What is happening with your town or city election? We have a 3 person race for Mayor in my small city and I am seriously considering voting for the independent. The Dem won't a tight race over the guy I voted for. I only voted for the guy as a co-worker personally knew him and last minute research showed a decent policy. The winning Dem, I didn't like cause he has been a lawyer in this city for over 20 years and saw the city decline but now he wants to be Mayor? I am not voting for the Republican just cause I don't like his slogan and he looks like a jerkface but I have to look at his platform. So this is why I have to look at the independent. I have to look at his platform but that is where I stand.
Well in Chicago the teachers are on strike, I am sure it is to fight against those Republican politicians that have been in charge of running the city for the past what 100 years? Oh wait....
We're having a 7 to 9 way race for mayor to replace a guy who was marched out of office by the feds on corruption charges. As to the exact number . . . That depends on the court. Oh, I almost forgot: there is a write-in campaign promising "integrity and accountability" by a guy with felony convictions.
I was looking up any statewide ballot measures to see if I needed to update the California Leads the Way thread, but we don't have any this November. However, I did find this local measure from down in Southern California right near where I grew up: https://ballotpedia.org/Rancho_Palo...ons_for_Hospitality_Employees_(November_2019) This is in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, which is a very expensive suburb - a bunch of multi-million dollar mansions on hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island. This measure is to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr, but only for large hospitality companies (defined as more than 50 employees, where "employee" is defined very liberally, anyone who works five or more hours per week, so companies that employ a lot of part-timers will still be affected). The thing is, RPV doesn't have a big tourism sector - it's mostly big ass mansions - but there are two large hospitality employers that will be affected by this measure. This place, where my nephew worked for a few years while he was finishing his degree, and these mother********ers right here. I'm pretty sure this measure was aimed directly at that second place. You'll have to click the link (or I guess hover over it) to see what it is.
CPS teachers' salaries are pretty high relative to those of other big-city districts. I'm a big supporter of teachers, having been raised by two of them, but even a progressive might engage in some back-and-forth with the teachers union.
One thing that I saw that I may be onboard with the teachers is more nursing staff in schools. I would have to educate my self more on the demand, but at first thought, it looks to me like a good demand to have full time nurses at all schools (I guess a detail could be that school has to be above X amount of students to have a full time nurse).
My local ballot will have three elections, all with Democrats running uncontested. Obviously the wider battle for control of the Virginia legislature is a big deal though.
All the reason you need. Conclusive research tells us that 100% of bad politicians hawking bad policy do, in fact, "look like jerkfaces". Ted Cruz? Jerkface. Dick Cheney? Jerkface. Mitch McConnell? Jerkface. Donald Trump? Definite resting jerkface. Bulletproof reasoning.
Scratch that, some crazy people are running write-in campaigns: https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...5af780-f4f0-11e9-a285-882a8e386a96_story.html
Thank God we don't have anything at the local level until 2020. The past few years, we've had a huge mayor race, tons of ballot initatives, an airport privatization debacle. Claire losing to Hawley. Also a reformer prosecutor triumph who unfortunately has been a complete disaster. The worst was an attempt by a libertarian to de-charter the city, absorb it into the county, strip us of roughly 40% of our funding (via elimination of the earnings tax) and set up a corporate structure with oversight of the former city's functions. Our mayor would go away and the county exec (who we didn't vote for and who ultimately found himself in jail) would have been our representation. We need a break. The biggest local thing next year is my Congressman (Lacy Clay) getting challenged by Cori Bush again.
Here locally, we just changed our form of city government from a mayor/council to a council/city manager, due mostly to the unproven accusation that our current, outgoing mayor has been involved in some shenanigans. Shenanigans like allowing the parks & rec administrator to embezzle around $250K over a few years from the cash collected by the swimming pools for guest access and concession stands. Basically, the mayor didn't want to put the oversight in place to stop it from happening and then fought council when they wanted forensic accountants to go over all cash accounts in his tenure. Oh, and the current council is trying to push a few changes to the way they are allowed to do business, basically they want the ability to change zoning on an emergency basis without public input/warning/meetings. We have quite a bit of farmland to our west that is inside the city limits that developers want. All politics are corrupt. All.
Whatever the local races are, a Democrat will win. Over the past 20 years, the Chicago suburbs have switched from being a Republican bastion to being predominantly Democratic. There remain a few holdouts, but not in my immediate area. And certainly not with Trump being the current face of the GOP. Running as a Republican is a thankless job with Trump at the top of the ticket.
Big elections tomorrow in Virginia. I fully expect the Democrats to regain control of both chambers of the Legislature in the Commonwealth.
Not local to me, but you know that socialist city councilwoman in Seattle that wants to kill tech firms in her City. Well it looks like Amazon will fight back with more than a million worth of free speech. Amazon is trying to buy Seattle’s city council election, and this socialist council member is fighting back pic.twitter.com/YmIU2zvlF0— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) November 5, 2019
Democrats may have flipped the Senate in Va. Hopefully the House will be next... PROJECTION: Democrats pick up the Virginia State Senate from the Republicans. ✔20 DEMS (+2), 13 GOP, 7 to count.#VirginiaVotes #VirginiaElections— Cicada News (@cicada_news) November 6, 2019
Big F**** Deal. Andy Beshear (D) appears to have defeated Matt Bevin ® the incumbent Governor in Kentucky. Mitch the Turtle may feel uneasy tonight. Dave Wasserman called it. I've seen enough. Projection: Andy Beshear (D) has defeated Gov. Matt Bevin (R) in #KYGOV.— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 6, 2019
Great story.... Juli Briskman, the woman from Virginia who was fired for telling @realDonaldTrump he’s #1 just won an election to her county Board of Supervisors pic.twitter.com/OBi7vBm3Mg— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) November 6, 2019
Super excited for Virginia. The Commonwealth has truly become a Blue State now. The Democrats have flipped both the House & Senate in the Va Legislature. All the statewide elected officials are democrats as well. Way too go neighbors! Va still sucks though.....
Hard to say what that really means for Mitch. Bevin is so incredibly despised and douchy by even KY GOP voters. Bigger news to me: Dems appear to have taken both chambers of the VA leg. So the momentum from the last state leg election continues. That this continues to build suggests to me that Mandarin Mussolini is in trouble in NC.
I know we’re not supposed to tweet dump in non tweet threads...but this....so much this.... I miss the days when I didn’t feel emotionally invested in an off-year Kentucky governor’s race.— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) November 6, 2019
The VA result also likely means the Dems net a couple of House seats in 2022. I can foresee a truly nightmarish scenario for our democracy. Let’s say the Dems have a good 2020 in state legislatures, and gerrymander as effectively as the GOPs did in 2011. What if the House consistently has 100 more Dems than GOPs...while the Senate hangs around 50-50 and retains the filibuster. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising for next year to give us 51 GOP senators (representing a clear minority of Americans) who won’t confirm any of President Warren’s picks for anything, and the House to be 240-195. It would be a different kind of constitutional crisis.