Ohio Trusts Tim Ryan to Fight for its Economy and That’s a Big Advantage

In rare bipartisan agreement, Ohio election observers conclude that only the candidate Buckeye State’s voters truly trust to expand and protect the state’s economic future will head into the November election with the support of a cross-section of voters needed to prevail.

Voters know the drill: everyone claims to be for job creation and economic opportunity, and everyone rails against U.S. companies shipping factories and jobs off to China and other far-away places. Fortunately for Ohio voters, records speak louder than campaign rhetoric. Only one Senate candidate has an honest history of promoting “Made in Ohio” jobs, manufacturing and investment, while the other candidate made a fortune in and around the slimy business of making a buck in Beijing.

Not surprisingly, with a 20-year voting record and his position as co-chairman of the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is seeing a surge in his campaign for Senate in Ohio, building on the trust he’s earned from Buckeye State voters. Tim Ryan repeatedly has demonstrated his commitment to Ohio jobs and economy, most recently this month with Intel’s $20 billion semiconductor development project groundbreaking in Central Ohio.

“Today we broke ground on a future that every Ohioan can be proud of,” Tim Ryan said of the project that is expected to provide 3,000 manufacturing jobs with an average salary of $135,000. “This multi-billion-dollar investment is a culmination of an unprecedented collaboration between federal, state, and private sector leaders that will transform Ohio’s economy and provide future generations an opportunity to build a stable middle-class life right here at home.”

The Intel semiconductor project will compete in an industry in which 90 percent of chips are currently produced overseas, and will create another 7,000 construction jobs in Ohio, as well as support jobs and revenue for local businesses. It’s all part of Tim Ryan’s “Cutting Workers In on the Deal” agenda.

“Throughout his career, Tim Ryan has been a reliable partner for Ohio’s building and construction workers, and we can count on him to bring that fight and commitment to the U.S. Senate,” said Mike Knisely, executive secretary of the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, a labor organization with a reputation for backing Republicans yet in this race is putting its trust and support behind the Democrat Tim Ryan.

Jobs are returning to America this year faster and in bigger numbers than at anytime this century since “reshoring” data began being collected. Even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal trumpeted the good news with an article headlined, “U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs.” Building on that momentum, Tim Ryan has made it a point to emphasize job security and national security depends on bringing home the supply chain from China and other foreign lands and reshoring those jobs and products in manufacturing states like Ohio.

It all comes down to trust. Tim Ryan is the only candidate in the race we can trust on expanding the reshoring movement and protecting the Ohio economy – just ask current and former Republicans.

Tom Laakso of Columbus, a lifelong Republican until 2016, sees the issue of trust connected to how politicians frame themselves, especially the candidate’s personal record of where he worked, who he is backed by and who he is beholden to. So for Laakso, an Ohio State graduate who studied political science, the purely cosmetic reinvention of Trump-backed J.D. Vance is a makeover too far for Ohio.

“To me, someone campaigning as an outsider is like someone applying for a job with no references or prior job experience,” Laakso wrote recently in The Columbus Dispatch. “If it were my business, would I hire someone without experience solving these problems and who I don’t trust?”

At the center of Vance’s trust problem with Ohio voters is his resume and his chief backers, all of which reflect a record of a businesses with cozy relationships with foreign adversaries like China, and policies that cost Americans money, jobs and economic opportunity. A longtime resident of San Francisco up until his decision to run, Vance worked for Silicon Valley companies that invested and operated overseas, some even representing Chinese real estate interests and Chinese online retailer Alibaba.

Vance’s lousy reputation for cashing in on offshoring U.S. manufacturing jobs and investing in overseas manufacturing is a dark but well-deserved pedigree. Vance’s is the protégé of venture capitalist and Maga-darling Peter Thiel, having worked for his Silicon Valley investment firm and landing a whopping $10 million contribution from Thiel that kicked off Vance’s campaign for Senate.

Among the Big Tech fat cats, Thiel is a billionaire that enrages Republicans and Democrats alike, and he has cast a dark shadow on Vance’s lounging campaign. In an attempt to separate himself from who he really is, Vance naturally tries to score points on the campaign trail (when he actually does show up to campaign) by bad-mouthing Big Tech, the very foundation of his wealth, but even Ohio Republicans see right through that hypocrisy.

