New polls, commissioned by End Citizens United / Let America Vote Action Fund and conducted by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research released last month, show that the For the People Act (H.R. 1, S. 1)––which would protect Americans’ freedom to vote, stop billionaires from buying our elections, and put in place ironclad ethics reforms––is extremely popular in West Virginia and Arizona. Press Release.
From the Polling Memo:
SUPPORT FOR THE BILL
- The For The People Act is extremely popular in both West Virginia and Arizona. In West Virginia, voters supported the bill by 79%. In Arizona, 84% of respondents supported the bill, with a remarkable 73% supporting it strongly.
- In both states, the bill remains broadly popular across the board—including with Republicans and Independents. In the red state of West Virginia, a full 76% of registered Republicans and 79% of registered Independents or unaffiliated voters support the For The People Act. In Arizona, the bill earned support from 78% of registered Republicans, and 81% of registered Independent or unaffiliated voters.
- The bill also performed strongly with all ideological subgroups. In West Virginia, the bill garnered 82% from moderates and 76% support from conservatives. In Arizona, the bill earned 89% support from moderate voters, 80% support from somewhat conservative voters and even 75% support with very conservative voters.
- The For The People Act was also a strong unifier among groups that do not traditionally lean towards Democrats. In West Virginia, voters without a college degree supported the bill 76%, with men without a college degree supporting it 74%. Men also supported the bill nearly just as much as women, 77% to 80%, and men aged 18-54 supported it 79%.
- In Arizona, the bill garnered 83% support with voters without a college degree overall (including 74% that strongly supported the bill) and 80% with men without a college degree. White men in Arizona supported the bill 80%. Even Arizonans who had voted for Trump in 2020 supported the bill 75%.
- The Democratic base is also almost universally supportive of the For The People Act, with 81% of West Virginia registered Democrats and 92% of Arizona registered Democrats supporting it.
KEY COMPONENTS
- Individual provisions of the For The People Act have overwhelming support among voters. In West Virginia, more than 8 in 10 voters (84%) support providing more transparency into lobbyist fundraising, and 77% support stopping billionaires from buying elections by limiting the influence of wealthy donors. Moreover, 85% of voters support ethics reform—ending self-dealing and waste of taxpayer dollars by making sure government officials follow iron-clad ethics rules that eliminate conflicts of interest between personal profit and policymaking.
- In Arizona, 90% of respondents supported the bill’s ethics provisions, 89% supported transparency into lobbyist fundraising, and 86% supported prohibiting political candidates from benefiting from unlimited secret corporate money to boost their campaigns.
- Another top-testing provision in the bill was that it would modernize our voting system to ensure safe and accurate elections. This provision garnered 83% support in West Virginia and 86% in Arizona, including 71% strongly support in that state.
The Press Release adds:
These numbers are consistent with a recent poll, commissioned by ECU // LAV Action Fund and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) and conducted by Global Strategy Group and ALG Research, that showed that the For the People Act is incredibly popular in key Senate battleground states, with 83 percent of voters across party lines supporting the bill.
Newsweek reported, Arizona, West Virginia GOP Voters Back Democrats’ Election Bill as Conservative Opposition Mounts:
While conservative groups are raising their pressure campaign against HR 1, new polling shows that Republicans in Arizona and West Virginia overwhelmingly support the sweeping election bill.
The End Citizens United/Let America Vote Action Fund survey, first shared with Newsweek, found HR 1—also known as the For the People Act—to be extremely popular among all voters in both states.
In West Virginia, respondents supported the bill by 79 percent. In Arizona, 84 percent of likely voters supported the bill, and 73 percent “strongly” backed the voting rights legislation.
The Democratic proposal also enjoys high levels of support among Republicans, despite ongoing efforts from several conservative groups to have the states’ moderate senators vote against it.
West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly are critical votes in the Senate, where Democrats have the slimmest of advantages in the 50-50 split chamber. All three senators would have to back the legislation for it to pass, as not a single Republican member has indicated they will support it. First, though, lawmakers would have to amend or eliminate the filibuster rules.
Heritage Action is running television ads in West Virginia and Arizona in opposition to the For the People Act See earlier post, Fact Check: False Heritage Action Ad Opposing The For The People Act (Updated).
Another group, One Nation, said it will devote $1.85 million to place television and radio ads opposing the For the People Act and supporting the filibuster across Arizona and West Virginia, as well as New Hampshire, Nevada and Montana.
Jane Mayer reported at The New Yorker, Inside the Koch-Backed Effort to Block the Largest Election-Reform Bill in Half a Century (snippet):
A recording obtained by The New Yorker of a private conference call on January 8th, between a policy adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell and the leaders of several prominent conservative groups—including one run by the Koch brothers’ network—reveals the participants’ worry that the proposed election reforms garner wide support not just from liberals but from conservative voters, too. The speakers on the call expressed alarm at the broad popularity of the bill’s provision calling for more public disclosure about secret political donors. The participants conceded that the bill, which would stem the flow of dark money from such political donors as the billionaire oil magnate Charles Koch, was so popular that it wasn’t worth trying to mount a public-advocacy campaign to shift opinion. Instead, a senior Koch operative said that opponents would be better off ignoring the will of American voters and trying to kill the bill in Congress.
And this is what these putative “Democratic” Senators are doing, “ignoring the will of the voters in their states and trying to kill the bill in Congress” on behalf of the right-wing “Kochtopus” network and Heritage Foundation.
Earlier this year, Reuters reported U.S. Chamber rewards Senators Manchin, Sinema for opposing Biden initiatives:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it is backing Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema with campaign contributions as a reward for their opposition to some of President Joe Biden’s legislative initiatives and for trying to work with Republicans.
In disclosures made public on Thursday, the Chamber said its political action committee during the first quarter made about $17,000 worth of contributions to the two senators and nine members of the House of Representatives.
* * *
Manchin, who is from West Virginia, and Sinema, who is from Arizona, are opposed to ending the Senate’s filibuster, a custom that requires a 60-vote majority to advance most legislation. read more The Chamber also has called for preserving the filibuster to require Democrats, who control a single-vote Senate majority, to seek support from Republicans on major non-budgetary initiatives.
Manchin has emerged as a key barrier to Democrats using the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris to pass key party priorities in the Senate without any Republican support, including Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment plan.
Manchin and Sinema also opposed Biden’s plan to include an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour as a part of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package – a provision opposed by the Chamber, which said it hurts businesses struggling with the pandemic.
The Chamber opposes Biden’s plan to pay for the investments with corporate tax hikes. Manchin has rejected Biden’s proposed 28% corporate tax rate, saying 25% is more appropriate. The senator opposed the Trump administration’s 2017 corporate tax cut to 21%.
UPDATE: Judd Legume points out that Joe Manchin’s arguments echo talking points released in April by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Republican-alligned trade association that recently backed his reelection campaign. Where Joe Manchin gets his talking points.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the largest “dark money” political organizations in America, and obviously is opposed to the “dark money” provisions in the For The People Act. It was cheaper for them to just purchase a couple of putative “Democratic” senators for a measly few thousand dollars.
30 pieces of silver to sell out American democracy. This is what the For The People Act is trying to guard against.
The Rachel Maddow Show summed this up succinctly for West Virginians on Monday night. Maddow should do a companion piece for Arizonans.
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Sinema is starting to get the attention she deserves…
Sinema faces Arizona blowback over becoming the Senate’s new unmovable roadblock
By Dan Merica, Kyung Lah and Anna-Maja Rappard, CNN
Updated 8:25 PM ET, Thu June 10, 2021
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/10/politics/sinema-arizona-progressive-blowback/index.html
Igor Derysh at Salon reports, “Joe Manchin’s “highly suspicious” reversal on voting bill follows donation from corporate lobby”, https://www.salon.com/2021/06/10/joe-manchins-highly-suspicious-reversal-on-voting-bill-follows-donation-from-corporate-lobby/
Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat famous for his vow to maintain the Senate filibuster and thereby scuttle much of President Biden’s agenda, recently published an op-ed opposing the For the People Act, Democrats’ whopping voting-rights bill. That article strongly echoed talking points from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — and appeared shortly after the influential pro-business lobby resumed donations to Manchin’s campaign after nearly a decade.
