If the GOP can slap a “socialist” label on Democratic opponents – whether or not it’s true – they can propel their weak candidates to victory An off-cycle special election in Los Angeles’ 12th City Council District wrapped up on August 13 – one necessitated by the departure of Councilmember Mitch Englander, who woke up the … Continue reading The Lessons in Loraine Lundquist’s Loss
Paper ballots, a paper trail and no internet connectivity on ballot readers. VSAP may be the answer we've been looking for. AND it's publicly owned! Its genesis was a ten-year voting systems research project conducted by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its ownership is public: the Los Angeles County … Continue reading Could L.A. County’s New Voting System Solve Election Security?
The California Democratic Party convention hosted 14 presidential candidates, providing a pre-debate glimpse of the evolving nomination battle. If there were such a thing as a candy shop for Democratic activists, it would look a lot like the California Democratic Party state convention, where 14 of the party’s 23 declared presidential candidates arrived to peddle … Continue reading California Dems Check Out the Contenders, Find a Lot to Like
Many reasons, one common goal: turn state government blue by challenging Republican incumbents statewide. For Beverly Harrison in Virginia’s House of Delegates District 15, it started with Donald Trump’s 2016 election, intensified at the D.C. Women’s March the following January, and crystallized during the early 2019 fight for state ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. … Continue reading Virginia Democrats Stepping Up to Run in Rural “Red” Districts
Illinois' Marie Newman & grassroots supporters take the fight to incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski in this Blue-Trending District. Ordinarily, I’m one of those Democrats bothered by primary challengers to sitting Democratic members of the U.S. House and Senate. Most of the time, I’d prefer we spend our time, money and political energy electing additional Democrats … Continue reading Newman Primaries Conservative ‘Democrat’ Lipinski in IL-03
Virginia's Network NoVA is putting together its 3rd annual Women's Summit to ensure that VA women flip the House of Delegates in 2019. The next time someone tries to laugh off the January 21, 2017 Women’s March as just an ineffective, self-indulgent demonstration by pink pussy-hatted women, just share Network NoVA’s story with them. Because … Continue reading With the ERA Hanging in the Balance, Virginia Women Are Taking Charge
Scientists offer optimism: data on California's generation of renewable electricity points to a clean energy future for the state. When the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) – the state’s non-profit overseer-operator of the Golden State’s bulk electric power system, transmission lines and electricity markets – posted data on its website April 9 showing that the … Continue reading We Can Win the War on Climate Change. Just Ask California.
The proposed bill to support Dreamers ignores young adults who entered the US legally as children, but are now 'aging out' or finishing college. Talk about a Catch 22. If you’re among the more than two million young adults living in America who were illegally brought into America as children and qualified for President Obama’s … Continue reading The Proposed ‘Dream & Promise Act’ is a Nightmare for Some
Reflections on Apollo 11: seeing a movie, and seeing what goes unseen, unspoken & unnoticed. Last weekend, we splurged on two IMAX tickets to view a gem of film history: Apollo 11, the documentary movie created from recently rediscovered National Aeronautics and Space Administration footage as a celebration of America’s extraordinary 1969 moon landing – … Continue reading History Looks Different Through a Woman’s Eyes
And according to experts, electing women doesn't just feel better: it delivers better results for constituents and community. On two consecutive weekends in February, two of my representatives – one, a 31-year-old newly-elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 25th House district, the other, a 40-something newly-elected member of the California Assembly from … Continue reading Meetings are Different When Your Congressman is a Woman
While America fixates on the multi-car pileup that is the Trump Regime, it helps to see women making progress somewhere. I’ve just published a book – Ms. Nice Guy Lost – Here’s How Women Can Win – which chronicles the many ways in which Donald Trump and the GOP have rolled back rights and opportunities for … Continue reading US Women Could Use Some Good News. Here’s Some!
Updating constituents about the shutdown, the new House Rep in CA-25 moves quickly to connect and communicate. While most freshman House members stayed in Washington, D.C. for additional orientation and education sessions last weekend, CA-25’s newly-inaugurated Rep. Katie Hill caught a red-eye flight back to her Southern California district to brief constituents on the status … Continue reading On Her 4th Day in Office, Katie Hill Flies Home, Hosts a Town Hall
Katie Hill's open communication as Congressmember-elect has CA-25 constituents excited about her first term as their Representative.
It started slowly, but one week out it's clear: the GOP was swamped in the midterms by a multi-hued Democratic wave.
