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Almost everyone here is running unopposed, scept for two judgeships and a member of the town council.
Epicurius fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 16:11
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The House is probably the bigger problem than the Senate, and not just because of the gerrymandering, but also because, for size reasons, they haven't increased it since 1912. This means that the number of people per house seat varies pretty widely by state, and, unlike the Senate, where that's obvious, in the House, its much less so. This leads to some pretty strange things, like Delaware only having one house seat for 900,000 people, while New Hampshire, which only has a hundred thousand more people in it, but 2 house seats, has a house seat per 520,000 people. Even if you're looking at bigger states, Alabama has one seat per 686,140 people, while neighboring Mississippi is one seat per 744,560 people. This has a real effect, in terms of the power of the individual voter, the moreso because this is also used to figure out electoral votes, which means that voters in some states don't just have more voice in picking their representatives, but in picking the president.
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Nov 7, 2019 03:32
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achillesforever6 posted:Like beyond the whisper network stuff about him, Lee just being a lovely boss to those involved in working on his initial campaign makes me glad he left the DSA, but annoys me how much people outside the DSA still think he is in it or that the Rose Caucus is just a formation within DSA (which I suppose is the point). He also just appeals to a bunch of the blackpilled/FTV folks who think posting is actual organizing. I mean, everybody made such a big deal about him being in the DSA when he first got elected, he just got stuck in my head as "DSA guy who posts online a lot.". When did he leave it, and how come nobody made a big deal about that?
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Jun 9, 2021 14:48
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Like I had mentioned in another thread, this is not in itself a socialist vs non-socialist thing. New York State is largely a machine state or largely a lot of little machines. The Democrats are strongest in New York City and its suburbs, in Albany County, and in Erie County, where Buffalo is. In each of these areas, you have a Democratic machine that dominates city/county politics. I could talk about some of the machines, but for purposes of this, lets talk about Buffalo and Byron Brown. Brown got his start in Erie County politics the way a lot of people get their start in Erie County politics.....he got to know people in Erie County politics. He had been a salesman for Bristol-Myers Squibb after he got out of college, but he wasn't happy with the job. So after looking for a while, he became Chief of Staff for the president of the Buffalo Common Council. After that, he went to work for Arthur Blackwell, in the Erie County Legislature, then he went to Albany to work for Arthur Eve, who was Deputy Speaker of the Assembly. He then went back to Buffalo and became director of the Erie County division of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and at the same time, got involved in the Buffalo voter mobilization organization Grassroots. After like 8 years of this, he decided he was going to run for office himself, and after a failed run for the Erie County Legislature, he ran successfully for Buffalo Common Council in 1995. In 2000, he ran successfully for New York State Senate and then in 2005, he ran successfully for mayor, and he's stayed in there until now. In 2006, when Cuomo ran for Attorney General, he went out of his way to court Brown, who was seen a rising star in the party. This was part of an overall strategy by Cuomo to court black politicians. In 2004, Cuomo had lost the Democratic nomination to Carl McCall, who was black and had gotten a lot of black support in the primary. Cuomo and Brown stayed very close since them. Meanwhile, Cuomo over the years had had a rocky relationship with the Working Families Party, I can go into more detail about the formation and development of the Working Families party, but in brief, it came out of the New Party, and got a lot of additional support when the Liberal Party fell apart, and its base is sort of a combination of labor union supporters and middle class progressives. They had started out having a good relationship with Cuomo but it fell apart after Cuomo had become governor, and the WFP had criticized some of his actions. (It got so bad that in 2014, Cuomo created a new party called the Woman's Equality Party. It was ostensibly because Cuomo was trying to get a bill passed called the Woman's Equality Act, which helped with pay equity, ironically, strengthened laws against sexual harassment, increase punishments for domestic violence, and so on, but, more cynically, had its abbreviation ,WEP.) I bring this up because India Walton appeared on the WFP line. One of the reasons Governor Cuomo was successful for so long is that he was able to fill positions with political allies. In this case, Jacobs, who had been a major figure in the Nassau County party and had been chairman in 2009 and was appointed by Cuomo in 2019. Jacobs is very much a Cuomo man, and if given the choice between having the state party endorse a long time Cuomo ally and supporter, or having it endorse a candidate backed by a party hostile to Cuomo, he's going to do the former. The county party is backing Walton, though.
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Oct 18, 2021 23:50
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Sanguinia posted:And Cuomo fleeing the Governor's Mansion in disgrace to avoid his own party impeaching him doesn't change their war calculus? State level politics can be so wild. Probably not, especially because Brown himself had been the State Party Chairman until 2019, when he stepped down for Jacobs. So you're asking the state party leadership to support somebody who the chairman doesn't support over the former chairman. That's kind of a big ask. Brown himself is pretty popular in the party among the leadership. Walton doesn't really have any institutional experience at all, as near as I can tell, other than being a union representative and the director of a land trust.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:10
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VitalSigns posted:Why. Because, in New York, at least, the State Democratic Party leadership, in general, is more loyal to the machine and the Governor than it is to the rank and file Democratic voter. Maybe Walton will win anyway. Like I had said, the Erie County Party leadership supports her. Reform candidates have won before. Usually, what the reform candidate does is to dismantle the old machine and build a new machine loyal to them. If she does that, if she stuffs the city and county with loyal DSA people or whoever it is that backs her, she'll likely survive and have a future. Brown will get a job someplace else, and the party will adjust to the new Buffalo politics. It's happened before. Brown came in as a kind of a reformer too, the ambitious young African-American who was going to use grass roots organizing to finally get a black mayor.. eta: I'll also say beyond that that human beings are social and that your relationship with other people affects the way you treat them and they treat you. If all the party leadership thinks "Hey, I know Mayor Brown, I worked with him and he's a great guy", they might not endorse him, but might figure, " let's just stay out of this. No reason to hurt his feelings or make him feel bad.". Political relationships, especially, are personal ones. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 04:21
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VitalSigns posted:Oh ok you said it was quote "a big ask", and I don't see how it is at all. Respecting the voters is a bare minimum in my eyes for a party that wants to call itself "Democratic". I did add something to my lot post that cross posted with yours, btw. And I'm not saying you can't get mad about the situation. You can. It just probably won't make much difference. As for the party calling itself "Democratic", well, North Korea calls itself a 'democratic republic' too. My personal take is, while I probably would have voted for Brown in the primary had I lived in Buffalo, and I don't like either Walton or the DSA much, I think the state party should endorse her, because she did win the nomination after all. But I don't really have a lot of say, so....
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Oct 19, 2021 05:01
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It's more the rank hypocrisy given the accusations of disloyalty and opportunism (at best) constantly slung at leftist candidates and anyone supporting them, while there's demonstrable examples of the machine politics outright self-destructing the party when a leftist gets elected. (see also: Jeremy Corbyn) Not to mention things like the PUMAs. I can't really speak about Corbyn. its my understanding that there are enough differences between American and British politics that you can't really make a good comparison about the way party structures and internal processes work, and that's even more true for the Labour Party that has this hybrid labor unions\local party mixed organizational structure. The PUMA thing was different. It was largely astroturfed by the Republican party, wasn't supported by national Democratic leadership, and the arguments of the PUMAs was very much that party leadership was institutionally biased against Clinton. None of that has much to do with NY state politics, though.
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Oct 19, 2021 10:46
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 11:20 |
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PUMAs are a feel thing, but to the best of my knowledge, they weren't being encouraged by the national party leadership. And yes, compari g a black politician to a Klan leader is a pretty bad comparison.
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Oct 20, 2021 12:37
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