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Welcome to the Tuesday, March 3, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Voters to cast ballots in presidential, congressional primaries
- New York’s ban on single-use plastic bags took effect March 1
- 36% of Brew readers who responded to our survey know someone with a Leap Day birthday
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Voters to cast ballots in presidential, congressional primaries
Super Tuesday is finally here! We've been preparing for this event for months—studying the races, analyzing the candidates, and sifting through the data. And now, we get to process some results. In addition to this being the date when the largest number of states and territories hold a presidential preference primary or caucus, it’s also the beginning of the primary season for congressional, state executive, and legislative races.
Here are five facts about what's happening today:
- Fourteen states and American Samoa are holding a presidential primary or caucus. That includes the nation's two most populous states—California and Texas. In total, 1,344 pledged delegates to the national convention are at stake, representing 34% of all pledged delegates. Approximately 40% of the U.S. population has a primary or caucus on March 3. Since Saturday, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer have ended their presidential campaigns. They're still on the ballot in the Super Tuesday states, along with anyone else who dropped out but did qualify for the ballot. Votes for those candidates are counted and could result in candidates receiving delegates after they’ve ended their campaigns.
- Five states—Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas—are holding congressional primaries. However, Arkansas’ congressional primaries were canceled because all five races have, at most, only one candidate from each party. The other four states feature 149 primaries for a combined 113 seats up for election in 2020. There are 47 Republican primaries, 48 Democratic primaries, and 54 top-two primaries. California’s 25th Congressional District is holding primaries for both a special and a regularly scheduled election and is counted twice in both of the figures above. Here is the breakdown by state:
- Alabama — six
- California — 54
- North Carolina — 15
- Texas — 74
- Alabama, North Carolina, and Texas are conducting primaries for state executive offices. The only gubernatorial primaries are taking place in North Carolina, where voters are also deciding primaries for nine other statewide offices.
- There are 248 state legislative primaries with two or more candidates in Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas. California holds top-two primaries while the other states hold partisan primaries. In a top-two primary, candidates of all parties are listed on the same ballot and the top two finishers advance to the general election.
- Voters will decide one statewide ballot measure each in Alabama, California, and Maine. In California, voters will decide 289 local ballot measures. Jurisdictions in 48 of the Golden State's 58 counties have a local issue on their ballots.
And bookmark the link below to stay on top of all the key election results tonight!
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New York’s ban on single-use plastic bags took effect March 1
New York's ban on single-use plastic bags took effect March 1, and for state residents, that means they must switch to reusable bags, or pay a five-cent per bag fee for paper bags.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed the ban into law in August 2019. Similar prohibitions are currently in effect in California, Hawaii, and Oregon. Additional bans in Maine and Vermont take effect in April and July, respectively.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) released final regulations to administer the measure in late February. The rules prohibit the use of single-use plastic bags by any retailer that collects sales tax, with certain exceptions, and gives counties and cities the option to charge shoppers a five-cent fee on paper bags. Retailers in violation of the rules face a $250 fine for the first offense and a $500 fine for each subsequent violation.
In 2007, San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to prohibit retailers from giving customers plastic bags. The ban applied to grocery stores and pharmacies and was expanded to retail stores in 2012.
Prohibiting the use of plastic bags has been a source of preemption conflicts between state and local governments. Preemption occurs when law at a higher level of government is used to overrule authority at a lower level. Other policy areas where such preemption conflicts have occurred are minimum wage and paid sick leave, firearms policy, sanctuary status, and marijuana decriminalization. To read more about preemption conflicts regarding plastic bags, click the link below.
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36% of Brew readers who responded to our survey know someone with a Leap Day birthday
Saturday was Feb. 29—known as Leap Day or Leap Year day—appears on the calendar once every four years. As a child, I always wondered what it was like for people born on Leap Day because when you’re a kid, anything that could even potentially interfere with receiving gifts can be pretty important. When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone who had a Leap Day birthday that I could ask questions of, which made this week’s What’s the Tea? such an interesting question to ask.
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