Democrats may be in the minority in the Missouri Senate, but you wouldn't know it after they staged an epic filibuster that just forced Republicans to abandon a cynical ploy to undermine direct democracy and thwart abortion rights.
Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is state Sen. Lauren Arthur, one of the participants in Democrats' record-breaking legislative marathon. Arthur breaks down the GOP's scheme to con voters into making it harder to amend the state constitution and explains how Democrats hung together through a 50-hour filibuster to protect cherished civil rights.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday's primaries, punctuated by Angela Alsobrooks' victory in the Democratic primary for Maryland's open Senate seat in the face of a $60 million onslaught. The Davids also highlight a big flip in Alaska, where a Democratic-backed independent is on course to unseat Anchorage's far-right mayor once final votes are tallied.
Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. New episodes come out every Thursday morning!
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. "The Downballot" is a weekly podcast, dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.
Beard: We've got another busy primary night to cover.
Nir: We do indeed. There were primaries across the country on Tuesday, so we are recapping the top races, including a contest in Maryland that could prove to be history-making in November. There were also interesting races in West Virginia and far across the country in Alaska, where a runoff was held for Anchorage mayor that saw Democrats flip a very important post.
Then for our deep dive, we are talking with Missouri state Sen. Lauren Arthur, who just participated in a record-setting filibuster to prevent the GOP from undermining direct democracy in the state. It's an amazing conversation. Lauren walks us all through a talking filibuster, just like you see in the movies. There is a ton to discuss, so let's get rolling.
Nir: Well, we had a ton of primary action on Tuesday night, but we have to start with the big race and I am really, really happy about this result in the Democratic primary for Maryland's open Senate seat. I think this was just a fantastic outcome and I am super happy with the candidate that Democrats nominated.
Beard: Yeah, there were two main Democratic candidates in the race for the open seat, Representative David Trone and Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. They're both from the Washington area, which is interesting because there wasn't really a Baltimore candidate. And Trone spent a ton of money here, and so he led a lot of the early polling, but Alsobrooks closed great. She ended up winning by, I think, a larger margin than anyone expected, really, going into the night.
She's currently up 54-42 on Trone. There is a decent chunk of mail ballots that came in late, that are still to be counted in Maryland. So that margin could adjust a little bit, but being up 12 points, the AP called it for her. So she's going to be the Democratic nominee. There's still a decent chunk of mail ballots out still to be counted, later this week. She'll definitely move on to the general election against former Governor Larry Hogan.
Nir: Yeah, we'll talk about the general election in a second, but the primary was really something because Trone didn't just self-fund the race, he broke records. He spent more than $60 million of his own money, which almost beats the all-time self-funding record for an entire Senate race, but that includes a general election. That record is actually held by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who's also up for re-election this fall, but Trone smashed all records for primaries. He was able to do this because he is the owner of a giant liquor store retail chain called Total Wine, and there's no question that he was sure all along that his money would provide him the definitive advantage and the reason why he was going to win this primary, in his mind. He started advertising on TV almost a year before the race. He wound up outspending Alsobrooks by, I think, around 10 to one.
The margin was completely ridiculous, but the reason why Alsobrooks won is because she had a real base of support. That really understates it. She has such widespread support, and I think affection, among Maryland's Democratic political establishment, and that counts for a ton. And we're going to see this theme come up again later in this show, but having that built-in base of support matters so, so much, and I think that this proves that money cannot simply overcome the connections, and party building, and networking that Alsobrooks has engaged in for many, many years. Trone's only been in office for a few terms. He just simply didn't have the deep network that Alsobrooks had and money wasn't the substitute.
Beard: Yeah, and we've seen this before with candidates who primarily self-fund because they don't have to raise money, and so they don't have to engage within the greater party infrastructure in the same way that candidates who raise money have to and often continually do throughout their careers. I'll also say that Trone was a congressman. He was in D.C. Obviously, Alsobrooks is in a suburb of D.C., Prince George's County, but is very much more within the Maryland political structure. But we saw the federal Maryland Democrats, who you think might side with a fellow congressman, largely side with Alsobrooks, which I think is a pretty clear sign to a voter as to who these folks, who are elected officials, really think would be the better senator in these instances.
