Caroline Fredrickson - The Democracy Fix: How to Win the Fight for Fair Rules, Fair Courts, and Fair Elections

THE DEMOCRACY FIX

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Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over

THE DEMOCRACY FIX

HOW TO WIN THE FIGHT FOR FAIR RULES, FAIR COURTS, AND FAIR ELECTIONS

CAROLINE FREDRICKSON

2019 by Caroline Fredrickson

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Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2019

Distributed by Two Rivers Distribution

ISBN 978-1-62097-390-5 (ebook)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Fredrickson, Caroline, author.

Title: The democracy fix : how to win the fight for fair rules, fair courts, and fair elections / Caroline Fredrickson.

Description: New York : New Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018042934| ISBN 9781620973899 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781620973905 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: DemocracyUnited States. | Right and left (Political science)United States. | Political participationUnited States. | ElectionsUnited States. | CourtsUnited States.

Classification: LCC JK1726 .F6664 2019 | DDC 320.973dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042934

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CONTENTS

THE FIX

North Carolina tells a story that the Left needs to take seriously. It was supposed to be the future, with progressive forces in ascendance and the imminent collapse of the Far Right. In 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain. It was a historic election nationally, but it was particularly so in North Carolina, which seemed to be trending blue after a turbulent, racist past. But the vote was close, and ever since then North Carolina has been a partisan battleground, with Republicans increasingly winning the upper hand. The momentary rise of the Left, buoyed by a charismatic candidate, masked how conservative forces had been plotting to hold power for the long term. In 2010, Republicans recaptured both houses of the state legislature as part of a focused effort led by Karl Rove to flip key statehouses in advance of redistricting. With a 20 percent increase in overall spending on North Carolina races from 2008 to 2010, mostly benefiting Republican campaigns, Roves efforts were successful. Much of that additional money came from multimillionaire North Carolinian Art Pope and his family, and groups they controlled.

In 2012, when Republicans captured the governorship as well, conservatives in North Carolina took full advantage of one-party control of government, going on a drunken bender of right-wing legislating to implement the policy ideas generated by Art Popes empire. They went wild on social issues, restricting abortion and attacking gay rights. For their corporate partners, they allowed fracking, curbed lawsuits against hog farms, anddespite their claim to support local controlpreempted local jurisdictions right to pass ordinances affecting their own residents, from raising the minimum wage to anti-discrimination measures. Pope, whose wealth supported the groups driving the anti-gay and procorporate agenda, was put in charge of the state budget by GOP governor Pat McCrory.

Most significantly, Republicans focused on locking in their power. They started by reversing years of expanding the franchise, rigging election rules in their favor in one piece of legislation, dubbed the monster law, that changed the board of elections; redrew district lines to benefit the GOP; and made it harder to vote by limiting early voting, requiring photo IDs, and adding hurdles to the registration process, all with an eye to limiting access to the polls for people of color, who tend to vote Democratic.

Federal courts have put a stop, for the moment, to North Carolinas restrictions on the franchise. In her ruling in NAACP v. McCrory, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz of the Fourth Circuit described the disproportionate impact the bill had on minority voters; the provisions, she wrote, seemed to target African Americans with almost surgical precision. Lawsuits also derailed the legislatures 2011 partisan gerrymander, which was found unconstitutional. A couple of court decisions, however, should not lead us to believe that the Rights plan has failed. Conservatives have a plancontrol the infrastructure of government and control the state for a long, long time. North Carolina is just a snapshot of what has been happening nationwide for decades.

Voter suppression and gerrymandering have given the Right the upper hand across the country. After the 2016 elections, Democrats hit a low in state legislatures they havent seen since Warren Harding was president in 1921. Republicans control 56 percent of state legislative seats, having made significant gains during the presidency of Barack Obama. Over the course of Obamas two terms, the Republicans added almost 1,000 state legislative seats, gaining control of 67 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers. In addition, in 24 states, in 2017 Republicans had the governorship in addition to both legislative chambers, while Democrats held total control in only five statesHawaii, California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. While the 2017 and 2018 off-year and special elections offered a glimmer of hope that the one-party nation has not yet arrived, a visceral and possibly transient antiDonald Trump reaction is not going to fix our problems.

The GOP takeover of state governments was no accident. In 2010, Republicans dumped $30 million into state racestriple the amount invested by Democratsto wrest control of the once-in-a-decade process of congressional redistricting and, with their new statehouse majorities, to draw maps that favored Republicans and pass laws that disenfranchised Democrats and people of color. In 2012, Democrats received 1.4 million more votes nationwide for House races, yet Republicans won control of the House by a 234 to 201 margin. And the GOPs state successes played a key role in defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016. Those same states that had been transformed from purple to crimson red in 2010 and 2012 adopted voter suppression laws that helped put crucial battleground states on Donald Trumps tally. This combination of dark money, voter suppression, and gerrymandering makes future gains in either state or federal elections a challenge for progressives and moderates.

But rigging elections was only one part of the plan. Just as it developed strategies to flip statehouses, the Right also had a plan to take over the courts. Dubbed the least dangerous branch by Alexander Hamilton because they have neither purse nor sword, the courts are nonetheless key players in policy decisions, and right-leaning oligarchs know that the courts are a necessary piece of the infrastructure to protect and augment their enormous wealth. The Chamber of Commerce, the Judicial Crisis Network, the Republican State Leadership Committee, and others spent millions campaigning against President Obamas Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and for Trumps right-wing nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as toward electing judges in the states, including, in 2016, a new state chief justice in Arkansas who rules by prayer, not politics. The Left invested almost nothing to support Garland and shudders at the impropriety of taking part in judicial elections. The result: far-right dominance of the judiciary with all that entailsrulings against campaign finance reform, voting rights, unions, and transparent government. Anthony Kennedys retirement from the Supreme Court gave the Republican Party an even more right-wing five-person majority, with four of those five justices nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote.