This Election Proved You Can Win on “Social Issues”

In the lead up to the election, pundits strained themselves bending over backwards to claim that Democrats’ focus on so-called “social issues” leaves them out of touch from the everyday concerns “ordinary” people deal with.

But surprise: The results of the 2022 midterms prove otherwise.

All five states with abortion on the ballot—California, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky, and Montana—voted to increase access. These are not all blue states. The results also come after voters in typically conservative Kansas voted in August to keep abortion protections in the state constitution.

Voters in Maryland and Missouri elected to legalize recreational use of marijuana, opening pathways to expunge convictions for people punished for conduct now legal under the new law. While Maryland is a reliably blue state, Missouri is not. Former President Donald Trump won Missouri by 15 points in 2020.

Even in states where marijuana legalization initiatives did not pass, the measures overperformed relative to Democratic results. In North Dakota, the measure failed by just under 10 points, while in South Dakota it fell short by about six. In Arkansas the measure failed by about 13 points. Trump had won by over 25 points in all three of those states in 2020.

Candidates who were unafraid to embrace “social issues” also fared well.

Los Angeles city controller candidate Kenneth Mejia won after a campaign where he explicitly called for cuts to the police budget—placing giant billboards displaying how outsized the city’s police budget was, and asking voters to reconsider where their tax dollars were going.

The 32-year-old beat Paul Koretz—who had been on the city council since 2009—by over 20 points.

In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman bested Mehmet Oz, flipping a seat formerly held by a Republican. Fetterman has been just as outspoken on trans rights as on eliminating price gouging and enacting a more fair tax code.

Alongside Fetterman was Josh Shapiro, who handily won Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race. Just days before the midterms, Shapiro went viral for remarks he made at a rally explaining what exactly freedom is. He connected same-sex marriage, book bans, and abortion access alongside public education investment, union membership, and a secure democracy.

His ideas—and the public’s overwhelmingly positive response to them—shows how “social issues” are not in contention with “kitchen table issues.” They never were. It’s offensive to pretend otherwise.

Kenneth Mejia was elected Los Angeles city controller by putting the city’s police budget on blast—and on a billboard for all to see.

Mejia was elected Los Angeles’ top financial officer with 60.8 percent of the vote, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. His opponent, Paul Koretz, trailed far behind with 39.2 percent.

The 32-year-old Mejia ran on issues including affordable housing, decreasing the police budget, and financial transparency from the city government. His campaign outreach included engaging with younger voters on social media platforms such as TikTok.

But his biggest coup was paying for a series of billboards throughout the city displaying a breakdown of the L.A. budget. The police budget was by far the largest.

Mejia, who is Filipino American, grew up in the Los Angeles area. He worked as a certified public accountant and as a community activist, particularly on issues of affordable housing. The Los Angeles Times endorsed him for city controller both during the primaries in June and in early October, ahead of Election Day.

“WE DID IT!” Mejia tweeted Tuesday night, listing off the number of ways his win is historic, including being the first Filipino elected official in L.A. and the first person of color elected to the city controller’s office in more than a century.

Read more about Mejia at the Los Angeles Times.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has been reelected—and thanks to Democratic victories in the state legislature, he’ll have some power against Republicans’ agenda.

Evers beat Republican Trump-backed challenger Tim Michels 51.2 percent to 47.8 percent, with 99 percent reporting. Michels, a millionaire construction executive backed by former President Donald Trump, supported a state-level abortion ban only with exceptions for cases of rape or incest. Opposed to same-sex marriage, Michels also questioned the integrity of the 2020 election.

At the same time, state Democrats were able to stave off Republican supermajorities in the state legislature. Republicans are still projected to win control of the legislature, but the news means that they won’t have a veto-proof majority.

Since coming into office, Evers has vetoed a whopping 146 bills sent to his desk by the Republican-controlled state legislature. A majority of these, 126 vetoes to be precise, took place since January 2021. These included bills that sought to restrict voting access, ban vaccine mandates, limit schools’ ability to teach students about racism and sexism, cut unemployment and Medicaid benefits, and much more.

Had state Republicans secured two-thirds supermajorities in both the state Senate and Assembly, Evers would have had far less power to stop such bills, many of which may resurface in the coming year. As it stands, state Republicans, who benefit from one of the nation’s most heavily gerrymandered maps, will fall short.