Manchin, who co-sponsored the [For The People Act] in 2019 and has supported filibuster reform in the past, became the first Senate Democrat to oppose the bill this week while reiterating his opposition to changing the filibuster, a key roadblock to voting reform. Skeptical members of Manchin’s party have questioned the reasons for his opposition, especially after after a recent poll found that a majority of West Virginia voters support changing the filibuster rules and that 79% of the state’s voters — including a large majority of Republicans — support the For the People Act.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., suggested that Manchin’s opposition to the proposal and filibuster reform may really be about measures in the bill aimed at cracking down on lobbyists and dark money.
“This is probably just as much a part of Joe Manchin’s calculus than anything else,” she told MSNBC on Tuesday. “You look at the Koch brothers and you look at organizations like the Heritage Foundation and conservative lobby groups that are doing a victory lap … over the fact that Manchin refuses to change on the filibuster. And I think that these two things are very closely intertwined.”
Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch, has explicitly targeted Manchin in its pressure campaign to defeat the legislation even though their own data shows that provisions cracking down on dark money are highly popular, including among Republican voters. Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the Koch-backed Heritage Foundation, organized a rally earlier this year to pressure Manchin to oppose the bill. Heritage Action has also partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to craft model voting-restriction laws for Republican state legislators. A Heritage Action organizer boasted in a video obtained by Mother Jones that the group was behind key provisions of the controversial law recently passed in Georgia.
[O]ne group that has been a major cheerleader of Manchin’s staunch opposition is the aforementioned U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful pro-business group that also receives Koch money and generally supports Republicans.
Manchin’s op-ed announcing his opposition echoed the Chamber’s talking points in a letter to senators alleging that “partisan” legislation would “undermine” public confidence in democracy, even though Republicans across the country have advanced and enacted overtly partisan bills aimed at restricting ballot access.
“When it comes to this ‘bipartisan’ argument, I gotta tell you, I don’t buy it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Joe Manchin has voted for bills that have not been bipartisan before. Look at the American Rescue Plan. So this is not just about bipartisanship.”
The op-ed came after the Chamber, which has launched an expensive lobbying effort against the bill, resumed donations to Manchin’s campaign for the first time since 2012. Reuters described this flow of corporate dollars as a “reward” for Manchin’s opposition to numerous Biden administration’s initiatives, as well as his stalwart support for the filibuster, which has almost certainly doomed the For the People Act.
“The timing of Sen. Manchin’s announcement is highly suspicious,” Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement to Salon. “Not long after the Chamber reopened their corporate checkbook for him, he made his opposition to voting rights known. Now millions of Americans may face significant roadblocks when they try to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Once again the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has found a way to stop any progress on voting rights from progressing on Capitol Hill.”
[W]hile the U.S. Chamber’s corporate members pay for its lobbying, its PAC donations come from the group’s executives, staff members and other affiliated individuals. The Chamber’s PAC made a contribution to Manchin in the first quarter of this year, its first since 2012.
[M]anchin, whose ties to the U.S. Chamber date back to at least 2010, when he was West Virginia governor, drew public praise from Chamber president and CEO Suzanne Clark earlier this year for his “principled stand” on preserving the filibuster, which is the most significant roadblock to the voting legislation.
Nick Vaugh, a lobbyist for the Chamber, presented Manchin with a “Spirit of Free Enterprise Award” in 2019, which the group says it gives to lawmakers who have supported its positions at least 70% of the time.
As it happens, Vaugh has been registered to lobby senators on the For the People Act and other issues since 2019, according to federal disclosure forms.
“It’s unfortunate Sen. Manchin has bought into the U.S. Chamber’s smears against the For The People Act,” Herrig told Salon. “And just like the Chamber, he is wrong — there is nothing ‘partisan’ about protecting the right to vote for all Americans. In carrying the Chamber’s water, Sen. Manchin is only inviting further voter suppression.”
[A]ccountable.US has launched a six-figure “Drop the Chamber” campaign challenging corporations like Microsoft, Target and Salesforce to back up their public support of voting rights by cutting ties with the group, accusing it of “siding against millions of Americans who will be subject to these racist voter suppression laws.”
“It’s on Chamber members that claim to support voting rights to end their relationships and speak out against this assault on Americans’ rights to vote,” Herrig said, “because anything less makes them complicit.”
