This Week in Statehouse Action: On and Off Wisconsin edition
or, Special Elections + New Maps = Good News For Dems, Which Feels Weird
Sooooooooooooo remember how I wrote on Tuesday about that Pennsylvania special election?
You know, the one in Bucks County’s HD-140?
Well, to pretty much no one’s surprise, Democrat Jim Prokopiak won it.
But in a seat that went for Biden 55%-44% in 2020, it’s the margin of Prokopiak’s win over Republican Candace Cabanas that’s actually newsworthy.
He smoked her 67%-32%.
And all the usual caveats apply – low turnout (just over 23%), single election, etc. etc. – but both Prokopiak’s and New York Democrat Tom Suozzi’s wins (the latter won the NY-03 special 54%-46%) are more data points in the continuing trend of Democratic overperformance in special elections.
Suozzi’s win just about matched Biden’s 8-point margin in that district in 2020, but obviously he improved quite a lot over Democrats’ 2022 performance (Santos won, after all), and the status quo looks pretty good in a district many believe is trending towards Republicans.
Anyway, yay, Democrats’ majority in the Pennsylvania House is safe (... for a while, anyway – all 203 seats are on the ballot again this fall), but these two specials plus a little-watched race in Oklahoma that also wrapped Tuesday appear to signal continued strength for Democrats early into this election year.
In Oklahoma’s House District 39, Republican Erick Harris defeated Democrat Regan Raff 50%-45%, which doesn’t really sound like good news for team blue until you realize that Trump won this seat by 26 points in 2020.
And these Democratic overperformances aren’t errant blips on the electoral radar.
As the incredibly smart Nathaniel Rakich pointed out last September, Democrats doing better than expected in special elections was a fairly consistent trend in 2023.
Of course, special election trends aren’t destiny, but it’s worth noting how past cycles’ special election overperformances compared to the national U.S. House popular vote.
In the 2017-2018 cycle, Dem special overperformance was +10.7; the Dem House popular vote margin was +8.6.
In the 2019-2020 cycle, Dem special overperformance was +4.3; the Dem House popular vote margin was +3.0.
In the 2021-2022 cycle, Dem special overperformance was just +0.5; Republicans won the national House popular vote +2.7.
So special election overperformance trends aren’t, like, not predictive, but November 2024 is several political eternities away, and anything can happen.
But enough about specials (... for now, she whispered ominously).
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Robin Vos
One of the biggest things that popped during my holiday-season hiatus was the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the state’s GOP-gerrymandered legislative maps are unconstitutional.
The ruling marked the final failure of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to overturn the will of Wisconsin voters by somehow preventing the newest justice, Janet Protasiewitcz, from ruling on the case.
As an erudite consumer of this missive, you likely recall how we got here, but here’s a quick recap for the folks who are new or have rededicated that chunk of their brain matter to, say, something more fun.
In the Long Ago Time of last April, Wisconsin voters elected Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, giving the court a 4-3 progressive majority.
The conservatives who run the legislature and cling to the majority control via extreme gerrymanders were extremely not happy with this, because they (rightly) worried that the newly liberal court would have an opportunity to rule in a lawsuit over those gerrymandered maps.
Speaker Vos worked aggressively to prevent Protasiewicz from participating in that ruling, demanding that she recuse herself and threatening her with impeachment if she didn’t.
Vos’ impeachment scheme was both nakedly partisan and ingenious.
Republicans have both the majority required in the Assembly to impeach a justice and the supermajority required in the state Senate to find her guilty of whatever offense they concoct.
But legislative Republicans wouldn’t even have to bother finding Protasiewicz guilty; simply impeaching her would be enough to turn the 4-3 progressive majority on the state Supreme Court into a 3-3 tie.
According to the state constitution, “No judicial officer shall exercise his office, after he shall have been impeached, until his acquittal.”
So the Wisconsin Assembly could impeach Protasiewicz, effectively suspending her from the court, and the Senate could drag its feet pretty much as long as it wants before actually holding the impeachment trial.
Bonus: If Protasiewicz isn’t actually removed from office, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers can’t replace her.
Theoretically, an impeached Protasiewicz could resign after being capriciously impeached, and Evers can then appoint a progressive replacement, but that would literally allow GOP lawmakers to effectively undo a free and fair election that happened just this past April for the simple reason that they don’t like who won.
Democrats came out swinging against this obvious attempt to undo the results of the election that put Protasiewicz in office, so Vos started casting about for some shred of “justification” for impeaching her.
To this end, Vos assembled his own little SEEKRIT PANEL of former state Supreme Court justices last fall to tell him that it was okay to impeach Protasiewicz.
In an email that was perhaps not intended to but totally became public, former conservative Justice David Prosser ended up recommending that “there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now,” as Protasiewicz hadn’t done any crimes or corruption while in office (which, by the by, had been under three months at that point).
Prosser went on to point out that using impeachment to affect the outcome of any particular case (cough cough redistricting cough) “will be viewed as unreasonable partisan politics.”
LOL imagine thinking that Wisconsin Republicans would ever be the slightest bit bothered by appearing unreasonably partisan
Second SEEKRIT PANEL member and former conservative Justice Jon Wilcox also also came out publicly against impeaching Protasiewicz.
