Alderman Ameya Pawar via Facebook Playbook Beyond the Beltway De Blasio bashes the MTA -- Illinois gubernatorial candidate lays out criminal justice reform platform

CALIFORNIA PLAYBOOK -- per David Siders and Carla Marinucci -- The lab-coat liberals are marching on Washington. Dismayed by President Donald Trump’s perceived hostility to climate science and other areas of research, a surge of scientists is entering the public arena and running for political office for the first time.

They represent an evolving brand of Democrat that has been gaining steam for months. What began with rogue Twitter accounts and protest marches has graduated into candidacies in House races in places as varied as California, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York. But they are also stretching the boundaries of the scientific field into unfamiliar terrain. Researchers traditionally avoided wading into politics. Now, amid winds of anti-intellectualism, they are testing whether a significant number in their ranks can break through.


By one measure, scientists would appear exceptionally well-positioned to run for public office. Seventy-six percent of Americans say they have at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists generally to act in the best interests of the public, according to a Pew Research Center poll last year. That level of confidence outpaces religious and business leaders, educators, the news media and elected officials.

But Pew has also documented wide differences in opinion between scientists and the public on issues ranging from evolution to vaccines and the safety of genetically modified foods. And other research suggests that if scientists wade too deeply into politics, public confidence in them might fall. http://politi.co/2vxObGe

FLORIDA PLAYBOOK -- per Marc Caputo -- The Aug. 28 general election for the swing state Senate seat will test newly installed Florida Democratic Party Chair Stephen Bittel’s promise to start winning races for his party. On the Democratic side in SD-40, Annette Taddeo is expected to crush former state Rep. Ana Rivas Logan. The GOP race between former state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, current state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz and Lorenzo Palomares is harder to gauge. Diaz de la Portilla had higher name ID going in but little money. Diaz had the establishment support of Tallahassee and has vastly outspent his rival, trashing him along the way.

In HD116, it also looks like a tossup in the GOP primary between Daniel Anthony Perez and Jose Mallea, who had the backing of former Gov. Jeb Bush. If Mallea loses, it might be time to rethink how much Jeb’s endorsement matters. The winner faces Democrat Gabriela Mayaudon. But it’s a Republican seat. So whoever wins the primary is likely to succeed Diaz, who’s leaving his House seat to run for SD-40. http://politi.co/1OC2BLg

ILLINOIS PLAYBOOK -- per Natasha Korecki -- Ameya Pawar, Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate, is laying out his criminal justice reform platform in what his campaign is billing as a major speech Tuesday in Bronzeville. “Everyone talks about — sentencing reform or gun reform — I look at it holistically,” Pawar told POLITICO. Illinois Playbook got a first look at the Chicago alderman’s criminal justice platform on Sunday.

Some of his priorities? Creating automatic expungement programs to make clearing criminal records more easy in Illinois, removing a roadblock to a job. Speaking of inequities of drug prosecutions, Pawar said drug issues facing “black and brown communities” have long been criminalized while the rising numbers of opioid addicts in white communities is increasingly described as a “health crisis.” Both should be treated as health crises, he said, with social supports made available and at the same time correcting past wrongs that penalized those who wouldn’t be penalized now for similar behavior.

“If you haven't committed a violent crime — your sentence should be commuted, there's no reason for you to be in prison,” Pawar said of those serving time for minor drug offenses.

Among the tenets of Pawar’s platform:

— “mass commutations” and some pardons for those convicted of minor, non-violent drug crimes

— eliminating mandatory minimum sentences in the state system

— “ending the war on drugs,” by legalizing and taxing marijuana and choking off resources that fund systemic racial inequities.

— statewide programs to clean lead out of water and clear homes of lead paint

“All of these things together are true reform,” Pawar told POLITICO. Pawar, who has been traveling the state in recent days as part of a One Illinois tour, said this isn’t just a Chicago or Cook County issue. “Danville has been hit pretty hard with gang violence. Same issues: main industries there leave ... what undergirds this is economics, the loss of jobs. Unless we unite around those root causes, nothing changes. Stop letting the governor pin us against one another.” http://politi.co/1KIZXzz

MASSACHUSETTS PLAYBOOK -- per Lauren Dezenski -- As Senate Republicans eye a potential Obamacare repeal vote on health care this week in Washington, Sen. Ed Markey is planning a media avail in Boston later this morning. It’s not clear yet what creative acronym-based wordsmithing Bay State’s junior senator plans to deploy, but he’ll call on Republicans to ditch the Obamacare repeal effort and instead work with Democrats to rehab the current law.

Markey’s Monday morning push from his Boston office is meant to preempt McConnell’s plans to force a vote to begin debate on repealing Obamacare as early as Tuesday. But his appeal via the fourth estate remains a long way from confirming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s late-June warning to Republicans that a failed Obamacare repeal vote would force the GOP to work with Sen. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats on a health bill. http://politi.co/1KQBHPp

NEW YORK PLAYBOOK -- per Jimmy Vielkind and Azi Paybarah -- Mayor Bill de Blasio walked onto a southbound F train Sunday and said the job of fixing the trains is for Governor Andrew Cuomo and new MTA Chairman Joe Lhota. The MTA, the mayor said, is “not spending the money they have. They’re not spending it on the right things,” like new signals, train cars, “electronic systems” and routine maintenance.

To hear de Blasio tell it, there is money sitting (probably on a train stuck in a tunnel) collecting dust. MTA officials are fuming, saying their dollars may not have been spent, but they are already earmarked and dedicated for identified projects. What they need, they say, is additional money on top of all of that. (Sparring over the difference between allocated and spent money is not new in New York. Back in 2016, de Blasio helped fend off a planned cut in federal anti-terrorism funding after an Obama official said New York had not spent money they were given. “[W]hen you buy complicated machinery, not all the money is spent in year one,” Senator Chuck Schumer said at the time.)

De Blasio’s Sunday trip was meant to pre-empt a forthcoming report from Lhota outlining his plan to fix the beleaguered system. In the plan, he is expected to echo Cuomo’s earlier call for NYC to give the MTA more money to fix the trains. Cuomo has already pledged $1 billion to do so, but has not said where it will come from. Cuomo also said he will expedite procurement rules to help upgrades move faster, which some, like former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, say will simply lead to wasteful spending, mistakes and, inevitably, poorer service. http://politi.co/1gJSEwx

NEW JERSEY PLAYBOOK -- per Matt Friedman -- Is Chris Christie a liberal crusader? Certainly not, but one couldn’t help but ask the question on Friday — if not for a brief second — as the governor furiously worked his way through more than 80 bills on his desk and gave us some landmark new laws, like a smoking age of 21.

The governor signed two bills that broaden the protections afforded transgender students, a move that puts him smack in the middle of a national debate on the issue. While the measures were only marginally controversial among lawmakers, the Republican governor himself had said such policies should be set at the local level, not by statewide “edicts.” Garden State Equality at the time called Christie “cruel and indifferent.” On Friday, after he had a change of heart, the group said Christie landed “on the right side of history.” The conservative blog “Save Jersey” called Christie “nominally Republican” and said he went “hard-left.”

Still, Christie gutted and outright vetoed a number of liberal priorities on Friday. But we have to wonder, with nothing else left to lose and just a few months left in office, what other sort of bills is the governor willing to sign? Perhaps the Democrats in control of the legislature have no reason to wait until January to tackle social issues that aren’t popular with many Republicans — but just might catch the governor's eye. http://politi.co/1WdOXgU



This article tagged under: Playbook Beyond the Beltway