All posts by Rick Hasen

“Meet the Lobbyist Fighting Against ‘Perfect Legal’ Corruption in DC”

election law biz

Dave Levinthal profiles Craig Holman for the Washingtonian”

When Craig Holman first came to, he found himself in George Washington University Hospital hooked up to machines.

His ribs, hip, and knee were shattered. His ankle, too. He had suffered a brain bleed.

The victim of an early-March car crash—another driver struck Holman’s 2002 stick-shift Saturn after running a red light on Pennsylvania Avenue—Holman would spend a week in intensive care and three more in various hospital wards. Surgeries would follow surgeries. Much of the time, he couldn’t leave his bed without assistance.

And still he couldn’t stop thinking about Donald Trump.

For hours and hours, Holman would fixate on the newscasts emanating from the TV above his bed. Body broken, his mind seethed at what he saw as gross abuses of power by the President: firing thousands of federal workers, issuing massive tariffs, targeting law firms perceived to have worked against his political or personal interests, letting his Department of Government Efficiency run amok. Holman wasn’t happy with Congress, either, which he viewed as feckless, a legislature surrendering its constitutional clout to an overstepping executive.

“You’re sitting there, watching Trump on the news doing some obvious violation of the law, and you’re thinking, ‘I’d be filing a complaint right now if I were home!’ ” Holman says.

Of that, there’s little doubt. The 69-year-old Holman is a leading member of a peculiar Washington tribe: advocates for good government. Also known as “goo-goos,” they fight to regulate lobbying, limit the influence of money in politics, keep elected officials honest, and otherwise “drain the swamp” in the pre-Trumpian sense of the phrase.

For 23 years, Holman has been on the frontlines working as the government-­affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, the progressive nonprofit founded a half century ago by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. In the best of times, the job can feel thankless, even Sisyphean. Outnumbered and outspent, goo-goos perpetually push the rock of reform up Capitol Hill, only to be pulled back down by the stubborn gravity of wealth and self-interest.

And these are not the best of times. Between an ongoing explosion of political spending and Trump’s return to the White House, goo-goos are on their back foot, confronting a new crisis almost daily. To wit: As emergency workers rescued Holman by cutting through both his car and his beloved leather jacket, the President signed an executive order establishing a government Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, never mind that Trump is heavily invested in the World Liberty Financial crypto-trading platform and launched an eponymous cryptocurrency—$TRUMP coin—days before his inauguration.

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“Newsom’s Gerrymander of California Has a Formidable Foe: Schwarzenegger”

redistricting

NYT:

A day after Gov. Gavin Newsom held a splashy campaign rally to debut his ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional map, Arnold Schwarzenegger walked into a Santa Monica hotel for breakfast on Friday.

He was wearing a new custom-made T-shirt. It was emblazoned with an image of a raised fist, an expletive aimed at politicians and the phrase, “Terminate Gerrymandering.”

As governor of California from 2003 to 2011, Mr. Schwarzenegger led the charge to do just that. He fought to overhaul how the state draws political maps, ultimately winning when voters passed a pair of ballot measures that took that power away from politicians and gave it to an independent commission.

Now, Mr. Newsom is asking voters to set the independent commission’s work aside for the next three elections in favor of a map drawn to help elect more Democrats. He’s pitching it as a temporary pause on California’s bipartisan system that’s necessary to counter a Republican gerrymander President Trump is seeking in Texas.

And Mr. Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, finds himself fighting to preserve a key plank of his legacy as governor, a reform that has allowed what he calls his post-partisan style of politics to endure in California even as a brawling hyperpartisanship has become the national norm.

“I hate the idea of the Republicans redrawing the district lines in Texas, as much as I hate what the Californians are trying to do,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in an interview at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows.

“But I’m thinking now about California, and about the people of California. I promised them that we are going to create a commission that would be independent of the politicians, and there will be an independent citizens commission drawing the lines. So I’m not going to go back on my promise. I’m going to fight for my promise.”…

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“NY state Senate candidate allegedly paid homeless people to lie about donations to net matching funds: report”

chicanery

NY Post:

An upstate GOP state senate candidate’s campaign allegedly paid homeless people to claim they made donations to him, allowing him to net matching taxpayer funds, a report says.

Several homeless men in Auburn told the Albany Times Union in a story published Friday that Caleb Slater’s campaign offered them $30 a pop to sign paperwork saying they donated $250 to his run in November.

