Guest Column: Three lessons from last week’s elections

By Mark Trahant
Trahant Reports

Three lessons from last week’s election results.

First: Gerrymandering can be defeated. The election districts in Virginia were designed to support incumbents, and especially Republicans.

The Atlantic described the “well-documented” Republican operation to gain “control of the mapmaking process in 2010 (and) saw their share of legislative seats steadily grow, even as their actual vote shares decreased. In other words, these maps helped Republicans retain majorities even when they earned substantially fewer votes.”

That changed Tuesday. Voters swamped the supposedly safe districts and Democrats gained significantly. Perhaps even control of the legislature (votes are still be counted and will be recounted in a key race). So turnout beats districts drawn by one side to win. (The definition of gerrymandering.)

Second: Minority parties can win in this election cycle. It’s always tough to run as a third or fourth party candidate in the United States. The deck is stacked. The system is rigged to favor the two established parties. However some twenty-plus self-described Democratic Socialists (ala Bernie Sanders) won on Tuesday, including Denise Joy in Billings, Montana. Joy was elected to the city council.

This could be an interesting trend.

Some states, California and Washington, have top-two primaries. That means a candidate can win even without party affiliation. But in most states – unless the rules change – the biggest opportunity for socialists, independents and Green Party candidates is for offices such as school boards and city councils.

Another mechanism that makes it easier for third party candidates is ranked choice voting (where you pick your favorite, second favorite, etc.) Several cities, such as St. Paul, Minnesota, now use that approach. Maine also voted to adopt ranked choice, but has not yet implemented it because of opposition from the legislature (and entrenched parties).

In Arizona, Eve Reyes-Aguirre (Calpolli) is running for the U.S. Senate on the Green Party ticket. She is a co-chair of the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus and a co-founding mother of the newly formed World Indigenous Women’s Alliance. She was also a representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women for the American Indian Law Alliance- 2015, 2017.

Reyes-Aguirre is also running against the two-party system. Her web site says: “The two-party system has allowed wealth inequality to skyrocket to its highest point since the 1920’s. Eve is committed to developing an economy that promotes an equal sustainable quality of life for more families through the enactment of a living wage, limitations on corporate tax incentives, and a truly progressive tax structure. We must all be treated equal to live equal.”

That brings to eight the number of Native Americans running for the U.S. House or Senate so far in 2018 election. Three Republicans – Rep. Tom Cole (Choctaw), Oklahoma; Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Cherokee), Oklahoma, former state Sen. Dino Rossi (Tlingit), Washington – and four Democrats – former state New Mexico state Democratic Party chair Deb Haaland (Laguna), Carol Surveyor (Navajo) in Utah, Tahlequah Mayor Jason Nichols (Cherokee), and J.D. Colbert (Choctaw) in Texas.

Lesson three. This is the “when” to jump and run in 2018 races. So much about politics is timing. Good candidates sometimes, no often, lose because their timing is off. It’s not the right cycle. There are too many headwinds.

Barack Obama generated turnout that encouraged Native voters and candidates. The chaos of 2016 with Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump did just the opposite. Turnout was down, especially in Indian Country. But we know most Native American candidates are outsiders. So we need a little luck. And good timing.

The 2018 election ought to be that. President Trump and his Republican Party have to defend infighting plus legislative failures from health care to possibly taxes. And the president’s popularity is only about a 38 percent approval rate. Awful numbers.

On top of that, even popular presidents lose midterm elections. Democrats lead in the average of generic polls, 47 percent to 38 percent.

But Indian Country needs more candidates, especially in districts that can be won in this climate.

My top pick: Alaska’s at-large district. Several Alaska Natives have challenged Rep. Don Young for this seat over the years, including Willie Hensley (Iñupiaq), Georgianna Lincoln (Athabascan), and Diane Benson (Tlingit).

And Young seems invincible. He was first elected in 1973 and is the longest serving member of the House. But, if this is a wave election, then no member of the House is invincible. And, even better, there are some really strong potential Alaska Native candidates.

Alaska will already have an interesting election field that includes Gov. Bill Walker and his running mate Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott (Tlingit).

And in Minnesota another high profile race will feature state Rep. Peggy Flanagan who is running for Lt. Gov. with U.S. Rep. Tim Walz.

At one point during the 2016 election cycle (which we now know was not good timing) there were more than a hundred Native American candidates. We need those kind of numbers again.

Especially this time around. There are more than 62 Native Americans serving in state legislatures around the country and many of those will be running for re-election.

So that brings me back to rule 3, part A. It’s my favorite rule in politics because it’s so simple: You gotta run to win.

Mark Trahant is the Charles R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism at the University of North Dakota. He is an independent journalist and a member of The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. On Twitter @TrahantReports.

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