Back to business

Nov 28, 2022 | 8:00 pm ET

By Kate Queram

The nutcracker caucus remained a group of one. (Photo by Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

The midterms are officially over (unless you’re in Georgia. Sorry, Georgia). I’d like to think we all had a good time*, but now we’ve got to get back to our regularly scheduled programming. It’s state government, baby, and it’s back with a vengeance.

*no need to email me if not!

The Big Takeaway

It’s hard to cover state government even when you’re focusing on a single state government, because state government is weird. And each one is uniquely weird. Did you know that Wisconsin’s legislative index has a section about cheese? Did you know that the North Carolina General Assembly has a Tomato Sandwich Day? (Did you know that people eat tomato sandwiches?) Nationwide, legislatures can’t even agree on a set number of chambers (thanks, Nebraska). Collectively, there is nothing uniform about state government. I need you to understand this point so that you will understand my next point, which is that I cannot possibly keep tabs on all of the state legislatures. It is impossible. There are too many of them, and they are all too weird.

I am blathering on about this because I was all set to frame today’s newsletter as a preview of all of the state legislative sessions that are surely getting underway, right up until I learned that there are no regular state legislative sessions getting underway. Most don’t start until January, which leaves us with a handful of perpetual legislative sessions, and none of them are in the states I want to talk about. Government, am I right?

Luckily, it’s my newsletter and I can (mostly) do what I want, so I’m going to talk about state government anyway! Let’s start with Oregon, where the legislature will convene in January with a record-high 17 members of color, up four from last year, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.

It’s progress, but it’s incremental and uneven. For example, the state will now have five Vietnamese-American legislators, the largest group in the nation; a milestone that coincides with a dip in Black and Latino representation. And the legislature is still disproportionately white — 81% of lawmakers (and every single Republican) are non-Hispanic white people, compared to 74% of the state’s population — and male (59% of lawmakers, versus 49.9% of residents).

The persistent diversity gap is yet another symptom of the rampant racial inequities inherent to American society. Here’s one example of what I mean: Government service doesn’t pay particularly well — in Oregon, lawmakers make $57,000 every other year — which makes it unrealistic for large swaths of the population. That’s particularly true for people of color, who historically make far less money than white people, often while doing the same work. The wage gap is particularly glaring for Latinas, who are paid 46% less than white men and 26% less than white women. You can see this easily in the statistics, but you can also hear about it firsthand in Hispanic communities throughout Oregon, lawmakers said.

“Folks said, ‘Hey, I can’t leave, I can’t leave the position that I’m in where I’m making money to sustain my family, to go take this job in the legislature, as much as I would like to run and represent my community,’” said Wlnsvey Campos, soon to be the youngest state senator in Oregon history. “There’s a lot of work to be done there.”

Incoming: Gen Z. (Photo by Bennett Leckrone/Maryland Matters)

Maryland’s General Assembly will skew slightly younger when it reconvenes in January with a freshman class that includes the state’s first Gen Z lawmakers. Joe Vogel, 25, and Jeffrie Long Jr., 26, both Democrats, said they ran for office to help their communities, per Maryland Matters.

“We live in a community and a state where a lot of people are doing really well, but a lot of people are being left behind,” said Vogel, a political activist from Rockville who ran for office at the urging of state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat who represents the same district. His priorities for the upcoming session include education, mental health and addressing hate crimes, policy areas he said are influenced by his experiences as a gay, Jewish and Latino man.

Long, who will represent portions of Prince George’s and Calvert counties, ran unopposed in the general election after defeating incumbent Del. Rachel Jones in the Democratic primary. The race, he said, represented an opportunity for a young person of color with “zeal, passion and tenacity” to serve in the legislature.

Before the election, Long worked for a handful of state lawmakers, including two — then-state Del. Michael Jackson, now a senator, and late Senate President Mike Miller — who represented his new district. As a result, he’s familiar with the state’s legislative process; experience he hopes to leverage in pursuit of bills related to infrastructure, schools and equity.

“I recognize I don’t just go in for myself, but the 40,000 people in my constituency that I will represent in my constituency,” Long said. “To be able to carry that banner, and to carry it proudly, is a very surreal feeling.”

Other legislative digests: Idaho legislators to select caucus leadership teams and committee chairs … Indiana lawmakers, teacher unions outline education priorities for 2023 legislative session … Kansas education policy reform in upcoming legislative session likely to mirror 2022 bills … Missouri state budget is bulging with $6 billion in surplus cash … Dem control of New Mexico House goes unchanged, but redistricting process may not … (Ohio) LaRose wants to make it harder for voters to amend constitution but evidence of a problem is lacking

State of Our Democracy

I could not, in the end, get through a newsletter without at least one midterm update (go ahead and cross off the “predictable” square on your bingo card)! This one’s out of Colorado, where U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert narrowly clinched a second term, besting Democrat Adam Frisch by less than 600 votes in a conservative district she’d previously won by six percentage points. This, according to experts, has little to do with Frisch and everything to do with voters being tired of Boebert, a far-right MAGA Republican who has spent most of her two years in office courting — or, more accurately, creating — exhausting controversies.

A partial list (because even digital newsletters have their space constraints): She interrupted President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address; repeatedly alleged that U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat and a Muslim, is a terrorist; protested a policy banning guns in congressional hearing rooms, and bought into a host of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, which somehow got around to casting doubt on her own 2020 election victory. (Weird!)

Basically: If MAGA is a kingdom, Boebert is its queen, which did her no favors in an election year where most voters were eager to abolish the monarchy altogether. And even her loyal-ish constituents had an easy alternative in Frisch, a centrist Democrat who leans conservative on fiscal policy and publicly objected to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, experts told Colorado Newsline.

Going out of his way to shake his opponent’s hand! MAGA would never. (Photo by William Woody for Colorado Newsline)

“My take is that a lot of people who voted for Frisch were voting against Boebert rather than voting for [him],” said Ryan Strickler, an assistant professor at Colorado State University Pueblo. “That means Frisch did a decent job putting himself in the center and painting himself as a moderate. I think that gave some voters who are weakly Republican a permission structure to vote for him.”

The election could serve as a 2024 blueprint for Democrats, who were stunned that Frisch pulled off an almost-win in a seemingly uncompetitive district with little help from national groups. On paper, the lack of support makes sense — Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District hasn’t elected a Democrat since 2008, and the latest round of redistricting pulled it farther to the right. But party officials hinted that the district could get more attention in 2024.

“In this election, the voters of Colorado’s 3rd District put MAGA Republicans on notice: extremism, hate and division isn’t welcome in Colorado,” a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Candidate Committee said via email. “While we narrowly came up short this time, voters will have their say again in two years.”

From the Newsrooms

One Last Thing

Researchers believe the brain uses calculus principles to control fast movements, which seems to explain why I am ungraceful and also bad at math. Science!