This way, Slater, who ultimately lost his bid for office, could allegedly receive public funds from the state that match contributions up to $250, the paper noted.

At least seven people who spoke to the outlet say they never contributed to Slater‘s campaign but were paid to submit contribution forms. One man said he was asked to recruit other straw donors as well.

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“Democrats’ Proposed New California Map Puts Five GOP Seats in Danger”

direct democracy, redistricting

Cook Political Report:

As Texas Republicans appear poised to thwart Democrats’ brief quorum break and pass a brutal new gerrymander, California Democrats’ plans to retaliate with their own aggressive map are coming into view.

Democrats’ California proposal is a mirror image of Republicans’ Texas plan in the sense that it flips three of the other party’s seats into solid Democratic pickups and makes two other GOP seats much more winnable, though still competitive. The plan would also shore up support for Democrats in the state’s competitive blue-held districts, including two rated as Toss Up and two rated as Lean Democrat by the Cook Political Report.

But unlike in Texas, where the GOP legislature can draw the state’s map however and whenever it wants, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats in Sacramento must first convince voters to permit them to enact a gerrymander — something that’s far from guaranteed….

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“Texas Democrats say they will return to state once session ends, California unveils retaliatory map”

redistricting

Texas Tribune:

Texas House Democrats who left the state in protest of proposed congressional redistricting said Thursday they will return to the state after the Legislature adjourns Friday and California’s state lawmakers introduce a retaliatory redistricting map in their state assembly.

In a statement, members of the minority party said their lawyers had advised them to return “to build a strong public legislative record for the upcoming legal battle” against the proposed reconfiguration of Texas’ congressional districts. The new map, stalled since dozens of Democrats left the state Aug. 3, is designed to net the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House. President Donald Trump pressured state leaders to undertake the effort mid-decade — a rarity — as the GOP tries to hold onto its thin majority in Congress.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who has asked the state’s Supreme Court to remove House Democratic Caucus leader Gene Wu from office, said earlier this week he would continue calling special legislative sessions — starting Friday after both chambers of the Legislature adjourn. House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would gavel out for the session if the lower chamber continued to lack a quorum, or the minimum number of present members required to conduct business.

The House, which needs 100 of its 150 members present to establish a quorum, has not reached that threshold since most of the chamber’s 62 Democrats left the state for Chicago, Massachusetts and New York in an effort to stop the proposed redistricting. Democratic lawmakers say the new map is an attack on the representation of minority voters in the districts being redrawn, while Republicans have defended their right to redraw district lines for partisan gain whenever they want….

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Annals of Authoritarianism: Trump’s Military Agents Appear Outside California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Press Conference on Redistricting Reform

authoritarian threats in US

Truly frightening stuff:

As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to announce that he would take on President Trump’s redistricting plans on behalf of California, scores of federal immigration agents massed outside the venue Thursday.

Newsom was set to speak at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, when Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who has been leading the immigration operations in California, arrived in Little Tokyo, flanked by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns.

“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves,” Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter in Little Tokyo. “We’re glad to be here, we’re not going anywhere.”

When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”

Newsom’s office took to X to share that agents were outside, posting: “BORDER PATROL HAS SHOWED UP AT OUR BIG BEAUTIFUL PRESS CONFERENCE! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!”

The apparent raid Thursday, during which one person was detained, comes amid calls from elected officials for an end to renewed immigration operations across the L.A. area. Federal agents have carried out a string of raids over the past week, arresting several people at car washes and Home Depot stores….

In a press conference outside of the museum following the operation, Mayor Karen Bass said, “there’s no way this was a coincidence.”

“This was widely publicized that the governor and many of our other elected officials were having a press conference to talk about redistricting, and they decided they were going to come and thumb their nose in front of the governor’s face. Why would you do that? That is unbelievably disrespectful, it’s a provocative act,” Bass said.

“They’re talking about disorder in Los Angeles,” the mayor said, “and they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now.”

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“The Dangers of America’s Gerrymandering Problem—And How to Fix It”

redistricting

Benjamin Schneer and Maxwell Palmer in TIME:

Instead, we believe it is possible to make reforms that keep the current electoral system while also overcoming some of its flaws. We’ve developed a process-based solution that has a number of appealing properties. It’s inspired by the problem parents face when dividing a cake between two children. How can they make sure everyone gets an equal slice? One child cuts the cake in two, and the other child chooses between the two pieces.

