The Tap: Tuesday, March 22, 2016

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The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.

Review of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #9 of The Tap, which was published on March 28, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

• PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS:
  • For more analysis on Tuesday’s elections, see: Split decisions on Western Tuesday
  • With big wins in Idaho and Utah, Bernie Sanders outperformed Hillary Clinton in the delegate count Tuesday night, winning an estimated 74 delegates to her 55. In both Idaho and Utah, Sanders beat Clinton by almost 60 percentage points. Clinton, however, won Arizona 58 to 40 percent and maintains a substantial lead over Sanders in the overall delegate count.
  • On the Republican side Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz took one state each, Arizona and Utah respectively. Arizona, with 58 delegates up for grabs, was a winner-take-all state. In Utah, Trump suffered one of his biggest losses of the primary season in terms of percentage points. He received 14 percent of the vote to Cruz’s 69 percent. His loss in Utah marked only the third time that Trump took less than second place in a state primary contest.
• Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D) wrote an op-ed in TIME to promote Bernie Sanders as “the only person running for president who has the intelligence, foresight and good judgment to make sound decisions when it comes to the issue of war and peace.” She argued that “while Sanders understands the need to defeat al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist organizations that attacked America on 9/11 and who continue to wage war against us, he has made it clear that he will not waste American treasure and lives on interventionist wars of regime change and so-called nation building.”
• Secretary of State John Kerry met with leaders in the Colombian government and a delegation from FARC, a Colombian militant rebel group, in Cuba. The delegations met to negotiate peace talks that began in November 2012. According to the BBC, both sides have agreed on “land reform, political participation, the illegal drugs trade and transitional justice” and are now in talks over disarmament. FARC leader Rodrigo Londono said, “[It was] a historic meeting with the U.S. secretary of state, something unprecedented and unthinkable. We received support from him in person for the peace process in Colombia, which fills us with optimism and makes us more certain that we're moving toward peace.”
• The Supreme Court issued four decisions.
  • In the case of Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, the court ruled that workers at an Iowa plant were able to rely on statistics to prove their case in mass. According to The New York Times, the case “limited the sweep of the court’s 2011 decision in Walmart Stores v. Dukes, which threw out an enormous employment discrimination class-action suit and made it harder for workers, investors and consumers to join together to pursue their claims.”
  • In Nebraska v. Parker, the court unanimously ruled that an 1882 law did not technically diminish tribal lands when it opened portions of the Omaha reservation to white settlers. According to SCOTUSblog, the court ruled that only Congress could diminish reservation land. However, the court also sent the case back to lower courts because “the town could argue that the tribe waited too long to claim the power to tax liquor sales in Pender and that it may have impliedly conceded by doing nothing for so long that it accepted that Pender was not under its legislative control.”
  • In Sturgeon v. Frost, the court unanimously ruled that the National Park Service could not regulate the use of hovercrafts on navigable waters that run through state land. The suit was originally brought by John Sturgeon, a moose hunter who was told he could not ride his hovercraft on a stretch of the Nation River that ran through National Park land, according to The Hill.
  • The court was divided in the case of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore. The case, filed by two wives who were required to sign loan papers submitted by their husbands, questioned whether demanding payment from spouses required to sign as guarantors of loans “constituted discrimination because of marital status, which is prohibited under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act,” according to The Hill. The court’s split decision means that the lower court’s ruling in favor of the bank remains in place.
• John Canegata, chair of the Virgin Islands Republican Party, disqualified all six delegates selected to represent the party at the Republican National Convention. Canegata said that delegates must confirm their selection within five days, and the selected delegates failed to do so. On March 10, the Virgin Islands GOP selected its six delegates, including Michigan political strategist and former Rand Paul aide John Yob. The eligibility of Yob and others is in the court system, as the territory's GOP leaders have questioned whether the selected delegates were citizens of the Virgin Islands.
  • See also: Presidential election in the USVI, 2016
• Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi released an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing a tax package passed in December of last year. The package extended almost 50 tax breaks to businesses and individuals; it was estimated to result in approximately $650 billion in tax cuts over the next 10 years and a potential increase in the national deficit of about $2 trillion over the next 20 years. Pelosi wrote that the Republicans who sponsored those tax breaks did not adequately prepare for the reduction in revenue that would result from the tax package. Pelosi argued that Congress is obligated to answer for revenue reductions in one area (i.e., tax cuts) with increases in revenue or spending cuts. This system is referred to as a “pay-as-you-go” or “paygo” budget, and it was part of the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 under President George H. W. Bush. The law expired in 2002, but Pelosi argued Congress should return to those principles as it resulted in a budget surplus in 1998. The content of Pelosi’s editorial was largely partisan, casting most of the blame of the current plan’s deficit onto the Republican majority. She did not elaborate on any discussions or actions in which Democrats may or may not have been involved.

