Good News! Another State Agreed to Change the Way We Decide National Elections.
I don’t know what to make of Abigail Spanberger, the former member of Congress who now is the governor of Virginia. At times, she has made me nervous with her tendencies toward Third Way-No Labels politics. (Third Way crowed very loudly over her blowout win for governor.) She has rankled Democratic members of the state legislature, who wonder if her campaign was something of a bait-and-switch. But, over the last couple of days, she made a couple of moves that moved her up a few notches in the shebeen’s estimation. First, she kicked Confederate nostalgia right in the goober peas. From The New York Times:
Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia has signed into law a bill to end tax exemptions for a slate of Confederacy-related organizations in the state. The signing by Ms. Spanberger on Monday is the culmination of a yearslong Democrat-led push to shake off the state’s legacy as the capital of the 11 Southern, slaveholding states that seceded from the country in the 1860s.
The new law’s most significant target is the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894 for descendants of Confederates. The organization’s stated purpose is to honor the members’ ancestors through, among other things, working with homeless shelters, food banks and other civic groups. Throughout its history, the group built hundreds of Confederate memorials around the country, which have become flash points for protests over historical memory and racial injustices in the last decade.
As the NYT points out, the UDC was central to the slavery apologetics and bullshit history that were at the heart of the Lost Cause mythology, especially in its activities as the civil rights movement began to catch fire. This is risky business for a new governor.
In the past, the organization has said that losing the decades-old tax breaks could hinder its ability to maintain its headquarters in Richmond and carry out its operations.
Golly whiskers, that’d be a shame. There’s no First Amendment right to a tax exemption, although I expect a lawsuit on that issue
Also, on something dear to the shebeen’s heart, Spanberger signed Virginia onto the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s the 18th state to do so. From The Guardian:
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state. The compact takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes—270 of 538—pass the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest. With Virginia, the compact now has 222 electors. Every state that has so far enacted the compact has Democratic electoral majorities, including California, New York, and Illinois. But legislation has been introduced in enough states to reach the 270-elector threshold, including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
If the Compact reaches its goal, expect all hell to pay in the federal courts, even though a recent poll saw 63 percent would replace the creaky current system with a national popular vote. Two of the four presidents elected in the 21st Century—George W. Bush and Trump I—lost the popular vote but won through a system devised (with slave states in mind) in the 18th. That is not exactly an endorsement of the original plan. So, good for Governor Spanberger. This week, anyway.
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