I'll also add that there was an interesting figure thrown around on Twitter on Tuesday night where money — like we said — does not decide races, but money still matters. Because I saw a tweet to you about, oh, money doesn't matter, which is not the case. There are three counties in Maryland's Eastern Shore that have a different media market than the rest of the state, which is covered by either the Baltimore media market or the Washington D.C. media market, where Trone spent a significant amount of money and Alsobrooks spent no money because she was more limited in her funds and focused on the two big media markets.
And those three counties were some of Trone's best counties and in fact much, much better for Trone than the other Eastern Shore counties in Baltimore's media market where he still won, but he won by a much narrower margin. So it's one of those things where you can clearly see how money matters, but it's not definitive. Other things matter too, as we saw ultimately with the endorsements and Alsobrooks's overall campaign.
Nir: Yeah, money has diminishing returns. I think the important thing is to have enough to run a credible campaign and get your message out there, which Alsobrooks certainly did. But after a certain point, it probably doesn't help a whole lot in moving the needle.
So now we're on to the general election. Republicans were excited. They felt that they had gotten a recruiting coup when they got former Governor Larry Hogan, who served two terms and was quite popular when he left office in 2022, when they got him to say he was going to run for Senate, even though he had previously really crapped on the idea of serving in the Senate.
But the reality is, as we have mentioned before on the show, it's much easier to win a state's governorship if you're from the out party than it is to win a Senate seat. We have seen this story so many times, Steve Bullock in Montana, Linda Lingle in Hawaii, Ted Strickland in Ohio, Phil Bredesen in Tennessee. It's just an incredibly hard lift, and Hogan can pretend all he wants that a victory for him would not undermine abortion access for women, but voters are not that naive. They understand that the Senate is governed by parties and there will be a lot of ads run, making very clear that Hogan will be a vote for whoever replaces Mitch McConnell.
So Hogan would have to win a ton of folks who are ready to vote for Joe Biden, because Joe Biden's going to win the state by large margin, in order to somehow defeat Alsobrooks. In addition, there is a measure on the ballot in November, in Maryland this year, that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Hogan has a crappy record on abortion.
What is he going to say when he's asked how he's voting on that measure? It's one thing to pretend, oh, I would never change a law, yada yada. Okay, but now we do have an opportunity to change a law for the better, do you support it? No. So I am a huge skeptic about Hogan's chances. I know that Mitch McConnell was talking him up recently, but of course, Mitch McConnell's going to say that. Anyway, I really don't see this race as being a major focus once we get to November.
Beard: Yeah, and one of the big factors around this governor versus Senate aspect is a lot of governor's races take place in midterms, with smaller electorates who are not voting for the president at the top of the ticket, and priming them at that partisan level for most people. So for him to go from running, well, he first won the governor's race in 2014, which was a very Republican year, and then he was able to play the incumbency on the feeling that his governorship was a success, into reelection in 2018 — also a midterm year, even though it was a better year for Democrats.
He hasn't had to run in a presidential year with a Democrat at the top of the ticket, winning Maryland by likely more than 30 points. And that is such a huge, enormous deficit to overcome without even getting into, like you said, all the arguments around, hey, you're going to go to D.C. and you're going to vote for Mitch McConnell's or Republican successor to lead the Senate. You're either going to block Biden's judges or you're going to facilitate Trump's judges.
There are a lot of things you're going to be party line about because that's how Congress works, and so I totally agree with you. I'm very, very skeptical of this race even being close by the end of the day. I think ultimately, Hogan ran for Congress twice before he became governor. I think he toyed around a lot with the national spotlight and potentially running for president in some form or fashion, but ultimately he just seemed like a guy who really wanted to run for office again, and this ended up being where he ended up, but I don't think he's terribly likely to win.
Nir: So we have a few more primaries from Tuesday night to discuss. Maryland also had a few open House seats due to retirements, and also Trone running for the Senate. In the third district, which is very blue turf in the Baltimore area, state Sen. Sarah Elfreth defeated former Capitol police officer Harry Dunn. She is, as of this recording, up 35-25. This puts her on a glide path to joining Congress next year because, like I said, this is a solidly blue seat and there is almost no chance of Republicans flipping it in November.
