Leaders who will tackle polluters could be the driving force to set the state up to win in the global energy transition.
For Texan voters, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a primary Democratic Senate candidate who was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wrote an op-ed reminding Texans that the Railroad Commissioner election is important if you care about the climate crisis. The Democratic candidate for the Railroad Commissioner is Chrysta Castañeda, whose platform is taking flaring more seriously than the anti-regulation incumbent.
If you care about climate change, look down ballot. Keep going after you make your pick for president and the Senate. Down in the statewide races, cloaked by a misleading name, is a critical choice. Don’t miss it. Texas voters have a power other Americans don’t.
Oil and gas drillers ask for permission to waste Texas’ natural resources by venting natural gas straight into the atmosphere or flaring it (burning it off) and the Railroad Commission routinely approves them without even so much as a hearing. One commissioner can require a hearing and require producers to prove the necessity of flaring a greenhouse gas (methane) that is 86 times more potent than CO2. Another seat on the three member commission will be up in 2022. Electing candidates to these seats that take seriously their role to regulate oil and gas could have far reaching implications. Advocates that care deeply about climate change could move our state — long synonymous with oil and gas — into a clean energy future that will better position the state to succeed long term.
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Check out the nonpartisan Vote411 which directly sources the profile and campaign pages from the candidates when elections are close.
However, sometimes Vote 411 misses some local candidates and races. So you’ll have to check out your County Election office and ask for a sample ballot and then Google your potential choices from there.
More good news from #Maine tonight.... Swipe to see... #byesusancollins #byebitchbye #voteblue #bluemaine #democraticsenate #downballot (at Maine) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9TjaJWAiFU/?igshid=t4anfcar0swm
Two cities approved taxes to fund climate plans and another voted for 100% renewable electricity.
In Long Beach, California, and in Denver, Colorado, voters approved taxes to put climate plans into place. The Long Beach ballot measure boosts an existing tax on local oil production by 15 cents per barrel. It will provide $1.6 million per year to fund community youth programs and a climate change action and adaptation plan. Denver voters decided to raise the local sales tax by a quarter of a percent, raising $40 million per year for programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (including public transit).
Meanwhile, the city of Columbus, Ohio, voted for a measure that will put it on the path to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2023. And Nevada voters also put their stamp of approval on a clean electricity plan that will force the state to get half its power from renewable sources by 2030.
While eyes are on the presidency, there’s an under-the-radar power grab in North Carolina
Twitter Thread
The new GOP state supreme court Chief Justice Newby has fired top court administrative officials including executive directors and general counsel. Described as "unprecedented and unparalleled" power grab to remake NC courts.
I should add: Getting Newby on the NC Supreme Court has long been a priority of the same RSLC forces that helped create the gerrymanders in NC this last decade. Here are just some of the never before seen internal documents from his 2012 race.
All eyes are on the presidential matters, but watch how power plays out in the states. If you watch the documentary Slay the Dragon, you’ll know that sweeping downballot seats and exploiting voters’ ignorance about gerrymandering and downballot power was a GOP tactic to gain control and block progress. Recall that last year North Carolina courts were crucial in redrawing the gerrymandered maps when SCOTUS upheld gerrymandering on the federal level, but GOP domination in the courts can reinstall it.
So long after Donald Trump is out of office, pay attention to state court politics.
Phone banks, social media, and friend-to-friend campaigning are the new focus ahead of this year’s U.S. elections.
Once it became clear that Sanders was not going to win the nomination, Strauss and a few fellow activists began to dedicate their efforts to starting a new initiative called the Down Ballot Disruption Project. The program, held entirely over Zoom, aims to teach young people how to canvass for candidates in their local elections and how to build a community around their activism, especially on social media.
Voters in Galveston County voting Precinct 334 in Hitchcock received a mail ballot that did not include the contested elections for Sheriff, 56th District Judge, and 405th District Judge. Although all county-wide offices in Galveston County are currently held by Republicans, the 334th precinct is heavily Democratic; according to county records, 104 voters in the precinct cast a vote in the July, 2020 Democratic primary runoff, while only 5 voted in the Republican primary runoff.
A sample ballot for Precinct 334 downloaded from the Galveston County Clerk’s website also showed the incorrect listing of candidates. A sample ballot for neighboring Precinct 336 has the accurate listing of candidates.
A reminder that checking your county office sample ballots can help you spot these errors and missing downballot races.
See Vote411 for nonpartisan voter guides in your area.
Addressing fears that Democrats will bring Cuban-style communism to the United States is a constant part of campaigning in her hometown. In Hialeah, a working-class city of about 230,000 that borders Miami, she estimated that 1 in 5 independent voters she talks to brings it up. It was something Collazo never heard when knocking on doors there as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. It also wasn’t a major issue in 2016, when Hillary Clinton nearly won Hialeah and carried District 110, the seat Collazo is running for, by 7 points.
Yet in 2018, District 110 swung 17 points to the right after Florida Republicans made socialism a central issue in the midterms and prioritized outreach to Latinos. Only one other Miami-Dade County state house district, which also covers parts of Hialeah, moved further toward Republicans. Going into 2020, it was clear that Democrats had a major problem with Cuban voters, particularly among the more working-class recent immigrants that it once counted on to counterbalance the conservatism of older exiles.
Instead of dealing with the problem, many South Florida Democrats told me, the party let it fester. Fernand Amandi, who helped shape Hispanic outreach for Obama’s reelection campaign as president of the consulting firm Bendixen & Amandi, said Florida Republicans have been running an almost permanent campaign since nearly losing the Cuban vote in 2012. “We’ve seen firsthand that Democrats have abandoned the battlefield when it comes to the constant, one-on-one engagement necessary to define the Democratic brand with Cuban voters,” Amandi, who is Cuban American, explained. State Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Colombian immigrant who represents a mostly Cuban district in Miami-Dade County, said it’s “almost like the Trump people have stolen the Obama playbook, which is be present, be visual, be constant.”