“The problem is, there’s a large disconnect between that rhetoric and the reality since J.D. left the state for Silicon Valley fortunes and Hollywood dreams,” Republican Rep. Bill Seitz, majority floor leader of the Ohio House of Representatives, wrote in The Enquirer of Cincinnati the week Vance announced his run for Senate in Ohio.

In fairness, Vance is a good talker, much like his best-known backer, Donald Trump. But as the sayings go, talk is cheap, and action speaks louder than words. Trump's idea of economic stimulus was ignoring the middle class and giving billionaires and corporations a free cash giveaway, which even Republicans say laid the foundation for the rampant inflation Ohio is now suffering through.

And, it’s hard not to forget Trump’s claim that “trade wars are easy to win,” but then he failed to get a single major industrialized allied nation to join him in raising tariffs on Beijing. Done right, economic pressure could have worked against China, but because Trump already had lost the trust of world leaders, his trade war instead turned out to be easy-to-lose – and he did. Trump’s go-it-alone tariffs set in motion the supply chain problems now choking America, especially Ohio.

Vance of course is banking on being able to fool people into thinking he’s not an owned man, but Ohio voters aren’t stupid. They know owing favors to Trump and Thiel will not be good for the state, its people, and economy.

The DSCC sums it up well:  “J.D. Vance is a fraud who only cares about himself and will hurt Ohio to get what he wants. He will say or do anything to get elected and Ohio voters cannot trust him in the Senate.”

Written by Ken Bazinet. Ken is a respected, longtime national political reporter and freelance writer based in rural Maryland.

Floridians Need To Fear GOP Plans to Gut Medicare and Social Security

Public policy experts, healthcare analysts and economists are warning Florida voters that Medicare and Social Security are on the ballot this November in Florida.

So critical to 4.8 million Floridians and the Florida economy, voters this fall will have the chance to determine whether Social Security and Medicare benefits continue to help pay the bills for nearly a quarter of the state’s population.

The Senate race in Florida is shaping up to be a ground zero contest to determine whether the U.S. seeks to continue to help seniors maintain a high standard of living, or whether food is taken off their tables and prescriptions are swept from their medicine cabinets.

Fortunately for voters, the sides are clearly defined.

Rep. Val Demings is a Democrat with a voting record of proven commitment to expanding and protecting the American Safety Net for seniors. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, not only has his own history of plotting to gut benefits, but he finds himself running amid a GOP Senate platform with a dangerous gimmick that would wipe out the crucial health care and retirement benefits that Floridians depend on.

It’s all documented.

The Republican Party no longer whispers its intention to burn a hole in the American Safety Net; it shouts it out load with no regard for who suffers while in total servitude to the wealthiest Americans who don’t want to pay a fair share to keep America growing. Led by Florida’s two MAGA-driven senators, the GOP blatantly flaunts its agenda for gutting Social Security and Medicare for its current recipients and outright eliminating the benefits for the next generations that are paying into the system and expect it to be there for them.

“Social Security is a sacred promise and it’s one that we must fulfill,” Rep. Demings said when she unveiled legislation called Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust, which would ensure America keeps its promises to Florida seniors. “Without our legislation, Social Security is on a path towards future cuts. That is unacceptable.”

Rep. Demings history of fighting for Social Security and Medicare recently earned her the endorsement, among others, from the Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA), a grassroots advocacy organization with more than 200,000 members across Florida.

“Rep. Demings has already proven as a member of the U.S. House that she will look out for older people in Washington. She has earned a lifetime score of 100% in the Alliance’s annual Congressional Voting Record,” said Florida ARA President Bill Sauers. “We trust her to work to expand and preserve our hard earned Social Security and Medicare benefits in the U.S. Senate. She knows that many seniors in Florida rely on those benefits, and she’s working to protect all of our retirement security.”

Florida ARA also saluted Rep. Demings votes in Congress to lower drug costs by requiring Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for seniors, cap out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year and cap insulin copays at $35 per month – measures the majority of Republicans in Congress consistently have rejected.

For his part, Rubio’s most recent scheme would force parents to choose between paid family leave to care for new babies or whether to get all their future Social Security benefits – that’s Rubio’s idea of family values. As described by Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Under the Rubio proposal, parents opting for parental leave would face permanent cuts to their Social Security retirement benefits that ultimately would far exceed their parental leave benefits.”

It’s appalling that Rubio would resort to a choice that amounts to a subtle form of blackmail for middle class parents, but it’s not surprising for anyone who knows how Rubio operates. Since 2010, Rubio has tried every scam possible to take away Social Security and Medicare benefits, beginning with raising the retirement age for benefits and reducing cost-of-living increases for recipients.

