All posts by David Lublin

2020 elections

Minority Members of the U.S. House

Note: This is a first cut at the data. If you catch any errors or omissions, please let me know. I have updated the original post to include Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (NY 11).

The total number of Black, Latino, Asian and Native American Members of Congress elected in 2020 is 111, or 25.5% of the membership. These numbers exclude non-voting members from D.C. or the territories.

In a departure from previous Congresses, one-half of new minority members will sit as Republicans–10 of 20. Among Latinos and Asians, the total number of Democrats is down while the number of Republicans is up. African and Native Americans saw gains in members from both parties.

African Americans

The 55 African Americans will compose 12.6% of the U.S. House as compared to 12.5% of the total population that was estimated as non-Hispanic Black (one race) by the Bureau of the Census in 2019. The total number of Black representatives is four higher than elected in 2018. All but two of the members elected in 2020 are Democrats, a net increase of three Democrats and one Republican.

Latinos

The 39 Latinos will form 9.0% of the U.S. House compared to an estimated 18.5% of the total population. There is no change in the total number of Latino representatives but there is a shift in the partisan breakdown. While there were just six Latino Republicans in the old Congress, the new Congress will have ten. Correspondingly, the 27 Latino Democrats elected in 2020 represent a decline of three from the 30 who won in 2018.

Asian Americans

The 15 Asian American elected will comprise 3.4% of the House but non-Hispanic Asians (one race) are an estimated 5.9% of the total population. This year’s elections produced a net gain of one Asian representative over 2018. While all elected in 2018 were Democrats, two elected in 2020 are Republicans. The number of Asian Democrats is down one.

The greater under representation of Latinos and Asians is not surprising in light of the much higher rates of non-citizenship. Latinos and Asians who are citizens are especially highly concentrated among the non-voting under 18 population as well as younger voters, who tend to participate at lower rates than older voters in all racial and ethnic groups.

Note that, following convention, Asian includes only East and South Asian here. As a result, the count excludes one Arab American and one Iranian American who are newly elected or returning after a gap in service. Both are Republicans.

Native Americans

There will be six Native American U.S. House members in the new Congress. They will be 1.4% of the U.S. House as compared to an estimated 1.5% of the total population. The population numbers include Native Alaskans, Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders as well as Native Americans.

The total number of Native American representatives is up by two in 2020. The incoming Native American Members of Congress, including one Native Hawaiian, are split evenly between the two parties, as was the case in 2018.

Members Counted Twice

Four representatives fall into more than one of the above categories, so the totals summed from each category are higher than the overall total of 110 minority representatives. New York Reps. Ritchie Torres and Antonio Delgado are Afro-Latino. Similarly, Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott and Washington Rep. Marilyn Strickland are Afro-Asian.

Minority Members of Congress

Black, Latino, Asian and Native American Members of Congress Elected in 2020

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2020 elections, Seventh Congressional District

Klacik Crazy Continues: Hogan Helped Mfume Steal Her Election

Look, this all comports with an effort by Kim Klacik to continue to keep her profile high so she can take in more money by riding the Trump train. She was never in any danger of winning Mfume’s seat, so why not see how much more money she can raise from the gullible.

At least Klacik realized that it had better be a doozy, Otherwise, how can she compete Giuliani’s tale of a long dead Venezuelan dictator organizing a national conspiracy with Democrats to steal the presidential election? Klacik claims the Republican governor is working to steal the election for a liberal Democrat who was going to win anyway by about this amount.

It all makes sense. Or rather, it’s so clearly bonkers, that Mike Ricci, Gov. Hogan’s Communications Director, retweeted it with a shrug above it.

Don’t forget, however, there’s a sucker born every minute. Based on the 2016 presidential election, Klacik is probably our next governor.

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2020 elections, Larry Hogan

Hogan Hits Back Hard at Trump Tweet on COVID Tests. “Stop golfing and concede”

Gov. Larry Hogan is having a very bad press week as the media finally focuses on the well known fact that the COVID tests from South Korea were overpriced duds and that he has continued to pretend that they were a success long after it was clear that they weren’t.

But Gov. Hogan is absolutely 100% right on the money when he says that the federal government left the states completely at sea. After denial of the pandemic was no longer possible, President Trump repeatedly and publicly told the states that they were on their own. So Gov. Hogan may have failed in this instance, but why on earth did the president and the federal government leave him to scramble for tests and other supplies?

