Category: Elections

Dozing Giant: Mexico’s U.S. citizens

Former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said “All politics are local.”

In Mexico, many socially conscious U.S.-born residents translate political conviction into social activism by volunteering at – or donating to – non-profits that advocate for positive change, including many focused on meeting critical needs of marginalized communities. (These organizations are often featured on COBALT’s Facebook/Instagram pages.)

But there is no substitute for a ballot.

And far too many Mexican residents who are eligible to vote sit out U.S. elections because “they have nothing to do with my life in Mexico”.

But that’s a viewpoint which turns a blind eye to the significant local impact that American politics have on daily life south on the Mexican side of the border.

U.S. government policy has significant implications for daily life south of the border on issues ranging from banning assault weapons to human rights to environmental sustainability to income inequality. (An estimated 5,000,000 firearms have been trafficked to Mexico since the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban. Over 200,000 Mexico residents receive U.S. Social Security benefits).

It also has implications for U.S. policy on trade Mexico trade, energy, and immigration.

But can votes cast FROM Mexico…

…really make a difference FOR Mexico?

There are no fewer than 800,000 – and likely well above 1,000,000 – Mexico residents eligible to vote in U.S elections.

The Federal Voter Assistance Program estimates that only 10% of eligible U.S. voters living abroad vote

Democracy’s greatest enemy is apathy.

In 2022, Democrats lost 9 House races by less than 10,000 votes… 5 by less than 3,000 votes… and one (CA17) by only 564 votes.

If you were born in the U.S….

…were born to a U.S. citizen…

or were naturalized in the U.S….

it is your right to vote from Mexico:

1. Register online (start here)…

2. Receive your ballot via email…

3. Print, complete, and return mail your ballot.

Do it not just for the future of the U.S.… but also for Mexico’s future.

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Feathered nests

The federal government’s executive branch publicly releases details about the fines it collects from employees who file financial documents late, but when it comes to reporting the personal financial interests of Congressional members and staffers, an entirely different standard applies.

The 2012 STOCK Act requires lawmakers and staff earning at least $132,552 a year in 2021 to report stock trades of more than $1,000 within 30 days of the transaction.  They are only required to disclose the values of their trades in broad ranges.

Those who miss filing deadlines are supposed to pay a late fee of $200 the first time, with increasingly higher fines if they continue to be late.  Penalty payment rests on an ‘honor system’, and violators can apply for a waiver that excuses them from the penalty.

  • Tom Rust, chief counsel for the House Ethics Committee, an independent investigative agency, declined to comment on who had or hadn’t paid fines.
  • Congress’ Legislative Resource Center declined to comment on whether the office received late fees… or even if it kept records of such payments.

In the absence of public documents, it is left largely to investigative reporting to ferret out violators.   Insider found that:

  • 57 members of Congress and at least 182 of the highest-paid Capitol Hill staffers were late in filing during 2020 and 2021.  Of these, 19 declined to answer whether they’d paid a penalty. Ten who said they’d paid their fines declined to provide proof receipts or cancelled checks.
  • The US Treasury Department found “”no matches”” when asked under the Freedom of Information Act for evidence of fine payments by 22 members of Congress known to have recently violated the STOCK Act.  

NPR has documented at least 69 cases of failure to report among member of Congress (30 Democrats, 39 Republicans).  The number of trades per Member range from a handful to 700, and their value from $5,000 to $17.53 million.  Three in ten trades were conducted in the name of a spouse or dependent child.  Stocks traded included petroleum, aerospace, and pharmaceuticals (including Pfizer during COVID).

In the House, the Committee on Ethics decides whether to pursue the Office of Congressional Ethics’ findings.  It has the power to reprimand lawmakers, discipline staffers, or do nothing at all.  No similar investigative office exists on the Senate side.

Sen. Chris Coons, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, declined to comment.

While there are no reports showing how often the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated financial-disclosure matters before the STOCK Act’s passage, attorney Kedric Payne – who worked in the office at the time – said nothing changed after lawmakers passed the law.

“There was just nobody paying attention to it.

No one was filing complaints.”

A former investigative counsel in the same office said, under condition of anonymity, “The enforcement of the financial-disclosure requirements is virtually nonexistent.”

Virginia Canter, the chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Congress’ laissez-faire approach to the STOCK Act “sends the message that they are held to a lesser standard than other government employees, and that they are above the law.”

The effect of the process is to leave the public in the dark, let Congress off the hook, and render the STOCK Act toothless.

Tyler Gellasch, a fellow at Duke University School of Law, is calling for Congress to pass a measure that would require lawmakers to use a third party, such as a blind trust, to participate in trading stocks, and to require same-day filing of file disclosure forms for each transaction, including the exact amount, day, and time.

