In this edition
Arkansas Voters First had a mission in 2020: It would get nonpartisan redistricting on the November ballot. It studied the rules, which required 89,000 valid signatures be submitted to the state by July 3. In early March, at a cost of around $200,000, Arkansas Voters First put paid staff into the field, with a clear message and a tight deadline. The first day they could collect signatures: March 16.
“We were just getting out into the field,” said Arkansas Voters First spokesman George Shelton, “and it became clear that CDC guidelines were going to make it impossible.”
Organizers quickly realized that collecting signatures would be impossible, as stay-at-home orders clamped down and voters shut their doors. Arkansas Voters First hit the 100-signature mark, saw no chance of success and sued. The plaintiffs were three voters who wouldn't be able to sign their petitions and who argued that if the ballot measure was stopped, it would “freeze the political status quo” without finding out whether voters wanted to change it.
As the coronavirus pandemic has shut down most economic activity, keeping many elected officials at home, candidates and issue campaigners are trying to lower ballot access requirements. In some states, they've succeeded. In others, they've already given up, punting on their ballot initiative campaigns and opting to try later.
All of it is highlighting the vast and seemingly random discrepancies in how states determine what voters see on their ballots. Much of it is colored by partisan politics, whether the fear that third-party candidates could peel voters away from a major party or that some ballot measures could skew November turnout. But the campaigners who have gotten used to fighting for every inch of ballot access hit their limits.
“Asking people to go door to door under these conditions is unconscionable,” said Michael O'Neil, a spokesman for the Green Party, which is challenging signature requirements in several states.
The pandemic may have uneven effects on ballot access across the country, depending on what states had in place and when judges hear petitioners' cases. In much of the country, the Green and Libertarian parties easily or automatically make the ballot every cycle. In 2016, the Greens made 44 state ballots, plus the District of Columbia's. So far, they've made the District and just 22 other states. (Making a ballot in a state one year is not a guarantee of future access, and states that require signatures often tie the required number to total votes cast.)
The path for third-party ballot access has always been rocky, and it was getting rockier before the pandemic. The Greens point to Georgia, Nevada and Tennessee as three of the most problematic states; in the latter two, the turnout surge of 2018 raised the number of signatures required for any ballot access, as it's based on a percentage of all votes cast in the last election.
“We've got six weeks left, and the chance of getting the signatures we need in Nevada is basically zero,” said Brendan Phillips, who runs the Green Party ballot access effort.
Signature requirements have tripped up even major-party candidates before, and even without the pressure of a global health crisis. But the pandemic has added a new level of complication. In New York, an incumbent Democratic legislator fumbled her ballot petition by forgetting to attach a cover sheet. Under normal circumstances, she could have filed as an independent candidate for the safely blue district. That would require sending out volunteers to get signatures, which stay-at-home orders had rendered impossible, a Catch-22 already in effect in other states. (Petitioning requirements vary from state to state, too, with some accepting petitions mailed by voters to signature-gatherers.)
“There were days when it was both required by law and prohibited by law for people to collect signatures in Illinois,” said Oliver Hall, the founder of the Center for Competitive Democracy, who has been advising politicians on ballot access issues.
In some states, when petitioners have asked for relief, they've gotten it. In more states, they've sued, and have won. The Libertarian Party's lawsuit in Illinois delivered most of what activists wanted: lowering the signature requirement by 90 percent, pushing the deadline from June 22 to Aug. 7, and allowing e-signatures on petitions, something that ballot access lawyers note is allowed for many other legal documents.
But Illinois, which has not voted for a Republican for president since 1988, is not among the states Democrats and Republicans are expected to contest in November. The pressure is higher in states with close races, and it always has been, with the two major parties tending to view Greens and Libertarians as spoilers. That played out in Montana two years ago, when Republicans helped a Green Party candidate access the ballot, and Democrats successfully sued to get him off.
In Michigan, where some Democrats blame 2016 Green Party voters for throwing the state's electoral votes to Donald Trump, a similar fight is playing out in a House race. Eric Esshaki, a Republican running in the 11th Congressional District, filed for a temporary injunction over the state's 1,000-signature requirement. The stay-at-home orders, he argued, prevented the kind of signature-gathering campaign that the law envisioned.
Esshaki won, and the deadline was extended. But state Attorney General Dana Nessel appealed that decision, pointing out that Esshaki had been able to file more than 1,300 signatures “despite his representations and arguments to the court to the contrary.” In an interview, Esshaki said he'd set an original goal of 2,000 signatures, because hundreds of voter names are often struck when opponents challenge the petitions.
“I think the attorney general's targeting me because I won in court,” said Esshaki. “This is about the Constitution, but it's also about all the other candidates and voters, and what works for them.”