State

• The “Fair Wage Act of 2016,” an initiated state statute designed to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2021, was certified for the ballot and will be decided by state voters on November 8, 2016. It was sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). The “Raise California's Wage and Paid Sick Days Act,” a competing initiative that would increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020 and allow employees to earn a minimum of six paid sick days per year, could also potentially appear on the November ballot. It was sponsored by the state council of the Service Employees International Union. Laphonza Butler, president of SEIU California, said that the union would continue collecting signatures for its $15 minimum wage initiative despite the certification of the initiative backed by SEIU-UHW. Minimum wage-related measures have also been certified for the ballot in Maine and South Dakota and have been proposed in at least seven other states.
• The Georgia General Assembly passed a bill to expand Georgia’s supreme court from seven justices to nine. The state constitution already allows the expansion, but current state law limits the number of justices to seven. The bill now goes to Governor Nathan Deal (R), who would appoint the two new justices under the law.
• The Kansas State Senate narrowly passed a bill to expand and define impeachable offenses for Kansas Supreme Court justices. Specifically, the bill defines the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors,” given as cause for impeachment of justices in the Kansas State Constitution. If the bill passes, high crimes and misdemeanors for supreme court justices would include, among other offenses, “commission of a breach of judicial ethics”; “attempting to subvert fundamental laws and introduce arbitrary power”; and “attempting to usurp the power of the legislative or executive branch of government.” The bill now goes to the Kansas House of Representatives.
• Clint Penzo defeated Isaac Foley in the Republican primary runoff for District 88 of the Arkansas House of Representatives. Penzo and Foley advanced from the March 1 Republican primary to a runoff election after neither candidate received more than 40 percent of the vote. Since no Democratic candidates filed for election in the district, barring unforeseen circumstances, Penzo will become the district’s next representative. Arkansas continues to have some of the nation's least competitive legislative elections.

Special elections

• • South Carolina special elections:
    • In Senate District 4, a Republican primary was held, but no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote. Since no candidate received a majority, the top two vote-getters, Rockey Burgess and state Rep. Michael Gambrell, will face off in a primary runoff on April 5. The winner of the runoff will be unchallenged in the special election on May 17.

Local

• New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s (D) affordable housing plan was approved via a pair of zoning text amendments passed by the city council through votes of 42-5 and 40-6. Crain’s New York Business claimed that “[t]he mandatory inclusionary housing policy defines de Blasio's political agenda. It was proposed as a counterweight to the trend of rising residential rents and the displacement of longtime residents from their neighborhoods.” Following the plan’s passage, city real estate lawyers questioned whether it would be effective since the city's tax breaks to incentivize the construction of mixed-income buildings had expired earlier in the year. New York is the largest city in the United States.

Preview of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #8 of The Tap, which was published on March 21, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

• Presidential primary elections and caucuses
  • Arizona
  • Idaho Democratic caucus
  • Utah caucuses
• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will fly to Moscow to meet with Russian officials. Talks are expected to center on the Syria crisis and the continuing efforts to end the civil war. They are also expected to talk about the effect of Russia’s recent partial military withdrawal from Syria.

State

• Primary runoff: Arkansas
  • Isaac Foley and Clint Penzo will face off for the Republican nomination for District 88 of the Arkansas House of Representatives. The runoff election will be held because no candidate earned a majority of the vote in the March 1 primary election. No Democratic candidates filed for election in the district, meaning that, barring unforeseen circumstances, the runoff election will decide the district’s next representative. Arkansas continues to have some of the nation's least competitive legislative elections.
• Special elections
  • South Carolina special elections:
    • South Carolina State Senate District 4 - (Republican primary)