Our approach, which we call the “Define-Combine Procedure,” splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation.

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“The Racial Gap in Trust in Elections (and How to Close It)”

election administration

Laura Uribe, Kailen Aldridge, Thad Kousser, Kyshan Nichols-Smith, and Tye Rush have written this article in Political Science Quarterly (also a version here without a subscription). Here is the abstract:

While the contemporary conversation about trust in U.S. elections focuses on mistrust among white conservatives, we ask whether racial and ethnic minority groups also lack confidence in the integrity of the vote count. Is there an enduring gap along ethnoracial lines over trust in elections and, if so, what determines the magnitude of this gap? Grounding our theory in the literature on race and trust in institutions and elections, we outline hypotheses about the mechanisms of mistrust for minority groups. We use an original national survey as well as data from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections from 2012 through 2022. We find that Black and Native Americans have lower levels of trust in elections when compared to white Americans. Asian Americans are not statistically unlike whites in their level of trust, and the trust gap that exists for Latines is partially explainable by demographic characteristics such as education and income. We further demonstrate the profound importance of state voting laws: in states that impose high barriers to accessing the ballot, the gap between white and Black Americans’ trust in elections doubles in size, while in states with the most inclusive voting laws, the racial gap in trust disappears.

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“Poll: California voters back independent congressional maps, complicating Gavin Newsom’s redistricting push”

redistricting

Politico:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a major hurdle in his quest to revamp his state’s congressional lines, according to a new poll: Californians’ deep support for its current independent redistricting commission.

By nearly a two-to-one margin, voters prefer keeping an independent line-drawing panel to determine the state’s House seats, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found. Just 36 percent of respondents back returning congressional redistricting authority to state lawmakers.

“It’s not surprising, in the sense that California has voted twice for this independent review commission not all that long ago,” said Jack Citrin, a veteran political science professor at UC Berkeley and partner on the poll. “And there’s a lot of mistrust and cynicism about politicians and the Legislature. That’s reflected here as well.”

California Democrats are plowing ahead with a high-stakes gambit to redraw the state’s lines to counter a proposed gerrymander by Texas Republicans spurred by President Donald Trump. California officials are expected to unveil newly redrawn maps at the end of this week that would position Democrats to nab five extra seats, neutralizing the Texas redraw….

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“A strange GOP divide is forming over Trump’s gerrymandering plans”

redistricting

Politico:

President Donald Trump’s aggressive redistricting push is sparking public concern from an unusual mix of Republicans.

Resistance to mid-decade redraws is running the ideological gamut and cutting across levels of government. While many are backing Trump’s gambit to protect the GOP’s House majority in the midterms, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are airing concerns — a list that spans lawmakers from swing districts in blue states to safe territory in ruby-red Florida.

Trump and his team have convinced once-wary Texas Republicans to draw a new House map and lobbied the GOP governors of Missouri and Indiana to at least “seriously” consider following suit, but the Republican governor of New Hampshire has ruled out pursuing any changes because “the timing is off.” And GOP state lawmakers across the country — who hold the power to redraw lines in several of the states at the forefront of what’s becoming a nationwide redistricting arms race — are finding themselves similarly split.

These strange divisions underscore the complex political dynamics of the president’s latest power play. It’s become a loyalty test that could boost Republicans’ chances of keeping their trifecta in Washington, but one that also carries significant electoral risk for several of their own members in Congress and potential for broader voter backlash.

Trump’s team is barreling forward, bullish about having more opportunities to redraw maps across the states than Democrats and brushing off concerns as primarily coming from members whose seats are at risk. Administration officials and allies are working to fire up his base by noting that Democrats have already gerrymandered several states in their favor and have limited moves left to play. And MAGA online influencers like Steven Bannon and Charlie Kirk are encouraging their fans to jam Greg Abbott’s phone lines so the Texas governor ratchets up pressure on quorum-breaking Democrats to return and let Republicans pass a new congressional map. But even that is showing some limits.

“Redistricting is not really an ideological exercise as much as a self-interest exercise,” California-based GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said. “The safer you are and enjoy being in the majority, the more your self interest is ‘lets see Texas get scrambled and if we sacrifice some colleagues from blue states, in California and New York, so be it.’”

But for those more vulnerable Republicans, “this poses a substantial risk to your career,” Stutzman said. And that’s why some are reflecting at least a “growing private sentiment of ‘is this really worth it?’”…

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