It doesn’t stop there. Rubio has pushed for Republican plans to privatize Social Security, which as we have seen the past three years are no longer epic failures just in theory; they are a bad investment in reality. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the volatility of the global financial markets, triggering trillion-dollar gyrations that threatened 401ks and private pension funds, which Rubio would model his privatization plans after.

Floridians just saw first hand how little control over their private retirement funds they have in a crisis. Social Security, however, was immune to the financial markets covid-driven crash, and payments to retirees continued without interruption or reductions. Yet Rubio would gladly line the pockets of fat-cat investment banks at the cost of gambling away middle class livelihoods.

How much is enough for Rubio’s wealthy patrons? Rubio already gave billionaires and corporations a free cash bonanza when he voted for the Trump tax cuts, which even Republicans say laid the foundation for the rampant inflation Floridians are now enduring. Rubio was also an ardent backer of the Trump tariffs that many of the same economists say set in motion the supply chain problems gripping America. When he shows up for work, Rubio appears unable to balance the federal checkbook let alone show he can be trusted to keep benefits flowing to Floridians, who already paid into the system.

As if Rubio’s record of maintaining a red ledger balance sheet in the Senate isn’t tough enough on Floridians, his partner in the Senate, Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has upped the ante on ending Social Security and Medicare with an even more blatant path to killing the benefits programs.

Scott, currently the richest serving U.S. senator and former CEO whose company engaged in one of the largest Medicare fraud scandals in U.S. history (the company he headed was fined $1.7 billion), is using his position as chairman of the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) to wage what many people believe is a personal vendetta against the American Safety Net, some say it‘s payback because the company he headed got caught with its hands stealing from the Medicare cookie jar.

As chairman of the NRSC Scott is charged with winning back the GOP majority in the Senate, so his agenda is meant to be gospel to the GOP. He pulls no punches, either, calling for putting sunsets on Social Security and Medicare within five years. He’s since resorted to double talk to try to hide the pain and suffering his multi-point agenda written for Senate GOP candidates would cause nearly 25 percent of Floridians. But the experts know the truth.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher for seniors. We need Val Demings in the Senate fighting against any Republican plan to cut or ‘sunset’ Social Security and Medicare,” said Sauers, speaking for his retirees’ organization. “Under the plan of Sen. Rick Scott (FL), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Social Security and Medicare would be automatically terminated within five years unless renewed by legislative action.”

Written by Ken Bazinet. Ken is a respected, longtime national political reporter and freelance writer based in rural Maryland.

Holding the House in ’22: Let’s Get to Work Now

Katherine Clark, assistant speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, offered insights on the 2022 midterm elections. Representative Clark provided reasons for hope but also cautioned that hope can only be realized if we do the work now to elect Democrats in November. “We are the ones who are going to have to fight for this majority,” she said. “These are the days that matter.”

Clark spoke with more than 180 people at a special virtual event organized by Together We Elect, a project of Left of Center PAC

Congressional Democrats need to deliver legislation to gain voters’ support. Clark said, “We’ve got to do the most good we can to help the most people.” There is widespread agreement on improving access to childcare and universal pre-K. Even the business community supports these issues since they are crucial to the country’s economic recovery. Clark added that Democrats can’t give up on climate change legislation either, “despite Joe Manchin.”

The Democratic Party also must keep the Republican failures in sharp focus, voting against middle class tax cuts, for example. We need to pressure media and social media outlets to counter the lies – including the Big Lie – that Republicans tout. “We have to push back and correct the record,” she said. “This is going to be a very difficult cycle, but we have a lot to tell the American people. Not only what they stand to gain and protect our democracy, but what they stand to lose if they vote Republican.”

People should remember what has been accomplished since Biden became President. “We talked, we organized, and we drove out the vitriol of the previous administration,” she said. The Biden administration made huge investments in infrastructure, which helped in every district in the country. “We need to tell these stories,” she said.

And, although Republicans have engineered new, unfair Congressional districts, the work done by Democrats, including independent commissions and legal challenges, has meant that the results are much better than expected. She pointed to specific recent events, such federal judges ruling that the Republican-drawn maps in Alabama violate the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn. 

Congresswoman Clark also predicted that the assault on reproductive rights will mean that abortion will be a leading issue in the midterms.