Lawsuits against burdensome signature requirements can work, as Nessel herself knows: In 2018, an independent candidate for her job fought his way onto the ballot by suing to get the signature requirement lowered. Each of those lawsuits drains time and energy from the candidates. And even if they succeed, it might not solve the separate problems faced by ballot measure campaigns.
Those activists have been tripping over the hurdles. Already, an effort to legalize marijuana in North Dakota has been postponed, as has an effort to fund more public transportation in San Francisco with a wealth tax. An effort to decriminalize some psychedelic drugs in Washington is looking dicey; so is a socialist-led campaign in Seattle to tax major corporations, with a focus on Amazon. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the owner of The Washington Post.) New Approach Montana, a campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in the state, has sued to delay the signature deadline.
In Arkansas, the pandemic may smother something activists had a once-in-a-decade shot to do: transfer the state's redistricting process from legislators to an independent commission. “We're on a deadline,” Shelton said. “If this doesn't make the ballot, legislators get to draw their own maps and we don't get a chance to change that until 2030.”
Reading list
How a candidate who literally can't campaign has built a small lead.
The effort to strike a would-be veep off the list with warnings about voter enthusiasm.
“Republican leaders want Congress back at work, defying public health advice,” by Mike DeBonis and Paul Kane
The reopen debate on the Hill.
To hawkfish, or not to hawkfish?
On the trail
The “reopen” movement is coming up on its two-week birthday, and after protests in a number of state capitols, we have polling that tests its theory: that Americans want to lift stay-at-home orders and let most people back to work.
So far, the answer is no, and the protests themselves aren't very popular. In the new CBS News poll, just 23 percent of Americans support the protests demanding a reopened economy, while 62 percent oppose them. The skepticism cuts across every demographic and political group, and by a three-point margin, even most Republicans oppose the protests.
Opposition to the president's tentative embrace of the protests is even higher, with Americans saying he should discourage them, not encourage them, by a 48-point margin. Again, the opinion cuts across party lines; Democrats want Trump to discourage protests by a 71-point margin, while Republicans prefer it by a 23-point margin. A majority of Republicans told the pollsters they'd prefer the president say nothing.
Other polls, which have tested public support for the most contentious state stay-at-home measures, have found similar results, with governors who signed off on tough restrictions still supported by clear majorities of their voters.
(A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida put approval of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was criticized for taking a long time to issue stay-at-home orders, above 50 percent; strong, but notably lower than other swing-state governors.)
But the biggest tell, in terms of whether these protests have been changing minds, came at Wednesday's White House briefing. Less than a week after he cryptically tweeted about “liberating” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia — he was apparently watching a Fox News segment about Minnesota protests, which used the “liberate” framing — the president said that he had told Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that he “disagree[d] strongly with his decision to open up certain facilities which are in violation” of the national “phase one” guidelines.
“I love those people that use all of those things; the spas, the beauty parlors, the barbershops, tattoo parlors,” Trump said, naming some of the businesses whose restrictions are set to be lifted tomorrow in Georgia. “I love them, but they can wait a little bit longer, just a little bit, not much, because safety has to predominate. We have to have that. So I told the governor very simply that I disagree with his decision, but he has to do what he thinks is right.”
As The Trailer noted Sunday, Trump's reluctance to defend his “liberate” tweets was a clue that the president was nervous about the politics. He had been slow to embrace the tea party protests of 2009 and 2010, but those protests were always more popular than “reopen” protests have been so far. By October 2009, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found more Americans viewing the tea party favorably than unfavorably by 17 points. That was not just well ahead of popularity for Congress, but as the newspaper pointed out, it was higher than support for either major political party.
The two movements had plenty in common, from the speedy grass-roots organizing on Facebook to the support provided by conservative donors, nationally and locally. The demands, obviously, were worlds apart: Tea party protesters were tapping into anxiety about a collapsing economy, while “reopen” protests were tapping into a much shallower well — frustration with stay-at-home orders that could end soon anyway.
The tea party also benefited from the collapse of the Republican brand in 2008. The movement's first rallies, in February 2009, were largely promoted by conservative radio hosts; the second wave, in April, was promoted by Fox News and sometimes gave guest speaking slots to its hosts, such as Glenn Beck. When the movement invited higher-profile Republicans to speak, in September, it tended to be conservative outsiders who were not associated with the George W. Bush years, such as Minnesota's Michele Bachmann. Its iconography had nothing to do with Republicans; protesters rediscovered the Gadsden flag and redesigned the old revolutionary flag.
