Democrats scored big victories in a series of special elections on Tuesday.
In New Hampshire, Democrat Hal Rafter won his special election for the New Hampshire State House in a landslide — 56-44.
Criminally indicted Republican ex-President Donald Trump won the district, Rockingham 1, in both 2016 and 2020.
Rafter ran against MAGA Republican extremist Pastor James Guzofski. The seat became vacant in April after Republican Rep. Brian Bartlett resigned due to’ health issues.
Guzofski is a radical election-denying conspiracy theorist who believes vaccines “literally infected [people] with the virus,” being gay is “against nature,” and that abortions are Democratic “blood sacrifices to Molech.”
In other words, a typical Republican in 2023.
The GOP now holds a narrow 198-197 edge in the New Hampshire State House, despite a gerrymandered map that favors them. Yet, this edge won’t likely remain for long.
If the Democrats win the November 7 special election — as expected in a safe blue seat — the balance of power will be even in the chamber.
Rafter’s win was just one of a series of Democratic victories on Tuesday evening.
Democrat Lindsay Powell won her special election for the Pennsylvania State House in Allegheny County in a blowout performance. As of 8:15PM ET, Powell held a commanding lead with 82% of the vote.
While expected, here’s what makes Powell’s win so important: Powell’s win puts Democrats back in control of the Pennsylvania House with a narrow majority.
Powell, a Pittsburgh nonprofit leader, ran against Republican Erin Connolly Autenreith, a real estate agent and local Republican chairperson who attended Donald Trump’s January 6, 2001 rally, but reportedly left prior to the Trump and GOP-led terrorist attack on the Capitol.
The seat became vacant after Democrat Sara Innamorato resigned in July to pursue local office in Allegheny County. Republicans still retain a Senate majority in the commonwealth.
The string of victories display Democrats’ electoral strength heading into the 2024 elections. As pundits continue to talk endlessly about their shoddy polls and failed narratives, Democrats continue to outperform all expectations.
Voters continue to reject the extremism of the Republican Party election after election in what could — and should — be the biggest political story of our time.
We don’t win them all, but if we can tune out the narrative, I’d say we are winning.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who ONLY get their information from “the narrative” pushed by the media.
How do you think we’re doing?
Open thread.
Baud
👍👍👍👍
trollhattan
My NH brother has myriad amusing stories re. how out of control that ginormous state house rabble can be. Tiny state and hundreds of members mean it’s possible to get elected by being friendly to the neighborhood dogs and having a lot of cookouts. Or, being batshit crazy to mimic your neighbors.
Ramalama
Fantastique!
Being gay is against nature unless you’re a dog who happens to want to hump same-sex other dogs, in that case you’re making a choice to be gay because humanity gets to decide how to act, but don’t act like that because it’s against God’s will except the Bible says free will but not lying down with another man but if you’re a woman you’re good to go, except the Bible doesn’t say that so you’re just putting words into God’s mouth which if you do that you’re powerful so you must buckle down to the GOP because otherwise you’re forcing things down their throats…
C Stars
Oh geez, it’s really great to hear some good news. Here in the Bay Area, a small school district in the East Bay (Sunol Glen) recently voted to ban pride flags. The superintendent opposed, and now the board has instituted a “performance review” of her work. Horrible to see the hate creeping in so close to us.
rikyrah
CLAP CLAP CLAP
Cameron
@Ramalama: “I think I know what you mean, Travis” -Taxi Driver
bbleh
We’re sure winning most of them, starting with the WH in 2020 and the razor-thin GOP win of the House in 2022 (which ain’t looking like much of a “win” right now if you ask me).
Eeyores gonna Eeyore, and access-and-click-hungry media got their own priorities, but I’d say just working as we’ve been working looks like a pretty good rule of thumb.
bbleh
@Ramalama: … except for our Lesbian niece whom of course we love and support very much, because.
JaySinWA
Even ABC news has a story up about the Democratic wins, so it is not just MTN [Meidas Touch].
https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-winning-big-special-elections/story?id=103315703
teezyskeezy
It’s revealing when these wingnuts say a lifestyle or identity is “against nature” or “against biology.” The wording is vague and it sounds like an appeal to authority, exactly as if they had said it is “against biblical law” with ‘nature’ or ‘biology’ simply substituted in place of ‘biblical law.’ It shows how they think, and how they try to bullshit us. It shows how everything to them is about adherence to some ideological or moral belief system, that there are these magical commandments that MUST BE FOLLOWED. But of course they don’t actually believe in “nature” or “biology” as a framework to follow–they are all about the right wing fundie “morality” bullshit. They just know most of us don’t want to hear that shit so they think they can dress it up with something secular and sciency, and in the process definitely missing the point in front of everyone.
MattF
Yeah, this is the way it has to be— one election at a time, one state at a time. Not glam or media-friendly. The Rs see the landslide coming.
WaterGirl
@MattF: Maybe landslides if everything weren’t so gerrymandered.