Clark answered questions posed by those who attended. One person asked her to talk about which are the most critical House races. Some redistricting has shored up support for certain Democratic incumbents, but other newly drawn districts spell trouble for Democratic incumbents, Clark said. She mentioned the following as now more vulnerable: Daniel Kildee, Michigan 5th district; Dina Titus, Nevada 1st; Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey 5th, and Mikie Sherrill, New Jersey 11th. Cong. Tom Malinowski, New Jersey 7th, is going to have a particularly hard race now because of redistricting, Clark said. 

Answering a question about the possibility of breaking out portions of the Build Back Better or Voting Act bills, Clark said that would not be as easy as some might think. Better options may include using reconciliation and Executive Orders, she said. 

Clark also said the political arm of the Democratic Party — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — will meet in February to formulate a united strategy for the coming election cycle. New Frontline and Red 2 Blue lists will be released shortly, Clark said. The DCCC operates Frontline and Red to Blue programs to provide additional support to Democratic candidates in competitive races. Clark was vice-chair of the DCCC’s recruitment subcommittee, which oversaw the highly effective Red 2 Blue program in 2018. The Red 2 Blue program worked to flip red states blue.

“All our Frontliners need our support. We can’t afford to lose any of them,” Clark said. “What we know is all of these races are going to be close. It’s going to be (about) turnout. It’s going to be (about) how we can connect with people.”

After Clark, members of Together We Elect spoke about the effective actions that volunteers can access in order to join the struggle to hold the U.S. House and Senate. These included a Volunteer to Volunteer (V2V) program that asks volunteers to reach out to other volunteers to inspire them to re-engage. Another option for volunteers is to become an Action Coach, helping others find effective actions that suit the individual volunteer. 

Nearly 100 people responded to a poll held during the Zoom event, saying that they want to get involved in volunteering with Together We Elect or its actions.

Event emcee Michael Ansara of Together We Elect advised that the road to Democratic success in the midterms will require a unified effort. “Yes, it will be harder than it was in 2020, but it is possible – if we do the work.”

At the conclusion of Clark’s presentation, Ansara asked what gives the congresswoman the most hope. After admitting it might sound corny, Clark said, “It’s all of you – people that continue to take their time and remain active.”

Access to a video recording of “Holding the House in ‘22” is available here.


Written by guest contributor Angela Carbone. Angela is a retired journalist and freelance writer based in Massachusetts. She is one of many Together We Elect volunteers sharing their professional skills to help elect Democrats.

Marco Rubio is vulnerable. Val Demings can send him packing.

Politically divided Florida has long frustrated Democrats, and Marco Rubio is a testament to that. He has managed to win two Senate elections with relatively small shares of the vote: 49% in 2010 and 52% in 2016. 

August polls suggest Rubio, after 11 years in office, has not broadened his base of support ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. The right candidate in the right political conditions will be able to pick him off. While we can’t know yet what the conditions will be, we do know that Rep. Demings is the right candidate.

Quinnipiac found that Rubio holds a 49 percent job approval rating, with only 47 percent saying he deserves re-election. Three other polls tested a Rubio-Demings match, with two showing a close race: Future Majority shows Rubio leading 47 to 44 percent, and St. Pete Polls has an even smaller lead of 48 to 46 percent. 

Moreover, at this early point in the race, Demings almost certainly trails Rubio in name identification, as the Orlando-area congresswoman has never before run for statewide office. As she becomes better known over the course of her Senate primary campaign, she has a great opportunity to overcome that narrow deficit for the general election, in large part because her background is a great fit for Florida.

Central Florida’s “I-4 Corridor” is known as the key swing area, and Demings represents Orange County inside the corridor. The county is the bluest part of Central Florida, but nevertheless, as a three-term congresswoman Demings is a familiar figure in the region. Furthermore, Demings was born and raised in Jacksonville, in the more Republican northern part of the state. (In 2020 Duval County, where Jacksonville is located, voted Democrat for president for the first time since 1976.) Demings will be able to campaign up north as a homegrown success story, not an unfamiliar outsider.

Demings’ experience as Orlando’s former police chief should also help her connect with Florida’s swing voters, while maintaining support from the Democratic base. As New York City’s Eric Adams showed this summer, when we won the Democratic mayoral primary, an African-American candidate with background in law enforcement can credibly campaign as tough on crime and tough on police brutality. And such a candidate is harder for Republicans to caricature as outside the mainstream.

