Violent Threats Against Elected Officials

Many posts have discussed political violence..

 Nick Corasaniti at NYT:

An investigation by The New York Times examining hundreds of records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents and law enforcement logs has found that, over a two-year period from 2024 to August of this year, thousands of violent threats inundated the lives of elected officials in unprecedented ways.

Some threats were vague; some were frighteningly specific. They promised torture, stabbing, rape and murder. They aimed at Republicans and Democrats alike, and at a range of officeholders from county clerks to United States senators. They targeted spouses, parents, siblings and children.

At least 44 governors, as well as their staff and families, have been subjected to violent threats over the past two years, The Times’s investigation found. That’s also true of at least 70 of the nation’s 100 senators, and at least 185 members of the House of Representatives — nearly half the body. More than half of the country’s secretaries of state, most of whom serve as their states’ chief election officers, have received threats of violence.

Social Media Influencers in the CA Governor Race

Many posts have discussed social media. 

An unusually large number of social media posts support billionaire CA gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer.  Ben Wieder at LAT:

The posts include direct-to-the-camera appeals, with personal details interwoven into messages of support for Steyer. An influencer goes for a stroll as onscreen text touts Steyer’s policies. Some seek to convey authenticity, if occasionally ham-fistedly; one influencer mispronounces Steyer’s last name.

What they do not include is a disclosure that their creators were paid by the Steyer campaign to produce the videos, according to a complaint filed this week with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission and a Times review of the posts.

The complaint alleges that the Steyer campaign failed to notify the influencers it hired of their obligation to inform their audience when their posts have been sponsored by the campaign.

California passed a law in 2023 requiring that influencers disclose if they have been paid to create promotional content for or against a candidate or ballot measure, one of the few jurisdictions in the country with such a requirement. There is no such requirement at the federal level.

...

Steyer’s campaign appears to have relied on paid influencers more than any candidate for governor, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.

That spending represents only a small fraction of the massive campaign war chest Steyer has seeded with nearly $180 million of his own money. But the complaint highlights the growing degree to which political candidates have come to seek out the authenticity that social media influencers seem to offer.

...

While many of the new Steyer influencers have few followers, Steyer’s campaign disclosed in its most recent campaign finance report that it had paid thousands of dollars to numerous social media influencers with massive audiences, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Several of the videos produced by these popular social media personalities also failed to disclose that they had been paid by the campaign, according to the complaint and The Times’ review of the content.

But even accounts with few followers can still have a big impact if they are producing a steady stream of content supporting Steyer, said veteran California political strategist Mike Madrid.

“What they’re trying to do is trip the algorithm,” he said. “It looks like it has a bigger audience than it really does. It’s taking the concept of astroturfing into the digital age.”

Clemency and Video

Many posts have discussed executive clemency.

Matt Nadel and Jan Kobal at NYT:

Using lights, a camera and a tried-and-true narrative formula, Matt Nadel produces short films about incarcerated people in New York. His goal? To persuade the governor, Kathy Hochul, to grant his clients clemency.

Thanks to the tough-on-crime zeitgeist that began in the 1980s, governors have often come to view clemency as a political liability rather than an opportunity to give people second chances. Grants of clemency in New York, for example, have plummeted as a result. Filmmakers like Mr. Nadel — hired by lawyers — have become a last resort.

“It feels like I’m trying to hack a broken system,” he says.

But as Mr. Nadel argues in the Opinion Video above, it shouldn’t require such an elaborate production to get people out of prison.

Article II and State Constitutions

Many posts have discussed the presidency.

At AEI: 

Reading the First State Constitutions on Executive Power: A Window into Article II Joseph M. Bessette, Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor (Emeritus) of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College Joseph.Bessette@claremontmckenna.edu & Gary J. Schmitt, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Gschmitt@aei.org

 Turning next to the opening words of Article II—“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”—the question arises whether those words were meant to grant substantive power or were merely meant to designate the office of the chief executive. First, as our review of the state constitutions showed, the executive vesting clause was not an invention crafted by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Virtually every state constitution included a general grant of executive authority, with the constitutions of three states—South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York—offering clear textual antecedents to the vesting formula found in Article II. In each of the three, there is evidence that the executive vesting provision was read, or assumed to be, a substantive grant of power. When that fact is combined with the most obvious reading of the text itself,78 it seems reasonable to conclude that the opening line of Article II was intended to give the president an actual power. And the fact that the power vested is “the executive power” implies that it was a power that was understood to have a distinct and discernable character.

