Before we dive into today’s news, we want to present you with an opportunity to help the Ballotpedia community next Friday, August 7 for our next Day of Service!

We're getting together (virtually) to research contact information for local candidates that will be on November's ballot. Why? Because with over 15,000 cities and towns in the United States, going down the ballot is an ambitious goal that we know this community can help with!

After our work, we'll hang out together on a virtual happy hour to kick off the weekend with a cold drink in hand!

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Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington to hold primaries for state executive, legislative offices

• Five states are holding statewide primaries on August 4, 2020: Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington. Candidates are competing to advance to the general election on November 3. 
  
  
• Candidates in Arizona are running in elections for the following state offices:
• Corporation Commission (3 seats)
• Arizona State Senate (30 seats)
• Arizona House of Representatives (60 seats)
  
  
• Candidates in Kansas are running in elections for the following state offices:
• State Board of Education (5 seats)
• Kansas State Senate (40 seats)
• Kansas House of Representatives (125 seats)
  
  
• Candidates in Michigan are running in elections for the following state offices:
• State Board of Education (2 seats)
• University of Michigan Board of Regents (2 seats)
• Michigan State University Board of Trustees (2 seats)
• Wayne State University Board of Governors (2 seats)
• Michigan House of Representatives (110 seats)
  
  
• Candidates in Missouri are running in elections for the following state offices:
• Governor
• Lieutenant Governor
• Attorney General
• Secretary of State
• Treasurer
• Missouri State Senate (17 seats)
• Missouri House of Representatives (163 seats)
  
  
• Washington holds top-two primaries, in which all candidates are listed on the same primary ballot. The top two vote-getters, regardless of their partisan affiliations, advance to the general election. Candidates in Washington are running in elections for the following offices:
• Governor
• Lieutenant Governor
• Attorney General
• Secretary of State
• Superintendent of Public Instruction
• Commissioner of Public Lands
• Treasurer
• Auditor
• Commissioner of Insurance
• Washington State Senate (25 seats)
• Washington House of Representatives (98 seats)
  
  
• Alabama is also holding a special state legislative primary on August 4. If no candidate receives a majority of votes, the top two vote recipients will advance to a primary runoff scheduled for September 1. Winners advance to the general election on November 17.
  
  
• Ballotpedia identified several state and local primaries taking place Aug. 4 as battleground primaries:
• Thirty-six candidates are running in the top-two primary for governor of Washington. The top two finishers, regardless of their partisan affiliation, will advance to the general election. 
• Incumbent Jay Inslee (D) has led in polling and is expected by local political observers to place first and advance to the general election. Including Inslee, there are five Democrats in the running and 11 Republicans.
• Two Republicans have led in polling and fundraising: businessman Tim Eyman (R) and Loren Culp (R), the police chief of the town of Republic, Washington.
• The last Republican to win election as governor of Washington was John Spellman (R) in 1980.
  
  
• Eleven candidates are running in the top-two primary for lieutenant governor of Washington, including four Democrats, five Republicans, and two Libertarians. Incumbent Cyrus Habib (D) is retiring to join the Jesuit Order.
• Among the Democratic candidates are U.S. Rep. Denny Heck (D) and state Sen. Marko Liias (D). Former Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has endorsed Heck, while Habib and the LGBT Victory Fund have endorsed Liias.
• In Washington, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately. The last Republican to win election as lieutenant governor was Joel Pritchard (R) in 1996.
  
  
• Incumbent Bob Ferguson (D) and challengers Matt Larkin (R), Brett Rogers (R), and Mike Vaska (R) are running in the top-two primary for Attorney General of Washington.
• Ferguson, who was first elected in 2012, is running for a third term. 
• Each of Ferguson’s challengers has criticized his lawsuits against the Trump Administration, saying they have distracted him from his state-level responsibilities.
• The last Republican to win election as attorney general of Washington was Rob McKenna (R) in 2008.
  
  
• Incumbent Kimberly Gardner (D) faces challenger Mary Pat Carl (D) in the Democratic primary for St. Louis Circuit Attorney.
• Gardner was first elected in 2016, where she faced Carl and two other candidates in the Democratic primary. That year, Gardner defeated Carl 47% to 24%.
• The race attracted national attention following Gardner’s decision to file felony charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a couple who confronted Black Lives Matter protestors from their front lawn while armed.

