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Welcome to the weekend!
Keep reading for this week's highlights in state and local politics. For a full review of the week, plus a look ahead, remember to click the button below and launch the full edition.
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Rokita wins Republican nomination for Indiana Attorney General over incumbent Hill
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Former U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita defeated incumbent Curtis Hill and two other candidates—Decatur County Prosecutor Nate Harter and attorney John Westercamp—in the Republican Party primary convention to determine the party’s attorney general nominee for the general election. Rokita also served as Indiana’s Secretary of State from 2002 to 2010.
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Much of the race centered on the disciplinary action taken against Hill, who was accused of inappropriately touching a legislator and three staffers at a 2018 party. The allegations led Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) to call on Hill to resign, which he refused. On May 11, 2020, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against Hill in a disciplinary action and suspended his law license for 30 days.
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Rokita joined the race after the Supreme Court decision, saying, “our incumbent [Hill] is wounded. The unanimous Supreme Court ruling, by Republican appointed and conservative Justices, after a significant investigation of the facts made this choice clear.”
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Hill denied the allegations. In a later statement, he said, “Both President Trump and I are ‘wounded’ as some would say. But not so wounded to ignore our individual record of achievement.”
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After the final round of voting, Rokita received 52 percent of the delegate vote to Hill’s 48 percent. Rokita will face former Evansville mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel (D) in the general election.
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Atlanta mayor, state legislators test positive for coronavirus in California, Mississippi, North Carolina
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Keisha Bottoms, the Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, announced on Twitter on July 6 that she had tested positive for coronavirus. She wrote that she did not have any symptoms, and later said that her husband also tested positive for the virus.
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Several Mississippi lawmakers have tested positive for coronavirus.
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State Rep. William Brown (D), who represents District 70, announced that he tested positive on July 4.
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Speaker of the House Philip Gunn (R), who represents District 56, announced on July 5 that he had tested positive.
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State Rep. Greg Haney (R), who represents District 118, announced on July 7 that he tested positive.
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State Reps. Ronnie Crudup Jr. (R), who represents District 71, and Earle Banks (D), who represents District 67, both announced on July 8 that they had tested positive for coronavirus.
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Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann (R) also tested positive for coronavirus on July 7, according to a statement released by his spokesperson.
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California State Assemblymember Autumn Burke (D), who represents District 62, tested positive for coronavirus on July 6.
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Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain (R) announced on July 2 that he had tested positive for coronavirus.
- On July 10, North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R) announced that a Republican state senator had tested positive for COVID-19. Berger did not reveal the Senator’s name. State Senator Danny Britt (R), who represents District 13, identified himself as the lawmaker who tested positive later that day in a tweet.
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Lt. Governor Cox declared winner of Utah’s Republican gubernatorial primary
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Spencer Cox, Utah's lieutenant governor, won the Republican gubernatorial primary on June 30. As of Thursday, he had received 36% of the vote to Jon Huntsman's 35%. Gregory Hughes received 21%, and Thomas Wright received 8%.
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The race was called July 6 as absentee ballots continued to be counted. Cox advances to the general election with his running mate, Deidre Henderson. Three election forecasters rate the general election as Safe or Solid Republican.
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Huntsman served as Utah's governor from 2005 to 2009.
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Incumbent Gov. Gary Herbert (R) did not seek re-election and endorsed Cox in the primary.
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New Mexico’s stay-at-home order to expire
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New Mexico’s stay-at-home order, in place since March 24, is set to expire on July 15. Along with California, New Mexico is one of only two states with an active stay-at-home order. The order in California is set to last indefinitely.
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As of July 10, stay-at-home orders have ended in 41 states. Nineteen of those states have Republican governors and 22 have Democratic governors (including Wisconsin, where the state supreme court invalidated the stay-at-home order).
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Pennsylvania governor extends moratorium on evictions and foreclosures a second time
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Voters to decide statewide, legislative primaries and runoffs in Alabama, Maine, Texas
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The statewide primary election for Maine is on July 14, 2020. The filing deadline to run passed on March 16, 2020. Candidates are running in elections for the following offices:
- One member of the U.S. Senate
- Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives
- Thirty-five state senate seats
- One hundred and fifty-one state house seats
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Candidates are competing to advance to the general election scheduled for November 3, 2020. Maine uses a ranked-choice voting system (RCV), in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. A candidate who wins a majority of first-preference votes is declared the winner. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First- preference votes cast for the failed candidate are then eliminated and redistributed, lifting to the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally then is conducted to determines
whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process repeats until a candidate wins an outright majority. As of July 2020, Maine was the only state that had adopted RCV at the state level, although other states have adopted RCV at the municipal level or have adopted RCV but not yet implemented it.
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Alabama and Texas are holding statewide primary runoffs. The filing deadline to run in Alabama passed on November 8, 2019. If no candidate wins a majority of votes in the primary election, the top two candidates advance to a runoff election. Alabama’s primary election took place on March 3, 2020. Eight offices advanced to primary runoffs in Alabama, including races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, the state court of criminal appeals, the Alabama State Board of Education, and several municipal-level races.