Also worth noting is how Article II of the U.S. Constitution mirrors much of the structure of the New York constitution. As in the case of New York, Article II’s first section 57 vests the executive power and also spells out how the chief executive is selected. Then, in the following section in both constitutions, the executive is given a set of powers, such as being commander-in-chief and having the authority to grant pardons. And finally, Article II, sec. 3 of the Constitution, echoing Article XIX of the New York Constitution, states: 

[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The section appears as a mix of authorities—some significant, others less so; one seemingly discretionary, the others not (“shall”). What appears to tie them together is that each has in some way a role in keeping the government moving forward. This is both broad, such as in putting forward ideas for legislative consideration and ensuring the nation’s laws are properly administered, and, more mundanely, in formally accepting the credentials of foreign emissaries and ensuring civilian and military officials are properly authorized to carry out their duties. Given this list of responsibilities, it was perhaps one reason the nation’s chief executive was designated as “President,” presiding not over another branch of government or even a single chamber of the legislature but, rather, acting as a steward for government functions most aptly suited to the institution of the presidency. 

Finally, with the exception of Pennsylvania’s constitution, the U.S. Constitution is the only constitution in the founding period in which the executive is given both a list of 58 duties and an oath of office. And, with the exception of Georgia’s constitution, the Constitution is the only American governing charter of the period that had an oath specifically tailored for the chief executive. (“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”) It’s an oath that points toward the president’s official responsibilities being broader than being a mere executive—with the duty to faithfully execute the laws being just one of several responsibilities listed in Section 3 of Article II—while, at the same time, circumscribing their execution to supporting the political order itself. 

Veto-Proof Majorities

Many posts have discussed state legislatures.

Ballotpedia:

State governors may veto bills advanced by the state legislature. With sufficient support—between one-half and two-thirds of sitting legislators, depending on the state—state legislatures may overturn a gubernatorial veto. When one party controls enough seats to overturn a veto without any support from the other party, a legislature can be said to hold a veto-proof majority. These are most important when the governor belongs to the opposite party as the veto-proof legislature.

Heading into the 2024 elections, there were four states with a governor of one party and a veto-proof state legislative majority of the opposing party: Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Vermont. All four states held elections in both legislative chambers in 2024, meaning their veto-proof supermajority status was at stake.

There were two states—Nevada and Wisconsin—that could have switched to having a veto-proof majority and an opposing party governor as a result of the 2024 elections. They were considered potential supermajorities. Click here to learn more about potential supermajorities.

As of Nov. 7, two of the four states that had a veto-proof legislative majority and governor of the opposing party heading into the 2024 elections — Kansas and Kentucky — maintained that status after the elections. Vermont lost that status as a result of the 2024 elections, with Democrats falling below the threshold for supermajority control in both chambers.[1] Axios Raleigh also reported that North Carolina Republicans lost their veto-proof supermajority as a result of a key Democratic pickup in the House.[2]

Wisconsin did not become a veto-proof supermajority as a result of the 2024 elections. As of Nov. 7, Nevada's supermajority status was uncalled.

Total Recall

At NYT,  Soumya Karlamangla writes about Governor Gavin Newsom's victory in the CA recall.  She notes that GOP registration has plunged since Schwarzenegger's 2003 election.

Plus, over the past 18 years, party lines have hardened. In 2003, Democrats were more willing to criticize the governor from their party, while Schwarzenegger had cross-aisle appeal as a moderate Republican, and also a movie star.

“Arnold was to many Dems a perfectly acceptable alternative,” said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

This year, however, Republicans failed to coalesce around a candidate who could appeal beyond the far right, as my colleague Jeremy W. Peters reports.