The state GOP had drawn these gerrymandered maps in 2011—once they regained trifecta control in the state. And Republicans have never looked back, holding their grip on a state that just re-elected a Democratic governor, and elected Biden in 2020 and Obama in 2012.

For now, Democrats still have an able defender in Evers, who can stave off Republican attacks on the government’s ability to do anything for its people.

Four states voted to ban slavery on Election Day, closing a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment that allows for draconian prison labor practices.

The Thirteenth Amendment bans slavery or involuntary servitude, except when used as punishment for a crime. About 800,000 prisoners across the United States are forced to work, often in cruel conditions and for little or no pay.

Tennessee, Vermont, and Oregon all passed amendments to their state constitutions Tuesday eliminating language that allows slavery as punishment in prisons, by 79.7 percent, 89.2 percent, and 54.3 percent of the vote in each state, respectively, according to The New York Times.

In Alabama, 76.6 percent of residents voted to recompile the state constitution, which will remove racist language and legally irrelevant provisions, including prison labor. The referendums do not automatically change the state of prison labor, but they do make it easier for legal challenges over the treatment of prisoners.

Unfortunately, in Louisiana, 60.9 percent of state residents voted to keep the language allowing slavery as punishment for inmates.

The U.S. prison system has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and Black people are disproportionately imprisoned, according to the ACLU.

Prison workers produce about $2 billion worth of goods per year, and more than $9 billion in services annually, the ACLU found in a report. California has long used inmates as firefighters, some of whom are sent out with insufficient equipment.

These workers are paid an average of 52 cents per hour nationally—seven states pay them nothing at all—but they don’t get to keep all of the money they do make.

They end up pocketing less than half of what they earn after deductions are made for taxes, room and board fees for the prison where they are locked up, and other costs.

Any inmates who refuse to work are often punished, University of California, Los Angeles law professor Sharon Dolovitch and Stony Brook University associate history professor Robert Chase told The Washington Post, such as with solitary confinement or the removal of sentence reductions for good behavior.

Colorado was the first state to close the loophole in 2018, followed by Nebraska and Utah in 2020.

Hours before the midterm election polls were set to close, former President Donald Trump said that if Republicans do well, he should “get all the credit”—but if they lose, he “should not be blamed at all.”

Maybe Trump knew what was coming. Because what some saw as a forthcoming red wave turned out to be a ripple, at best. And many of the candidates Trump personally endorsed lost the election, a lot of them in races Republicans were expecting to win.

Here is a running list of every major Trump-endorsed candidate who lost the election:

Senate

• Kelly Tshibaka, Alaska
• Blake Masters, Arizona
• Leora Levy, Connecticut
• Herschel Walker, Georgia
• Adam Laxalt, Nevada
• Don Bolduc, New Hampshire
• Mehmet Oz, Pennsylvania
• Gerald Malloy, Vermont

House

• Sarah Palin, Alaska’s At-large District
• Kelly Cooper, Arizona’s 4th district
• John Gibbs, Michigan’s 3rd district
• Karoline Leavitt, New Hampshire’s 1st district
• Robert Burns, New Hampshire’s 2nd district
• Sandy Smith, North Carolina’s 1st district
• Bo Hines, North Carolina’s 13th district
• Jim Bognet, Pennsylvania’s 8th district
• Steve Chabot, Ohio’s 1st district
• J.R. Majewski, Ohio’s 9th district
• Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, Ohio’s 13th district
• Yesli Vega, Virginia’s 7th district
• Joe Kent, Washington’s 3rd District

Governor

• Kari Lake, Arizona
• Darren Bailey, Illinois
• Derek Schmidt, Kansas
• Dan Cox, Maryland
• Geoff Diehl, Massachusetts
• Tudor Dixon, Michigan
• Scott Jensen, Minnesota
• Mark Ronchetti, New Mexico
• Lee Zeldin, New York
• Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania
• Tim Michels, Wisconsin

Secretary of State

• Mark Finchem, Arizona
• Kristina Karamo, Michigan
• Kim Crockett, Minnesota
• Jim Marchant, Nevada

Attorney General

• Matthew DePerno, Michigan

This piece was last updated on December 7.