“If you are a member of Congress, you have this duty to not take advantage of information you learned because of your job.”

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The Anti-Partisans

It would be easy to conclude that American voters are now immovably committed to either Blue or Red, with margins of victory presumed to often hang on the sliver of the electorate that identifies with neither party.

But recent surveys conducted by Pew Research tell a very different story:

One-third of voters now identify as neither Democrat or Republican.

But this is not new news. Party identification has remained virtually constant for almost 3 decades, and there have always been voters who take great pride in not identifying with – much less ‘joining’ – either party. 

What has changed over the same period is the share of Americans who not only decline any party identification, but who hold highly negative views of the choice afforded by only two parties.

Not surprisingly, such opinions were more widely embraced during the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections, but are at an all-time high in the run-up to the 2022 mid-terms.

More surprising, however, is the remarkable consistency with which Americans of every political stripe – by a margin of 5:1 – agree on the gravity of political divisiveness promoted by the news media, and playing out among ordinary Americans, between politicians, and in social media.

Voters are exhausted by shrill and uninterrupted partisan chest-pounding and trash-talking… of hyperbolic boasting and bashing… of political discourse devolved into snarky memes.

As the election approaches, mass school shootings and abortion bans have handed Democrats have a windfall opportunity not only to energize party regulars, but to sway Republican-leaning Independents who are terrified or outraged enough by both to break with long-standing habit.

If, that is, individual Democrats can make the distinction between demonizing the opposition party/leadership without in the process demonizing those who may not be drinking all of the MAGA Kool-Aid.

And that, in a nutshell, is what COBALT is all about: A Progressive public agenda, presented as issues and facts without the partisan toxicity.

     

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      Ferociously red Texas

      Some may remember predictions back in 2012 about the demographic inevitability of a Blue Texas, and population trends since seem to lend further credence to the claim:

      • Seven in 10 Texans now live in the state’s 6 largest urban areas
      • Minorities account for 46% of the population (including 9% Black and 28% Hispanic).

      So how is it that Texas Democrats continue to struggle in statewide contests when the political landscape should – on its face – promote Democratic competitiveness?

      The answer lies in rural Texas.

      In 2018, Beto O’Rourke lost his Senate race against Ted Cruz by 215,000 votes statewide… but by over 441,000 votes in counties with populations of less than 50,000.  These counties, incidentally, voted against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in virtually the same proportions.

      Democrats simply cannot win in Texas without meaningfully improving their position in these counties.

      This time around in his challenge of Texas’s incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, O’Rourke has become even more visible in rural Texas, but it’s still an uphill battle.

      While more than half of rural voters approve of Abbott’s job performance, O’Rourke’s unfavorability rating among them is 60%… more than 9 in 10 of whom characterized their opinion as “strongly unfavorable.”  The flip side is that Beto needs to improve his position among them by only 5%-10% (30%-35%) to affect the outcome.

      Much of the animus among rural voters can be attributed to O’Rourke’s passionate public outburst after visiting the site of a 2019 mass shooting in El Paso:

      “Hell, yes… we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

      O’Rourke doesn’t talk as much about gun control these days.  He is instead chipping away at Abbotts’s rural base by attacking the governor for “leaving rural Texas behind” on three issues:

      • Broadband internet access.  O’Rourke is highlighting Abbott’s veto of a bill to bolster a state fund which subsidizes broadband internet in rural Texas.
      • Quality of public education.  O’Rourke is attacking Abbott’s embrace of school vouchers as an attempt to “defund” public education by letting parents use taxpayer dollars to send their kids elsewhere. (Texas voters favor the measure 2-to-1.)
      • Closure of rural hospitals.  O’Rourke blames Abbott’s refusal to expand Medicaid in Texas.

      But any discussion of rural voters in Texas is incomplete without consideration of its Tejano vote.

      While Democrats still enjoy an advantage among Tejanos, their margins have declined in both of the last two Presidential elections.  One contributing factor is that protestant evangelical denominations have been attracting many converts among historically Catholic working-class Tejanos.  Another is that Democrats’ national Latino outreach can fail to leverage the distinct nuances of the Texas Latino culture. Sometimes – as in Hillary’s backhanded appeal in her selection of running mate Tim Kaine based in part on his fluency in Spanish.

      RealClearPolitics reports that in five surveys conducted between June 29 and August 29, Abbott’s advantage is projected at no less than 5%, and as much as 10%.