Kevin Faulconer, the centrist Republican candidate on the ballot, garnered little support throughout the campaign, though he resembles the kind of moderate Republicans who have succeeded here in the past.

Meanwhile, Larry Elder, a far right conservative radio host, quickly became the most popular candidate for recall supporters. But, as demonstrated by Tuesday’s results, Elder’s appeal with Republicans didn’t translate to Democrats, who overwhelmingly voted to keep Newsom in office.

There are no obvious answers as to what the future of the Republican Party will be in California. But Newsom is up for re-election in 2022, (yes, actually) so whatever tack the party chooses may become clear soon enough.

Interstate Cooperation Is Hard

At Politico, Anna Gronewold reports that coronavirus has prompted the creation of regional alliances of state governments, but they are finding it hard to coordinate the reopening of economies and government services.

Executive staff from the offices of multiple governors told POLITICO that they are in daily text, email and phone communication with their counterparts, an unheard-of arrangement during normal times. And the seven Northeast states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware — announced Sunday that they would purchase medical supplies collectively to avoid competing with each other in the global marketplace.

That collaborative spirit, however, has been hard to conjure in other aspects of the regional restart.

“The problem we have with the regional compact is, if everyone's going to make their own decision, what’s the compact?” said New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, in an interview. “From a distance, it doesn’t look like there is [a compact].”
...
Informal agreements among states happen all the time, said Bridget Fahey, a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Cary Law School who researches federalism. The high visibility of the recent binge of alliance-building is perhaps more telling than their actual content, she said. That doesn’t mean they don’t serve a useful purpose — for example, they can be effective in persuading residents that their individual governor isn’t the only one making controversial public health decisions.

But they have also served as a messaging mechanism, because states can rarely enter into a binding agreement without federal approval, said Yoo, the former Bush official.
“If they actually required states to do something, they would be an unconstitutional compact,” he said. “They always have more of a symbolic aspect to them.”

And there might even be another bit of symbolism at work as well, or so Yoo suggested.
“I don’t think the symbolism was pressuring the federal government,” he said. “It was more like giving the middle finger to the federal government.”

Governors and Public Health

David French at The Dispatch:

It’s vitally important to understand that while the federal government possesses far more resources than any state, the president has less inherent authority to respond to pandemics than governors. The federal government is a government of enumerated powers—it has only the powers granted it by the Constitution. Therefore, for the president or Congress to act they have to locate the source of their authority within a specific provision of the Constitution.

The states, by contrast, possess a general police power—an inherent authority that is then limited by both the state and federal Constitution. A governor or state legislature can often act without a specific grant of power. The power to act is presumed, absent a specific limitation.

In 1824, the Supreme Court observed in Gibbons v. Ogden that sovereign state authority includes the authority to enact “quarantine laws” and “health laws of every description.” Think of it like this: Just as the president and the federal government act at the peak of their powers when national security is threatened, America’s governors are often at the peak of their power when public health is at stake.

Thus, as AEI’s Jay Cost noted in an excellent Twitter thread on police power vs. enumerated power, a governor backed by a state legislature has “the sovereign power to make you go home if you are a menace to ‘public health.’”

Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

Since the coronavirus began spreading, the governors have taken a lead role in issuing strict guidelines and stern warnings, asserting themselves in ways that only highlighted the initial inaction and lack of seriousness from the White House.

...
Nick Everhart, an Ohio-based Republican strategist, went even further, predicting that the severity of the virus would prompt “a shift from the political-outsider candidate era — where public service, having been in office and branded a career politician was a liability — to an era where that competence and experience of understanding how to manage government is seen as a plus and important litmus for handling the next crisis.”

The durability of partisanship in American history, even in times of crisis, and deep mistrust of institutions may test such an assessment. Most voters may return to their usual habits after the virus has been contained.

But for now, the country is turning to governors, some of them little known on the national scene, for reassurance and leadership in a fashion that sharply breaks from the Washington-centric lens through which government has been viewed in a period of national and celebrity-oriented politics.

Some governors have been slow on the uptake.