Gov. Hogan was among the first Republicans to do the utterly normal and congratulate President-Elect Biden. He hadn’t gone beyond that to show leadership in demanding that Trump concede or point out that his behavior was that of an undemocratic sore loser. Looks like the President’s attack has just goaded him into precisely just that.

It turns out that President Trump isn’t the only one who doesn’t take well to public slams and knows how to punch back twice as hard.

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purple line

The World’s Longest Bad Breakup: MD & the Purple Line Transit Partnership

by David Lublin (with a little help and inspiration from a friend)

This is like the world’s longest bad break-up. Will they get back together, or won’t they? And if so, will it last? And if not, looks like they’re gonna put themselves back out there on Match.com (P3 edition) and hope for the best.

It’s like the State is the boyfriend not getting the message when told “It’s not you, it’s me.” In this case, it may really be the “me” because my understanding is that companies like Fluor in the Purple Line Transit Partnership no longer want to be in this sort of business. Put another way, they just aren’t that into us anymore.

The problem for the State is that the breakup comes with a payout of $367 million — a little more than the usual foregone when you made the wise decision not to request that VHS tape or DVD back. Where is the State supposed to find this money? Is the new concessionaire supposed to pay it as part of taking over the contract?

Then there is still the little matter of the extra $1 billion and rising in costs. I have no idea how much Fluor and the other companies are willing to pay to make the State go away. I’d observe, however, that (1) the State needs this finished way more desperately (it’s a political imperative, if nothing else) than they do, and (2) you can hire an awful lot of lawyers for just a fraction of that to fight over that big a chunk of change.

In short, it looks likely we’ll be on the hook for it. The State has the fantasy that this somehow won’t reduce the State’s borrowing capacity because the new concessionaire (P3 partner) will borrow the money. But we’ll have to pay it back over time and the bond rating agencies have made clear that they will unsurprisingly regard this government financial obligation as such in evaluating our AAA bond rating.

The financial distress resulting from this project is just getting started. It could hardly come at a worse time.

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Montgomery County Council, purple line

Council Drops the Other Purple Penny

We already know that the Purple Line is going to be massively delayed and way over budget. The Montgomery County Council inadvertently revealed just before the election that it also won’t bring the promised economic or housing benefits.

The Council voted 7-2 to heap new tax incentives on developers in order to make project happen around Grosvenor-Strathmore and other Red Line Metro stations in the County. Metro carries more passengers than the Purple Line and Grosvenor-Strathmore is a desirable location for development, as are several other Red Line locations.

If we need to give developers gobs of money to make development happen at these locations, the same will surely be true at Purple Line stations. Yet the Purple Line wasn’t sold that way. Land has been upzoned around all the Purple Line stations and we were told that development would follow.

No one mentioned the need for massive subsidies once the Purple Line was built. On the contrary, we were promised that development around these stations would help fill the county’s coffers even as it produced more housing and economic development around the stations. Turns out that’s not the case.

The only place where development is planned or underway is at Chevy Chase Lake. Unfortunately, this appears to be the only place where the economics make sense. We’ve paid literally billions to subsidize one economic development. The lobbying by the Chevy Chase Land Company paid off. For them.

So add the cost of huge development subsidies to the Purple Line tab.

The major advocates of the Purple Line have a lot to explain, but perhaps at the top of the list among the current county leadership are County Councilmember Hans Riemer and Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson. Hans Riemer was a former leader of Purple Line Now before joining the Council and has continued to advocate relentlessly for the project, as has his good friend, Casey Anderson, on the Planning Board.

Both present themselves as certain of the solutions to the region’s transit and housing problems. Even ignoring the out-of-control costs and massive delays, and I don’t know why we should, they heavily touted the housing and economic development benefits of the Purple Line. Neither Riemer nor Anderson ever explained that we would need to heap subsidies on top of the transit costs to make the housing and economic benefits happen.

Though they are far from alone in needing to shoulder blame, rather than being an economic cash cow, the Purple Line has now metastasized into the monorail episode from the Simpsons. Only it’s a lot less funny to be living it.

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2020 elections, Republicans

MD Republicans Promoting False Election Fraud Claims

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has provided a refreshing bit of sanity and leadership by refusing to join the chorus of his fellow Republicans claiming that Democrats stole the presidential election and congratulating President-Elect Joe Biden.

