In this edition: Minneapolis votes on whether to replace the police, the school assault case that could rattle Virginia's elections, and Democrats' favorite Republican elections official joins the Biden administration.
2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysis ArrowRight
Nodding my head sagely and pretending to have read Toni Morrison's “Beloved,” this is The Trailer.
MINNEAPOLIS — It was the ninth door that MJ Carpio knocked on Saturday, and the umpteenth time she'd heard the question.
“I'm here doing voter awareness for Question 2,” Carpio told the man who answered the knock on his door. He looked at the information she'd handed him, prepared by the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign, about the effort to replace the city's police department with a new Department of Public Safety.
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“Is that about giving less money to police?” he asked.
In a few minutes, Carpio convinced him that it wasn't, and moved on to the next house in the 4th Ward — the northern neighborhoods where nearly half of Minneapolis homicides had been committed this year. The campaign to dramatically restructure policing, 17 months after the killing of George Floyd ignited a national racial reckoning, has divided the city's liberal voters, with both the “yes” and “no” campaigns warning of disaster if they lose.
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There's much more on the Nov. 2 ballot, including the mayor's office, city council and a ballot measure that would allow the city to enact rent control. Another ballot question would transfer some powers from the city council to the mayor. Question 2 hangs over all of it, with advocates well aware of the national attention that would come their way if they vote to replace the police department — or if they don't.
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“Right now, we're almost in the worst of all possible worlds,” said Attorney Gen. Keith Ellison, who lives in Minneapolis — and whose son Jeremiah, a city council member, is being challenged on Tuesday by an opponent of Question 2. “We've got a spike in violent crime, and we've got no reform when it comes to police-community relations.”
The text of the ballot question is straightforward, though that hasn't stamped out confusion about what it would do. Since 1961, the Minneapolis charter has required the city to fund a “police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident.” The city still met that standard, equal to around 888 officers, at the time of Floyd's murder by former MPD officer Derek Chauvin. It has lost 200 officers since then, half of them in the first month of the 2020 uprising, amid a spike in crimes ranging from carjackings to arsons to homicides.
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Passing Question 2 would remove the MPD and the staffing requirement from the city charter, creating a new department with a “comprehensive public health approach,” including both police officers and social workers. It wouldn't do that immediately; the current system, where the police commissioner is appointed solely by the mayor, would be replaced by one where the 13-member city council shared appointment power.
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Advocates for the ballot measure are adamant that passage wouldn't abolish policing, and that the crime spike has happened under the status quo. Opponents point out that some advocates, including members of the city council, floated then dropped a plan to replace the MPD last year, as crime began to rise and calls to “defund the police” became a political liability.
Those opponents include Mayor Jacob Frey, who is seeking a second term on Nov. 2 and emphasizing that he always opposed “hashtags” and “slogans” about scrapping the MPD. In an interview at his home, not far from where he was heckled by protesters who demanded he “defund the police,” Frey said his consistent opposition to replacing the MPD was helping him win reelection.
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Two of his opponents in the ranked-choice election, community organizer Sheila Nezhad and former state legislator Kate Knuth, supported the question; Nezhad, who got more votes than Frey at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party's endorsement meeting, had helped compile a 2017 report on policing in Minneapolis that argued for “abolition” of the MPD.
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“Policing cannot be reformed away from its core function of protecting whiteness and wealth and has always disproportionately targeted dark skin and poverty,” Nezhad said in an interview, summing up the report. Both she and Knuth were trailing Frey, even as polling found the mayor's approval rating hovering in the 30s.
“For a year, they talked about defunding the police,” Frey said. “One of the things that we have to stop, and this is nationwide, is this pendulum swinging back and forth. You've got defund or abolish the police on one side of the pendulum, and you've got do nothing on the other.”
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Polling in the city has found Frey polling strongest among Black voters, who are crucial to the “no” campaign's strategy. In ads, and in appeals to voters at Black churches, a “yes” vote is portrayed as a threat to neighborhoods that have seen gun violence surge since last summer. In interviews, voters who were adamant about opposing Question 2 universally cited the rising crime, saying the city should be focused on adding police to replace the ones who quit.
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“We need police,” said Jama Abdull, a 58-year old airport worker who had immigrated to the city from Somalia and cast an early vote against Question 2. “If this passes, I move somewhere else. I have seven children. They need to be safe.”