This to me, was another interesting race, somewhat comparable to the one we were just talking about, because Harry Dunn was a huge hero for his service on Jan. 6th when he defended the Capitol against the riot. He became a very prominent figure, and he raised an enormous, enormous sum of money, more than $4 million from small donors all across the nation, and that made him a force to be reckoned with. But he didn't live in the district. You don't have to live in the district, as we know, but he didn't live in the district.
His ties weren't quite as strong and Elfreth, a little bit like Alsobrooks, did represent a good chunk of the district. She did have good ties to the political establishment and she also benefited from a lot of outside spending. AIPAC came in big for her, but at the end of the day, it was that personal direct tie to the area that wound up winning the race for her.
Beard: Yeah. Dunn had some really interesting national endorsements. In fact, former speaker, Nancy Pelosi endorsed Dunn and it really seemed from a D.C. perspective that he was the leading figure and was probably the favorite. So it was definitely a little bit of a surprise. Of course, as you mentioned, Elfreth had significant outside help monetarily to keep up with the money that Dunn had raised, and I think once she was able to be competitive financially on the air, her ties, as you mentioned, really came through a big chunk of that district had voted for her before for the Senate and of course was comfortable voting for her to send her to Congress.
So I think that's another piece of evidence that these local ties, and the experience that you have in lower office, are a great way to set yourself up. That's not the only way to get to Congress, but I think if you look overall, the most common way to get to Congress is to have a lower office where people know and have supported you in the past, and we see that here with Elfreth.
Nir: I think that the example of Harry Dunn might also be quite relevant for another primary that's coming up next month down in Virginia in the open 7th District where Eugene Vindman, another hero of the resistance as it were, has also raised huge sums nationally. His identical twin brother Alexander Vindman was the chief whistleblower in the Ukraine matter that ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment. But Vindman doesn't have particularly strong ties to that district, and so we will see once again, whether it's the establishment and local roots versus a huge infusion of grassroots money that carries the day.
Beard: Yeah. The interesting question I think in comparing these two districts, is whether there is an Elfreth-type character with both the local support, and either funding internally or funding from an outside group that's going to make that person competitive with Vindman's money. Because I could see Vindman getting a similar percentage of support as Harry Dunn getting like 25% or so, but in this case, if there's not a single opponent who's going to get 35 or 30%, he could easily win that primary. There's not a runoff in Virginia and he could go on and be the nominee with that lower level of support if there's not a consolidation around another candidate.
One other race that we want to note from Maryland is the Baltimore mayor's race where incumbent Mayor Brandon Scott defeated former mayor Sheila Dixon. He's currently up 51 to 41 as of this recording. Dixon was the mayor a number of years ago. She resigned after being convicted of embezzlement. She ran again and narrowly lost to Scott four years ago, and was back for another try. Scott seems to have defeated her more comfortably this time, and he of course will sail to the general election as Baltimore is an extremely, extremely Democratic city.
Nir: One interesting thing about Scott is that he is the first Baltimore mayor in quite some time to win two full terms at the ballot box. There's been a lot of turnover, people leaving office early due to scandal and resignation like Dixon did. The last person to do so was Martin O'Malley. O'Malley didn't wind up serving out two full terms, but that's because he wound up becoming governor in 2006. So Scott's success could see this become a potential stepping stone for him for future higher office.
Beard: The other state that had a ton of competitive primaries on Tuesday night was West Virginia. Of course in this case, they were mostly on the Republican side, whereas in Maryland, we mostly focused on the Democratic side. The race that had the clearest front runner was the Senate primary where Governor Jim Justice easily won. He crushed his opponent. Congressman Alex Mooney, 62-27, and is almost certainly going to be the next senator from West Virginia replacing retiring Democrat Joe Manchin.
