Elections

Midterm election results show the bad-faith “crime wave” narrative failed to con a critical mass of voters, who instead want a less draconian police state.

On Election Day, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will decide whether to close loopholes in their state constitutions allowing the forced labor of incarcerated people.

Pamela Price is running a progressive campaign to change the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in California. She’s winning. But her opponent, longtime prosecutor Terry Wiley, is trying to paint her as the next Chesa Boudin to score votes.

Jones says her experience transforming the treasurer’s office will make her an effective mayor. Voters will let candidates know what they think next week.

Progressive policies face a committee structure that distorts democracy and favors corporate-backed centrists.

Incumbents Jimmy Flannigan and Alison Alter have been targeted by conservative challengers because of the council’s votes to cut police funding and repeal a ban on public camping.

Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman has jumpstarted the state’s pardons process, while Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s self-styled progressivism isn’t winning over advocates.

None of the Austin City Council members who voted to cut police funding lost their elections, but a police union vice president who fearmongered about the defund movement did.

In North Carolina, Attorney General Josh Stein’s Republican opponent painted him as soft on crime. Voters re-elected him anyway.

A Democratic president who politely listens to progressive rhetoric while failing to act on it is one who just watches the planet burn a little more slowly.

Voters decided to keep Adel in charge of the third-largest prosecuting agency in the country. She is recovering from emergency surgery for bleeding in her brain.

Fife has pledged to reinvest in the local community, aggressively combat the housing crisis, address income inequality, education, healthcare and more.

Party leaders have blamed progressive left policies for disappointing electoral results. A close examination of winners and losers suggests otherwise.

Candidates promising to remake Southern California’s legal system, won major races for DA, county supervisor, and City Council, among others while overcoming significant spending by pro-law enforcement groups.

Los Angeles County, with the country’s largest jail system and largest local prosecutor office, is considered a crown jewel in a nationwide push for criminal justice reform.

The ideological change is a boon for the left, as states prepare for redistricting in 2021 and the challenges that may come with it.

The LA County supervisors are poised to tackle a wide range of criminal justice reforms, including moving children and people struggling with mental health issues out of the criminal legal system, and redirecting millions of dollars away from law enforcement and back into communities.

Current law mandated that the city have at least 1,971 full-time police officers.

Jones has vowed to support expansion of the Supreme Court, back the Green New Deal, and push for criminal justice reform.

The chef and restaurant owner says she plans to support the fight for a $15 minimum wage and other reforms that will make ‘Wisconsin work better for more people.’

“I have always had a focus on public service, always a desire to make sure that I’m using my skills and talents to help people and to make the community around me a little bit better,” she said.

Hollins’s ‘very personal’ decision to run was sparked in part by the Trump administration ‘catching everything on fire.’ Now she wants to advocate for subsidized child care, police reform, and more.

Houston area voters re-elected Gonzalez after he supported bail reform, cleaned up the county jail, and provided aid to incarcerated people living with opioid use disorder.

The ballot initiative would have bloated prisons and jails in the state and undone important criminal legal reforms, advocates say.

Members of The Squad are already among the Democratic Party’s most influential voices.

Simmons, an attorney, is fighting to give people “a first chance so they won’t need a second chance later on in life.”

Minnesotans, Fateh said, “should be able to access the folks that are representing us and make sure that they’re partnering with the community.”

Leger Fernandez wants to pass universal healthcare and improve infrastructure in tribal and rural communities.

“This economy doesn’t work for everyone; it works for very, very few people,” Newman said.

Bowman has also advocated for an eviction moratorium and for rental payments to be cancelled for the duration of the pandemic.

Bush’s victory in Missouri’s First Congressional District makes her the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress.

Grown adults have voted their way into the current morass in this country. Now is the time for a younger generation to lead the way.

First-time state Senate candidate Jackie Fielder’s housing plans are geared toward government investment, while incumbent Scott Wiener’s plans have relied on the construction of market rate housing with some affordable units.

If Democrats win control of the Senate, allowing this archaic tradition to survive will make everything of significance the party hopes to accomplish virtually impossible.

Sanchez is running for one of the state House seats that Democrats are hoping to flip.

If he wins his bid to represent the state’s Sixth District, Hoadley says he would reallocate police funding, improve health care, and invest in rural communities.

The Second District candidate, who has been endorsed by more than 50 Black leaders in Omaha, also wants to make investments in Black and Latinx neighborhoods.

She is running for a historically Republican-controlled seat, and if she wins, it could help turn the state House blue.

If she’s successful in her bid to represent Texas’s 24th Congressional District, Valenzuela will flip the district to blue and become the first Black and Latinx member of Congress.