First off, I know it dropped on a Friday afternoon, so just in case you missed it and are interested in that sort of thing: How To Stop Trump From Stealing The Midterms
While most eyes are trained on the Michigan’s Democratic primary for the state’s open US Senate seat, y’all know that’s not my jam – and frankly, there are more than enough Hot Takes out there about it already.
I’m chiefly concerned with the nominating contests for the state House and Senate, as every seat in the Great Lakes State’s legislature is on the ballot this year.
Democrats are hoping to flip the state House, which currently has a 58-52 GOP majority, and keep (ideally expand) their majority in the Senate, which is currently 20 D/18 R.
Much like several up-ballot races today, some of these primaries have become proxy fights for various wings of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Take, for instance, heavily Democratic SD-01, where community activist Justin Onwenu and former state Rep. Abraham Aiyash, both of Detroit, are vying for the nomination in what’s being described as a “bitter” contest.
Aiyash served as House majority floor leader from 2023-24 and says he’s running to take on DTE Energy over high utility rates; he’s also outspokenly anti-AIPAC.
Onwenu’s campaign seems to have benefited financially from Aiyash’s stances, as Michigan pro-Israel donors reportedly account for at least $117,000, or 33%, of the $353,000 of Onwenu’s fundraising.
Additionally, an organization tied to DTE Energy has spent about $20,000 on direct mail supporting Onwenu.
Onwenu has criticized Aiyash for failing to endorse Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
In SD-02 – another heavily Democratic district – state Rep. Erin Byrnes faces Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the 2024 Uncommitted Movement, which protested Biden’s support of Israel during the Israel-Gaza conflict.
In SD-03, the son of former US Rep. John Conyers, Jr. is one of 11 Democrats vying for this open seat.
In SD-12, five Republicans are vying to take on Democratic Sen. Kevin Hertel in November.
Four of the five have never held elected office, and one has run in Democratic primaries in five previous legislative contests, most recently just two years ago.
This district is described as “the most Republican seat in the state currently held by a Democrat.”
In HD-02, Democrat Frank Liberati is trying to take over the Democratic-leaning seat his brother Tuillo is vacating.
He faces opposition from two other Democrats, one of whom is a transgender woman (Joanna Whaley) who stepped up to run after Tullio voted to ban trans girls from participating in girls’ sports.
Apparently being anti-trans is a family thing; back in April, Frank filed a complaint against Whaley alleging that she violated state campaign law by not listing her deadname on her campaign paperwork.
The complaint was rejected, yay!
Most polls tonight in Michigan close at 8 p.m. ET, though a handful of counties close at 9.
I’d argue that the most important election today, though, is happening in Kansas.
It’s not a primary, though – it’s a ballot measure (on primary day in a midterm election year, because Republicans love to do that when they want to depress turnout on something).
Conservatives in Kansas — not satisfied with having veto-proof majorities in the legislature and immense amounts of political power all across the state — want to upend the current way state Supreme Court justices are selected and retained in the hope of reshaping the Sunflower State’s highest court to be …. ah, friendlier to their way of thinking.
Today, Kansans are voting on whether to amend the state constitution to allow voters to directly elect justices to the state’s highest court.
This would change the process that the Sunflower State has been using since 1958, which operates thusly:
Justices are currently picked from a pool created by a nominating commission of five lawyers (who are themselves selected by other lawyers) and four nonlawyers selected by the governor.
One lawyer and one nonlawyer must be from each of the state’s four congressional districts (so yes, the process is already gerrymandered).
When a seat on the court opens, this commission taps three finalists, and the sitting governor appoints one of them to the bench.
Fun fact! Thirteen other states also use that basic model (the “Missouri Plan”).
But Kansans already have a say in this process!
After a new justice serves one year on the bench, they must stand for a statewide retention vote in the next general election.
If retained, the justice serves a six-year term and then faces voters again (and so forth and so on every six after).
So … why is this happening? How did we get here?
Kansas … well, it’s been THROUGH IT over the past decade and change.
In the long-ago time of the early 2010s, conservatives in Kansas decided to try a tax experiment – a “supply-side” gambit that, briefly, consisted of then-Gov. Sam Brownback convincing GOP lawmakers to cut the top rate of the state’s income tax by almost 30 percent and the tax rate on certain business profits to zero.
