NYT takes a deep dive into NYC’s ranked-choice ballots to show how Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani beat former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Big takeaway: although voters could list up to five candidates on their ballots, 54% didn’t include Cuomo at all.
All posts by Dan Tokaji
The Floridization of Politics
The U.S. Capitol may be in Washington and the President in Scotland at the moment, but Florida is at the center of American politics, Kimberly Leonard suggests in Political Playbook.
Not only has President Trump spent much of his time governing from Mar-a-Lago and surrounded himself with Floridians like Susie Wiles and Marco Rubio, but many “Florida-tested” policies have found there way to Washington. That includes bans on transgender athletes, immigration crackdowns, attacks on higher education, and anti-woke laws.
As Leonard describes it:
When your author was reporting in Washington over Trump’s inauguration, Florida Republicans and lobbyists were beside themselves with glee about what it would mean to be a major power player in the new administration. Despite being a huge state, Florida had historically been viewed as the loud, embarrassing uncle of American politics. Trump changed that. . . .
“Florida has adopted and replicated President Trump’s America First agenda and has created many emerging leaders to carry on the MAGA torch,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers tells Playbook. “President Trump appreciates Gov. DeSantis’ work and they will continue to advance the same goal — Making America Great Again.”
Some of us are old enough to remember that, a quarter century ago, a disputed presidential election in Florida led to significant changes in how elections are administered and more partisan battles over how we vote. Florida is now changing democratic politics in very different ways.
“Democrats desperately look for a redistricting edge in California, New York and Maryland”
Politico on the limited options available to counter Republican redistricting efforts in Texas, Ohio, and Missouri:
In conversations with more than a dozen state lawmakers and redistricting experts, Democrats’ best shot at redrawing a map lies in California, a heavily blue state with a huge number of congressional districts. They see the second-best option in New York, which saw Democratic gerrymandering efforts sputter in recent years, and Illinois, which is already a heavily pro-Democrat gerrymander. Far less likely options lie with Maryland and New Jersey, which have just four Republican-held seats between them.
“AOC’s Met Gala appearance violated House gift rules, ethics panel says”
The House Committee on Ethics determined in a report released Friday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) failed to comply with the House’s gifting rule as part of her appearance at the 2021 Met Gala, determining that she improperly accepted free admission to the gala for her partner and failed to pay full fair market value for some of the items she wore at the event.
Ocasio-Cortez and her counsel, the report states, sought to comply with House ethics requirements, but found that she accepted more than $3,700 in rented apparel — including a white gown emblazoned with “Tax the Rich” in red letters — and a hairpiece, but paid less than $1,000. . . .
The committee declined to sanction Ocasio-Cortez, provided that she donate the $250 value of the Met Gala meal provided to her partner who went to the event with her, Riley Roberts, and pays the brand behind her Met Gala look, Brother Vellies, an additional $2,733.28 “for the fair market value of the goods that she received in connection with her 2021 Met Gala attendance.” . . .
Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Mike Casca, said in a statement that the congresswoman accepts the committee’s ruling.
“Minnesota rejects DOJ demand for state’s voter rolls”
The Justice Department asked Minnesota election officials in June for voter rolls and other information to show proof of compliance with federal election law. Similar requests were made to other states, including Colorado, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
In a letter sent Friday, Justin Erickson, general counsel for the Secretary of State’s Office, said the Justice Department did not “identify any legal basis” for its request, nor did it explain how the data would be “used, stored and secured.”
Ballot Stuffing in Brooklyn?
From the NYT, reports of what sounds like old-fashioned election fraud in a GOP city council primary:
The New York City Board of Elections asked prosecutors on Friday to investigate possible ballot stuffing and votes being cast by dead people in a hotly contested City Council race in southern Brooklyn.
After a second day of hand recounting on Friday, George Sarantopoulos, a businessman, led Richie Barsamian, chairman of the Republican Party in Brooklyn, by a mere 16 votes in the G.O.P. primary in District 47.
