INSIDE POLITICS: State & Local With Alan Greenblatt
Your biweekly analysis of political news and the people who run for office.
Members of the Maryland General Assembly's Women's Caucus. The caucus currently has 78 members out of 188 total members in the General Assembly. (TNS)
The New Faces of State Legislatures: For a bill to become law in Colorado, it’s going to need support from women. Colorado is now the second state, following Nevada in 2018, to have a majority of its legislative seats won by women. “For the first time in state history, Colorado celebrates a legislature with a majority of women lawmakers, including the most diverse, female-led House leadership team to date,” said incoming state House Speaker Julie McCluskie. “I couldn’t be more proud to lead a caucus that reflects the state we all love.”
Women made a strong showing in legislative contests across the country. They made up nearly a quarter of the total number of lawmakers following the 2008 elections and then remained stuck at that level for the next decade. Finally, in 2018, their share rose to 28 percent. It’s ticked up steadily ever since. Thanks to further gains this year, women will make up just under a third of the nation’s legislators – 2,386 all told, or 32.3 percent of the total. That’s five times the number of women who served back in the 1970s... READ MORE.
(Shutterstock)
Polarization Is a Renewable Resource: By now, it’s not exactly news that American politics is highly polarized. It’s becoming difficult to remember a time of greater bipartisan cooperation, even for us old fogies. A pair of new studies show just how far polarization has gone.
Boris Shor of the University of Houston and Nolan McCarty of Princeton University have come up with polarization measures for legislative behavior that are widely used by other scholars. They update their own findings in a new paper looking at the past couple of decades.
Long story short: Polarization continues to get worse... READ MORE.
District Attorney Larry Krasner (TNS)
Krasner’s Complaint: Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is arguably the most prominent among the nation’s so-called progressive prosecutors. As such, he’s been a handy target for conservatives looking to blame someone for the city’s high murder rate. But now attacking Krasner is a legal matter, as well as a political one.
Last month, the Pennsylvania House voted to impeach Krasner. Actually removing him from office, however, would require a Senate trial. Krasner filed a lawsuit last Friday, arguing that the clock has run out on his impeachment, since the legislative session in which he was impeached has ended... READ MORE.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis created a police force earlier this year dedicated to election fraud. (TNS)
Annals of Election Denial: Election denialism is still a thing, but its appeal appears to be waning on the right. The Cochise County, Ariz., board of supervisors voted to certify election results last week, after being ordered to do so by a court. In Luzerne County, Pa., the board of elections also voted to certify results last week in the face of a lawsuit, after failing to meet the state deadline.
There had been no credible allegations of fraud in either county. The failure to certify results in Cochise County threatened to cost Republicans a seat in Congress. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – certified this week as the winner of the governor’s race – is calling for two of the county supervisors to be investigated by prosecutors.
Voter fraud remains a problem more widely discussed than actualized... READ MORE.