But nobody on either side of the ballot question disputes that crime is up. Question 2's proponents describe the rising violence as an indictment of a police department that the city lost faith in years ago; the killing of George Floyd was just one in a string of police-involved shootings that galvanized the local racial justice movement.
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“We haven't had a mayor to help us navigate through such a challenging time with really present active, engaged leadership,” said Knuth.
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The idea of dismantling and replacing the current police department has also divided the Democratic Party. Some Question 2 supporters on the council face opponents who accuse them of racing to defund police; some elected Democrats who represent areas outside the city, like Sen. Tina Smith and suburban Rep. Angie Craig, are urging a “no” vote. All of them, like Frey, say the goals of reformers are admirable, and achievable — just not by getting rid of the MPD.
“If the argument is to further invest on all levels of government in critical social justice and welfare work, let's do it,” Frey said. “I mean: housing, benefits, food justice, environmental justice? Yes, let's do it. Let's invest more. A lot more. But you don't need to decimate one important public service in order to bolster another.”
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Question 2's supporters say the critics are simply dishonest about the stakes. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who endorsed both Nezhad and Knuth last week, pointed out that smaller Minnesota cities don't have a system like Minneapolis, with a requirement for how many police must be hired and a commissioner accountable only to the mayor.
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“What we will ultimately get when we vote yes to changing the charter is what every single city in Angie Craig's district has,” Omar said in an interview after rallying with Knuth on Saturday. “This is basically Angie Craig saying my constituents should have better public safety than Minneapolis constituents. And that is not acceptable.”
If Question 2 succeeds, the “yes” campaign will have convinced most Minneapolis voters that the city's 60-year-old policing structure simply wasn't equipped to handle rising crime. Voters who said they were afraid of Question 2 passing often described a specific crime they'd seen or heard about, asking if a better-staffed MPD could have stopped it. Voters who supported the ballot question said they were worried about crime, too — and convinced that the current system couldn't fight it.
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“In the aftermath of the protests last year, it was all community organization and mutual aid that actually got people help and safety,” said Olivia Barrington, 25, at a community fair Sunday. “It wasn't the police.” The Democrats campaigning for Question 2 were spending the campaign's last days making the same argument, telling voters who were nervous about “defunding” or “abolishing” police that they were really voting to enhance public safety.
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“You know what really scares business away?” Nezhad asked. “Putting a million-dollar barbed wire fence around downtown during the Derek Chauvin trial. What really scares business away is filling the streets with tear gas, to the tune of millions of dollars, or watching the MPD hunt down residents.”
And if Question 2 loses, a city that gave Joe Biden more than 86 percent of its vote last year could deal a permanent blow to a movement that is visible across the city. The block where Floyd was killed has become a memorial site, marked by monuments of Black fists raised in the air. Floyd's face appears on murals and posters. “Black Lives Matter” signs are planted in yard after yard. And some of those yards belong to voters who plan to vote no.
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“It could really create an environment of apathy,” Omar said. “It would make it hard for people to be optimistic about change and about organizing and mobilizing.”
Reading list
“A ballot initiative on overhauling police after George Floyd’s death is tearing Minneapolis apart,” by Holly Bailey
A deep dive into the campaign to change policing in a liberal city.
“Divided left field of Minneapolis mayoral hopefuls have unified message: Don't rank Frey,” by Liz Navratil
It's not personal, it's politics.
“Virginia’s gubernatorial race tests the fear-of-Trump factor as a political motivator,” by Dan Balz
What do voters hear when somebody tells them “Youngkin = Trump?”
“In Virginia, Latinos tend to vote for Democrats. But Youngkin’s trying to win them over anyway,” by Antonio Olivo and Teo Armus
A campaign for voters Democrats have usually won easily.
“’Let’s Go Brandon’: A test case for subversion, amplification, and commodification in the post-Trump American right,” by Hampton Stall
A comprehensive look at how a chant became a meme.
On the trail
On Monday, a Virginia juvenile court found that a Loudoun County, Va., teenager had committed sexual assault against a classmate in a school bathroom, months before allegedly committing the same offense at a different school. That case has become part of the closing Republican campaigns for governor and attorney general, with the party's nominees calling for more security in schools and demanding that Democratic Attorney Gen. Mark R. Herring open an investigation into the school board.
“Parents have a right to know when sexual assaults occur in their school systems, yet Democrats pushed through legislation that told our local school systems not to report sexual assaults,” said the five most recent Republican attorneys general of the state in a statement, shared by GOP attorney general nominee Jason Miyares.