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Similarly, in Texas, if no candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two candidates advance to the primary runoff election. Texas’ primary was also held on March 3, 2020. Seventy-four offices advanced to primary runoffs in Texas, including races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, the state legislature, the state court of appeals, and the state railroad commission. Multiple municipal-level races also advanced to primary runoffs.
- Ballotpedia is following one Texas runoff as a battleground: the Democratic primary for Travis County District Attorney. Incumbent Margaret Moore faces challenger Jose Garza, who led Moore 44% to 41% in the March 3 primary. Moore’s endorsers include Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Austin Mayor Stephen Adler, while Garza’s include third-place primary finisher Erin Martinson (D) and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
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Three states release school reopening guidance
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Kentucky, Montana, and Texas released guidance for reopening schools this fall. The guidance documents serve as general guidelines; local school districts are responsible for creating specific reopening proposals.
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So far, seven states (Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, and Wyoming) have reopened their campuses for students and staff. Eleven states have released reopening guidance and also announced a scheduled reopening. Two states have announced schools will reopen in the fall but have not released reopening guidance, while 13 other states have released guidance for reopening schools to in-person instruction, but have not indicated when or whether they plan to do so.
- In March and April, 48 states—all but Montana and Wyoming—closed schools to in-person instruction for the remainder of the 2019-2020 academic year. Those states accounted for 99.4% of the nation's 50.6 million public school students.
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Loucks retires from Wyoming state legislature
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Carl “Bunky” Loucks (R) resigned from the Wyoming House of Representatives on July 6, citing a need to focus on his small business due to the economic impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Loucks did not file to run for re-election this year. His resignation thus ended his nearly decade-long tenure in the state legislature six months earlier than planned.
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Three Republican candidates–David Carpenter, Leah Juarez, and Kevin O’Hearn–are running for the seat in the August 18 primary. No candidates filed for the Democratic primary.
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Republican Party officials will meet on July 15 to nominate three candidates to serve the remainder of Loucks’ term, one of whom will then be appointed by county commissioners in the district. The list of candidates for appointment to the seat as of July 10 consisted of the three candidates running in the August primary.
- All 60 seats in the Wyoming House of Representatives are up for election this year. In 40 of the 60 races, no candidates filed in the Democratic primary. No candidates filed for the Republican primary in just five of the 60 districts.
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Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York extend list of states covered by quarantine requirement
- Governors Ned Lamont (D-Conn.), Phil Murphy (D-N.J.), and Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) announced that Delaware, Kansas, and Oklahoma now fall under the “joint travel advisory” originally issued June 25. Visitors from those states will need to quarantine for 14 days upon entering Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York.
- The advisory states that travelers arriving in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey states from states with a high infection rate must quarantine for 14 days. The infection rate is based on a seven-day rolling average of the number of infections per 100,000 residents.
- The advisory originally included eight states and has since expanded to 19. The full list includes Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
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Candidate filing deadline for state executive, legislative offices to pass in Delaware
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Delaware’s filing deadline to run for state executive and legislative offices will pass in Delaware on July 14. The primary is scheduled for September 15, and the general election will be held on November 3.
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In Delaware, prospective candidates may file for the following state offices:
- The next and last statewide filing deadline in the 2020 election cycle is on July 24 in Louisiana.
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Douglass-Boone appointed to late representative’s seat in Nevada State Assembly
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A Nevada State Assembly seat that has been vacant since May of last year was filled by appointment. Clark County commissioners appointed Kasina Douglass-Boone (D), a social worker for Clark County Schools, to represent District 17 in the chamber. The vacancy occurred when late Representative Tyrone Thompson (D) died on May 4, 2019.
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There are two candidates on the ballot in the November general election for the HD 17 seat, Democratic candidate Clara Thomas and Republican candidate Jack Polcyn. Douglass-Boone did not file to run for election to the seat.
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District 17 has been represented by a Democrat since at least 2003. With the exception of a power-sharing agreement from 1994 to 1996 and a Republican majority from 2014 to 2016, the Democratic Party has controlled a majority of seats in the assembly since 1992.
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Ballot measures update
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State legislative special elections
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Forty-eight state legislative special elections have been scheduled in 25 states so far this year, with 34 seats having taken place already. Heading into those races, Democrats had previously controlled 13 of the seats, while Republicans previously controlled 21. One seat flipped from Democratic control to Republican control, and five seats flipped from Republican control to Democratic control.
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In special elections between 2011 and 2019, one party (either Republicans or Democrats) saw an average net gain of four seats nationally each year.
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An average of 56 seats were filled through special elections in each of the past five even years (2010: 30, 2012: 46, 2014: 40, 2016: 66, 2018: 99).
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An average of 88 seats were filled through special elections in each of the past five odd years (2011: 95, 2013: 84, 2015: 88, 2017: 98, 2019: 77).
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Upcoming special elections include:
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States in session
Eight states—California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—are in regular session.
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The Lucy Burns Institute, publisher of Ballotpedia, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible to the extent of the law. Donations to the Lucy Burns Institute or Ballotpedia do not support any candidates or campaigns.
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