Particularly troubling for election authorities was the late discovery of 22 paper ballots that officials said were not scanned by the voting machines on election night. The surprise comes on the heels of a report in The New York Post that two absentee ballots were cast by voters who are dead and another by a man who said he did not vote and has no primary voting history going back to the 1980s.
One of the dead voters would be 107 years old, the other 101, records show.
Rick comments here. While there’s usually less than meets the eye when fraud is alleged, this one seems like it could potentially be real.
“Under Siege From Trump and Musk, a Top Liberal Group Falls Into Crisis”
Fascinating NYT story about the financial difficulties facing Media Matters. The Times reports that it “has racked up about $15 million in legal fees over the past 20 months to defend itself against lawsuits by Elon Musk, in addition to investigations by Mr. Trump’s Federal Trade Commission and Republican state attorneys general.” The story also reports on the group’s tension with its lawyers:
In early February, frustrated by what some at Media Matters saw as the high cost and slow pace of their lawyers at the influential Democratic firm Elias Law Group, the advocacy group began transitioning the X cases to different law firms. An Elias lawyer notified the group that it owed roughly $4 million.
“We understand this case has been and remains very difficult for everyone involved, as was Musk’s intention when he brought it,” Ezra Reese, the chair of Elias’s political law group, wrote in an email to Mr. Carusone and Media Matters’s lead fund-raiser, Mary Pat Bonner.
Mr. Reese offered to wipe away about half of the unpaid tally in exchange for payment of $2.25 million within about a week. If the group did not commit to the payment plan, Mr. Reese wrote, his firm would expect full payment of the original amount and would “go pens down and take steps to withdraw from the case by the end of the month.”
The ultimatum did not sit well inside Media Matters.
“You must be kidding!!” Ms. Bonner responded to Mr. Reese. “This is how you treat people who have been clients for 16 years and are friends?”
In a statement to The New York Times, Mr. Reese defended his firm’s work, noting that it helped with matters including the effort to shut down the state attorneys general investigations. “These victories,” he predicted, would help Media Matters and other organizations “stand up to politically-motivated investigations and lawsuits brought by the right wing.”
“Fired prosecutor who handled Capitol riot cases sues government”
A prosecutor who handled some of the most high-profile cases against Jan. 6, 2021 rioters is suing the government over his dismissal last month, arguing that the decision was politically motivated.
Former assistant U.S. attorney Michael Gordon is one of dozens of federal prosecutors the Justice Department has fired since President Donald Trump returned to office, despite such measures generally only being used in cases of misconduct, as The Washington Post reported last month.
On Thursday, Gordon and two other former DOJ employees — Patricia A. Hartman, who was a public affairs specialist in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, and Joseph W. Tirrell, who led the department’s ethics office — filed a lawsuit Thursday over their terminations, which they said disregarded “long-standing statutory and regulatory protections that govern how and when members of the civil service can be terminated, and the limits thereof.”
Texas Redistricting Hearing
NYT and Texas Tribune report on yesterday’s hearing in Austin before a select committee of the Texas house on redrawing the state’s congressional districts. From the Texas Tribune story:
The Legislature has not yet revealed any proposed revisions of the existing map, which was drawn in 2021 and has since reliably yielded 25 seats for Republicans, and 13 for Democrats. Rep. Cody Vasut, the Angleton Republican chairing the House redistricting committee, said the information gathered at the hearings will shape whether and how the maps are redrawn. . . .
But many at the hearing, including Democratic lawmakers, condemned the hearings as a sham, saying the map has likely already been drawn by Trump’s political team.
More hearings are scheduled for Saturday in Houston and next Tuesday in the Dallas area, according to the NYT, which also reports that Texas Democrats are conferring with the Democratic governors of California and Illinois.