Nir: The much more contested race was the Republican primary for governor. We mentioned this one before. This was the most disgusting Republican primary we have seen in quite some time. The entire race was focused on each candidate trying to prove that they were more transphobic than the next guy. Every single campaign and every single outside group was running ads, just trying to demonstrate to voters just how transphobic they are. And the winner of this disgusting contest was Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
He defeated Del. Moore Capito who is the son of Shelley Moore Capito, the state's other senator, by a 33-28 margin. Morrisey, of course, lost to Joe Manchin in 2018 by what wound up being a surprisingly close margin; Republicans had kind of given up on him in that race and Manchin won. But it was by no means a blowout and probably a key reason why Manchin decided to retire ahead of this election. Anyway, just like Jim Justice, Morrisey is just about dead certain to become the state's next governor, and he is going to be an absolutely foul figure.
Beard: Yeah. There's really no candidate to root for in this. All of them were terrible. None of them took any sort of more positive path through the West Virginia Republican primary, which I doubt would've been a good idea. They probably all ran the race that made them most likely to win. It's just unfortunate that a race involved them being transphobic and awful throughout the entirety of the primary campaign. The most interesting thing you can say about it was that Morrisey's support in the northern part of the state was able to carry him through relatively poorer showings in the southern part of the state, particularly because the other candidates had a tendency to split the support, whereas Capito won a number of counties in the southern part of the state including the county with the capital of Charleston.
He also lost a number of counties to the third-place finisher Chris Miller, which meant that Morrisey's northern support, including some a few counties in the south, was able to carry the day with only 33% of the vote.
Nir: So clear across the country about as far across the country as you can possibly get, we had another super interesting race on Tuesday night. This was not a primary. This was a runoff for the mayor's position in Anchorage Alaska and we had a flip. Suzanne LaFrance, who previously was a member of Anchorage's equivalent to a city council, appears to have ousted incumbent Mayor Dave Bronson. She was up 45 the day after the election. There are still an unknown number of ballots left to count, but media reports all indicate that there aren't enough for Bronson to make up the difference, which is currently about 5,000 votes.
If LaFrance hangs on as it certainly looks like she will, she would be the first woman ever elected as mayor of Anchorage, which of course is by far Alaska's largest city. Now, this race was nominally nonpartisan, but as they almost always are in high-salience races like this one these days, the battle lines were quite clear.
Bronson is a far-right Republican while LaFrance is an independent, but she had been endorsed by the Anchorage Democratic Party. Bronson ran a very typical GOP playbook. He tried to attack LaFrance as woke and in the grips of some crazy far-left ideology. And LaFrance responded by running a pretty non-ideological campaign. She focused on questions about Bronson's competence and his penchant for getting into fights and issues like snow removal, which obviously is pretty damn important in Alaska. In the end, we saw which kind of campaign won out. It was the one about issues that actually matter to people, not the one about crazy paranoid fearmongering.
Beard: Yeah. Bronson won his first race three years ago, very, very narrowly. So I think the forces in opposition to him, which included both the center and the left, had a clear target to say that this person was too far right. He certainly governed that way and they were able to consolidate the anti-Bronson support behind this independent candidate with the Democratic Party support, as you said.
And it looks like that was enough to overcome any incumbency advantages that he might've accrued over the past three years. And so it looks like, hopefully, Anchorage is going to get a much better mayor.
Nir: So interestingly, even though more than a third of the state lives in Anchorage, the mayoralty hasn't really been much of a stepping stone for Republicans, but it has for Democrats. The last two Democrats who represented Alaska in the US Senate, Mark Begich and Tony Knowles, both served as mayor before seeking higher office.
Now, we should probably wait until LaFrance is actually sworn in before we start talking about her next steps, but who knows? We could be hearing more about her in the future.
Beard: Yeah. There are plenty of Republicans to take on in Alaska, so we will see where that might go.
Nir: Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up on our deep dive, we are talking to Missouri state Sen. Lauren Arthur, who just participated in a historic filibuster to thwart the GOP's efforts to undermine direct democracy in the state of Missouri. It is a fantastic conversation. Please stay with us after the break.