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: Yeah, I am much less enamored of Meidais Touch than I used to be. Hawking their products and just the tone of all their podcasts. We don’t need a Rush Limbaugh on our side.
I can barely listen to them anymore. But this seemed factual, so I went with it.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Yes, but you have to expect that the opposition will do everything in its power and more to stay in power. They are entirely serious about this. We must be also.
teezyskeezy
@Ramalama: This is all true, but we should remember that these wingnuts aren’t appealing to “laws of nature” in good faith. It’s just bullshit they say to normies in place of saying that their right wing fundie religious beliefs tell them gayness is bad. They don’t respect some imagined “Natural Law” outside of what their fundie beliefs say is God’s Law. They think they can dress up their moral opposition with some secular sciency stuff and pass it off.
Eolirin
Even some of our loses, like that WI state legislature seat, were with margins that were much smaller than they “should” have been. Dobbs (and other things) has created a several point shift in our favor in most places. That won’t be enough to win really safe red seats, but it may be enough to break everything that’s marginal our way.
The real test will be whether this holds up in a Presidential race, where we can see if it’s just a factor of a motivation gap that’ll be minimized by a bigger election or if there’s a real shift in the electorate itself.
We do have an additional advantage in that Gen Z is so overwhelmingly breaking for Democrats. If they keep doing that and we can get them to turn out like 2020 and 2022, we’ll get a persistent shift as well. But that’ll take a bit.
Frankensteinbeck
The evidence is very clear that being gay is entirely within nature, intended, and the existence of gay members of any species increases the success of their genetic line.
But conservatives can’t imagine anything beyond a grade school understanding of any topic. Complexity and nuance are anathema to them. It’s not just that they don’t know that there’s more to it than ‘gay people don’t have children’, they cannot grasp that there could be more.
Rusty
As a granite state resident I am happy for the NH house win. We are very gerrymandered, the Democrats got more votes than the Republicans for state senate, but the Republicans control 14-10. The house is also gerrymandered, but with 400+ representatives in a state of only 1.3M residents, it’s tougher to draw as extreme lines. Hopefully we can win the house and slow down or stop the creeping destruction of the NH public school system. The conservatives started and keep expanding school vouchers. We pay a family more to not have their kid in the public school system than we pay the public school system for educating the same kid. What a mess.
WaterGirl
@Rusty:
That’s crazy. And awful.
Alison Rose
@C Stars: Ugh. Sunol is on that southeast edge of the East Bay that’s often ideologically closer to inland CA. It’s literally just a fucking rainbow, people. Grow up.
JoyceH
The other day CNN was interviewing New Hampshire voters and found quite a few of them were RFKJr-curious. Interesting though, every one of the RFKJr-curious were Republicans. Somehow I don’t think RFKJr is going to siphon off the votes that the Money behind him thinks he’ll siphon off.
Alison Rose
@Frankensteinbeck: And Tango Makes Three! 🐧
Steeplejack
😹
jonas
Yeah, but it helps queer kids feel safe/seen, so we can’t have that.
glc
Mastodon thread reader.
Unclear to me how useful it is but as people have some issues with the functionality of Mastodon, it might be of interest.
h/t Deborah Hartmann Preuss
Alison Rose
@Steeplejack: How were you able to do the embed? It hasn’t worked for weeks and I just tried again with this one and got the same stupid error message that Muskrat seems uninterested in fixing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I don’t care if people think being gay is “against nature.” That’s their problem. But other people’s orientation are NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Geez.
teezyskeezy
@Frankensteinbeck: Complex and nuance do escape wingers and their understanding of science is perhaps even worse than grade school level, but they are also just plain dishonest and they don’t make these appeals to “natural law” in good faith. That’s just how they try to launder their fundie beliefs for the normies. They know most people won’t be swayed by their fundie “biblical law” arguments so they substitute “nature” in place of it. These people are the worst of combo of having genuinely fucked up beliefs and also having absolutely no scruples.
Steeplejack
Redacted.
teezyskeezy
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Curing potentially fatal illnesses I guess is “against nature” too? I guess I am happy to stand athwart nature from time to time.
Steeplejack
@Alison Rose:
I have been reading mostly on Nitter lately, but I thought this item was worth the full treatment. I went to the Twitter version, clicked the three-dot thing next to “Follow,” then clicked “Embed post” and finally “Copy Code.” That’s the same way I always used to do it.
ETA: This was on my Windows computer. Haven’t tried it on my (Android) phone lately.
Also, I don’t have a Twitter account. I’m just going in with my browser (Firefox).
Alison Rose
@Steeplejack: Weird, for weeks now when I try to do that, I get an error window saying “Sorry, we can’t create an embed for that. It may have been deleted or made private. Please try again.”
JoyceH
Cassidy Hutchinson has a book coming out. Going to buy it? I might.
