2020 Archives - Progressives Everywhere

Republicans set the stage for the COVID-19 pandemic. These Democratic candidates explain how their policies can fix it.

Winning elections in November and flipping states blue is now a matter of life and death.

The Trump Administration has gotten plenty of stick for its absolute failure to respond to (or, for a while, even believe in) the COVID-19 pandemic, all more than deserved. Unfortunately, Trump’s nuclear stupidity and extreme culpability for the immediate crisis have overshadowed an important fact: the entire Republican Party bears responsibility for not only setting the conditions for the pandemic’s spread, but also guaranteeing the dire situations in which so many people now find themselves.

The COVID-19 response bill that the House passed on Friday (and is still waiting for a vacationing Mitch McConnell to take a look at) is egregiously flawed, but our safety net is so thin that it still contains the most basic contours of policies that should have been passed generations ago. From refusing paid sick leave and expanded healthcare coverage to the privatizing of hospitals and supply chains that have stores short on basic necessities, Republicans have created this situation with 40 years of assaults on government and economic equality.

Because so many of these policies are left to states to handle, flipping legislatures blue this year will be essential to ensuring Americans are not left helpless and vulnerable going forward.

With this in mind, Luisa Wakeman, a cardiac nurse running for State House in Georgia, is redirecting her campaign’s resources into efforts to help the community navigate through COVID-19.

“As a nurse, I worry about the healthcare system, and whether we will have sufficient resources to help the sick when the pandemic reaches a peak,” she tells me. “I worry about where we are in the progression of the virus since there are no data points that we could have had with preparation and testing. I worry about the healthcare workers who will forget to care for themselves while working long hours to save more lives.

“My campaign is in a unique position to have a pulse on the community, volunteers at the ready and a network of phenomenal people who care about helping others,” she adds. “As a nurse, I can be a resource for answering questions and sharing factual information.”

CLICK HERE to donate to Democrats running to flip state legislatures blue via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!

Continue reading “Republicans set the stage for the COVID-19 pandemic. These Democratic candidates explain how their policies can fix it.”

Gerrymandered protection gone, one of NC’s most anti-abortion legislators is facing heat

Many modern GOP lawmakers are by nature whackjobs, but it’s their overwhelming job security that brings out the truly evil stuff. North Carolina, where a racist gerrymander allowed Republicans’ most reactionary lawmakers to run wild, is a prime example.

From the infamous “bathroom bill” to voter ID and abortion restrictions, it’s been a true conservative nightmare. Since 2015, State Senator Joyce Krawiec (R-SD-31) has taken advantage of her gerrymandered seat to push some of the worst Republican laws, including the noxious “born alive” anti-abortion bill, which she introduced and sponsored (it was later vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper).

Thankfully, the gerrymander was finally thrown out by a state court last fall, leading to redrawn maps that made Krawiec’s district significantly more competitive and give Democratic challenger Terri LeGrand a real chance at flipping it.

LeGrand, a lawyer who has spent years working in higher education, first ran for State House in 2018 and swung an extremely gerrymandered House district by 20 points; she made it competitive for the first time in years and drove its Republican into retirement this cycle. Now, in a fairer district, she’s got a chance to straight-up take down a far-right Republican and turn North Carolina blue.

“I always paid attention to politics, but before I ran in 2018, I just kind of assumed that there was a bold line between two groups of people and there were stark differences [between Democratic and Republican voters],” LeGrand tells Progressives Everywhere. “But as you’re out on the trail and you’re talking to voters and listening to voters, you realize that we’re all united in far more ways than we’re divided.”

CLICK HERE to donate to Terri LeGrand via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!

Continue reading “Gerrymandered protection gone, one of NC’s most anti-abortion legislators is facing heat”

This Georgia election proves why every race matters, win or lose

Donald Trump being elected president is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the United States. It’s been a full-on catastrophe in all ways but one: The resistance to his regime also provided a jolt of new energy and determination to a Democratic Party that desperately needed it, motivating millions of activists and candidates to build grassroots infrastructure that generally takes years to grow.

Luisa Wakeman is a perfect example of this progressive revival. A resident of the Atlanta suburbs, she’d long figured most of her neighbors were Republicans, so she never spent too much time on politics; instead, she focused on her family and her dual career as a flight attendant and cardiac care nurse (really!). But when Donald Trump mocked of Gold Star families and disabled reporters in 2016, it pulled her off the sidelines; she began volunteering for the Clinton campaign that summer, and when Trump scored his unlikely victory, Wakeman vowed to get even more involved.

Fast forward a few years later and Wakeman is one of the most promising Democratic state legislature candidates in Georgia. She’s running a strong campaign in the rapidly changing and very flippable HD-43, a seat Democrats desperately need to win.

CLICK HERE to donate to Luisa Wakeman’s campaign via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!