Unfortunately, Maryland Republicans are not following his lead. As the Washington Post reported, U.S. House Rep. Andy Harris (R-1) is propagating unsubstantiated allegations:

Secret unobserved vote counting in the swing states means that we will have to wait until a court unravels what really went on. When that thorough investigation is over, and we know that only legal votes have been counted then we will know who the real winner is – and then and only then we need to move on.

All of Trump’s claims regarding observers have been dismissed around the country. Just a reminder of what happened in the Philadelphia case:

during a hearing for a federal version of that suit on Thursday, Judge Paul Diamond of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania pressed a lawyer for Mr. Trump on whether the campaign’s observers did, in fact, have access to the facility. The lawyer said, grudgingly, that there were “a nonzero number” of people in the room.

Oops.

Meanwhile, Seventh District Republican Nominee Kim Klacik has been promoting groundless claims in Baltimore:

There is voter fraud whether people want to admit it or not. Just so you know, there are people looking into my race as well, and as soon as I have information, I’ll share that.

More on Twitter:

Yes, Kim Klacik is alleging that people were stealing votes for Kweisi Mfume in her race. She’s also claiming that people are looking into it, which sounds equally fanciful. I bet the gumshoes on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? were more active. Mfume beat Klacik by over 130,000 votes or 43% in this heavily Democratic district.

Meanwhile, as I look around Twitter and Facebook pages of Republican members of the General Assembly, I keep coming up empty in my search for someone who echoes the Governor’s thoughts in congratulating President-Elect Biden. (Hope springs eternal, let me know if I missed someone.) I found plenty who touted Republican gains–funny how there was never any fraud mentioned in those elections.

Del. Justin Ready impugned Philadelphia elections without any basis even though he admits it probably won’t change the outcome:

Except there is no evidence of any “irregularities” or “shenanigans” beyond the deep abnormality of the failure to concede the election and invented claims of a stolen election designed to delegitimize the President-Elect and our democracy.

Sen. Steve Hershey is looking to help elect the two Republicans to the U.S. Senate in Georgia–the same two with corrupt stock trades who have now demanded the resignation of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State at Trump’s behest because he ran an election in which Trump lost.

Though Hershey is clearly more interested in golfing:

It’s almost a Klacik level of commitment.

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2020 elections, Montgomery County

Pierre Trailing in Challenge to Incumbent Judges

Based on the report run just after midnight, progressive challenger Marylin Pierre is trailing in her bid to unseat one of the four incumbent judges.

These are incomplete results but they show Pierre with a substantial deficit of over 50,000 votes behind Christopher Fogleman in fourth place.

Note that the number of under votes, the people who cast ballots but chose not to vote in the contest, is far higher than the number of votes received by an of the judicial candidates. There are no partisan cues and most people don’t know the candidates.

Pierre has run a spirited challenge, winning a slot in the general election by defeating one of the incumbents in the Democratic primary. She won some noted endorsements, including one from Prince George’s State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy the other day.

At the same time, Pierre’s campaign made several missteps. Previously, the progressive-backed candidate had donated to Republicans. Her twitter account suggested wrongly that burden of proof was on accused police in the George Floyd case to show that they are not guilty. Pierre blamed the misstep on a volunteer who failed to follow guidelines in managing the Twitter account.

The incumbent judges proved ready to capitalize aggressively on these errors, even to the point of getting a restraining order against Pierre for a campaign volunteer who inaccurately portrayed her as Judge Pierre. These problems combined with a very different electorate that of the Democratic Primary appear to have left Pierre short last night with the incumbent slate of four judges returning to the bench in Montgomery.

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2020 elections, Baltimore, Seventh Congressional District

Klacik’s Vanity Project

Republican Kim Klacik sure garnered a lot of attention and money for her longshot bid to unseat Kweisi Mfume in the Seventh Congressional District. But she has been far more focused on building her national brand than on Baltimore.

Klacik may have become the first congressional challenger in history to refuse free local TV time when she wouldn’t sit down for a standard candidate profile interview with WBAL at the end of October. As WBAL reported:

Klacik declined an invitation to sit down with 11 News for this election series. A spokesman said Klacik would agree to a live TV interview or nothing.