Paul LeBlanc at CNN:

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who faced swift backlash since tweeting a photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant Saturday, declared a state of emergency on Sunday as the state announced its eighth case of coronavirus.

In the now-deleted tweet, Stitt said, "Eating with my kids and all my fellow Oklahomans at the @CollectiveOKC. It's packed tonight!"

His post runs counter to the warnings of public health officials who are encouraging the public to stay home and practice social distancing as a way to contain the spread of the virus. As of Sunday, there was more than 3,000 cases of the novel coronavirus in the US, according to government agencies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Brad McElhinny at WV Metro News:

Gov. Jim Justice announced on Tuesday evening that West Virginia has its first confirmed case, which he said was identified in the state’s Eastern Panhandle.
...
Justice also announced, as other governors have, an order shutting inside service for restaurants, bars and casinos starting at midnight. He said delivery and takeout would remain available.
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Just yesterday, when other governors were shutting down restaurants, Justice said some aspects of life could remain normal. “Go to the grocery stores. For crying out loud, go to the grocery stores. If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.”

Justice has been urging West Virginians to practice “social distancing” — scrubbing hands, coughing into sleeves, staying a few feet apart.

Constitutional Hardball

In 2004, Mark Tushnet wrote an important article titled "Constitutional Hardball."

For the past several years I have been noticing a phenomenon that seems to me new in my lifetime as a scholar of constitutional law. I call the phenomenon constitutional hardball. This Essay develops the idea that there is such a practice, that there is a sense in which it is new, and that its emergence (or re-emergence) is interesting because it signals that political actors understand that they are in a position to put in place a new set of deep institutional arrangements of a sort I call a constitutional order. A shorthand sketch of constitutional hardball is this: it consists of political claims and practices-legislative and executive initiatives-that are without much question within the bounds of existing constitutional doctrine and practice but that are nonetheless in some tension with existing pre-constitutional understandings.  It is hardball because its practitioners see themselves as playing for keeps in a special kind of way; they believe the stakes of the political controversy their actions provoke are quite high, and that their defeat and their opponents' victory would be a serious, perhaps permanent setback to the political positions they hold. 

Matt Glassman writes:

But the way hardball took over in regard to the Senate rules should give us some pause about its application at the Constitutional level. One of the key lessons of watching the Senate escalate the war over the filibuster is that the hardball tactics, once employed, are hard to stop and really hard to reverse. Taking those tactics out of the Senate and using them to fundamentally alter another branch of the government seems patently dangerous, in the existential sense, for the separation of powers system. Would the Supreme Court even exist in any independent sense if unified majorities simply recreated a Court they preferred?

On a more grand scale, court-packing is one of the key moves of autocrats throughout the world, most recently in Honduras, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. Whatever short-term benefit one might gain from a court-packing scheme, the long-term impact would undoubtedly be to fundamentally weaken the Court, which would only serve to empower either a president or a party that sought to consolidate power more generally.

I have long experience thinking about constitutional hardball because I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the statehood process, which is perhaps the weakest board in the Constitutional flooring for anyone seeking to play hardball (see below). The main relevant lesson I learned from studying statehood is that the flexibility of our Constitutional design is usually a source of its enduring strength, but in the wrong moments can become a profound weakness.

 Todd Richmond at AP:  

Wisconsin Republicans released sweeping lame-duck legislation Friday that would move the 2020 presidential primary, restrict early voting and weaken both Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul and Gov.-elect Tony Evers.

The GOP aims to hold a hearing on the bills Monday and take floor votes on Tuesday, giving current Gov. Scott Walker a chance to reshape state government again before he leaves office in January.

"Wisconsin law, written by the legislature and signed into law by a governor, should not be erased by the potential political maneuvering of the executive branch," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a joint statement. "The legislature is the most representative branch in government and we will not stop being a strong voice for our constituents."

The package is loaded with contentious proposals, chief among them a plan to shift the 2020 presidential primary from the first Tuesday in April to the second Tuesday in March.

Republicans have acknowledged the shift is a purely political tactic as conservative state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a Walker appointee, will be on the April ballot and the GOP fears a Democratic wave could cost him his job. They've said decoupling Kelly's race from the primary could help him.

