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RandySF's JournalSen. Bernie Sanders endorses 2 California ballot measures, including rent control expansion
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who remains popular in California after winning the state’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary, on Wednesday announced he is throwing his support behind two ballot measures related to rent control and restrictions on oil drilling.
“Landlords should not be allowed to raise rents to whatever they want, whenever they want. Big Oil should not be allowed to make record profits while drilling near neighborhoods, daycare centers, and schools and endangering people’s health. In California and across the country, all of our people deserve a safe and decent place to live,” Sanders said.
The longtime Vermont politician’s endorsements come after he stayed on the sideline in the recent U.S. Senate primary that featured three prominent Democrats, including Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee, a close ideological compatriot. Rep. Adam B. Schiff topped the field of Democrats and in November will face off against Republican former Dodger all-star Steve Garvey.
The housing ballot measure comes from a coalition of housing advocates led by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The measure will ask voters to repeal a major restriction on rent control, in effect allowing more cities and counties across the state to cap rents on more types of homes....
Sanders is also backing a measure to ban new oil drilling in neighborhoods. California passed a law in 2022 banning new oil and gas wells near homes, schools and hospitals, but its implementation has been delayed after the oil industry placed a referendum on the November ballot to overturn it.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-15/sen-bernie-sanders-endorses-two-statewide-ballot-measures
VA: This county undercounted 4,000 Biden votes in 2020. Now the head of elections is looking to win back trust
Eric Olsen thought his job was going to kill him.
He had been the head of elections in Prince William county, Virginia, for almost a year when he unexpectedly announced during an electoral board meeting in October 2022 that he’d be resigning soon. He was dealing with a serious heart condition and worried about the impact of the “debilitating stress” of his new job.
“I am resigning after this election,” Olsen told the board in the wealthy Washington DC suburb. “Because if this is how the general registrars are treated when they are trying to do the right thing, then by God, what happens when something goes wrong?”
He added: “If I’m dead next year, I won’t be a very good registrar anyway.”
Olsen had been a particular target of the local Republican party and election activists because of an alarming error he discovered shortly after taking the job in November 2021: the county had misreported its election results, which he later learned resulted in a roughly 4,000-vote undercount for Joe Biden in 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/virginia-eric-olsen-election-offices-voter-trust
Brandon Scott wins Democratic nomination in Baltimore mayoral race, Sheila Dixon not conceding
BALTIMORE – Brandon Scott won the Democratic primary nomination for Baltimore mayor in a rematch against former mayor Sheila Dixon, the Associated Press called Tuesday night.
Scott, the incumbent, and his challenger Sheila Dixon addressed the crowd with about 14,000 mail-in ballots still to be counted, which won't be until Thursday.
As of late Tuesday night, Scott held a 5,000 vote lead over Dixon with over 70% of precincts reporting when the AP called the race.
"There may be some votes to be counted, but it is safe to say, we are destined for a second term," Scott said. "Baltimore, you said very clearly that your democracy is not for sale no matter how rich they are. you have confirmed once again that the naysayers that underestimate our city will never understand what truly makes Baltimore great."
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/baltimore-city-mayor-brandon-scott-confident-his-supporters-will-show-up-on-election-day/
McConnell opposes bill to ban use of deceptive AI to influence elections
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Wednesday he will oppose bipartisan legislation coming out of the Senate Rules Committee that would ban the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create deceptive content about federal candidates to influence elections.
McConnell, a longtime opponent of campaign finance restrictions, warned that the bills coming out of the Rules Committee “would tamper” with what he called the “well-developed legal regime” for taking down false ads and “create new definitions that could reach well beyond deepfakes.”
He argued that if his colleagues on the Rules panel viewed a dozen political ads, they “would differ on which ones were intentionally misleading.”
“The core question we’re facing is whether or not politicians should have another tool to take down speech they don’t like,” he said. “But if the amendment before us extends this authority to unpaid political speech, then we’re also talking about an extension of speech regulation that has not happened in the 50 years of our modern campaign finance regime.”
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4665499-mcconnell-opposes-bill-to-ban-use-of-deceptive-ai-to-influence-elections/
San Francisco: Breed joins Peskin in rejecting TogetherSF mayoral debate
San Francisco’s five major candidates for mayor will debate The City’s issues Monday, but on two separate stages.
Mayor London Breed announced Tuesday that she will not participate in political advocacy group TogetherSF Action’s planned May 20 debate.
Instead, Breed and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin — one of four prominent candidates looking to deny her a second full term in office — will participate in a “conversation” hosted by Mission Local journalist Joe Eskenazi.