The first assault, which occurred in May, has emerged again and again in this year's statewide campaigns. Scott Smith, the father of the victim, was arrested at a June 22 school board meeting for disorderly conduct. Images of the arrest went viral before further reporting clarified why he spoke out: Moments earlier, Superintendent Scott A. Ziegler had said that “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
That wasn't true — the assault had been reported to police four weeks earlier — and that's where the 2020 legislation referred to by Miyares comes in. Democrats, who had just won control of the House of Delegates in the 2019 elections, passed the bill as part of a criminal justice reform agenda, ending the requirement that schools report any crime on school property to police. Republicans opposed it, but Democrats and education unions got behind it, arguing that reporting every misdemeanor on school grounds to police was disproportionately hurting non-White students by giving them criminal records.
“This legislation is about removing the zero-tolerance policies that push too many students into the criminal justice system, particularly our minority students,” Jim Livingston, president of the Virginia Education Association, said in a 2020 statement supporting the change. “It’s time we move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to reporting and tap into the experience and expertise of our front-line school principals.”
The new law didn't prevent that assault from being reported to police. While the assault occurred in a women's bathroom, and the perpetrator identified as gender-fluid and wore a dress, the schools did not, at the time, have a gender-neutral bathroom policy (Loudon County implemented one over the summer). Republicans have highlighted the story as an example of Democratic education policies making students less safe, promising to roll back the 2020 law altogether.
“When I’m governor, every school will be mandated to report crimes to local law enforcement,” GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin said at a speech last week restating his education plans. “No more coverups, no more keeping parents in the dark. If there is a crime committed at a school, we’re calling the police.”
Democrats have mostly ignored the story altogether. The conservative Daily Wire, which ran the first interview with Smith about what happened to his daughter, approached Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe to ask if he still supported the Loudoun County prosecutor who had made the case against Smith. McAuliffe didn't answer. Earlier, when asked about the case by The Trailer — in the context of anger rising at school boards — the candidate focused on how he'd increased education funding during his four years of governor and said Republicans were exploiting voter anger.
“I'm disappointed in the rhetoric that we've seen out there today in these school board meetings, the visceral, screaming hatred that's come out,” McAuliffe said at the time. “But a lot of this has been promulgated by Donald Trump, and a lot of it's been promulgated by Glenn Youngkin.”
McAuliffe launched his campaign 10 months ago with a robust education funding plan and a pledge to be the state's “education governor,” claiming ownership of an issue that usually cuts in Democrats' favor. Since his final debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe has dismissed criticism of his statement that parents should not be “telling schools what they can teach,” saying he was taken out of context on something he is happy to defend.
The Loudoun school board's handling of the sexual assault case is something else entirely. On Wednesday morning, there were walkouts by students protesting how the assailant was transferred to another school while an investigation into the first assault was underway — and while the school board falsely suggested that nothing had happened.
Ad watch
Youngkin for Governor, “Laura Murphy: McAuliffe Shut Us Out.” The GOP campaign in Virginia is closing by getting more specific about Terry McAuliffe and his opposition to letting parents veto education materials in public schools. Murphy, a conservative activist who raised objections to the inclusion of Toni Morrison's “Beloved” in an AP course, talks about it without mentioning the book by name. She says instead that she objected to “some of the most explicit material you can imagine,” that Virginia legislators “turned bright red” when they saw it, and that McAuliffe vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have let her and other parents allow their kids not to read it. The “Beloved” factor was well-reported at the time, and McAuliffe seemed to welcome another fight about it, accusing Youngkin of wanting remove a Black author from schools; Youngkin's campaign pointed out that the bipartisan vote for the bill included several Black Democrats.
Murphy for Governor, “If You.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Democrats have run a few lighthearted spots in this year's elections, breaking from the occasionally grim focus on tying Republicans to the far right. In this spot, people representing ordinary New Jersey residents sit at a desk belonging to Murphy, daydreaming about what they'd do with his job, and naming some policies they support, like “paid family leave” and a millionaire's tax. “So, that's what I've done,” Murphy says, back in his chair.
Neighbors for Justin Bibb, “A Fight We Can Win.” One of the two Democrats in Cleveland's Nov. 2 mayoral runoff, Bibb is closing out on crime with the same sort of messaging the candidates in Minneapolis have come around to. “I lost my cousin to murder. Crime and violence threaten us all,” Bibb says. His solution: A combination of better police training and “accountability,” including “mental health support” — more services that imply a robust police department, not a fundamental restructuring of policing.
