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Alabama Democrat Marilyn Lands flips state legislature seat
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Democrat who campaigned on reproductive rights wins special election for Alabama state House seat
Washington — Democrat Marilyn Lands won a special election for an Alabama state House seat late Tuesday, flipping a Republican-held seat in the deep-red state in the aftermath of a court ruling in the state that threw access to fertility treatments into question.
Lands, a mental health counselor, made reproductive rights central to her campaign. She’s spoken openly about her own abortion when her pregnancy was nonviable. And she ran advertisements on reproductive health care, like contraception and in vitro fertilization, being threatened in the state, after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that equated frozen embryos to children and led major IVF providers in the state to pause fertility treatments.
“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” Lands said in a statement after her victory on Tuesday. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”
Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The seat representing Alabama’s 10th district in the state legislature had long been held by Republicans. But former President Donald Trump won the district by a slim margin in 2020, making it a toss-up district that Democrats had set their sights on. Lands also ran for the seat in 2022, but narrowly lost to her Republican opponent.
Heather Williams, president of Democrats’ legislative campaign arm, called the special election “the first real test” of how voters would respond to the IVF ruling in Alabama and reproductive rights more broadly, and “a harbinger of things to come.”
“Republicans across the country have been put on notice that there are consequences to attacks on IVF — from the bluest blue state to the reddest red, voters are choosing to fight for their fundamental freedoms by electing Democrats across the country,” Williams said in a statement.
Democrats are hoping this year for a repeat of the 2022 midterm elections, when the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and subsequent restrictions in states became a major motivator at the ballot box, fending off an expected red wave. Democrats are expecting that fallout from the IVF ruling to reinvigorate the voter base, keeping reproductive rights top of mind heading into the 2024 election.
New GOP debate criteria puts several candidates on September hot seat
The Republican National Committee is raising the bar to qualify for its second presidential debate in September — a move that could leave several candidates on track to make the first debate in danger of missing the second one.
Seven candidates appear to have already punched tickets to the first debate, with a handful of candidates trying to clear the bar in the final weeks before the Aug. 23 showdown.
The new criteria for the September debate, confirmed to NBC News by a person familiar with the party’s plans, will raise the fundraising bar for each candidate from 40,000 unique donors to 50,000. And while candidates will need fewer surveys to check the box for the polling criteria, they’ll need to hit 3% in those polls.
That’s where some candidates could run into trouble: Hitting 3% in either two national polls after Aug. 1 or in one national poll plus surveys from two different early-voting states is a bigger lift than the 1% mark needed in the August debate criteria.
Candidates also have to pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee and meet some other technical criteria. Here’s how the GOP primary looks in terms of qualifying for the September debate.
Who’s likely to make the stage?
The new polling and debate thresholds should be a cakewalk for former President Donald Trump, who has led every recent, high-quality poll of the GOP nominating field and ended June with about 400,000 unique online donors (per an NBC News analysis).
Likewise, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t expected to have trouble either. He has settled into a clear second place, polling safely in double-digits, and he’s brought in more money from donors than any non-Trump GOP candidate this year.
Same goes for businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. All three have been at or above 3% in virtually every qualifying poll, and each of them announced reached the 40,000 threshold weeks ago.
And while former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been a bit less consistent in the polls than those others, he has hit 3% in a number of recent polls that appear to meet the RNC’s technical criteria. Christie has a strong chance to meet the new polling threshold unless something happens at the first debate that cuts into his support. He also cleared the 40,000 threshold relatively quickly after his June campaign launch.
Whose outlook is less clear?
After those candidates, all bets are off. Republican hopefuls will have until 48 hours before the second debate to meet all the thresholds, giving candidates who fell short of the first stage about a month to improve their fortunes.
Former Vice President Mike Pence almost always hits at least 3% in qualifying polls, too, so he likely won’t be sweating the polling criteria. And while he hasn’t hit the 40,000-donor mark yet, his campaign said this week he had eclipsed 30,000 and was averaging more than 1,000 new donors a day, so he’s expected to make the August debate stage soon.
If he keeps up that pace, with Pence’s campaign embracing the spotlight brought on him by the recent Trump indictment, he’d hit 50,000 donors with weeks to spare before the September debate.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is another interesting case. While self-funding, he hit the donor threshold thanks in part to his campaign giving donors $20 credit card gift cards for donating just $1 to his campaign.
But Burgum has an issue: He virtually never eclipses 1% in national polling. He is performing better in state-level polling, however, after a major ad-spending blitz in the early states.
So whether Burgum makes the second debate could hinge on a few key factors: how many pollsters release state-level surveys with a large-enough sample size to meet the RNC’s polling criteria, whether he can boost his profile during the first debate, or if he’s willing to continue to spend at a major clip to boost his numbers nationally, since he’ll need to hit 3% in at least one national poll.
Who faces an uphill battle?
The remaining candidates, all who remain long shots (at best) to make the first debate, will struggle to meet the criteria for the second one.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson hasn’t eclipsed 1% in any polls that appear to meet the RNC’s technical criteria for determining the field for the first debate. And he said this week he was about halfway to meeting the 40,000-donor threshold, casting doubt on whether his fundraising support can boost him to the first debate, let alone the second one.
Others, like conservative commentator Larry Elder, former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, do not appear to have hit the donor threshold for the first debate and are registering in polling less consistently than Hutchinson.
Justin Jones, expelled Tennessee House member, wins back seat
Nashville Democrat Justin Jones, a member of the so-called “Tennessee Three,” won back his state House seat Thursday after Republican lawmakers expelled him for his participation in a pro-gun control protest in the Capitol.
Jones, 27, defeated Republican candidate Laura Nelson.
Along with Jones, fellow Democrat Justin Pearson, 28, was also vying to reclaim his House seat in Memphis against independent candidate Jeff Johnston after also being expelled in April.
The young Black lawmakers were reinstated by local officials after being booted from the GOP-dominated Statehouse, but only on an interim basis. They needed to clear a special election in order to fully take back their legislative positions.
SETH HERALD/AFP via Getty Images
Thursday’s election comes as lawmakers are preparing to return to Nashville later this month for a special session to address possibly changing the state’s gun control laws. While Jones and Pearson’s reelection to their old posts won’t make a significant dent to the Republican supermajority inside the Legislature, they are expected to push back heavily against some of their GOP colleagues’ policies.
Jones and Pearson were elected to the Statehouse last year. Both lawmakers flew relatively under the radar, even as they criticized their Republican colleagues’ policies. It wasn’t until this spring that their political careers received a boost when they and fellow Democrat Rep. Gloria Johnson participated in a protest for more gun control on the House floor.
The demonstration took place just days after a fatal mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville where a shooter killed three children and three adults. As thousands of protesters flooded the Capitol building to demand that the Republican supermajority enact some sort of restrictions on firearms, the three lawmakers approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn, and joined the protesters’ chants and cries for action.
Republican lawmakers quickly declared that their actions violated House rules and moved to expel their three colleagues —an extraordinary move that’s been taken only a handful of times since the Civil War.
Seth Herald / Getty Images
Ultimately, Johnson, who is white, narrowly avoided expulsion while Pearson and Jones were kicked out by the predominantly White GOP caucus.
The Legislature then refused to take up Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to place some limits on people considered a threat to themselves on others from accessing firearms. In return, the Republican governor quickly announced that he would hold a special session starting Aug. 21 to once again attempt to woo hesitant GOP members to vote for his proposal.