Rob Christensen at The News & Observer:

Shortly before [Democrat Roy] Cooper took office, the GOP leaders called a special legislative session which slashed the governor’s appointments from 1500 to 300; required legislative confirmation of the governor’s Cabinet; and took away the governor’s power to appoint trustees to the campuses of the University of North Carolina system.

It turns out, the GOP lawmakers were just getting warmed up.

Now the legislature wants voters in November to pass two constitutional amendments that would further weaken the governor. One amendment would put the election machinery in the hands of the legislature by giving lawmakers control over who serves on the election board. Another would give the legislature a major role in filling judicial vacancies, increasing their power over the courts, which have been routinely ruling the legislature’s power grabs as illegal.

The five living former governors – three Democrats and two Republicans – have called for the amendments’ defeat. The state’s six former N.C. Supreme Court justices – four Democrats and two Republicans – are also urging voters to reject them.

Violent Campaign Video

The most elitist threat I've ever heard: "I'm going to stomp all over your face with golf spikes." https://t.co/PgiXx4hPoP

— Chris Young (@ByChrisYoung) October 12, 2018

Governors and Health Care Reform

Today, a bipartisan group of governors issued this statement in the wake of Trumpcare's collapse:

Congress should work to make health insurance more affordable by controlling costs and stabilizing the market, and we are pleased to see a growing number of senators stand up for this approach. The Senate should immediately reject efforts to ‘repeal’ the current system and replace sometime later. This could leave millions of Americans without coverage. The best next step is for both parties to come together and do what we can all agree on: fix our unstable insurance markets. Going forward, it is critically important that governors are brought to the table to provide input, and we stand ready to work with lawmakers in an open, bipartisan way to provide better insurance for all Americans.

The list of the eleven governors who joined this statement is below.

• Bill Walker, Governor of Alaska
• John W. Hickenlooper, Governor of Colorado
• John Bel Edwards. Governor of Louisiana
• Larry Hogan, Governor of Maryland
• Charles D. Baker, Governor of Massachusetts
• Steve Bullock, Governor of Montana
• Brian Sandoval, Governor of Nevada
• John R. Kasich, Governor of Ohio
• Tom Wolf, Governor of Pennsylvania
• Phil Scott, Governor of Vermont
• Terry McAuliffe, Governor of Virginia

Kasich writes:

The best next step is for members of both parties to ignore the fear of criticism that can come from reaching across the aisle and put pencil to pad on these and other ideas that repair health care in real, sustainable ways. America needs it, and I know that a bipartisan group of governors, including myself, stands ready to help in any way we can to provide an affordable, sustainable and responsible system of health care for the American people.

Not Learning About the Election

Pew reports:

About one-in-ten Americans (9%) did not learn about this year’s presidential election in a given week from any of 11 types of sources asked about in a January Pew Research Center survey. One striking trait of this group is their lack of faith in the impact of voting.

Half of this group thinks that their vote doesn’t really affect how the government runs things, notably higher than the 36% of those who learned about the election from at least one type of source.

This group shows other signs of being less engaged in government affairs: Only 37% of them follow government and public affairs at least some of the time, compared with 82% of Americans who got news and information about the election.

And, while 87% of those who learned about the election follow news in general at least sometimes, this is true of only 55% who did not learn about the election. Additionally, about half (54%) of those who did not learn about the election say that all news media are pretty much the same, compared with a quarter of those who learned about the election.

American adults ages 18 to 29 are more likely than any other age group to have not learned about the election. In total, 17% of them did not learn from any type of source, nearly double that of the next highest age group (though the vast majority of younger adults – 83% – did learn about the election). This corresponds to earlier research showing that younger adults tend to be more politically unengaged.

GOP Dominance in the States

Chris Cillizza writes at The Washington Post:

The 2015 election is over. (You may not have known it was even happening.) And it proved one thing: Republicans have an absolute stranglehold on governorships and state legislatures all across the country.