“My parents were immigrants, my family is originally from Holland, and my grandparents were in the Dutch Resistance during World War II. I grew up with stories about what can happen when people look away,” Wakeman tells Progressives Everywhere. “I knew I had to get involved when I saw hatred infused without repercussions.”

This is Wakeman’s second run for the State House. In 2018, Wakeman came less than 800 votes of unseating long-time State Rep. Sharon Cooper, a Republican who hadn’t faced any electoral opposition since 2010. It’s a familiar story; for a decade, Democrats just ceded legislative seats like this one to Republicans, allowing them to enact all sorts of racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-democratic laws in states throughout the country. That’s especially true in Georgia, where extreme anti-LGBTQ laws and mass voter suppression have become the norm.

Continue reading “This Georgia election proves why every race matters, win or lose”

Democrats could turn Mar-a-Lago blue

Back in October, Donald Trump declared Mar-a-Lago his official place of residence. Now we’re all focused on sending him back to his tawdry club in Palm Beach on a full-time basis, but you know what would be even sweeter? Sending him back to a Palm Beach represented by a progressive Democrat who is absolutely his polar opposite.

Jim Bonfiglio is running to represent the 89th district in the Florida House of Representatives after a razor-thin, 32-vote loss in 2018. As Democrats gear up for a run at flipping the Florida House this year, the 89th district represents their juiciest and sweetest opportunity. Bonfiglio actually lives miles down on the same street as Trump, but everything about Bonfiglio stands in stark contrast with the greedy, corrupt, and grossly incompetent president. The comparisons are pretty direct and frankly staggering:

Example 1: Trump spent his life as a predatory landlord and dirty real estate scam artist. Bonfiglio has worked as a foreclosure defense attorney for the last 32 years, fighting tooth and nail to save people’s homes.

“It’s very satisfying, trying to help people save their homes,” Bonfiglio tells Progressives Everywhere, noting that he’s helped see through beleaguered homeowners through three financial crises, dating back to the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980s.

“You get people at their worst and you try to save their houses for them,” he continues. “There’s usually a good reason why they fell behind on the mortgage. Most of the time it’s medical bills, loss of job or divorce. I like to try to help people get through the bad times and get to a better part of their lives.”

Example 2: Trump has a long history of bilking employees and contractors, refusing to pay them for their hard work. Bonfiglio, meanwhile, conducts free seminars to teach young lawyers across Florida how to protect working people facing unfair foreclosure.

During the 2007 economic crisis, which walloped Florida particularly hard, Bonfiglio also hosted free walk-up clinics with volunteer attorneys so that people facing foreclosure could get advice and legal counsel, free of charge.

“People would come all day long, we’d hook up an attorney with a client, and they’d sit down and talk to them and try to figure out if there’s any way they could save their house,” he says. “When foreclosure peaked in 2007 and 2008, I’d give my whole Fridays too. People would come in every half an hour and it was always illness, job loss, divorce, and if I can’t save this house, I don’t know where I’m going to stay.”

CLICK HERE to donate to Jim Bonfiglio’s campaign via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!

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Eliz Markowitz is running in the first big race of 2020

All political analysts’ eyes are on Iowa and New Hampshire right now, but they should really be looking at what’s happening down in Texas: On January 28, the state will hold a special election runoff in the 28th district of the State House of Representatives. Why is it so crucial? Democrats are now down just nine seats in the chamber, as we’ve noted before, and this one is a great flip target.

The fact that Dems have the good fortune of running such an impressive candidate in the district makes it an even more exciting race. And given Eliz Markowitz’s backstory, it’s very easy to want to chip in and support her.

In 2018, Markowitz ran what she calls a “one-woman show” during her first-ever campaign, an uphill battle for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education. She served as her own campaign manager and “ran around Southeast Texas,” she says, pushing herself in a longshot race in a very red gerrymandered district and pulling to less than a 10 point margin.

She bounced back and ran a strong race in a special election for the State House this fall, qualifying for the District 28 runoff against Republican Gary Gates, a perennial loser best known as a “slumlord.” Now, her campaign has a bit more help — Beto O’Rourke has been working on her behalf, and Michael Bloomberg visited on Sunday. Build it and they will come.

Yet in conversation, Markowitz prefers to focus on the issues, including education, healthcare access, and gun violence. She’s not running for the notoriety or power, a fact confirmed by the roundabout way she got into politics in the first place.

Markowitz began her career in computer science, working for the Princeton Review. She thought she was going to go down the corporate path, she says, and got her master’s degree in business. Then tragedy struck. “My mom unexpectedly passed away and I moved back to Houston to be with my dad, who is my best friend,” Markowitz explains. “My mom had suffered from addiction for her entire life, and so I wanted to do something that was actually helping people from falling through the cracks of our healthcare system.”

CLICK HERE to donate to Eliz Markowitz’s campaign at Progressive Everywhere’s ActBlue Page!

Continue reading “Eliz Markowitz is running in the first big race of 2020”