Klacik doesn’t live in the Seventh District. As she notes, it’s not a legal requirement, and says she’ll move if she wins. Klacik has spent an unusual amount of time outside the district for someone claiming to have a genuine interest in winning it. Klacik traveled to Arizona to take part in rallies with President Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. — not the usual stomping grounds for voters in the Seventh District (at least of Maryland).

Republican blogger Brian Griffiths and I rarely agree on anything political. Seems like he got this one dead right though:

Kim Klacik doesn’t actually give a damn about winning the election. Kim Klacik doesn’t give a damn about the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee, of which she ostensibly remains a member. She doesn’t give a damn about the Maryland Republican Party or even the city of Baltimore. All she cares about is continue to parlay her unearned fame into continued speaking fees and media appearances. Hey, she wouldn’t be the first internet celebrity Republican to follow the money. But for Kim Klacik to do it now, mere days before her election, is an insult of the highest order and she is making a fool out of everybody who has ever supported her or gave her money.

Generally, it’s great for any community to have strong choices and to be courted by both parties. But that’s not what Klacik’s campaign has been about. Maryland voters of all political stripes ought to remember that when she launches her next vanity project.

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2020 elections

GOP Gov & Dem Assembly Leaders Join to Support Counting All Votes & Express Confidence in Elections

Earlier today, Republican Governor Larry Hogan joined with Democratic Speaker Adrienne Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson to release this Public Service Announcement expressing firm support for counting all the votes and confidence in our state’s elections.

On the eve of Election Day, this bipartisan announcement is welcome leadership and the right message in these deeply divided times. As in all other states, Maryland’s count will not be fully complete on election night. Nevertheless, as leaders from both parties express, we will count all the votes and can have confidence in the final result.

That’s the right message around the country.

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2020 elections, voting rights

Barr’s DOJ Will Monitor MoCo Election Along with Other Dem Areas.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice plans to send monitors to 44 jurisdictions “to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws” on Election Day. Montgomery County, Maryland is one of them.

The 44 selected jurisdictions are almost exclusively ones that the Democrats expect to win in tomorrow’s presidential election. In North Carolina, for example, DOJ will monitor Democratic Wake (Raleigh) and Mecklenburg (Charlotte) but no other counties.

In Florida, the four out of the five counties are among the nine that Hillary Clinton managed to carry in the state. The fifth is Duval (Jacksonville), which she lost by just one point, has a large African-American population, and has been moving away from the Republicans–the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate won by four even as he lost narrowly statewide.

Given the repeated attempts by the Republicans and the Trump campaign to limit access to the polls and to outright disfranchise voters, this seemingly far from accidental targeting of Democratic areas by Bill Barr’s extremely partisan Justice Department merits further investigation.

Here is the complete list of jurisdictions that DOJ plans to monitor:

  • Coconino County, Arizona;
  • Maricopa County, Arizona;
  • Navajo County, Arizona;
  • Los Angeles County, California;
  • Orange County, California;
  • Broward County, Florida;
  • Duval County, Florida;
  • Hillsborough County, Florida;
  • Miami-Dade County, Florida;
  • Orange County, Florida;
  • Palm Beach County, Florida;
  • Fulton County, Georgia;
  • Gwinnett County, Georgia;
  • City of Chicago, Illinois;
  • Cook County, Illinois;
  • Montgomery County, Maryland;
  • City of Boston, Massachusetts;
  • City of Lowell, Massachusetts;
  • City of Malden, Massachusetts;
  • City of Quincy, Massachusetts;
  • City of Springfield, Massachusetts;
  • City of Detroit, Michigan;
  • City of Eastpointe, Michigan;
  • City of Flint, Michigan;
  • City of Hamtramck, Michigan;
  • City of Highland Park, Michigan;
  • City of Jackson, Michigan;
  • Shelby Township, Michigan;
  • City of Minneapolis, Minnesota;
  • Bergen County, New Jersey;
  • Middlesex County, New Jersey;
  • Bernalillo County, New Mexico;
  • Mecklenburg County, North Carolina;
  • Wake County, North Carolina;
  • Cuyahoga County, Ohio;
  • Allegheny County, Pennsylvania;
  • Lehigh County, Pennsylvania;
  • Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania;
  • Richland County, South Carolina;
  • Harris County, Texas;
  • Waller County, Texas;
  • Fairfax County, Virginia;
  • Prince William County, Virginia; and
  • City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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