A special election will be held to replace Rep. Benjamin in Congress; likely to be held concurrent with the next Congressional election in November 2022.
Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings: March 21, 2022
Nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. The Senate confirmation hearings begin today,and are expected to run all week. Some of Judge Jackson's issue stances:
On Abortion: Co-authored a pro-choice friend-of-the-court brief
Plus Republican, Libertarian, progressive, and QAnon responses
President Biden addressed a joint session of Congress for his first official State of the Union speech (last year was just a preliminary "address to a joint session of Congress"). We cover the numerous responses too....
New member of the U.S. House of Representatives: Jan. 11-18, 2022
Plus hot races and House redistricting races
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL-20) passed away in April 2021. A special election took place on Jan. 11, 2022 in which Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick won. In a sign of these challenging times for democracy, her opponent refused to concede despite the overwhelming landslide, and instead announced legal blocking actions. Those actions failed, and Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick was sworn in on Jan. 18, 2022.
Other upcoming House events:
One more special election is scheduled for April 2022 to fill a vacancy in CA-22; if any more vacancies occur, the special election is likely to take place on November 8th, 2022, in conjunction with the general election.
Redistricting shuffles House seats around due to changes in population from the 2020 census. Five pairs of House incumbents got redistricted into opposing each other. Many more incumbents facing such opposition chose instead to retire.
Redistricting also goes the other way -- creating new seats in several states, and resulting in "hot races" from rematches or newly-eligible candidates.
CA-22: Devin Nunes (R) chose to resign from Congress for a media job,
requiring his constituents to bear the cost of a special election
(primary scheduled for April 5) instead of serving out his term.
Redistricting battles: (two incumbents facing each other):
Scoring members of Congress on response to the Capitol Riot
We looked into three key votes to characterize each member of Congress' views on the events of January 6th. For each key vote, we scored the votes as follows on a scale from "-2" indicating support of the events of January 6th, to "+2" indicating opposition of the events of January 6th:
Electoral Decertification: This vote took place on January 6th, after a long interruption by rioters entering the Capitol building. The vote was to block certification of the vote of the Electoral College:
YEA to block certification scores as -2 (support Jan. 6 events)
NAY to block certification scores as +2 (oppose Jan. 6 events)
H.R. 24 Impeachment: President Trump was impeached for inciting insurrection. The impeachment vote, on bill #24, took place separately for the House and Senate:
NAY on impeachment in House vote scores as -2 (support Jan. 6 events)
NOT GUILTY on removal from office in Senate vote scores as -2 (support Jan. 6 events)
YEA on impeachment in House vote scores as +1 (oppose Jan. 6 events)
GUILTY on removal from office in Senate vote scores as +2 (strongly oppose Jan. 6 events)
SPONSOR on impeachment bill H.R. 24 scores as +2 (strongly oppose Jan. 6 events)
H.R. 503 Commission: Congress created a Commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6th. The Senate rejected a bipartisan commission; that vote counts for Senators. Members of the House them created a separate commission without the Senate; that vote counts for House members:
NAY on creating a Jan. 6 Commission scores as -2 (support Jan. 6 events)
YEA on creating a Jan. 6 Commission scores as +2 (oppose Jan. 6 events)
Legislator category
Number of legislators
Hard-core J6 supporter (score -6)
105
J6 supporter (score -3/-4/-5)
27
Leaning toward J6 support (score -2)
104
Mixed views on Jan. 6 (score -1/0/+1/+2/+3)
26
Opposes Jan. 6 events (score +4/5)
17
Hard-core against Jan. 6th (score +6)
261
Grand Total
540
The grid above totals the scores for each legislator, and then counts the number of legislators in each score category. These votes were spread over a few months, so some members didn't have the opportunity to cast all three votes -- those are reflected by omissions which count as zero in the score.
A score of "-6" indicates that the legislator voted three times to support the Capitol riots -- 105 legislators did so, all Republicans. A score of "+6" indicates that the legislator three times opposed the Capitol riots -- 261 legislators did so, 257 Democrats and 4 Republicans. The mixed votes are the most interesting cases-- the 174 legislators who indicated some support and some opposition to the events of Jan. 6.
The lowest-scoring Democrats all scored "+4" -- Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib. In all three cases, the legislator abstained or was absent from one of the key votes. There were 10 additional Democrats scoring below "+5", but those were all legislators who left office, or who were sworn in after the earliest vote. There were 6 additional Democrats who voted YEA on impeachment but chose not to co-sponsor the House Bill; they scored "+5". In other words, there were zero Democrats who actively voted against the consensus Democratic view of opposing the Capitol riots of January 6th.
That was not the case among Republican legislators. There were five Republican Senators who scored "+6": Cassidy; Collins; Murkowski; Romney; and Sasse. In addition, two Republican House members scored "+5": Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom voted to impeach but didn't co-sponsor H.R. 24. Those seven Republicans have become the political targets of former President Trump and his ardent supporters. Over 120 Republican legislators scored in the range of "-2' to "+3" -- some of that group will draw Republican primary opponents because of these votes.
As the Congressional investigation into the events of January 6th begins, we survey the opinions of elected officials and candidates, and group them into four partisan categories:
Republicans who support the events of January 6th:
OnTheIssues could not find any elected officials or candidates who identify as Democrats who supported the January 6 insurrection. We will continue to look.
Incumbent Keisha Bottoms; served as mayor since 2018; retiring 2021
City Councilor Antonio Brown vs. City Councilor Andre Dickens vs. former Mayor Kasim Reed, and several others running
There are three gubernatorial races in 2021: CA, NJ, and VA. The other races listed below are early reporting for the November 2022 races.
The California recall results are listed below -- all of the candidates listed are expected to run again in 2022.
The percentage for Gov. Newsom indicates the result of "Question 1: Shall Gavin Newsom be recalled from the office of governor?"
The other percentages are from "Question 2", who shoudl replace the Governor, if Question 1 passed (which it did not, so Newsom remains governor).
It's early in the Senate election cycle (the election that will be held in November 2022) but plenty of states have hot races already. Our early coverage:
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett nominated as ambassador to Luxembourg
President Biden has nominated numerous politicians as foreign ambassadors -- the full list so far appears below.
We wondered if Biden's number of political appointments was higher than usual -- so we made a list of Trump's political ambassadorships too.
The answer is: Both Biden and Trump made numerous political appointments, and that's fairly normal for ambassdorships.
We define "political appointment" as "a person who was covered by OnTheIssues for their elected role or campaign role, prior to their nomination as Ambassador."
Update: Gov. Cuomo announced his regination on Aug. 10; Lt. Gov. Hochul will be sworn in on Aug. 24.
New York Attorney General Letitia James investigated allegations of sexual harassment against Governor Andrew Cuomo, and released a public report of their findings. Status of resignation and impeachment:
Straw Poll results from Conservative Political Action Conferences
The American Conservative Union holds the "CPAC Conference" annually, with a wide range of conservative speakers and candidates.
The ACU conducts a "straw poll" at each CPAC conference, indicating preferences for the next Republican presidential primary. While indicative mostly of conservative sentiment, this poll is widely reported in the media.
In 2021, for the first time, the ACU held two CPAC conferences: one in February and one in July, due to COVID restrictions.
We report on the poll results from both 2021 conferences below, with links to CPAC excerpts or additional excerpts.
Figures are from the "without Trump" poll for all candidates other than Donald Trump.
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