Rubio, meanwhile, after 11 years has failed to live up to the hype. He used to be breathlessly hailed as the “savior” of the Republican Party. But instead he’s been a bystander as his party descended into bigotry and conspiracy-mongering. In 2013, he flinched when anti-immigrant voices in hi party rebelled against bipartisan immigration reform. After voting for it in the Senate, Rubio abandoned it and argued against a House vote. After getting steamrolled by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential primary, he re-styled himself as a Trump loyalist. Now that Trump is no longer in office, Rubio continues to operate of fear of his party’s base. Rubio claimed to be supportive of an infrastructure bill, but couldn’t bring himself to support the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure the came before the Senate and passed with the help of 19 other Republicans. 

Of course, there are plenty of Trump loyalists in Florida. Trump did win the state twice, albeit narrowly. But if swing voters start to turn against Trumpism, Rubio won’t have any safe harbor. This summer’s spike in Florida COVID-19 cases is seriously damaging the standing of Trump’s favorite governor, Ron DeSantis, who won narrowly in 2018 and is also up for re-election in 2022. The fates of Rubio and DeSantis may be intertwined. 

Demings is well suited to seize any opportunity created by Republican incompetence and intransigence. For Democrats to keep the Senate, they need to not only play defense to protect their incumbents, they must also play offense wherever pickup opportunities exist. One exists in Florida and Demings is the candidate best prepared to take advantage. 

Written by guest contributor Bill Scher. Bill is a contributing editor at Politico magazine. He is the author of the book, “Wait! Don’t Move to Canada.” His writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic and several other outlets.

Finding the Best Way to Talk About Doing the Right Thing

One of Twitter’s more lucid and pragmatic tweeters, @SimonWDC delivered two extraordinarily thought provoking questions in the last 24 hours: how do we Democrats deal with President Biden’s declining numbers despite doing just about everything right and what words best describe today’s @GOP?

It seems September is our time to have deep thoughts about what to do as a party. Here are two of mine. We have to get out of letting our expressions of dismay at how awful Republicans are dominate our emotional spectrum. There is a place for that but it is overwhelming us as a party and that isn’t good. We need to express our joy and celebrate all the good things we do. It feels good to be a Democrat! We’re happy! We need to show that! Second, we are losing on propaganda. Misinformation is our bigger problem. We must get in front of it with a much more robust and assertive communications campaign. Jen Psaaki is great, but she isn’t enough. We need coordinated, positive, informative messaging EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. 

That’s it. Maybe a little early in the day and too soon after vacation, but I saw Simon Rosenberg’s tweets and writing and they had a tone I haven’t seen before. He’s right that we need some massive shifting, so I thought about it. It isn’t right that we aren’t doing better in the polls. And it strikes me that the best counterpoint to the depths to which the once honorable opposition has sunk is to be loud and proud of being honorable in response. We need those two things and we need them fast.

Written by Left of Center Co-founder Mara Dolan

Finally, Republicans in Congress stopped saying no.

We finally have a Covid relief package and the reason is clear: Republicans finally stopped saying no. Chuck Schumer made it very clear from the floor of the Senate last night, saying the delay “was caused by a Republican majority that didn’t want to vote the monies desperately needed by the American people.” Yet even on MSNBC this morning, the narrative was unchanged. “Congress” finally made a deal, and there was speculating about what finally motivated Nancy Pelosi.

The Biden Administration continues to build a balanced, talented, and patriotic team to begin governing on January 20, 2021. There is another important change coming along to Democratic politics in America, The election of a new Democratic National Committee chair is imminent. Whoever the incoming DNC Chair is, he or she must actively smash the narrative that Democrats are responsible for Republican conduct. 

While Americans were going hungry and the clock ticked on the federal evictions moratorium, Republicans in the Senate did nothing. Democrats went to the table repeatedly, only to have Republicans just say no, while the press reported both Parties were equally at fault. Republicans have been on message, and on brand for years. No matter which media outlet you turned into on any given day, no matter which Republican was speaking, they were all saying the same things, and it worked. Democrats must do the same. 

Regardless of where a Democrat lies on the political spectrum, the facts remain unchanged. It is Democrats in Congress who consistently work on behalf of the American people, and for what most Americans support: sensible gun safety, jobs that pay a living wage, quality public schools, affordable, quality healthcare, and Covid relief to help the millions of Americans who have lost work, can’t afford to feed their families and pay their bills, and who are facing eviction while Republicans refuse to do anything until they’re finally worried in the 11th hour, not about the American people. What they’re worried about is the outcome of the election in Georgia.