Ohio House of Representatives replaces Speaker amid federal investigation

• Amid an ongoing federal investigation, the Ohio House of Representatives voted unanimously on July 30 to remove Rep. Larry Householder (R) from his leadership position as state Speaker of the House. State representatives introduced the motion for removal shortly after a federal grand jury indicted Householder on racketeering charges.
  
  
• The Ohio House voted 55-38 that same day to select Bob Cupp (R) as the new speaker. House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes issued a statement indicating no members of the Democratic Caucus voted for Cupp. In his swearing-in address to the chamber, Cupp said, “It is a great privilege to lead this chamber. Sorry it is in such difficult and trying and unprecedented times as this, however, but I pledge to do so honorably and fairly and humbly.”
  
  
• Both Householder and Cupp are running for re-election this year. Householder advanced unopposed from the April 28 Republican primary in District 72 and is running unopposed in the general election on Nov. 3. Cupp ran unopposed in the District 4 Republican primary and faces Libertarian candidate Christina Marie Holloway in the general election.
  
  
• Federal law enforcement officers arrested Householder and four other individuals on July 21 on charges of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering scheme. Householder was accused of collecting more than $60 million in exchange for legislation that would bail out two nuclear plants.

Missouri voters to decide whether to expand Medicaid

• Missouri voters will vote on Amendment 2, the Medicaid Expansion Initiative, on August 4. Amendment 2 would expand Medicaid eligibility in Missouri to adults between the ages of 19 and 65 whose incomes are at or below 138% of the federal poverty level. The amendment would also prohibit  future additional restrictions or requirements for the expanded population to qualify for Medicaid coverage beyond those required for other Medicaid-eligible populations. It would require the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Missouri HealthNet Division to submit state Medicaid plan amendments by March 1, 2021, to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to implement Medicaid expansion.
  
  
• The following populations are currently eligible for Medicaid in Missouri:
• Individuals over 65 years of age,
• Blind or disabled individuals,
• Adults with dependent children with a household income at or below 22 percent of the federal poverty level,
• Infants under the age of one in a household with an income at or below 196 percent of the federal poverty level,
• Children between the ages of one and 18 in a household with an income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level, and
• Pregnant women with a household income at or below 196 percent of the federal poverty level.
  
  
• Amendment 2 was sponsored by Yes on 2: Healthcare for Missouri. The campaign submitted 341,440 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State on May 1, 2020, to qualify the measure for the ballot. In Missouri, the number of signatures required to qualify an initiated constitutional amendment for the ballot is equal to 8 percent of the votes cast for governor in the previous gubernatorial election in six of the eight state congressional districts. The initiative qualified in districts 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. A total of 172,015 valid signatures were required, and a projected total of 258,686 signatures submitted by the campaign were valid in those districts.
  
  
• There are two political action committees, Healthcare for Missouri and Missourians for Healthcare, registered to support Amendment 2. As of July 27, 2020, the committees had raised a total of $10.1 million, with Missourians for Healthcare receiving the bulk of the contributions. The top five donors to the campaign included the Missouri Hospital Association, the North Fund, the Health Care Issues Committee of the Missouri Hospital Association, the Health Forward Foundation, and the Washington University.
• The support campaign argued that the coronavirus pandemic has shown the need for Medicaid expansion. Jack Cardetti, a spokesperson for the Yes on 2 campaign, said, "Now more than ever, Missourians need to be able to access care in their own communities and protect thousands of local frontline healthcare jobs. ... Amendment 2 will help keep rural hospitals and urban clinics open by bringing $1 billion of our own tax dollars back from Washington, instead of going to the 37 other states that have expanded Medicaid.”
  
  
• No on 2 in August is leading the campaign in opposition to Amendment 2. The committee organized in early June and has reported $112,000 in contributions. Opponents have argued that expanding Medicaid is not economically prudent. 
• State Senator Bob Onder (R-2) said, "The money needed to expand Medicaid is going to come from somewhere. It either has to come from education, from roads or from massive tax increases. ... I do think that Missourians, particularly in these challenging economic times, will realize that a massive expansion of the Medicaid program isn’t something that we can afford." Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) also came out in opposition to expanding Medicaid. He argued, "I don’t think it’s the time to be expanding anything in the state of Missouri right now. There’s absolutely not going to be any extra money whatsoever."
  