Wilcox, who served on the court from 1992 until 2007, told AP that he “[does] not favor impeachment,” saying that it should be reserved “for very serious things” and that there was nothing to justify impeaching Protasiewicz.
Former conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, the third member of this little cabal, refused to say anything about the matter on the record.
Anyway, Wisconsin Democrats got a great Christmas present in the form of a Dec. 22, 2023, ruling by the state Supreme Court (4-3, of course) finding that the state Assembly and Senate maps were unconstitutional gerrymanders.
The parties to the suit had a January 12 deadline for submitting new maps for the court to consider as replacements.
Six map proposals were submitted to the expert redistricting consultants hired by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to evaluate from legislative Republicans, Democrats, Evers, and academics.
After taking a few weeks to evaluate them, the consultants reported back to the court and found that:
The maps submitted by Democrats, Evers, and academics are “tilted toward the Republicans” but are competitive enough that “the party that wins the most votes will win the most seats.”
The maps submitted by the Republican-controlled legislature did “not deserve further consideration” by the court.
This all came about a week after Vos and his Republican cronies in the legislature made a last-ditch effort to forestall the court’s implementation of whichever maps it selects.
Basically, legislative Republicans took Evers’ map proposal and made “miniscule changes” (lol) to “un-gerrymander” them (lol).
Specifically, Vos said the Republican changes to Evers’ maps un-paired a bunch of GOP incumbents who’d been drawn into districts with other GOP incumbents.
[[deep breath]]
THE ONLY REASON THERE ARE SO MANY GOP INCUMBENTS IS THE FACT THAT YOUR EXISTING MAPS ARE SUPER GERRYMANDERED AND ANY FAIR MAP CAN’T HELP BUT DRAW SOME REPUBLICANS INTO THE SAME DISTRICT BECAUSE THEY’RE INCREDIBLY OVER-REPRESENTED IN BOTH CHAMBERS
So, effectively, Vos re-gerrymandered Evers’ maps and somehow expected him to sign off on them.
Obviously, Evers didn’t.
So Vos & Co., becoming apparently increasingly desperate to forestall the Supreme Court’s selection and implementation of even worse (for Rs) maps, last week pulled a little bit of a …hail mary?
Eh, that doesn’t quite work here, but what I’m trying to say is that desperate Wisconsin Republicans did something desperate.
They passed Evers’ proposed legislative maps without any changes.
Just, like, voted on them.
… okay there was one change: Assembly and Senate Republicans inserted language that prevents the maps from going into effect until November’s elections, instead of, like, immediately.
… which would give Wisconsin Republicans the rest of the year to enjoy the benefits of their illegal gerrymanders in any special elections or recalls that might occur between now and then.
Also, according to the scores given to the various submitted legislative maps by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s experts, Evers’ maps appear to be just slightly less hostile to Republicans’ extreme legislative overrepresntation than other Democratic-submitted maps (page 15, iyi).
Still, Evers’ maps seem like they’d be pretty fair, even if they do “maintain a slight Republican bias.”
According to Daily Kos Elections, Biden would have won an 18-15 majority in the Senate, though many districts would just narrowly favor the president.
In the state Assembly, Trump would have won 50 of those 99 seats in a state he lost by a slim margin.
But it’s the delayed implementation clause that really makes Republicans’ proposal problematic.
Like, we have NO IDEA the lengths Wisconsin Republicans would go to to ratfuck both Democrats and Wisconsinites generally if they could still hold elections on their illegal maps (N.B. Republicans currently have a veto-proof majority in the state Senate and are just two seats shy in the Assembly) over the next nine months.
I mean, I have some ideas, but if you take one thing away from this missive, I hope it’s to never, ever underestimate Robin Vos’ creativity when it comes to holding on to power.
Speaking of Vos, there’s some speculation that he wants the delayed-implementation clause included to help defend against a recall effort being organized by some MAGA types who find him insufficiently election denier-y.
The same folks tried – and nearly succeeded in – taking Vos out in the 2022 primaries.
Anyway, Evers has until Tuesday, Feb. 20, to decide whether to sign or veto Republicans’ bill (nearly all the Dems voted against it) implementing the maps that he drew.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court hasn’t laid out any kind of timeline for selecting new legislative maps, but they have a bit of runway – primaries for Wisconsin’s fall elections aren’t until August 13, and candidate filing doesn’t close until June.
Also there’s the likelihood that Wisconsin Republicans are going to appeal the December ruling striking down their maps to the U.S. Supreme Court, so … yeah, there’s still a ways to go with all this.
Bonus: If you want an excellent visualization of just how gerrymandered Wisconsin’s current legislative maps are, Philip Bump (and, I presume, some unsung data viz hero) dropped some great charts in this piece for WaPo this week comparing each party’s vote share in the state to legislative seats won.
Welp!
That’s gonna be a wrap for this week.
Next week I’ll be digging into some policy stuff (this was Crossover Week in Virginia and I am AMPED) … unless something else catches on fire, which, well, it feels like a big part of any legislator’s day is playing with matches, so …
But I guess that’s part of the magic. There’s always something happening in some statehouse, so it can be a little challenging to predict the nature of one of these missives before I actually get to writing it.
So extra thanks for hanging in – not just with this edition, but generally.
And never forget:
You’re important.
We need you.