Americans deserve a government that works, and a free press that practices ethical journalism as the framers of our constitution intended. Access journalism is upending our democracy on a daily basis. It is time to hold the media accountable. No platform for lies, innuendo or extremes with no basis in reason or fact. We are are duty bound as Democrats, and as citizens, to speak the truth about who the Republicans are and what they are doing to the American people. One more time, and a little louder for our Democratic colleagues in the back. 

JOB ONE: TELL AMERICA WHO THE REPUBLICANS ARE.

We can all agree on that.



A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg — Part Three*

In January, 2019, pollsters took the temperature of state residents regarding the flag and the results continued to be discouraging. Fifty-four percent of the state would vote to keep the flag and only 43 % would vote to remove it.  But in the polls in mid-June this year, the results had flipped:  55% of voters said they would vote to remove, with 41% voting to keep it.  When the phrase “In God We Trust” was offered as a choice for a new flag, the number to remove the flag shot up to 72% percent.  

What caused this shift?  In the spring, a courageous, young and talented black football player, Kylin Hill, announced he would no longer play for Mississippi State because of the state flag.  Other allies joined the call, including some who had long resisted the move—the Mississippi Baptist Association said it was time to go and even the powerful Pentecostals said it was at least worth a discussion.  Thirty-two municipalities had already removed the flag from government flagpoles. All eight public universities had taken it down by demand of student activists.  Twenty-one private, community and junior colleges joined them, along with over 100 businesses throughout the state.  When Senator Chad McMahan of Tupelo, a Republican, rose to the well of the Mississippi Senate to advocate voting to remove the flag last Sunday, he noted that 15,000 of his constituents had contacted him with their wishes.  He was voting yes to remove because 10,000 of them—a two-to-one margin—told him to change it.  

Ultimately, no outside force or pressure moved Mississippi officials.  A majority of Mississippians, black and brown and white moved them.  The shift in attitudes and convictions did not happen overnight and came at the cost of blood and sweat and tears, of civil rights movement activists and the local leaders they supported. But finally, enough of us said with one voice, “It’s time.” 

I have always loved the color purple.  There was a brief moment in the seventies, when I learned that the teenybopper singer Donny Osmond’s favorite color was purple and I abandoned my first love; Osmond wasn’t cool, and at the age of thirteen, I aspired to coolness. 

I matured enough in my twenties to realize that Osmond and I could both like the same color without my “cool” factor being undermined; truth to tell, I had never been cool in the first place. But for me and purple, it has been full steam ahead ever since. My first big furniture purchase, when I could finally afford something that wasn’t a hand-me-down, was a purple couch. You get the point.  So, this is the place where I get to say I told you so

In 2018, I declared we were purple and I bid us claim it and build on it.  Mississippians did—not because I asked, mind you—but because enough of us understood what I said in my column two years ago: "You can’t be a Confederate American."

The work before us is still overwhelming:  In 2016, the National Center for Children in Poverty noted that 49 percent of Black children in Mississippi live in poverty. Last year, the Clarion-Ledger found that Black Mississippians are twice as likely to be denied home loans as whites. The CDC revealed that Black women are at least three times as likely to die from complications in childbirth as white women. The Center for Social Inclusion found that school districts with higher proportions of Black children also have higher numbers of non-certified teachers. Added to these disparities, many in the state legislature are determined to limit Black and poor Mississippians’ voting rights.  

We enter what I believe will be a dangerous time, when those who wanted to keep the flag will feel cornered and angry, a frightening combination anytime. But we can move forward with momentum now because we showed the world, and most importantly, we showed ourselves that we have changed.  The stories we tell ourselves about who we are shape what we believe and how we behave.  Most often unconscious, those narratives nevertheless have great power.  The story we’ve told ourselves about Mississippi—as individuals who live here and as outsiders who look on in chagrin and disappointment—is that Mississippi is a backwards, racist state that will never change.  It’s a comforting story, if you live outside of the state.  It allows others to estimate their progress by comparison and feel better about where they are.   

Last weekend, Mississippians said, “No more.” 