  
• In 2017, Maine was the first state to vote on a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid according to the Affordable Care Act. It was approved. In 2018, ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid in Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho were approved. A 2018 initiative in Montana that would have renewed Medicaid expansion and increased tobacco taxes was defeated. On June 30, 2020, Oklahoma approved an initiative to expand Medicaid. It was approved 50.5% to 49.5%. Maine, Utah, and Oklahoma expanded Medicaid with opposition from Republican governors. Idaho expanded it with support from its Republican governor. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts (R) did not take a side on the question.

Connecticut, New Jersey, New York expand list of states under quarantine requirement; Maryland issues travel advisory

• Governors Ned Lamont (D-Conn.), Phil Murphy (D-N.J.), and Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) announced the addition of Illinois, Kentucky Minnesota, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico to the joint travel advisory originally announced June 24, bringing the total number on the list to 34 states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.
  
  
• On July 29, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) issued a travel advisory recommending residents of Maryland refrain from traveling to states where the positive diagnosis rate exceeds 10%. He said Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Texas all met that threshold, and urged anyone who had traveled to one of those states to get a COVID-19 test upon arriving in Maryland.
  
  
• On July 28, The Kansas Department of Health and Environment removed Arizona from its quarantine list. As of that date, only those who had traveled to or from Florida were required to self-quarantine for 14 days in Kansas.
  
  
• On July 24, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) announced that he was issuing a mandatory travel order to take effect Aug. 1. The order requires that travelers to the state fill out a travel form (unless they are traveling from a state defined as low risk by the Department of Public Health) and either self-quarantine for 14 days or provide the results from a negative COVID-19 test administered no more than 72 hours prior to arrival. Travelers who violate the order could face fines of up to $500 per day.

Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to be sworn in during ultramarathon

• Justice-elect Jill Karofsky, who won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 7 of this year, will be sworn in while running an ultramarathon race on Saturday. She plans to stop at mile 35 of a 100-mile race and Justice Rebecca F. Dallet will preside over a socially-distanced ceremony.
  
  
• Karofsky defeated incumbent Daniel Kelly with 55.2% of the vote to Kelly’s 44.7% in April’s nonpartisan election. Although the race was officially nonpartisan, Kelly has been a member of the court’s conservative majority and received support from conservative groups. Karofsky said she would join the court’s liberal minority and received support from liberal groups. 
  
  
• Karofsky's win reduced the size of the court's conservative majority to 4-3, meaning that the 2023 election will determine control of the court, assuming no justices leave the bench early.

Minnesota releases public school reopening guidance

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) released the Safe Learning Plan for reopening K-12 public schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The plan requires a county to have fewer than nine coronavirus cases per 10,000 residents over a 14-day period in order to fully reopen schools.
  
  
• So far, seven states (Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, and Wyoming) have reopened their campuses for students and staff. Thirteen states have released reopening guidance and also announced a scheduled reopening. One state has announced public schools will reopen in the fall but has not released reopening guidance. Officials in 21 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 except 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. Montana and Wyoming did not require in-person instruction for the year. Montana schools were allowed to reopen on May 7 and Wyoming schools were allowed to reopen on May 15.

Tennessee voters to decide state legislative primaries

• The statewide primary election for Tennessee is on August 6. The filing deadline to run passed on April 2. The general election will be held on November 3. Candidates are running in elections for the following offices:
• 16 state Senate seats
• 99 state House seats
  
  
• One state court of appeals judge, Carma Dennis McGee is also up for retention election on August 6. If retained, Judge McGee will serve an additional eight years on the court. 
  
  
• Tennessee has a Republican state government trifecta. A trifecta exists when one political party simultaneously holds the governor’s office and majorities in both state legislative chambers.
  
  
• The next primary is on August 8 in Hawaii.

Texas Court of Appeals judge Bridges dies in car accident

• Appellate judge David Bridges (R), who sat in Place 1 on the Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals, was killed Saturday night when an individual driving under the influence of alcohol hit Bridges as he was driving on the freeway. Bridges had served on the court since 1996.
  
  
• Bridges was running for re-election to his seat on the court and advanced unopposed from the Republican primary on March 3. He was to face Democratic candidate Craig Smith, a judge of the Texas 192nd District Court, in the general election Nov. 3. 
  
  
• Because of the timing of Bridges’ death, Republican Party committee officials from his district will nominate a replacement candidate to appear on the general election ballot. They have until August 24 to submit the nomination.

North Carolina state Senator resigns six months early, says he plans to pursue other projects

• North Carolina Senator Andy Wells (R) resigned from his seat in the state senate six months before the end of his term. He had represented District 42 in the chamber since 2015.
  
