Happy New Year—well, Lunar New Year anyway

Way back in October, I told a few friends I’d be posting over the Christmas holiday on the Substack blog I started prior to moving to Arizona in 2019. It was a blog that held true to its name (which I’ve since migrated to beehiiv); I managed a scant eight posts on ‘My Non-Periodical Dispatches’ over four years.

And, while I did post this past December, it was a bit of cheat as I was happily ‘unplugged’ in Bodega Bay.

Technically, that year-end post was a reshare of a blog by Jonathan M. Katz, calling out the founders of Substack—Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi—for allowing their platform to become a revenue and subscriber generator for Nazis and White Christian Nationalists.

As a result of Substack’s willingness to coddle people who barely register above pedophiles for their utter depravity, I’ve joined others in leaving the platform (h/t to Roots of Change and @tynanfiles).

So, welcome to my first post (buzz?) on beehiiv!

All of the above is a sort of preface. The real focus of this post is how 2024 is starting off—given we recently ushered in the Lunar New Year of the Dragon (or as I knew it when growing up, Têt). In keeping with the Dragon’s Zodiac symbol, this year has been characterized by strength, power and success. At least, when viewed through the lens of my own priorities and passions.

I will start with the first of three successes that all came on the eve of Valentine’s Day: the passage of HB 41, a Clean Transportation Fuels Standard that cleared New Mexico’s state Senate by a vote of 26-15 (it next goes to Governor Lujan-Grisham’s desk for signing).

As part of small, but mighty crew, at the Low Carbon Fuels Coalition, my day job at this non-profit, technology-neutral trade association is to help state legislatures adopt an already-proven policy framework, one that measurably reduces air pollution from transportation-related emissions, using science and performance-based carbon-intensity reduction targets, while harnessing market mechanisms to spur fuel competition (i.e., no added taxes or government mandates).

This work dovetails (almost perfectly) with my grassroots volunteer role as a founding District Captain of the San Francisco chapter of Sister District Project, where I’ve been focused since 2017 on supporting state legislative candidates in races where we’re a few seats from flipping chambers to Democratic majorities, holding chambers with slim blue majorities, or making in-roads to break GOP super-majorities.

New Mexico’s passage of HB 41 took four years. In truth, most bills are multi-year affairs as legislators need to get familiar with the bill’s language, stakeholders often want amendments, staff have to schedule hearings in multiple committees and for chamber floor votes (a logistical pretzel at best), and of course, there’s the task of counting and whipping votes—no small feat, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi.

HB 41 started life in 2021, then it was re-introduced and amended (improved) in 2022 by local environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Conservation Voters New Mexico, and New Mexico Voices for Children, to increase the bill’s carbon intensity reduction goal from 10% to 20% by 2030, and 28% to 30% by 2040, while also directing the state to invest 100% of utilities’ carbon credits from electrification to impacted communities. But, thanks to a DUI keeping one legislator from voting on the House floor, the bill ended in a tie-vote (NM doesn’t hold tie-breakers), which meant it didn’t pass on that second of four tries.

Ultimately though, like California, Oregon and Washington¹ before NM, the ONLY reason America’s No. 2 oil and gas state passed a law to directly tackle the greenhouse gas emissions in their transportation sector, is because (like the West Coast states), NM is a Democratic trifecta. That 26-15 “Do Pass” vote? It was entirely a party-line vote. And when one party is literally, arguing against science, there will be no winning over hearts and minds when it comes to the climate crisis.

Which brings me to the second of the three successes from February 13: Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi’s election to Congress in New York’s 3rd District.

While I’m laser focused on supporting state legislative races (and campaigns), I do follow races at the Federal level, as well. I’ve learned that state legislatures pass 23 times as many laws as Congress, making them both “laboratories of democracy”² AND autocracy—but clearly, what happens, or more often doesn’t happen under the GOP majority in Congress, is also vitally important.

According to the all the pundits and polls, and as you can see from the headlines below (a mere sampling), this “tight” race was supposed to be “neck-and-neck,” down to the wire, a total nail-biter, and certainly a much bigger hurdle for Dems than Repubs. Yet, as of the latest public count, 54% of the voters in NY03 chose Suozzi over the 46% who opted for his MAGA opponent. That’s an eight point difference in the same district that yet another criminally-indicted Republican won in 2023, by seven points.

If this all feels familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before.

In 2020, Biden’s loss to Tr*mp dominated media and polling narratives (before he won by a record number of votes and vote margin), and in 2023’s midterm, it was a “red wave”—no, a “red tsunami” that media and polls predicted was about to crash (before it turned into an unprecedented Democratic win—for the in-power party, literally the best midterm performance ever). Now in 2024, AGAIN with the “mad poll disease,” which has media screaming that Tr*mp is beating Biden, nine months before the election. Which is all to say:

I could dedicate entire posts to issues with polling or with our binary, conflict-driven, and horserace-obsessed media, who can’t seem but be beholden to anxiety-inducing, click-bait headlines that are normalizing fascism, whether intentionally or not. Instead, I point you to an excellent piece on why to skip the “pollercoaster” and this, on why the media must cover the “stakes” to our freedoms and the survival of democracy here and abroad, if one candidate or another wins, rather than covering the “odds,” especially when those odds are so statistically flawed.

Instead, let’s go back to Suozzi. Pause and consider just how big a success this 16pt voter swing away from the racist, nativist, sexist, LGBTQ-hating, and pro-Putin politics of MAGA is…the results of NY’s swing district race, should inform our thinking about what’s possible in this year’s elections.

But, just as it is supremely flawed to forecast based on bad polls, it’s equally foolhardy to use the results of a single special election in February as prologue to November’s outcomes.

Which brings me to my third success highlight of Valentine’s Day eve. On the same night that voters decisively elected Suozzi—who unequivocally supported a woman’s freedom to decide if, when or how to start or grow a family, and drew a sharp contrast on immigration by emphasizing the need for a path to citizenship for Dreamers—in Pennsylvania’s District 140, voters overwhelming chose Jim Prokopiak, increasing the recent Dem state House majority to 102-100, after they flipped it from red to blue in 2023.

But here’s what matters about this third success: by a margin of more than 2-1, PA voters gave Prokopiak a whopping 67% to 32% win over his MAGA opponent. Moreover, this is the seventh straight state House election in PA, where Democratic candidates have averaged 16 points better than Biden in 2020.

In fact, since the Supreme Court’s MAGA Justices decision constricted (for the first time since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896), rather than expanded, our constitutional rights through their Dobbs decision—in election after election, voters have helped Dems outperform Biden’s historic 2020 win. A few of those victories (though certainly not all) below:

• VA State House - flip (Nov 2023)

• KY Governor - bigger vote margin (Nov 2023)

• OH Reproductive Freedom Ballot Measures - 57+ margin (Aug & Nov 2023)

• Jacksonville, FL Mayor - 52+ (May 2023)

• Colorado Springs, CO - 57+ (May 2023)

• WI Supreme Court Justice - 55+ (April 2023)

• MI House & Senate, MN Senate, and PA House - flips (Nov 2022)

• KY & MT Reproductive Freedom Ballot Measures - 52+ (Nov 2022)

• KS Reproductive Freedom Ballot Measure - 59+ (Aug 2022)

So, while a bit tardy, I share this post to wish you a Happy Lunar New Year—may it continue to be one marked by the strength, power and success of those who share our values and passion for constitutional freedoms, environmental and economic justice, equality and a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

¹ More information on Clean Fuel Standards: California, Oregon and Washington.

² Laboratories of Autocracy is from the title of a book by author David Pepper; his more recent publication, which I recommend is ‘Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual for Every American’