FastEdD
I went to my local Democratic club meeting last night. Standing room only. In the last couple of months, 412 new members. Tonight at the Capistrano Valley Unified School District board meeting, the “Moms For Liberty” idiots are going to try to spread their toxic brand of bible humping, LBGTQ hating, book banning. They will be met by 100 of us who will shut that shit down.
WaterGirl
@FastEdD:
We want a report on how that goes. :-)
Redshift
@teezyskeezy: Not to mention that just taking something from someone else because you want it and you can is clearly not “against nature”; animals do it all the time. But as has been discussed, their “against nature” is just a way to lie and pretend they don’t really mean “against God’s law.”
BlueGuitarist
@Alison Rose:
Speaking of rainbows, earlier today heard Depeche Mode, Just Can’t Get Enough on the radio, so thought of you (dj followed with Grateful Dead.)
BlueGuitarist
@Steeplejack:
hahaha!
When WaterGirl posted Fetterman’s reply to Nate Silver mocking his predictions, i didn’t remember that Silver had Oz with 57% chance of winning.
Redshift
@C Stars: We have some truly awful people running in our upcoming school board race (officially non-partisan, so candidates get “endorsed” by the local party instead of nominated by them.) One of the at-large candidates, Maureen Brody, we knew was a complete MAGAt who was a white supremacist who was at the rally on the Ellipse, but it only recently came out that she was also at the Capitol and was tear-gassed.
Fortunately, they’re not popular here and they know it — for some (or maybe all), their campaign lit doesn’t mention the GOP endorsement; instead they claim to be “an independent candidate.” But with no party affiliation on the ballot, we still have to work to make sure people know which candidates are which.
Alison Rose
@BlueGuitarist: Haha, DM followed by the Dead, they were obviously thinking of me :P It’s funny to me that Just Can’t Get Enough is still so popular when it’s so out of joint with the rest of their catalog. It’s from their debut and was written by Vince Clarke, not Martin Gore, and it’s so bubbly pop whereas most of their other hits are, you know, a little more mysterious or dour, LOL. (For example, at this very moment I’m listening to Black Celebration.) I did think it was hilarious to hear that it was used in Cocaine Bear.
C Stars
@Redshift: Yeah, I get the sense that there are just a couple of hateful people on the school board in Sunol Glen, but it’s such a small district/board that their vote has outsize power. I bet if elections were held tomorrow, they’d be ousted, after all of this ugliness. GOP politicians generally have to hide their awful affiliations/hateful beliefs in order to win in places that aren’t raging MAGA.
Steeplejack
@Alison Rose:
Just thought of this: I went to twitter.com, not x.com. Dunno if that would make a difference.
. . . And I just checked it on x.com, and it worked there, too, at least for me.
wjca
Fascinating factoid on the Sunol schools: because they draw from neighboring areas, there are more kids in the school that the total population of the area which votes on school board members.
Alison Rose
@Steeplejack: x.com just redirects to twitter.com, and I still get the same thing. Very weird.
C Stars
@wjca: Thank you. I was looking for more information about what happened here, and found this well-written and comprehensive article in the Pleasanton Weekly. It sounds like outside agitators showed up at the district meeting and successfully caused trouble that caused the board president (who is in on this shameful stunt) to shut the meeting down early and call in police officers to clear out the meeting space. Now the board has just fired their lawyer and is gunning to take down the superintendent. Really nasty stuff.
https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/news/2023/09/20/fallout-in-sunol-over-boards-decision-to-ban-school-from-flying-lgbtq-pride-flag
H.E.Wolf
Nice photo of newly elected PA state rep Lindsay Powell here:
https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2023-09-19/democrats-retain-narrow-control-of-pa-house-after-lindsay-powell-wins-special-election-in-district-21#
C Stars
@Alison Rose: It’s literally just a fucking rainbow, people. Grow up.
Exactly. What the fuck?
@FastEdD: Nice. Thank you for showing up. Be safe and be strong.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: I also found it first at MTN following a link rikyrah posted about something else and scrolling down, then checked for some other sources. I had seen a few headlines about special elections yesterday, but had forgotten about them until this morning.
I was surprised at the ABC coverage not being the usual Democrats in disarray. For once a positive outlook for D’s in the mainstream.
wjca
But not in that order. The report that I read (East Bay Times) said that first they cleared the room, and only then held the vote to ban the Pride flag. Which seems like it has to conflict with the law on public vs secret meetings.
StringOnAStick
@WaterGirl: I have Medias podcast a shot after liking their tweets in the old days, but deleted them off my podcast list 5 minutes into the first one for exactly the reason you’ve given. My go to politics/news podcast is Daily Beans, gets me on the trainer on mornings when I would rather not.
The Pale Scot
@BlueGuitarist:
Rainbows!
Debbie Harry & Kermit The Frog – Rainbow Connection
like a metaphor
@Redshift:
“You cannot go against nature
Because when you do
Go against nature
It’s part of nature too”
-from the 80s Love and Rockets song No New Tale to Tell