  
• Wells did not file to run for re-election to his seat in the North Carolina State Senate this year, running instead for Lieutenant Governor. He lost to Mark Robinson in the Republican primary on March 3, coming in second place with 14.6% of the vote to Robinson’s 32.5%. 
  
  
• Wells did not provide details on his post-departure plans, but told the Charlotte Observer that he’s “now available for some other projects.” 

O’Hearn joins Wyoming House of Representatives

• Natrona County commissioners appointed Kevin O’Hearn (R) to the Wyoming House of Representatives this week. O’Hearn’s appointment filled the vacancy created when Carl “Bunky” Loucks (R) resigned in early July. Loucks, who did not file to run for re-election, said he resigned to focus on running his business. 
  
  
• O’Hearn had already filed to run for Loucks’ seat this year and will face David Carpenter and Leah Juarez in the Republican primary on Aug. 18. Unless he is re-elected, O’Hearn will represent District 59 in the chamber for the remainder of Loucks’ unexpired term, which is set to end on January 3, 2021.
  
  
• In District 59 and 39 other districts in Wyoming’s 60-seat state House, no candidates filed to run in the Democratic primary. No candidates filed in the Republican primary in just five of the 60 races.

Florida state senator, Connecticut state House candidate test positive for coronavirus 

• Florida state Senator Rob Bradley (R), who represents District 5, announced on July 28 that he had tested positive for coronavirus. Bradley was first elected to the Senate in 2016.
  
  
• Christopher Bowen (D), a candidate running to represent District 105 in the Connecticut House of Representatives, announced on July 28 that he tested positive for coronavirus. He is on the ballot in the general election on November 3, 2020.

Ballot Measures Update

• To date, 110 statewide measures in 33 states have been certified for the 2020 ballot.
  • Thirty-two of the certified measures are citizen-initiated measures. Seventy-seven are legislative referrals. One is an automatic constitutional revision commission question. 
     
  • Two new measures were certified for the November ballot in Oklahoma and New Jersey, and one measure was withdrawn from the New York ballot last week.
    • On July 29, the Oklahoma Supreme Court certified State Question 805 for the ballot after determining that Yes on 805 submitted about 250,000 valid signatures; 177,958 were required. The initiative would prohibit increasing a convicted person's sentence based on former felony convictions except in the case of violent felonies (defined).
    • On July 30, the New Jersey Legislature approved an amendment for the ballot that would delay the timeline for redistricting if the state does not receive census data by February 15.
    • On July 30, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced that a $3.00 billion bond issue for projects related to the environment, natural resources, water infrastructure, and climate change mitigation bond measure was being pulled from the ballot. Gov. Cuomo said, "The financial situation is unstable. I don't think it would be financially prudent to do it at this time.”
       
  • Seven statewide measures have been on the ballot so far this year. One more is on the ballot on August 4, and the remaining 102 are on the November ballot.
    • On August 4, Missouri voters will decide Amendment 2, an initiative to expand Medicaid coverage.
    • On July 14, Maine voters approved two bond issues:
      • Maine Question 1, High-Speed Internet Infrastructure Bond Issue (July 2020) - $15 million
      • Maine Question 2, Transportation Infrastructure Bond Issue (July 2020) - $105 million
    • On June 30, voters in Oklahoma approved State Question 802, an initiative to expand Medicaid coverage. The vote was 50.5% to 49.5%.
       
  • Proponents of 15 additional ballot initiatives and veto referendums in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota submitted signatures for verification by state officials.

Special Elections

• Fifty-one state legislative special elections have been scheduled in 25 states so far this year, with 35 seats having taken place already. Heading into those races, Democrats had previously controlled 14 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.
• In special elections between 2011 and 2019, one party (either Republicans or Democrats) saw an average net gain of four seats nationally each year.
• 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).
• 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).
  
  
• Upcoming special elections include:
• August 4
• Alabama House of Representatives District 49 (primary)
• Michigan House of Representatives District 4 (primary)
• Washington State Senate District 38 (primary)
• August 11
• Georgia State Senate District 4 (general election runoff)
• South Carolina House of Representatives District 115
• August 18
• Alaska State Senate District M (primary)
• Florida State Senate District 20 (primary)
• South Carolina House of Representatives District 107 (primary)

States in session

Eight states—California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—are in regular session.

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