Bostonians for Real Progress, “How to Defund.” A super PAC supporting Boston City Council member Annissa Essaibi George for mayor is hitting fellow council member Michelle Wu from the right and left, in a tight 30 seconds. Citing a July 2020 interview, from the aftermath of racial justice protests in the city, it warns that Wu would “defund the police” by reducing positions, and cites her council votes to warn that she'd create a “less affordable” Boston by not supporting funding for public transit.
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Poll watch
Virginia governor 2021 (Suffolk, 500 likely voters)
Terry McAuliffe (D): 46%
Glenn Youngkin (R): 45%
Princess Blanding (L): 2%
The pro-Democratic lean of modern Virginia is more visible in this poll than in other recent polling that shows the same, margin-of-error result. Looking at an electorate that's just slightly less Democratic than it was in 2020, Suffolk finds a small plurality of Virginians saying the commonwealth is on the “wrong track” — far more say the country is — and just 42 percent approving of President Biden's job performance. And by a small margin, more voters than not think Youngkin is “honest” about his abortion stance, which suggests that Democrats gained little from highlighting a video in which Youngkin said he'd downplay his abortion views to win independent votes. But Democrats lead every statewide race narrowly, and undecided voters, when pushed, break slightly more for Democrats than for Republicans.
Virginia statewide races 2021 (VCU, 808 adults)
Governor
Terry McAuliffe (D): 41% (-2 since September)
Glenn Youngkin (R): 38% (+4)
Lieutenant governor
Hala Ayala (D): 36% (+3 since September)
Winsome Sears (R): 35% (+5)
Attorney general
Mark Herring (D): 39% (no change since September)
Jason Miyares (R): 35% (+2)
The Virginia Commonwealth University poll doesn't push respondents for an answer like some other pollsters do, and a result is around 20 percent of adults here saying they don't want to vote for either major-party candidate, or are undecided. But the voters who gave an opinion look like the voters in every last-stretch poll: Independents and voters in the Tidewater region have moved toward the Republican ticket since the end of summer. Voters who identify as Democrats — there's no party registration in Virginia — are also slightly less supportive of their party nominees than voters who identify as Republicans.
In the states
Texas. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D) officially announced his switch from the 15th Congressional District, which he currently represents, to the 34th Congressional District, which Republicans in Austin drew as a safe Democratic seat — and which contains the McAllen Democrat's home.
“Texas Republicans stripped hundreds of thousands of constituents out of the 15th District of Texas, which I currently represent,” Gonzalez explained in a statement.
Texas Republicans gained ground with Latino voters in 2020, and Donald Trump lost the current 15th Congressional District by 2 points, after losing it by 17 points to Hillary Clinton. The new map made the district more competitive for Republicans, and Gonzalez hinted weeks ago that he was ready to bolt. On Monday, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee sued over the new map, echoing local Democrats who say the legislature violated the Voting Rights Act by not carving out a new Latino-majority seat.
Maryland. Three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown will leave his safe seat to run for attorney general, creating a crowded battle for a majority-Black district that is unlikely to change much under new maps.
“This is not about leaving or running away from Congress,” Brown told The Post's Rachel Chason. “It is about moving in the direction of a position that gives me the opportunity to do even more for the people of Maryland.”
Brown served as lieutenant governor from 2007 to 2015 and was the party's nominee for governor in 2014, losing in an upset to Gov. Larry Hogan (R) after a lackluster campaign. Democrats don't see the same risks in the race for the state's top law enforcement job, which they've held since Woodrow Wilson was in the White House.
Washington. Three-term Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) will join the Biden administration, taking a role to protect future elections from interference, and ending 56 years of GOP control over the state's top elections office.
“We will identify and interpret the diverse business needs of elections officials to create strategies to defend our nation's election system,” Wyman said in a statement. Her move was first reported by CNN.
Democrats in Washington sometimes crossed swords with Wyman; in 2016, the party unsuccessfully linked her to Donald Trump, citing her support for voter ID laws. But Washington is one of six states that sends mail ballots to every voter, and in 2020, Wyman became one of the most-cited Republican experts in favor of expanding voting access and proving that mass mail balloting could be done without inviting voter fraud. Last November, Washington Democrats swept every statewide office but one — Wyman's. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who ran for president in 2019, will appoint her replacement.
Countdown
… seven days until elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and primaries in Florida’s 20th Congressional District
… 77 days until the election in Florida’s 20th Congressional District
… 126 days until the first 2022 primaries