These cuts were among the steepest ever enacted by any state anywhere.
The theory was that these cuts would be a sort of “adrenaline shot” for the Kansas economy, stimulating strong job creation, formation of new businesses, and growth in economic outputs.
It … didn’t work.
Kansas revenues quickly sank like a bag of rocks, which led to drastic cuts in education and other vital services, plus downgrades in the state’s bond rating.
The impacts were so severe that the 2016 GOP legislative primaries in the Sunflower State were … well, something of a bloodbath.
A bunch of GOP incumbents retired, and even more lost to more moderate challengers.
Democrats picked up a whopping 12 House seats (... not that they weren’t still deep in the minority, but still).
The following summer, the significantly-more-fiscally-moderate Kansas legislature shut down Brownback’s “real live experiment” in supply-side tax policy, repealing the business profits exemption and moving income tax rates back toward where they’d been.
I’m doing this dry AF history lesson because this was the backdrop to the beginning of what many Kansas conservatives deem the state Supreme Court’s “activist phase,” because after Republicans in the governor’s mansion and legislature basically bankrupted the state, the Court had to step in to force the government to fund public education.
A lawsuit about Kansas’ crappy school funding was already making its way through the courts before Brownback decided to trust ALEC and Arthur Laffer with his state’s fiscal wellbeing, but, as you can probably imagine, having the bottom fall out of overall state revenue is going to make such things waaaaaaay worse.
You see, according to the Kansas constitution, the legislature “shall make suitable provision for finance” of public schools.
The Kansas Supreme Court has interpreted that to mean funding must be both adequate and equitable – and when the state was running out of money, the “adequate” bit became a pretty big problem.
In fact, in spring of 2016, one small school district that “was hanging on by a thread” was forced to cut its school weeks from five days to four to survive for the remainder of the year.
For the better part of a decade, the Kansas legislature attempted to tweak its school funding formula to both minimize its impact on the state’s anemic budget and satisfy the Court’s demand that students actually have access to a decent education in buildings that aren’t falling apart from teachers who are paid a living wage.
Most recently, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that “adequate” funding must keep up with the rate of inflation, heaven forfend.
By the by, the next governor and legislature will have to develop a new education funding formula, as the current one expires in 2027 – which could very well become subject to scrutiny by the state’s highest court yet again.
Seeing as they’re also facing a projected budget deficit of about $408 million this fiscal year, I’m sure Republicans would like the freedom to balance the state’s books on the backs of kids – freedom the current state Supreme Court doesn’t seem too keen on providing.
Anyway, all this is to say that, for more than a decade, Kansas conservatives have been pissed at the state Supreme Court for forcing them to adequately fund public education.
But of course, when it comes to conservative outrage, this whole issue pales in comparison to their ire at the Court for interpreting the state constitution in such a way that preserves a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
And honestly, that’s what this amendment fight is mostly about, because conservatives don’t seem to care about kids after they’re born, only before.
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled (6-1) that the state constitution protects abortion rights in a sweeping decision that blocked a ban on a common second trimester method for ending pregnancies while also putting other state abortion restrictions on the chopping block.
Current state AG Kris Kobach (he’s running for reelection, by the by, but Kansans have an amazing alternative this year) wasn’t coy about proposing “another path” to banning abortion in Kansas – specifically, an amendment just like the one voters are deciding on today that would allow conservatives to “slowly and quietly” place anti-abortion justices on the court through popular elections.
If the constitutional amendment passes, conservatives are hoping to elect at least four anti-abortion justices to the seven-member court by 2033.
Businesses are also Big Mad at Kansas’ highest court after a 2019 decision that removed state caps on non-economic damages, including pain and suffering, in personal injury lawsuits.
As you might imagine, spending on both sides of this constitutional amendment ballot measure has been ridic.
Specifically, more than $12.8 million has been spent on TV ads, direct mail, and more (the final tally is likely to be a decent bit higher, since the final pre-election reports are only through July 20).
At least two of the groups bankrolling the push to pass the amendment are funded by our old pal Leonard Leo. (TL;DR he’s bad)
I’ll be watching results with bated breath tonight for sure; if you’d also like to spend your evening like this for some reason, the NYT is usually great, but you can also go with a local outlet (most of which use AP, but not all).
Most polls close at 8 p.m. ET, but some are open until 9.
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