More on Miami Election Postponement Decision
CBS and ABC report on Monday’s decision by a state trial court judge, that Miami commissioners lacked authority to postpone this year’s elections until 2026. The ABC story notes that the ruling provided declaratory relief, but Michael Morley opines that “if push comes to shove, the court can just enter injunctive relief.” The city is appealing.
Toobin: “The Line Trump Crossed by Accusing Obama of Treason”
Jeffrey Toobin in NYT on President Trump’s assertion that former President Obama engaged in “treason” in connection with the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election:
President Trump’s history of intemperate remarks has earned him a perverse kind of immunity; the more outrageous his statement, the faster it is often dismissed. But Mr. Trump doesn’t deserve this bloviator’s privilege. He’s not just the president, but, more to the point, he’s the overseer of an unusually compliant Justice Department, and his offhand condemnation of his predecessor is as significant as it is chilling. . . .
The absurdity of this investigation is underlined, too, by the fact that Mr. Obama is almost certainly immune from prosecution — thanks to Mr. Trump and the Supreme Court. In its decision last year in Trump v. United States, the court held that there was a presumption that former presidents could not be prosecuted for any “official” conduct during their time in office. The preparation and dissemination of intelligence findings are certainly official functions of the presidency, and accordingly, they would be off limits as the bases for any criminal charges.
But pointing this out seems almost unfair to Mr. Obama; it suggests that he would escape prosecution only because of the lamentable technicality established by the Supreme Court in the Trump case. The more important reason is simpler: Mr. Obama committed no crime.
“Texas plan to redraw maps could protect GOP House majority”
After the 2020 Census, Texas Republicans drew lines to protect incumbents instead of maximizing their chances of gaining more seats. In establishing new lines this year, they could give themselves opportunities in several districts. Under the current maps, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional districts. . . .
Democrats warn that Republicans could lose some of the seats they hold now by moving voters to new districts, particularly if 2026 stirs up a wave of voter opposition to Trump. But the risk for Texas Republicans appears low. Republicans could draw a map for the state that gives them 30 House seats that Trump won by 15 or more percentage points last year, [Cook Political Report’s Dave] Wasserman said. That’s a margin that would protect Republicans even in tough years. . . .
Trump’s Justice Department in a letter this month alleged Texas lawmakers violated the Constitution by considering race when they drew four of the current districts. The letter threatened new litigation, putting pressure on the state to draw new maps. Democrats called the letter from Harmeet K. Dhillon, the head of Justice’s civil rights division, a ruse because Texas officials have testified under oath that they did not take race into account when they developed their maps.
“Justice Kagan Urges Supreme Court to Explain Itself in Emergency Decisions”
NYT:
Justice Elena Kagan said Thursday that the Supreme Court was shortchanging the public and lower court judges by failing to explain its reasoning in rulings on cases that come before the court on an emergency basis, including challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the federal government.
“I think as we have done more and more on this emergency docket, there becomes a real responsibility that I think we didn’t recognize when we first started down this road, to explain things better,” Justice Kagan said. “I think that we should hold ourselves, sort of on both sides, to a standard of explaining why we’re doing what we’re doing.” . . .
Her comments came during an appearance in Monterey at an annual meeting of federal judges and lawyers from the Ninth Circuit. . . .
“I think we should be cautious about acting on the emergency docket,” Justice Kagan said. “Sometimes we have to, but I think we should be cautious.”
Decisions on that docket, known by critics as the shadow docket, are typically not fully briefed and argued before the court. Often, emergency docket decisions do not provide any description of the court’s reasoning, leaving lower court judges to decipher the meaning.
Politico has more on Justice Kagan’s remarks, including her thoughts on judicial independence and defiance of federal court orders.
“DeSantis floats mid-decade redistricting for Florida congressional seats”
Politico: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, fresh off a win at the state Supreme Court over a congressional map he pushed through three years ago, said Thursday the state should consider overhauling its districts between censuses. The GOP governor claimed Florida’s map is currently ‘malapportioned’ due to its population surge and that there’s ‘ample justification’ for a mid-decade redistricting effort.”