This concludes our three part series of A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg written by Susan M. Glisson, Co-founder and partner of Sustainable Equity, LLCa social change consulting firm and part of the Inclusive Innovations Collective.  Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanMGlisson

* The title for this three part series about Mississippi is taken from a Bob Moses’ quote. Bob Moses, age 85, is an American educator, civil rights activist and hero, known for leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg — Part Two*

Today, let’s look more deeply, beneath the electoral numbers.  In January, 2017, seven cities around the state held Women’s Marches, in concert with the massive protest march in Washington, D.C. to communicate a new resistance to the promised policies and demonstrated rhetoric of Donald Trump. I was astonished by the number of marches, all well-attended and all planned with little notice or support.

Some of the march organizers in each place had been long-time activists for progressive causes. Some were new to activism and organizing.  But in each place, that early show of defiance against racist ideologies and policies emboldened progressives in the state. Since then, progressives have played defense across the state as Republicans supported or enacted every discriminatory measure encouraged by the Trump administration.  We’ve fought for Medicaid expansion.  We’ve pushed for criminal justice reform.  We’ve fought to protect the state’s only abortion clinic. 

In August, 2019, seven Mississippi communities were devastated by surprise ICE raids at chicken plants. Almost seven hundred immigrant workers were arrested and detained; some workers were sent back to places they hadn’t lived in decades.  Perhaps the Trump administration thought that reliably-red Mississippi would welcome this event. But an interesting thing happened; rural whites in those seven places got angry.  They had come to know these workers and their families, many of whom had lived in Mississippi for decades.  That anger grew and with it came new questions about the nation’s immigration policies and whether an automatic rejection of new people was wise or even Christian.  A coalition of unusual allies came together to help support the families and to help free those detained where possible. 

In the wake of the pandemic and then with the horrific murder of George Floyd by callous police officers in Minneapolis, I wondered how Mississippians would respond to the turmoil of the times.  It put my purple theory to the test.  The answer?  Over 32 communities and counting have held marches, rallies, and protests against police brutality and systemic racism.  THIRTY-TWO.  In conservative towns like Pontotoc and Picayune and Brandon. Compare that to the seven women’s marches in 2017, a number you’ll recall was astonishing to me at that time. 

Know this.  It wasn’t courageous white public officials who earned the victory lap, though I am grateful for those who voted in the affirmative.  But these are the same leaders who refused to even consider a bill on flag removal in 2015, in the wake of the Charleston massacre of 9 black churchgoers, when communities across the South distanced themselves from Confederate imagery.  In 2017, when a similar wave of decluttering the landscape of Confederate memorials occurred after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, the state legislature and governor maintained their commitment to the emblem of slavery and white supremacy.  There was both economic pressure and incentive then to make the switch and yet they did not.

What changed their minds?  

What gave the legislature, dominated by a Republican supermajority, and a Republican governor the backbone to do the right thing?  The people of Mississippi. You heard me. Mississippi’s elected representatives, as with most other politicians, chase the sentiment of the people.  They very rarely lead it. 

You may be asking—where is my data? Come back tomorrow for the rest of the story.

Written by guest blogger Dr. Susan M. Glisson. Susan is co-founder of Sustainable Equity, LLC. She has worked for more than 20 years to change conditions that have created a legacy of inequities. Mississippi is her home.

Come back tomorrow for Part Three of A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg.

* The title for this three part series about Mississippi is taken from a Bob Moses’ quote. Bob Moses, age 85, is an American educator, civil rights activist and hero, known for leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg*

Part One

On Sunday, June 28th, 2020, the Republican supermajority Mississippi House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill removing the state flag that had flown over Mississippi’s public buildings for 126 years.  The Republican governor signed it into law two days later.  It was the last state flag in the country to bear a Confederate symbol.  Previous efforts by black legislators to introduce such bills died in committee.  In 2001, in a state referendum, Mississippians voted 2-to-1 to keep that freighted and offensive symbol.  

Success has many parents, as they say, and there will be many who will take credit for this monumental accomplishment; but it was far from certain.  I know that as late as Friday night, June 26th, we still were not confident we had garnered the remaining 4 votes we needed for a 2/3 majority in the Senate to suspend the rules in order to consider a bill on the flag. We’d spent days attempting to sway a few Republican senators identified as persuadable, but went to bed Friday night uncertain. But that weekend, it got done. 

How did this happen? 