Nir: Democrats in the Missouri state Senate have just emerged victorious after a historic filibuster in defense of direct democracy that could have major implications for abortion rights. Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is state Sen. Lauren Arthur, one of the participants in this record-breaking marathon, to explain the stakes to us and tell us exactly what is going on. Lauren, we could not be more grateful to you for taking the time to talk with us. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Lauren Arthur: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for highlighting this issue that's important for Missourians, but also I would argue, says a lot about the state of our democracy.
Nir: Absolutely. So before we get to the filibuster, I think we need a little bit of background here. The background is that Republicans want to put an amendment on the ballot on the same day as Missouri's August 6th primary this summer, which would make it harder for voters to amend the state constitution in the future. So what exactly would that GOP amendment do?
Arthur: So I'll start by talking a little about the initiative petition process. It's a really helpful tool when Missourians feel like their legislators are not responding or they're refusing to act on certain issues that are important to them, Missourians can collect enough signatures and send that issue to voters directly. In order for that to pass, it requires a majority vote. Missourians have approved things like Medicaid expansion, a higher minimum wage, and recreational and medical marijuana through the initiative petition process.
Republicans in Missouri, obviously they disagree with a lot of those positions and they want to make it harder to amend the state constitution. They would require that a majority of five out of eight congressional districts approve that measure. And we've seen some analysis that indicates as few voters as 23% of Missouri voters could defeat a ballot measure. So basically the effect of that is it would dilute the voices of those who live in more populous areas like Kansas City and St. Louis, and it would give more power and weight to the votes of those in rural Missouri.
Nir: This sounds awfully familiar because Republicans have been very open about their intentions, many of them at least. They want to stop an amendment, an initiative petition as you called it, that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, which currently looks likely to appear on the November ballot. Organizers just submitted hundreds of thousands of signatures, and if it passes, it would reverse Missouri's near-total ban on abortion.
But as we saw just last year in Ohio, Republicans tried almost the exact same thing, and their effort failed very badly when they tried to make future amendments harder, that failed, and then abortion rights did pass there. Missouri Republicans have an idea to overcome what I think is a very natural resistance among voters to curtailing their own rights, which they've called — and opponents have called — 'ballot candy.' What exactly does that term mean? Because that is a very unusual term.
Arthur: Yeah. As you said, I think Republicans recognize that the measure will be incredibly unpopular and that people understand and support the concept of one person, one vote. So the idea of ballot candy, they've tried to add in language that is completely unrelated to the idea of making it more difficult to amend the Constitution, but these are going to be things that appeal to more conservative voters and frankly that seem common sense.
So things like they included language that non-citizens shouldn't be allowed to vote. That's already the case in Missouri. It is illegal. It is clearly defined, and there is no threat that non-citizens would gain the right to vote in Missouri elections on an initiative petition.
But they think that if voters show up to the polls, don't know what is going to appear before them on the ballot, they'll see that initial language and think 'That makes sense, I'm going to vote for that' and move on without realizing that they're actually undermining their own voting power. The reason they call it ballot candy is, basically, that it sweetens the measure so that it's more appealing and appetizing to Missouri voters.
Beard: Now, Republicans have wide majorities in both chambers of the Missouri legislature, but the state Senate is unusual in that filibusters are allowed, but your filibuster operates pretty differently from the one in the US Senate that I think most of our listeners are familiar with. So how does that work and walk us through the decision to start this filibuster?
Arthur: Yeah, absolutely. The Missouri Senate is a unique and special institution where any senator can decide to stand up, and we have a standing talking filibuster. So if someone wants to oppose a piece of legislation, he or she or they can stand up and talk on the motion or the legislation before the body. And usually, that's used to force compromise. Sometimes it can be used effectively to kill legislation, but it requires that people are standing and talking. And the Senate Democrats have been doing that for the last 50 hours where throughout the course of that time, someone was standing and making the case that this is really wrong-headed for the state of Missouri. And I have been awake for so long. I think I forgot your original question.
Beard: Totally understandable. Yeah. My other part to the question was the decision to launch a filibuster against this legislation specifically.