The “reopen” protests took a very different tack. Trump campaign iconography, from red caps to altered American flags, has been everywhere in the events outside of state capitols. The images from rallies made them look like, at least in part, rallies in support of the president and against governors. That, so far, has polarized the message, tying it to a president who is unpopular in many of the states where the rallies have been held. And that approach isn't changing. On Thursday, while some state Republicans urged against protesters gathering outside Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's official residence, at least a dozen protesters went ahead, bringing a gigantic “Trump” display with them.
Ad watch
Christy Smith for Congress, “Kamala.” The junior senator from California ran for president last year with high hopes and big buzz, and many key endorsements from her home state. Kamala Harris's campaign faltered, and she pulled out before the deadline to appear on the California ballot. But she built a following with plugged-in Democrats and stars in a digital video for Smith, the candidate in next month's special congressional election, which is more about the power of the vote than about Smith herself.
Poll watch
Michigan (Fox News, 801 registered voters)
Joe Biden: 49%
Donald Trump: 41%
Biden/Whitmer: 49%
Trump/Pence: 43%
For the second time in a week, a poll of Michigan has found voters more comfortable with their Democratic governor's response to the pandemic than with the president's. By a 32-point margin, voters approve of Whitmer's handling of the crisis; by a five-point margin, voter disapprove of Trump's. Yet while Whitmer is personally popular, suggesting her as a running mate for Biden pulls some undecided voters off the sidelines and gets them behind Trump.
Pennsylvania (Fox News, 803 registered voters)
Joe Biden: 50%
Donald Trump: 42%
The second Fox poll this week found Biden with just as big a lead in this key swing state as his lead in Michigan. Both polls also point to a trend: With the primary behind him, Biden has consolidated Democrats and enjoys positive favorable ratings, while the president's ratings remain underwater. Here, Biden has a nine-point net positive rating, while the president is in negative territory, also by nine points. It's a huge advantage for the Democrat, especially compared to the last general election in Pennsylvania; the state's 2016 exit poll found a 15-point negative rating for Clinton and a 14-point negative rating for Trump.
Which party will you support in New Jersey's congressional elections? (Monmouth, 635 registered voters)
Democrats: 50%
Republicans: 38%
When is a 12-point lead not good for a party? When it's a decline from a far larger lead in the 2018 midterms, which went as well for New Jersey Democrats as any election ever has. While the party enjoys a similar lead to its 2018 lead in safe seats, it's now in a 45-to-46 statistical tie with Republicans in the swing seats. One of those seats already went red after Rep. Jeff Van Drew switched parties, and the others range from strongly Democratic (Rep. Mikie Sherrill's seat in the New York exurbs) to close with strong recruits (Rep. Tom Malinowski's largely rural seat.)
Candidate tracker
PresidentTrump has not left the White House in weeks, but he commemorated Earth Day with a tree planting on the White House grounds. His campaign has continued hosting nightly broadcasts for supporters and spent Wednesday on an episode attacking “Beijing Biden,” after its co-stars discussed pandemic response. “This issue of China is going to be critical as we head toward November,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. Meanwhile, his campaign updated the app available to supporters, creating a point system by which volunteers could get a meeting with the president.
Joe Biden, hunkered down in Delaware, held an Earth Day call with Al Gore; Republicans highlighted an exchange in which the Nobel Prize winner complimented India's effort to ban gas-burning car engines and phase in renewable technology. He also hosted his second podcast with a female Democrat who's facing speculation that she could become his running mate — Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Wait, what?
Last week, the Trump campaign celebrated a coup: an endorsement from a black Georgia Democrat serving in the state legislature. But on Wednesday, state Rep. Vernon Jones announced that he would leave his seat before the end of his term. And on Thursday, he retracted that.
“Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation,” Jones said in a statement officially announcing his resignation. “Someone else can occupy that suite.”
Twenty-four hours later, Jones tweeted that “the outpour of support I was received was too great for me to ignore” and that he would not resign after all. And previously, Jones told an Atlanta radio station that he would remain a member of the Democratic Party as he campaigned for Trump.
Democrats were unhappy with Jones long before this. The resignation seemed like an acknowledgment of reality: Jones had made a high-profile Trump endorsement just weeks before he would face a credible primary challenge. Jones, who had voted with state Republicans on some immigration measures, was a low-profile target for the party's left. The Trump endorsement made him famous, sending Democrats racing to endorse his primary challenger. And the high-profile un-resignation kept an otherwise-obscure legislator, the kind who easily wins lower-turnout primaries, in voters' minds.
Countdown
… five days until Ohio tries to finish its primary
… 19 days until the special elections in Wisconsin's 7th District and California's 25th District
… 116 days until the Democratic National Convention
… 123 days until the Republican National Convention
… 193 days until the general election