In November, 2018, in the wake of Mississippi’s senatorial election, I declared that Mississippi was now a purple state, in a late-night Facebook post.  I was shocked the next morning to see that the post had almost 2,000 “likes” and had been shared almost a thousand times—far more than my typical 30 likes and no shares (insert smiling/crying emoji here). 

Some commenters questioned my declaration; after all, the senate contest had been 3-way race, with two Republican candidates and one Democrat.  The Republican candidates split the conservative vote, with the “establishment” candidate emerging to move forward to the run-off.  Some chalked up Mike Espy’s winning of 38 counties to the in-fighting within the Republican party in Mississippi.

But I stand by my assertion then, even though Hyde-Smith won over Espy in the late November run-off.  In the run-off election, Espy lost to Hyde-Smith by less than 8 points. By comparison, Trump won the state in 2016 by almost 18 points. Espy cut that lead by more than half.  When you look at the actual vote count, Espy lost by less than 69,000. Hinds County alone, which contains the capitol city of Jackson and is predominantly black, has over 149,000 voters, almost 70,000 of whom didn’t vote in the 2018 run-off and Espy won the county by 43 points. Even more striking are the vote totals in several predominantly white counties.  In DeSoto County, near the Tennessee state line, Espy lost by less than 8,000 votes.  And more than 62,000 voters in that county failed to vote. In Madison County, a suburb county adjacent to Jackson, Espy lost by less than 3,100 votes, in a county with 73,000 registered voters, almost 30,000 of whom did not vote in the run-off.

With appropriate support and a well-run campaign with grassroots engagement, Mike Espy could win (as we may see come November this year in an Espy/Hyde-Smith rematch). And while 2019 election results were disappointing for many of us, there were signs, as in 2018, reflecting that shift has been occurring in a state from which no one expects surprises. In typically red DeSoto County, a Democratic African American woman won a state legislative seat.  To win an election, Republican candidates running for statewide offices must now win a near unanimous support of white voters.  The cracks in the facade are beginning to show. 

Written by guest blogger Dr. Susan M. Glisson. Susan is co-founder of Sustainable Equity, LLC. She has worked for more than 20 years to change conditions that have created a legacy of inequities. Mississippi is her home.

Come back tomorrow for Part Two of A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg.

* The title for this three part series about Mississippi is taken from a Bob Moses’ quote. Bob Moses, age 85, is an American educator, civil rights activist and hero, known for leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.

Join us for Jimmy Tingle's 2020 Vision; Why would a comedian run for office?


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Humor for Humanity presents an online political comedy event with Jimmy Tingle and Friends, and Left of Center Co-founders Deb Kozikowski and Mara Dolan:

Who? Jimmy Tingle and YOU!

What? Jimmy Tingle’s 2020 Vision: Why would a comedian run for office?

Where? Zoom Register HERE

When? Sunday, April 26, 2020 at 4 PM

Why? Sometimes Democrats wanna have fun with their politics.

Jimmy Tingle is a comedian, commentator, actor and founder of Humor for Humanity. He is a graduate CRLS, UMASS Dartmouth and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and was a 2018 candidate for LT Governor of Massachusetts.  He has worked as a humorist and commentator for 60 Minutes II and MSNBC and has appeared on The Tonight Show,  Conan O’Brien,  CNN, FOX, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and in his own HBO half-hour comedy special.  Humor for Humanity is a new social enterprise which aspires to raise spirits, funds and awareness for nonprofits, charities, political groups and social causes through Jimmy's expertise as a comedian, emcee and auctioneer. 

Left of Center is woman-run SuperPAC working in neglected areas rich with untapped Democratic votes. We believe in thought leadership that bubbles up from the grassroots to accomplish our collective goals. Our work in the critical swing states of Florida, North Carolina, and Maine is just the beginning. Our mission is to support candidates and volunteers who are ready to make change happen now. Our team approach works to protect our candidates by using communications and organizing strategies to help elect Democrats to the U.S. House who will hold the center, strengthen our democracy, and increase Democratic performance margins to help Democrats win up and down the ballot.

Left of Center is proud to sponsor Together for 2020 (T2020). T2020 efforts have focused on building an effective online community of trained volunteers as we now try to deal with our new normal of COVID-19 organizing readiness. The pivot to online training and action looks like it’s destined to be a long haul strategy. The tireless response from all partners has been phenomenal. Help us support our partner volunteers and as well as our congressional district targets. We are all in this together for 2020 and beyond!


Written by Left of Center Co-founder Deb Kozikowski