Arthur: Yeah. So because we only have 10 members in a body of 34 senators, we really have to pick and choose our battles. And this is such a fundamental issue protecting one person, one vote. It is foundational to our democracy. It is about fairness and justice and protecting the things that we hold dear as a democracy. So Democratic senators actually allowed that legislation to pass out of the Senate earlier this year because the whole time we've said, we really oppose the idea that you're going to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. But if you insist that that is a priority, we just want to make sure that it's a fair fight. That voters are informed. That they can read language that tells them what the amendment would actually do, and we trust voters to make the right decision when they understand what it is they're voting on.
So Democratic senators, once they cleaned that ballot candy off back in February and sent a clean version of the resolution, Democratic senators sat down voted no, and said, "Okay. We'll let that continue through the process." It was when it returned that it had that ballot candy on, and at that point, we just felt like it was such an important issue that we didn't want to in any way allow the GOP to try to deceive and lie to Missouri voters. It's just not right. So we felt really strongly that this was something we had to dig in.
Nir: So you mentioned that the Missouri Senate's filibuster is a talking filibuster, and that makes it very, very different from the United States Senate. And I think the talking filibuster is what most people think of when they hear that word. They imagine a sort of Mr. Smith goes to Washington kind of situation, and you actually have been living that. So walk us through what that's like. When exactly did it start? Are you taking turns? Is there anything you can and can't do? Are Republicans hoping to trip you up and catch you in a momentary second to try to end the filibuster? How does that all work?
Arthur: Yeah. So with the standing filibuster, basically someone seeks recognition, and then the way that the Democrats prefer to filibuster is by inquiring to one another. So we've had our filibuster partners and we work in shifts. Senators have stood and debated on the resolution.
We've talked about other important priorities, our vision for the state, and a couple of random topics about recommended movies, TV shows, and music to help fill those three hours, which can feel a little bit long when you're just standing up and talking. I mean, it's physical. You're standing at your desk for three hours at least. Some have picked up extra shifts and really helped out. It's been an incredible team effort, and I'm really proud of everyone for stepping up and sacrificing sleep, and at times hydration, and talking at all hours of the night.
We have decided that it was probably in our best interest to not be super hostile or aggressive towards the GOP, and that's because we're very aware that they do have a tool to shut down debate. And what's interesting is other Republican senators have actually filibustered more than Democrats this year. I don't know if that's the case after this really long filibuster, but Republican senators had been using the filibuster to basically attack other Republican senators.
And it's not unlike what we see in DC where some GOP senators were calling other GOP senators RINOs because they weren't taking hardline positions; they weren't being really aggressive in their attacks. So Republicans have really used the filibuster more than Democrats, and we just wanted to be respectful of the process and didn't want to antagonize anyone so that they might consider voting in favor of that motion that would shut down debate and force a vote on the worst version of this resolution.
Beard: Now, the Republicans that a lot of people are familiar with are these very aggressive Republicans that are eager to steamroll any and all opposition using any tool available. So it seems a little surprising that Republicans in the Missouri state Senate aren't just eager to use this motion that you just mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about the hesitancy from them on using it and why they haven't just gone full bore?
Arthur: Because of that division within the Republican Party, some Republicans have had a really hard time passing legislation and not even for Republican priorities. They've had a difficult time passing just basic governance kinds of bills. So for example, last week, the Senate debated the budget, and if not for Democratic votes, Missouri would not have a budget sent to the governor by the constitutional deadline.
So Democrats have been willing partners because we think that our state agencies should be funded. We know the importance of, for example, the renewal of something that is a self-imposed tax on hospitals so that they can fund our Medicaid program. As Democrats, we could have used all of those things as leverage, we could have teamed up with the guys who are trying to obstruct and cause chaos in the Senate and prevent any legislation from going forward. Democrats could have teamed up with that and made life very difficult for the Republicans and Senate leadership.
Instead, we believe in good governance. And if something is common sense, if something needs to get done for Missourians, Democrats have been good partners and we've negotiated in good faith on other legislation that might be a little bit more controversial. I think we have earned a little bit of goodwill. If they were to invoke that PQ or that nuclear option, everyone also understands that that's the end of the session, no other bills pass, and that it would have serious and long-lasting implications for the next session when the Democrats would come in and they would probably start from a very aggressive position.