      But whether or not O’Rourke’s aggressive campaigning in rural Texas counties pays rich enough dividends this November to sway the outcome, he will emerge with an even more robust statewide organization that may finally pay off when Texas next elects a Senator.

      Learn more about Beto O’Rourke:

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      ‘Mainstream Republicans”?

      “Not even a majority of Republicans are MAGA Republicans,” Joe Biden said in his speech in Philadelphia on September 1.

      It’s a bold claim, and one upon which may hang the Democratic Party’s prospects for turning a squeak-by election victory into a blue tidal wave.

      But is it wishful thinking on the part of the Democratic leadership to view the MAGA movement as a small but vocal G.O.P. fringe?

      Surveys of G.O.P.-Registered and G.O.P.-Leaning voters conducted over the past 45 days by NBC News, Quinnipiac, and CNN are in agreement that while Biden’s claim of ‘a majority of Republicans” may be overstated, there is a meaningful degree of truth in the claim that all Republicans are not MAGA Republicans:

      3 in 5 voters – and even 1 in 4 Republicans – are now convinced that Trump/MAGA is a threat to democracy.

      More than half of Republicans prefer a 2024 candidate other than Trump… and 1 in 4 is expressly opposed to a Trump nomination.

      But among the core of Registered Republicans who determine the outcome of Republican primaries, support for Trump is still above 70%. His supporters have been working tirelessly since 2016 to install themselves in positions of party influence at the state level, and the 2022 primary season has demonstrated Trump’s continuing ability to influence the outcome of statewide elections. Even today, Trump’s overall public approval rating continues to hover around 40%.

      Some 69% of attendees at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) expressed a preference for a Trump run in 2024, almost identical to the 70% share of Registered Republicans who support a Trump run.

      It’s noteworthy that while Ron DeSantis was preferred over Trump by only 24% of CPAC attendees, preference for him in a scenario in which Trump does not run jumps to 65% – close enough to Trump’s 69% to strongly suggest that MAGA will survive – and continue to drive the G.O.P. – whether led by Trump or not.

      A lot can happen to change the political landscape by 2024, but (absent a criminal conviction), the current numbers suggest a high likelihood that Trump will be re-nominated in 2024.

      But the data also suggests that if Trump secures the nomination in 2024, ‘mainstream’ Republicans would – at minimum – cast no vote for President and – at extreme – vote Democratic. It remains an open question whether 8 years of disillusionment among ‘mainstream’ Republicans will translate into deeper and longer-lasting changes in party allegiances.

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      U.S. citizens in Mexico: Diversos!

      The 1 million+ U.S. citizens in Mexico are an incredibly varied population…. the largest community of Americans living outside of the U.S…. and have the potential to change the outcomes of increasing tight election races.

      Much is written about the contingent of American retirees, non-Mexican in ancestry, who were born – and lived most of their lives – in the U.S.  These citizens are largely – but not exclusively – concentrated in enclaves along Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts.

      But not all of Mexico’s gringos are senior citizens… in fact, far from it.

      • 2nd generation. There are the U.S. citizens born of parents who were at the time residing in Mexico.  Some of these parents remained permanently, founding and operating businesses in which their children have now succeeded them.
      • Tours-of-duty. Some are working-age professionals on tours of duty with U.S. companies operating in Mexico, many with school-age children.  Others are digital nomads just passing through for a few weeks or months.

      These are, however, just the tip of an iceberg largely made up of U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry.

      • Border commuters. Tens of thousands of dual citizens live in cities and towns along the U.S. border commute to the U.S. daily, some as workers and others as owners of businesses ranging from currency exchange to auto insurance and nationalization that operate on both sides of the border.
      • Dependent families. Some U.S. citizens of Mexican birth return to Mexico to care for aged or infirm relatives, sometimes also to take up the reins of a family business.
      • Foreigner services. Others leverage their knowledge of English language and American culture to work in expat enclaves at businesses ranging from home construction/remodeling and retail to personal services.

      U.S. citizens are not required by law to surrender their American citizenship in order to become citizens of another country, but the laws on Mexican citizenship have a far more restrictive history.

      Until 1934, a Mexican woman who married a foreigner automatically forfeited her Mexican citizenship.  Not until 1950 was the law amended to allow her to retain it… but only if she and her spouse resided in Mexico. (This also allowed her to own property.)

      Not until 1969 was Mexican citizenship automatically granted to children born of a Mexican mother, regardless of where the birth occurred.  And while a 1997 law limited citizenship for these children to the first foreign-born generation, a 2021 law removed this restriction

      C O B A L T ‘S mission is to deliver – to all of these American citizens – its issue-focused, fact-based commentary on a progressive public agenda, and to promote U.S. voter registration among politically progressive American citizens living in Mexico.