The magic mix of efficiency, honesty, elder experience & Millennial/Gen Z fervor delivered an inclusive victory in CA-25.
Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom hold a rally for Katie Hill & Christy Smith ... and the Democrats in the audience put GOP crowds to shame.
Republican Secretary of State John Merrill adopts his party's favorite approach: anti-woman, anti-Democratic tirades on Twitter.
The Democrat running in purple CA-25 House district deftly threads political needle between reform advocates, gun owners.
Anita Hill. Murphy Brown. The "Year of the Woman". Is it 1992? It feels like it. But there are some important differences.
Studies, real-life experience show that more women in power equals better leadership, better policy, better outcomes. The numbers are nigh unto astonishing. Women, reported FiveThirtyEight.com on Aug. 10, are competing in 69 percent of open Democratic Congressional primaries this year (races in which there’s no incumbent Democrat). As of that date, women had won 65 … Continue reading Want Better Government? Survey Says: Vote for Women.
A rundown of how this administration is selling out the Earth for profits - and how cities, states & businesses are nonetheless pushing forward. Not long after Donald Trump’s inauguration, National Geographic began cataloging the ways in which his administration was seeking to roll back environmental policies – including, but certainly not limited to, those enacted … Continue reading How Trump is Rolling Back Years of Progress on Environmental Policy
Harnessing the flood of activists coming via groups like Swing Left and Indivisible can be a challenge. The Katie Hill CA-25 campaign shows how to maximize enthusiasm.In the good old days – B.D. (before Donald) – Democratic candidates for the U.S. House could count on one hand the kind of organizations they could turn to … Continue reading A Good Problem: Many Democratic Campaigns Are Awash in Blue Wave Volunteers
But do postcards motivate voters? And how do ‘postcarders’ stay on the right side of FEC rules? DWP writer Marcy Miroff Rothenberg explores... It began modestly in early 2017, when Americans who were opposed to the nominations of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General and Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education answered a plea from … Continue reading Old is New Again, as Activists Use Handwritten Postcards For Voter Outreach
CA-25 Democrats end a competitive primary by vowing to unite behind Katie Hill, against Trump rubber-stamp Steve Knight. If there’s one good thing to come out of the moral, ethical, diplomatic and policy disaster that is the Donald Trump presidency, it’s that grassroots Democrats seem determined not to let a Hillary-versus-Bernie battle to the death … Continue reading California Democrats Unite To Win
HOW TRUMP AND THE GOP ARE WORKING TO MAKE WOMEN’S LIVES WORSE AT WORK. PART OF OUR SERIES – THE GOP CON. I recently had to document for a male friend (who I consider politically savvy) that, yes, it is a factual truth that women who possess the same education, skills, experience and qualifications do … Continue reading The Gender Wage Gap May Only Get Worse in Trump’s America
Jess Phoenix, Katie Hill and Bryan Caforio address the issues & attack Steve Knight's empty podium in the final debate for the "nation's most flippable seat". The stakes were high as three Democratic candidates running to unseat incumbent GOP Rep. Steve Knight in California’s 25th Congressional District squared off at a debate last Saturday night … Continue reading A Mostly Friendly, Sometimes Fiery Debate in CA-25
How Trump and the GOP are setting back the clock on women’s healthcare. Part of our series, The GOP Con. As campaign promises go, it was pretty spectacular. Throughout 2016, Donald told American voters that he had the answer to the nation’s healthcare crisis – and if he were elected, every single American would soon … Continue reading Trump Promised “The Best” Healthcare…but Women Are Losing. Bigly.
What do history & data tell us about the likelihood they’ll turn out? Four million American teens will turn 18 before November 6 this year, which makes them eligible to vote in the nation’s upcoming high-stakes midterm elections. To hear them tell it, “post-millennial” high schoolers are joining forces with millennials to become the demographic … Continue reading Teens Say They’re Ready to Rock the Vote. Will They?
With so many women running for Congress, 2018 will bring interesting and unfamiliar tensions.For lots of American women, Election 2018 is starting to make us feel like we’re sugar-deprived kids walking into a gigantic candy story for the first time. Long resigned to choosing from a dreary array of navy blue suckers – or at … Continue reading Voting in the Year of the Woman
Women aren’t breaking records as they run for an unprecedented number of seats. They’re shattering them. A look inside the numbers. 1992 was the original “Year of the Woman” for Congressional races, when a then-record 11 women waged major party races for the U.S. Senate, and six of them won. Another 106 women ran for … Continue reading Women on the Run: Behind the Explosion in Female Candidates