Nir: That PQ, that's the motion for a previous question, but that only takes a simple majority in order to succeed. But what you're saying is this bitter division between these GOP factions, maybe, almost makes it impossible, despite the fact that they have, of course, a numerical majority to find a practical majority on the floor to call this previous question and shut off debate on the filibuster. They don't need a supermajority like in the US Senate, just the simple majority, but they still can't get it.
Arthur: That's correct. Yeah, exactly.
Nir: So as a result of all of this Democrats standing so strong and united together and taking shifts on filibusters throughout the night combined with really bitter GOP infighting and Republicans in disarray. On Wednesday afternoon, it sounds like you had a real breakthrough, a huge one, so tell us all about that.
Arthur: Yeah. I think there was pretty broad agreement and understanding that Senate Democrats were not going to back down and that there really was not a path forward to shut down the debate. And so the sponsor of the legislation made a motion to send this resolution to committee, or the House can recede from its position, which has all of that ballot candy, and make a determination going forward. There may be a conference committee where people meet and I don't think that the Democrats will, in any way, relent on that ballot candy issue. So if anything comes out of that committee, then we would expect it to be a clean bill.
Nir: And the legislative session ends at 6:00 PM local time on Friday, so there's a very limited clock for them to get this done.
Arthur: Yeah, that's correct. I should also mention the conference committee. We have Democrats and Republicans from the Senate, and then the House gets to assign its Republicans and Democrats as well to conference and hash out those details. But we are up against a hard deadline, 6:00 PM on Friday. There were... I mean, not unexpectedly… the really hardline Republicans were unhappy with this decision and they made that very clear and decried it on the floor. We will wait and see whether or not they're going to allow any other business to come before the body and whether or not we'll make it to 6:00 PM on Friday.
Beard: It seems like the two most likely outcomes here are either maybe nothing goes on the ballot or the clean version of the amendment goes onto the ballot, going back to this idea of the five of the eight congressional districts needing to pass any future amendments. So if that is on the ballot, you sounded like Democrats are going to campaign against it. How do you think it'll fare at the ballot box and what is the main campaign against it going to look like?
Arthur: Well, I think it will definitely be defeated and defeated resoundingly. There are so many people whose lives have been improved thanks to the initiative petition process and measures that Missouri voters have supported. And so I think they have a clear understanding of its importance and I don't think anyone wants their voices to count for less.
Like I said, I represent a purple district. We're talking about Republicans, Democrats, and Independents in my district, and I can't imagine a world in which any of them want their vote to count less than someone else's in a different part of the state. I think voters will get it and I also think that voters understand that this is a really cynical attempt to try to make it harder to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. There is a lot of movement and momentum to have that issue on the ballot in November. I think that they've collected, I don't know, two or three times more signatures than required in order to send that to voters. And I think this is a pretty brazen and obvious attempt to make it harder for people to make decisions about their bodies.
Nir: We have been talking with Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur of Missouri who just participated in a successful filibuster to get the GOP to back down from a diabolical plan to lard up a ballot measure with so-called ballot candy in order to entice voters to give up their rights to direct democracy. Lauren, thank you so much again for taking the time to talk with us. Before we let you go, how can Downballot listeners learn more about your efforts in the state Senate in Missouri and also about the various ballot measures that may be on the ballot this fall?
Arthur: Well, thank you so much for highlighting these efforts. Thankfully, we have great local journalists who have been here throughout the 50 hours along with the rest of us. I'll give a shout-out to the Missouri Independent, St. Louis Public Radio, the Kansas City Star, and the people who have helped cover this issue locally. With the Senate Democrats here in Missouri, we're few but mighty, and we're hoping to grow our numbers in this next election.
Nir: Where can folks find you online on social media?
Arthur: You can find us on Twitter—old habits die hard—or X at MoSenDems. We have an Instagram page @mosenatedemocrats, Facebook is MOSenDems, and Threads @mosenatedemocrats, and you can find me on X @LaurenArthurMO.
Nir: Lauren, thank you again for coming on "The Downballot."
Arthur: It was my pleasure. Thank you again.
Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to state Sen. Lauren Arthur for joining us. "The Downballot" comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to "The Downballot" and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.