Breed’s decision comes amid questions about the TogetherSF Action debate and the group’s numerous ties to the campaign of former interim Mayor Mark Farrell. Breed had already expressed concern last week about the event.
Like Peskin, Breed questioned the organization’s ability to neutrally moderate a mayoral debate given its connections to Farrell, whose chief of staff is a former TogetherSF employee. The two also share a communications consultant.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/london-breed-backs-out-of-may-20-togethersf-mayoral-debate/article_e4627808-1235-11ef-b466-5bbc49db5f80.html
A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum.
Weeks after winning a school board seat in her deeply red Texas county, Courtney Gore immersed herself in the district’s curriculum, spending her nights and weekends poring over hundreds of pages of lesson plans that she had fanned out on the coffee table in her living room and even across her bed. She was searching for evidence of the sweeping national movement she had warned on the campaign trail was indoctrinating schoolchildren.
Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”
But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.
The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/texas-granbury-isd-school-board-courtney-gore/
TX: Former far-right hard-liner says pro-voucher billionaires are using school board races to sow distrust
When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.
Gore points to West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have contributed to various political action committees that have poured millions into legislative candidates who have promoted vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas.
In recent years, the largesse from Dunn and the Wilks brothers has reached local communities across Texas, including Granbury, near Fort Worth, where fights over library books, curriculum and vouchers have dominated the community conversation.
Gore said that she believes school board candidates are being recruited, at times without their full knowledge, in an effort “to cause as much disruption and chaos as possible” and weaken community faith in local school districts.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/texas-tim-dunn-wilks-brothers-vouchers-courtney-gore/
PA: Montco's mail ballot processing issues last month preview consequences for November
Montgomery County officials are working to remedy internal issues that contributed to 183 voters receiving the mail ballots just three days before the primary election last month — endangering their ability to return them on time.
But the county officials says another factor was out of their control — a state law that resulted in just 30 days for county election offices to prepare, print, and distribute ballots before the election.
That law could cause delays in November when Pennsylvania election offices confront more voters and higher stakes in an election that could decide control of both the White House and Senate.
State law says counties may begin processing mail ballot requests 50 days before an election. But the candidate list for the primary was not final until 30 days before the April primary election, which created a tight time frame for election administrators to process and distribute ballots.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/montgomery-county-mail-ballot-delay-20240515.html
Once a wedge issue, abortion now a rallying cry for Biden, Democrats in Pennsylvania
It wasn’t that long ago that a Democratic congressman representing a place like Beaver County would avoid talking about abortion as much as possible. Chris Deluzio, whose district includes Beaver alongside a swath of Allegheny County, is taking a different tack.
“I think there is agreement across this district that people want the government out of something as personal as deciding what to do with their health care,” Deluzio said. “Even folks who might have a personal opposition to abortion don’t want the power of government mandating to women what they do.”
Traditionally, white working class Democrats have skewed more conservative on abortion. Jason Altmire, who previously represented Beaver County, opposed abortion rights when he spoke about the issue at all. Conor Lamb, who preceded Deluzio, said he was personally opposed to abortion but the government should not impose those values on others.
But many small-town Democrats have been trending toward Republicans regardless. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Dobbs case — which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion enshrined for a half a century by Roe v. Wade — reshuffled the deck for both parties. There are signs everywhere that an issue Democrats once avoided has become now a rallying cry.
https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2024-05-14/pa-abortion-democrats
NY: Will Manhattan Democratic Party boss Keith Wright start a political dynasty or trigger a rebellion?
It seems every two years or so an attempt to oust Manhattan Democratic Party boss Keith Wright emerges, only to fall short. It happened in 2017 after fellow Democrats raised concerns that Wright’s day job working with lobbyists conflicted with his leadership role. It happened again in 2019 when Wright was up for re-election as chair.
And it happened several months ago when a faction of aggrieved Democrats — mainly aligned with Wright’s antagonist, Rep. Adriano Espaillat — tried and failed to oust him over the same claims made five years ago.
But now a new opportunity has surfaced that might lay the groundwork for another mutinous attempt: the race for Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. The current holder of the seat, Assembly Member Inez Dickens, has announced plans to retire.
Wright’s opponents are seizing the moment, representing the latest salvo in a protracted feud between the old school, baritoned Harlemite and party officials wary of what they view as Wright’s penchant for silencing dissenters and barely offering a helping hand. The fight goes back years, with issues of race, political birthrights and the pursuit of power underlying the volley of recriminations.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2024/05/will-manhattan-democratic-party-boss-keith-wright-start-political-dynasty-or-trigger-rebellion/396593/?oref=csny-homepage-top-story
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