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      Senate race snapshot

      With nine weeks remaining until the general election, polling on U.S. Senate races is becoming more frequent and the emerging picture is a mixed bag of certain outcomes and down-to-the-wire races (complete data last below).

      FLORIDA:  Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings is poised to defeat incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.  Demings was on Joe Biden’s short list of prospective VP candidates in 2020.

      GEORGIA:  Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock is in a tight race with Herschel Walker.  Warnock won the seat by defeating incumbent Kelly Loeffler in a 2020 special election.  Walker, a pro football Hall-of Famer and 1992 Olympics participant, is a graduate of the University of Georgia.

      NEVADA: Polls are conflicted about re-election prospects for Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.  Cortez Masto, who holds the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Harry Reid, was twice elected as the state’s attorney general.  She is the first woman from Nevada – and the first Latina in the U.S. – to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

      NORTH CAROLINA:  Democratic State Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley is in a tight race with Ted Budd for the seat vacated by Republican Sen. Richard Burr.

      OHIO:  Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan is struggling in a race against J.D. Vance for the seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman.

      WISCONSIN:  Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is poised to flip the seat held by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

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      Flipping Wisconsin

      Mandela Barnes has never had time to waste. The son of a schoolteacher and a UAW night shift worker, his social activism began right out of college when he began working as a community organizer.

      By age 27, he was serving as a Representative in the Wisconsin state legislature.

      By age 31, he was elected Lt. Governor as Tony Evers’ running mate.

      Evers named Barnes to head the Governor’s Task Force on Climate Change pandemic, but when COVID appeared he travelled exhaustively throughout his state, encouraging people to get vaccinated.

      In 2020, in the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings, opponents seeking to recall Barnes and Gov. Tony Evers failed to secure the number of signatures needed to place the issue on the ballot.

      An August 27 poll has Barnes leading incumbent G.O.P. Senator Ron Johnson 49%- 47%, within the margin of error to make the race a dead heat.

      Barnes, whose campaign accepts no PAC money, has raised more then $1.3 million, mostly from small donations.

      Johnson, who has previously pledged that he would only serve two terms, is running for a third term. The senator has a long string of controversial remarks to his credit, most notably suggesting that “wokeness” and critical race theory were the cause of recent mass shootings in the U.S. Some of Johnson’s other quotes:

      “It’s not law-abiding gun owners that are the problem – it’s Islamic terrorists.”
      “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change.”
      “I think justice Scalia is really the gold standard of what a justice should be.”
      “I’d be supportive of a minimum wage…for guest workers, so we’re not creating incentives to bring in immigrants.”

      There are fewer clear-cut choices presented for statewide office than the one facing Wisconsin voters in November.

      Learn more about Mandela: Campaign web site

      Learn more about this race: Ballotpedia

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      Women staking a claim

      While the extent to which the reversal of Roe v. Wade has influenced the big increase in women running for statewide and Federal office may not be clearly known, the rise in and of itself is remarkable.

      The post-primary landscape reveals new records set for the number of women running both for Congress and for Governor:

      U.S. House: 776

      U.S. Senate: 84

      Governor: 86

      The 168 Black women represent new records set for number of Black female candidates for all 3 offices.

      The 95 Hispanic women represent new records set for the number of House and Gubernatorial candidates.

      While these numbers are encouraging, a steep slope remains:

      • Only 24% of current House members and 28% of Senators are women
      • Only 18% of Governors are women
      • There are 19 U.S. states that have never elected a female governor
      • Only 58 women have ever served in the U.S. Senate…none before 1932

      Under-representation of women on the Senate and Gubernatorial ‘benches’ from which Presidential candidates are most often drawn continues to limit opportunities for women to achieve national visibility on the political stage. 

      Although third parties have run women for the presidency far more often than men, women have appeared on the national tickets of the two major parties only four times, and only once as President:

      • Geraldine Ferraro (1984)
      • Sarah Palin (2008)
      • Hillary Clinton (2016)
      • Kamala Harris (2020)

      The numbers leave little doubt that partisan divide is not only the biggest obstacle to racially-balanced representation, but also to one that is gender-balanced.

      A staggering 71% of female candidates ran as Democrats this year.

      And while White and Latina candidates were distributed almost evenly between parties, 70% of Black candidates ran as Democrats.

      In House races, Black women running as Democrats outnumbered those running as Republican by almost 3:1.

      In Senate races, the number of Black women running as Democrats outnumbered those running as Republicans by almost 4:1.

      The cracks in the political glass ceiling are spreading, and2022 is shaping up to be the year that it finally shatters.

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