Trump Watchers Are Paying Close Attention to Local Races
But last night’s election results also mean progress for people on the issues they care about most.
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Last night was election night for plenty of U.S. voters, and there was enough drama to keep plenty of pundits biting their nails until the wee hours.
The nation was transfixed by the tight gubernatorial race in Kentucky in which Matt Bevin, the Trump-favored incumbent, appears to have been defeated in a squeaker by Democrat Andy Beshear.
“Is Kentucky a bad omen for Donald Trump?” asks CNN.
Maybe. But using local elections solely as bellwethers for Trump 2020 is a missed opportunity to understand the lives of actual people.
Here’s just one example. Among other things, Beshear ran on a promise to immediately re-restore voting rights to some 100,000 people who had been protected under a previous executive order overturned by Bevin. But Beshear has more work to do: Kentucky has one of the strictest voter disenfranchisement laws in the country, one of two states with a lifetime ban for ex-felons. (Iowa is the other.) Experts say that the ban currently impacts some 300,000 people in Kentucky, which is 9% of the state’s voting-age population and includes one-in-four Black residents.
(Also in Kentucky, first-time candidate Daniel Cameron became Kentucky’s next attorney general last night, the first-ever African American, and the first Republican to do so in over 70 years. If Bevin ever concedes, Cameron will be replacing former attorney general Andy Beshear.)
Two other races caught my attention, each inspiring for different reasons.
After months of a nasty hate-speech campaign organized by online trolls around the country, Safiya Khalid became the first-ever Somali immigrant to win a seat on Lewiston, Maine’s city council. At 23, she may also be the youngest. Khalid fled Somalia with her family when she was 7, landing first in New Jersey, then relocating to Lewiston, to join a growing Somalian immigrant community attracted by the affordable homes and good schools.
Today, the former mill town (and home to L.L. Bean) has a population of about 36,000, one-third of
And after facing down an ongoing hate campaign of her own, Virginia state delegate Danica Roem was re-elected to serve the state’s 13th district, becoming the first openly transgender person to win reelection in a state legislature. Lord knows, she needs the extra time—Roem ran on a quality-of-life platform that involved delivering breakthroughs in traffic and infrastructure. “Danica inspired trans people across the nation to run for office,” Mayor Annise Parker, president
Inclusion—like politics—is all local, all the time.
Ellen McGirt