Consider:

* With Matt Bevin's win in Kentucky on Tuesday night, Republicans now hold 32 of the nation's governorships — 64 percent of all the governors mansions in the country. (One race, in Louisiana, won't be decided until next month. Democrats believe they have a good chance of winning that race against now-Sen. David Vitter.)

* Democrats' failure to take over the Virginia state Senate means that Republicans still hold total control of 30 of the country's 50 state legislatures (60 percent) and have total or split control of 38 of the 50 (76 percent.)

That dominance — and what it means to the policy and political calculations and prospects for both parties at the national level — is the single most overlooked and underappreciated story line of President Obama's time in office. Since 2009, Republicans have made massive and unprecedented gains at the state level, gains that played a central role in, among other things, handing control of the U.S. House back to the GOP in the 2010 election.

State Legislative Elections

GOP gains at the state level were striking, as Mark Thiessen writes at The Washington Post:

While President Obama has downplayed Tuesday’s Senate results, arguing that Democrats were fighting on GOP ground, Republicans also picked up governorships from Democrats in liberal strongholds like Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois, as well as in Arkansas. Result? The number of GOP governors has risen from 21 to 31 since Obama took office (32 if Gov. Sean Parnell holds on in Alaska) — just short of the all-time high of 34 Republican governors in the 1920s.

Voters have also given those governors Republican legislatures to enact their agendas. When Obama first took office, Republicans held just 3,220 state legislative seats. After Tuesday’s vote, the number stands at 4,111 — a net gain of nearly 900 seats on Obama’s watch. Thanks to the 291 state legislative seats Republicans added in 61 chambers across the country last week, there are now more Republican state legislators than at any time since 1920.

Put another way: In 2008, the GOP controlled just 36 state legislative chambers. It soon will control 69 — and voters have given the GOP total control of state government in nearly half the country. In 2008, Republicans held both the legislature and governors’ mansion in just eight states. Today, the number is 24. By contrast, Democrats now control both the legislature and governor’s office in just seven states, down from 15before the 2014 election. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, that is the lowest number of states Democrats have controlled since 1860.

Interest Groups and the Republican Governors Association

Jonathan Weisman reports at The New York Times:

In politics, it is sometimes better to be lucky than good. Republicans and Democrats, and groups sympathetic to both, spend millions on sophisticated technology to gain an advantage.

They do it to exploit vulnerabilities and to make their own information secure. But sometimes a simple coding mistake can lay bare documents and data that were supposed to be concealed from the prying eyes of the public.

Such an error by the Republican Governors Association recently resulted in the disclosure of exactly the kind of information that political committees given tax-exempt status normally keep secret, namely their corporate donors and the size of their checks. That set off something of an online search war between the association and a Washington watchdog group that spilled other documents, Democratic and Republican, into the open.

The documents, many of which the Republican officials have since removed from their website, showed that an A-to-Z of America’s most prominent companies, from Aetna to Walmart, had poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of Republican governors since 2008. One document listed 17 corporate “members” of the governors association’s secretive 501(c)(4), the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, which is allowed to shield its supporters from the public.

Documents here. 

Congress, Veterans, and the VA

The Daily Beast reports:

Add Albuquerque, New Mexico’s to the growing list of VA hospitals accused of keeping secret waiting lists to hide delays for veterans seeking medical care. And it may already be too late to get to the truth and find out what harm, if any, was done to veterans there—VA officials are already destroying records to cover their tracks, a whistleblower inside the hospital tells The Daily Beast.

Last month, word broke that the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix kept a secret waiting list that allegedly led to dozens of preventable deaths. The VA’s inspector general was brought in to investigate the charges and hasn’t yet found any deaths in Phoenix linked to wait times, but his investigation is ongoing. Since then five other facilities have come under fire, leading to calls for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to step down. And now there’s Albuquerque’s. The evidence for this new secret list may be hard to track down, however.