CNBC reports, “Joe Manchin is opposing big parts of Biden’s agenda as the Koch network pressures him”, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/08/joe-manchin-is-opposing-big-parts-of-bidens-agenda-as-the-koch-network-pressures-him.html
The political advocacy group backed by billionaire Charles Koch has been pressuring Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to oppose key parts of the Democratic agenda, including filibuster reform and voting rights legislation.
That lobbying effort appears to be paying off.
CNBC reviewed an episode of a Koch policy group Americans for Prosperity’s video series, along with ads crafted by the organization. The network specifically calls on its grassroots supporters to push Manchin, a conservative Democrat, to be against some of his party’s legislative priorities.
Americans for Prosperity launched a website titled West Virginia Values, which calls on people to email Manchin “to be The Voice West Virginia Needs In D.C. — Reject Washington’s Partisan Agenda.”
It then lists all of the items Manchin has promised to oppose, including the idea of eliminating the filibuster, the For the People Act and packing the Supreme Court. It then shows everything the group believes Manchin should oppose, including Biden’s infrastructure plan and the union-friendly PRO Act.
Americans for Prosperity leaders took part in one of their video series with their West Virginia state director in May where they praised Manchin for voicing his opposition to abolishing the filibuster. Both Americans for Prosperity and Manchin have said they believe eliminating the filibuster would exacerbate partisanship.
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post writes “Manchin is setting himself up to be the villain of this fairy tale” (alternate caption, “Joe Manchin retreats to fantasyland and sticks America with the consequences”), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/07/joe-manchin-retreats-fantasyland-sticks-america-with-consequences/
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has the right to live in a make-believe wonderland if he so chooses. But his party and his nation will pay a terrible price for his hallucinations about the nature of today’s Republican Party. And even this sacrifice might not guarantee that Manchin can hold on to support back home.
[M]anchin’s decision is a catastrophe not just for this particular bill, though he has almost certainly doomed the legislation. A senior administration official told me Monday that “none of this is a surprise to those who have heard Manchin’s views” and that the White House will continue working to “make progress notwithstanding the difficult challenges in front of us, including a 50-vote Senate.” But thanks to Manchin’s decision, Biden doesn’t even have a 50-vote Senate for what many Democrats see as an existential fight against the GOP’s attempt to gain and keep power through voter suppression. The 49 Senate votes left after Manchin’s defection will take Biden and the Democrats precisely nowhere.
Worse, Manchin is asking Democrats to respond to ruthlessness with delusion.
[M]anchin did say he supports another proposed House bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would essentially restore provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act forbidding some states to change election laws without obtaining preclearance from the Justice Department. The original preclearance rules were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.
But Manchin wants this, too, to win bipartisan support. Unless Manchin changes his position on the filibuster, 10 Republican senators would have to cross the aisle and join with Democrats. So far, there is one — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The other nine must be in some parallel dimension, visible only to Manchin, where all the leprechauns, tooth fairies and unicorns are hiding.
Inconveniently for Manchin’s fantasies of unity, the fact is that one of our major parties — the one Manchin ostensibly belongs to — believes in guaranteeing access to the polls for all eligible voters, making political donations more transparent, tightening ethics rules for members of Congress and ensuring that congressional districts are drawn fairly. The other party doesn’t want to do any of those things, because Republicans see these reforms as threatening the GOP’s ability to win national elections with the support of a minority of voters.
[A] new survey of 600 likely 2022 general election voters from West Virginia commissioned by End Citizens United, a Democratic group advocating for passage of the For the People Act, and conducted by the polling firm ALG Research shows that Manchin is viewed favorably by 43 percent of voters and unfavorably by 50 percent. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.)
One poll question suggests a contradiction that implies the limits of Manchin’s dedication to defying political gravity, both at home and in Washington. The self-identified non-conservative Democrats who provide Manchin’s strongest base of support, with 59 percent viewing him favorably, are also the most skeptical of the filibuster Manchin has pledged himself to protect. Twenty percent of them say the filibuster should be eliminated, and another 45 percent say it should be reformed. Forty-three percent of West Virginians overall say the filibuster should remain unchanged.
