Lost in the discussion of Blagojevich’s sins is another fact: the end of Blago marked the end of the Illinois Democratic Party’s effective competition downstate. Looking at the trends from 1998 to 2006 shows a clear shift and a fascinating look at the rapid decline in the state’s ancestrally Democratic strongholds.
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Steve Troxler’s narrow win in North Carolina’s 2004 Agriculture Commissioner race was the most controversial election in the state.
Despite their control of the Governor’s office, Democrats don’t actually have full control of North Carolina’s executive branch. How did this happen, how did the votes play out, and how did Republicans take the council while losing the gubernatorial race?
Despite holding the relatively obscure office of the Commissioner of Labor, Cherie Berry has become one of the most well-known and beloved politicians in North Carolina history. With a funny name and omnipresence in state elevators, no politician in modern North Carolina history has seen such an unusual cult following.
Democrats feel confident that Republican Kris Kobach facing the Democratic front runner, State Senator Barbara Bollier, would lead to a competitive race in Kansas, but unfortunately for Democrats this is likely not the reality. Kobach is weaker than other Republicans, but there is no reason to believe that he is weak enough to lose a seat the GOP has held since 1932.
A competent Secretary of State is worth their weight in gold. The ones that do their job well can outlast…
Last month, a federal court issued a temporary injunction against North Carolina’s new voter ID law, which was passed in…
Although it is much harder to create a Democratic gerrymander than a Republican one, it’s not impossible – and this one would elect, at minimum, 9 Democrats in a 14-member map.
Local elections are typically dull, uninteresting affairs. For offices with minimal power, between candidates with little in the way of campaign infrastructure, very few voters usually pay attention to municipal races and often the elections end in uninteresting, low turnout landslides. Outside of New York and occasionally Chicago, elections for mayor are hardly noticed by the national media, and until recently, elections for district attorney were even less talked about. But in 2003, San Francisco was different. When the results were in, the city’s voters changed the course of modern American politics without even realizing it.
Despite the recent redraw of North Carolina’s congressional maps, the state remains gerrymandered to a degree and the maps will again have to be redrawn in a few years. Using the 2016 Voting District lines from Dave’s Redistricting App, I’ve drawn a map that could be used as a baseline for the 2022 redraw.