If more veterans were serving in Congress, perhaps some of them might have caught wind of the scandal sooner.  But the ranks of military veterans are dwindling on Capitol Hill and the nation as a whole.  Two graphs from Pew tell the tale:

 

The Comeback Kids

As Reid Wilson reported in The Washington Post a few months ago, lots of governors have been touting their states' "comebacks."  See the list below, which is not exhaustive. In most cases, they are claiming credit for these comebacks.  But they are pursuing different, if not contrary, policies (e.g., tax increases in California, tax cuts in Ohio).  So maybe something else is at work. During the Great Recession, constitutional balanced-budget requirements and the demands of the bond market forced states to cut way back. Now a modest national economic recovery is reducing unemployment and easing fiscal pressure.  Perhaps the governors' policies have no more responsibility for these "comebacks" than a rooster has for the sunrise.

• Sean Parnell (Alaska): ""With these polices in hand, the Great Alaska Comeback is underway."
• Jan Brewer (Arizona):  "Today, I am proud of the progress we've made in the past 5 years to bring about the Arizona Comeback."
• Jerry Brown (California): "It occurred to me that these critics – who have long recited our state’s decline – perhaps have nothing to say in the face of California’s comeback – except, “please, don’t report it.” Well, I’m going to report it, and what a comeback it is: A million new jobs since 2010, a budgetary surplus in the billions and a minimum wage rising to $10 an hour!"
• Pat Quinn (Illinois): "Illinois is making a comeback."
• Terry Branstad (Iowa): "Four years ago, I saw the future of our state getting bleaker. I love this state. I was sick of the direction we were going. I knew we could do better and four years ago, I came back to lead the Iowa comeback. And we’ve done it."
• Deval Patrick (Massachusetts): "Because we are making more of the things we invent in the commonwealth, manufacturing is making a comeback."
• Rick Snyder (Michigan): "Michigan is the comeback state."
• Jay Nixon (Missouri): "Today, Missouri’s automotive comeback continues to make headlines."
• Brian Sandoval (Nevada): "While our efforts to grow and diversify the State’s economy remains one of our biggest priorities, these results give me great confidence as we work together to continue Nevada's comeback."
• Chris Christie (New Jersey): "Today, I am proud to report that the New Jersey Comeback has begun."
• Andrew Cuomo (New York): "We had to reverse decades of decline in economic communities all across the state, especially upstate New York, and we had to start a New York comeback."
• Pat McCrory (North Carolina):  "This collaborative, problem-solving, focused leadership transformed Charlotte from a regional hub into a leading national metropolitan center. This focus on pragmatic problem-solving is now fueling North Carolina’s comeback to prosperity as well."
• John Kasich (Ohio): "I’m proud of the tax cuts because I think it’s another installment in Ohio’s comeback."
• Mary Fallin (Oklahoma): "We’re in the middle of what I call an Oklahoma comeback."
• Tom Corbett (Pennsylvania): "So, right up front, let’s give credit for Pennsylvania’s comeback where it belongs, to the people of Pennsylvania."
• Peter Shumlin (Vermont): "Our downtowns are on the comeback as vibrant centers for jobs, retail, and residential life, from Brattleboro to Barre, Newport to St. Albans and Rutland. Visitors from around the globe continue to come to Vermont to ski and hike our mountains, stay at our inns and resorts, and enjoy our state’s beautiful outdoors."

Governors and Credit-Claiming

At The New York Times, Timothy Egan says that California is doing well.

It’s unfair to give all credit for the Golden State revival to Jerry Brown. But the man, who will be 76 next month and was both the youngest and oldest governor of California, and who just announced a plan to run for a fourth term with an approval rating approaching 60 percent, deserves the lion’s share.

This article overlooks some important things.  By one measure, California has the highest poverty rate in the United States.  By another, it has one of the highest levels of inequality. The roads are bad and the schools are mediocre.  As the governor has acknowledged, unfunded liabilities are a big threat, and some cities have already gone bankrupt.

True, the state did not have a budget crisis last year.  But if Brown deserves the "lion's share" of credit, why are so many other states -- pursuing very different policies -- doing just as well?

Jerry Brown, Chris Christie and many of their fellow governors across the country are taking credit for the effects of a national economic recovery.

