (John Conryn) who will be a favorite for re-election but could be beatable with the right candidate. Continue Reading...

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Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 2 — Early Prime Time States)

By tmess2 | Published March 1, 2020

On any election day, 8:00 p.m. EST/7:00 p.m. CST, is a key time when polls close in a significant number of states in the Eastern and Central time zones.  (For the general election, the polls close in seventeen states at that time, the largest single batch of states.)  On Super Tuesday, six states will close their polls at that time:  Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.  As with the states closing earlier that evening, poll closing is not an exact end to the voting.  Instead, all voters still in line at a precinct still get to vote.  Additionally, election workers have to get the ballots from the precinct to a centralized vote counting location.  So there is a lag between the polls closing and the results being reported.  However, this time is when the news media can release exit polls and make projections and counties can report the totals from early votes.

Before going much further into the details, one significant change from earlier reports.  Maine law currently allow parties to opt to use ranked-choice voting for their primaries.  Early drafts of the Maine delegate selection plan indicated that the Maine Democrats would use ranked-choice voting.  Ultimately, the party decided against using ranked-choice voting.  (Apparently, Maine’s law required a party using ranked-choice to continue the process until one candidate got a majority of the vote and did not give the option of using it to determine who met a party’s threshold for delegates).

While Tom Steyer has ended his campaign, we still have five candidates in the race who have won delegates in at least one state.  We also have Michael Bloomberg who has put a lot of money into these states.  So far, we have not had any district (or state-wide) result in which more than four candidates reached 15%, but every one of these six candidates has at least one state or district in which they expect to be viable.  How many are viable in each district will impact the math for the distribution.  (And with early voting/absentee ballots and his ad spending, Tom Steyer could still get a significant number of votes in some locations even if he is not viable.) Continue Reading...

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2018 Mid-Term Election Preview — The South

By tmess2 | Published October 26, 2018

The South is probably the region in which there are the fewest competitive races in the country.  The extreme gerrymandering in these states means that outside of Texas, competitive House races are practically non-existent.

Starting with Alabama, while the governor’s mansion and seven U.S. House seats are on the ballot, none of these races currently look close.  This should not be a surprise to anybody.  While Doug Jones was winning the U.S. Senate seat in a close race last year, he only carried one of the Alabama’s seven congressional districts.  With Republican incumbents running in the six districts that Roy Moore carried and none of them a known bigoted pervert, Democrats are not expected to win any of these seats.  Despite the corruption that led to the prior Republican governor resigning, and Kay Ivey taking over last year, the expectation is that Kay Ivey will hold the seat by a comfortable margin.

In Mississippi, the Republicans hold a 3-1 advantage in U.S. House seats now and there is no reason to expect that to change after the election.  There are two Senate races on the ballot.  In the regular election, Republican Roger Wicker should be re-elected.  The interest race is the special election.  Like some other states, Mississippi holds a “jungle primary” (really a general election with a potential run-off) in which all candidates  from all parties run against each other.  Barring a major surprise, this race is headed to a run-off.  And, while Mike Espy is likely to make the run-off, he is unlikely to get his preferred opponent.  There is always a chance that in a lower turnout run-off that Mike Espy might defy expectations and win this seat, but — if this seat becomes important in light of the other results on election day — the money that would pour into Mississippi would make that difficult. Continue Reading...

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A Long December

By tmess2 | Published December 17, 2017

The year comes to a close with its usual mix of good news and bad news.

On the 2020 presidential election, the Unity Reform Commission has completed its work.  Josh Putnam over at Frontloading Headquarters has posting summaries of the Commission’s decisions.   From the first two summaries, the recommendations seem to be moving toward more open primaries (a reversal of the party’s traditional support for closed primaries) and to make caucuses more like primaries with a preference toward using the primary if there is a state-run primary.  These recommendations will go to the Rules & By-laws Committee (which folks may remember from 2008).  The Rules & By-laws Committee will take these recommendations into account in drafting the 2020 Call and Delegate Selection Plan.  When the draft is concluded, the RBC’s draft goes to the full Democratic National Committee for approval.  If the Unity Reform Commission believes that the RBC is not fully implementing their recommendations in the draft, they can ask for the full DNC to intervene.  Presumably, the party will also begin its site selection process early in 2018.

As the site selection and the rule drafting process continues, there will probably be a lot of discussion here.  For now, it is important to be cautious about changes driven by the problems of the last cycle.  There is always a temptation to “fight the last war.”  But the problems in one cycle do not necessarily recur in the next cycle, and it is important not to do things that will probably make more problems than they fix. Continue Reading...

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Fall Elections

By tmess2 | Published October 22, 2017

In most of the world, the practice is to limit the number of races being contested on any given election day.  Thus, regional elections are held on a separate day from national elections.  In the U.S., however, most states opt to hold state elections on the same day as national elections.  Thus, in most states, the election for governor either falls on the same day as the mid-term election or on the same day as the presidential election.  In a small number of states, however, the election for governor occurs in an odd-year.

Two states — Virginia and New Jersey — hold the election in the year after the presidential election.  (Three states — Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi — hold the elections in the year before the presidential election.)  Both New Jersey and Virginia have a tendency — not absolute, but a tendency — to elect a governor from the party not in the White House.  In New Jersey, the last time that the party in the White House won the governor’s race was 1985.  In Virginia, while the party in the White House won in 2013, the last previous time that the party in the White House won was 1973.  There are a lot of reasons for these results — including. similar to the problem that the party in the White House faces in mid-term elections, the simple fact that governing is much harder than running for office, so supporters of the party in power tend to be disappointed with the actual fruits of their victory while those out of power tend to be angry and motivated.

As things currently stand, things are looking very good for the Democratic candidates in New Jersey.  Aside from New Jersey’s normal Democratic lean and the tendency for the party not in the White House to win, the Republicans nominated the current Lieutenant Governor, making it hard to separate the current Republican ticket from the corruption of the current administration of term-limited governor Chris Christie.  The Democratic candidate, Ambassador Phil Murphy, leads by double digits in every poll this fall.  While some of the polls show enough undecided voters to leave a theoretical opening for the Republican candidate, the race in New Jersey is not particularly close. Continue Reading...

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The Republican Civil War — Alabama Edition

By tmess2 | Published September 24, 2017

The next seven days is one of those weeks that happen from time to time when there are a lot of events competing for the attention of political wonks — the German elections, the “long conference” at the Supreme Court, perhaps a vote on the latest Republican effort to repeal Obamacare, perhaps even more news on the Russian involvement in the 2016 elections and the Trump campaign’s connections to those illegal acts.  The most significant event, however, might be the Republican runoff in the Alabama Senate special election.

Over the years, a recurring topic on this blog has been the internal divisions in the Republican party (and to a lesser degree the divisions in the Democratic party).  The run-off in Alabama pits a conservative “Establishment” candidate (interim Senator Luther Strange) against the Tea Party/Trumpist candidate (State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore).    It is not possible to describe all of the wacky things that Justice Moore has done over the year that violated his oath of office (some of which got him removed from office the first time).  A Senator Moore would actually make Ted Cruz and Rand Paul look normal.

While Trump — perhaps seeing a need to at least pretend to work with the Republicans in D.C. — is supporting Senator Strange, but Breitbart and other parts of the Trump machine are supporting Justice Moore.  Current polls are showing Justice Moore with a comfortable (but not necessarily safe given how difficult it is to predict turnout) lead. Continue Reading...

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