That is just one poll, and Manchin’s history of winning suggests he knows his state. But even Manchin has to hold on to his strongest supporters. Blocking Biden’s agenda and allowing GOP voter suppression are not stances that will help him win his next election or change Washington’s increasingly twisted laws of politics. In this fairy tale, Manchin is setting himself up to be the villain.
The GOP wants to stop Biden from getting any of his proposed legislation through the Senate in his first two years. They want to take over the House and the Senate in 2022 with voter suppression strategies and make Biden a one term president so that they take back the presidency in 2024. They figure Biden either won’t run or will be near death from the stress they put him through.
President Obama, in his interview with Anderson Cooper,said that Americans need to “recognize that the path towards an undemocratic America is not gonna happen in just one bang” but will instead come “in a series of steps.”
Well, folks, we’re doing the steps.
I’m thinking to myself that I never saw this coming. I didn’t predict we would be having these conversations about losing our democracy. Last November I didn’t think that Trump’s Big Lie would be this effective for the enemies of democracy. I expected a backlash, to be sure. Trump’s entire presidency was a backlash for the Democrats electing an African American president with some progressive ideas. I knew that 74 million Trump voters meant some kind of trouble ahead. But advancing this far into losing democracy and at this pace? I didn’t see that.
Manchin and Sinema have to be dealt with. Period. I hope Biden and Schumer have some ideas other than begging, pleading, etc…A lot of people are getting really frightened by where this is a going.
This morning, NAACP President Derrick Johnson along with other prominent Black leaders, including Rev. Al Sharpton and the heads of the National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, met with Sen Joe Manchin to discuss the issue at hand.
Short version: “Dude, you do know that minority voters are critical to Democrats getting elected, don’t you? You dance with the ones who brought you to the dance.”
CBS News reports, “Manchin meets with civil rights leaders after rejecting Democratic voting bill”, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/manchin-voting-rights-bill-civil-rights-leaders/
Manchin told reporters after the meeting that it was “very productive” and “very informative,” and that participants “had a constructive conversation.” He said that “everyone’s position was discussed,” but also acknowledged he didn’t believe anyone changed their stance.
“I’m very much concerned about our democracy and protecting people’s voting rights, making sure that’s done,” Manchin said, adding that he was going to “continue conversations” with these leaders going forward.
In a joint statement, the civil rights leaders who met with Manchin also called it a “very constructive meeting,” and said that they urged the senator to support the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 knocked down by the Supreme Court.
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who has previously advocated for creating an exception in the filibuster for civil rights legislation, told reporters on Monday that he had spoken to Manchin about voting rights legislation. He countered Manchin’s argument about the need to pass bipartisan voting rights legislation, saying “that’s an interesting thing to say in light of the fact that we are seeing all of these decidedly partisan bills coming out of state legislatures.”
“I think that Joe Manchin understands that this is a defining moment in American history, and that our children are going to judge us, our grandchildren are going to judge us based on what we do right now,” Warnock said. “I’m committed as ever to make sure that we preserve voting rights in this country. And if we as Senators fail to do that, we have failed in the most fundamental way.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to Democratic colleagues on Tuesday that passing H.R. 4 was not a sufficient substitute for the For the People Act.
“H.R. 4 must be passed, but it will not be ready until the fall, and it is not a substitute for H.R. 1. Congressman John Lewis wrote 300 pages of H.R. 1 to end voter suppression. H.R. 1/S. 1 must be passed now. It would be our hope to have this pass the House and Senate in a bipartisan way,” Pelosi said.
.Manchin will also continue to face pressure from voting rights activists. The voting rights group Fair Fight Action, headed by activist and former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, announced a month-long campaign to help mobilize young voters of color around the For the People Act. Reverend William Barber II, who leads the Poor People’s Campaign, tweeted on Monday that his organization would lead a “Moral March on Manchin” in West Virginia in support of the bill. See, https://twitter.com/RevDrBarber/status/1402241220508782607
Please tell me Manchin wasn’t singing “We Shall Overcome” the same day he published an OpEd about why he won’t vote to defend the voting rights civil rights leaders fought & died for. This is why West Virginians are holding #MoralMonday March on Manchin’s office next Monday 6/14.
“Call me old fashioned, but I think Democrats should vote like Democrats. We don’t need to be so concerned with how Republican senators will vote — we just need to vote for what’s right for the American people.” – Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D. PA)