A few years ago, the effects of the Great Recession were causing huge fiscal problems for the states.  Demands for spending were up and revenues were down.

After several years of growth (albeit modest), the money iscoming into state coffers and the fiscal pressures are not as great. 

In California, Brown sees an improved fiscal situation and says his policies are responsible.  In Wisconsin, Scott Walker sees an improved fiscal situation and says his policies are responsible – even though his agenda is different from Brown’s.  (See his book Unintimidated.)  Ditto Chris Christie in New Jersey, Rick Snyder in Michigan, and Andrew Cuomo in New York.  Some states are in trouble (e.g., Illinois), but most governors of both parties are in good shape. 

Of course, if there is a downturn, these same governors will morph from heroes to goats, even though they aren’t any more responsible for recessions than for recoveries.

Recalls

Previous posts have discussed recall elections. CBS reports that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker beat back an effort to recall him from office, defeating challenger Tom Barrett (as he did in 2010). 

Walker is the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election. Gov. Gray Davis of California was recalled in 2003, and in 1921, North Dakota's Governor Lynn Frazier of was ousted due to a recall.

The heated recall race began amid the controversy created when Walker released a state budget proposal that included limiting the collective bargaining rights for public union workers. In response, large demonstrations protesting Walker's plan took place at the state capital building which eventually led to a recall effort. Voters who turned out for this election narrowly supported Walker's handling of the collective bargaining issue: 52 percent approved, and 47 percent disapproved.

Voters were similarly divided when asked about the state law that limited the collective bargaining rights of government workers: 52 percent approved, and 47 percent disapproved.

As expected, those voters who approved of Walker's policies voted overwhelmingly or the governor. Opponents of his policies backed Barrett, the Democrat.

Wisconsin voters were also split in their views of unions for government workers. According to exit polls, 51 percent said they viewed these unions favorably; slightly fewer - 45 percent - held unfavorable opinions.
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Wisconsin voters had strong opinions on the merit of recall elections. Sixty percent told exit pollsters that recall elections are only appropriate when there has been official misconduct, and another 10 percent think such elections are never appropriate. Just 27 percent of Wisconsin voters supported holding recall elections for any reason.

PACs and Patriotic Symbolism

As our chapter on civic culture makes clear, Americans have an attachment to patriotic symbols. At the Center for Responsive Politics, Tarini Parti explains the impact on electoral politics:

PAC PATRIOTISM ON THE RISE: More than 230 years after the U.S. gained independence from the British, buzzwords popular during the Revolution are making a comeback in politics.

Words such as, "Freedom," "Liberty," "Prosperity," "Patriot" and "Constitution" are now being used frequently in the titles of political action committees, the Center for Responsive Politics research indicates.

The number of PACs including the word “freedom” in their title, for example, has more than tripled over the last decade. Similarly, just 16 PACs had "liberty" in their names in 2000; the most current count is 37.

Some PACs, such as the Liberty and Freedom Foundation Ten in 10 PAC, are even doubling up on using those American ideals in their names for an extra sense of patriotism.

Much of the proliferation can be pinned to a very particular political wave: the surge of the Tea Party.

The loose movement known as the Tea Party has sprung several PACs in the last several years, and have shown a real affinity for using some of these pro-democracy monikers. Though it only spent around $10,000 during the 2010 election cycle, Liberty First PAC made waves early in 2010 as one of the first Tea Party-related committees to officially file with the Federal Election Commission. Patriots Fund, a super PAC that registered later during the 2010 election cycle, had a bigger impact: It spent around $42,000 on political advertising in support of Republican candidates during the election.

Left-leaning causes have their shown their own love for similar words, however.

Indeed, there's only one (key) word separating the Patriots Fund PAC with former-Sen. Russ Feingold's leadership PAC, the Progressive Patriots Fund, to name one example.

And liberty lovers on the left need look no further than Patriot Majority, a left-leaning super PAC that sprung up to help Democratic candidates fight off the wave of conservative election spending during the 2010 cycle. It spent about $2.85 million on political advertising, much of it -- nearly $2 million -- on the highly-contested Nevada U.S. Senate race between Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle.