On this week’s episode, we examine two big election outcomes—the Chicago mayoral race and the swing seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Progressives won elections, and some are saying that, between the 2022 midterms and these races, it’s a warning sign to those who fight against liberal policies. May Mailman joins to discuss the results and implications.  

May Mailman is a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Law Center. She is a former legal advisor to President Donald J. Trump, where she advised on a wide range of policies including health care, immigration, and social issues. While in the White House, she also worked in the office of the Chief of Staff and the Staff Secretary’s office. Prior to entering public service, May practiced litigation in Denver. Earlier in her career, she taught sixth grade in Kansas City through Teach for America. May received a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Kansas, where she served as Student Body Vice President. She also earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as President of their Federalist Society chapter. 


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we examine two big election outcomes this week, the Chicago mayoral race and the swing seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. Progressives won elections, and some are saying that, between the 2022 midterms and these races, that it’s a warning sign to those who fight against liberal policies. May Mailman joins us to discuss the results and implications.

May Mailman is a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Law Center. She is a former legal advisor to President Donald Trump, where she advised on a wide range of policies including health care, immigration, and social issues. While at the White House, she also worked in the office of the chief of staff and the staff secretary’s office. Prior to entering public service, May practiced litigation in Denver. And it is a pleasure to have you on, May. Thank you for joining us on She Thinks.

May Mailman:

Yeah, it’s great to be here.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, I want to start today by talking about the Chicago mayoral election results. This race was of course interesting because this is the race where Lori Lightfoot, the former Chicago mayor, was ousted. And so you had two individuals who beat her, who were going against each other trying to get the mayoral position. You had Brad Johnson and you had Paul Vallas. And it was the Democrat who edged out Paul Vallas, the Republican in this. And so I was hoping you could break it down for us a little bit. This race was interesting because it was about crime; that is what they focused on, and of course Chicago has seen an increase in crime in that area. And I think a lot of people were surprised by these results. Break it down for us, and what do you make of it?

May Mailman:

Yeah, so Chicago, this is the result after an initial runoff, where you had a lot of candidates and Lori Lightfoot did not rise above the needed threshold, which is shocking, but I think it indicated for a lot of people that Chicago was finally ready to wake up and say, “We have a crime-ridden city where our students are not being educated and our businesses are fleeing.” And so the top two candidates…. Paul Vallas got the most votes during this initial election, and he is a Democrat. But in 2009, he had given some sort of interview that said he sort of identified or felt a little bit Republican. And of course they hung that around him and just tried to sink him, and it worked.

So this Brandon Johnson, BLM activist, he said that he wanted to defund the police, and it wasn’t looking likely that he was going to win, but he had support from the unions, including the teachers’ unions, which is shocking to me. Why would a teachers’ union not want their children to be safe? But then he also very much played, I think, the racial identity card. So he was the Black candidate, the other, Paul Vallas, was not, and so made this more about identity than about the issues. And I think that’s too bad for Chicago.

Beverly Hallberg:

And it was a very close race. It looks like Brandon Johnson, he had 51.4% of the vote or roughly around there with Paul Vallas getting 48, roughly 48% of the vote. So it was very close. But you mentioned the unions, which did seem to play a big part of this. Now what was interesting is Mr. Vallas also had union backing, but he was backed by the police and firefighter unions and also the community. Now, one of the pledges he had was that he wanted to fill a thousand police vacancies to get more officers on the street. And what Brandon Johnson wanted to do is do a little bit more of the social engineering and training people, more of the social workers. And I found it fascinating that Chicago voters would actually go for the person who didn’t want to fill the police vacancies. When you even talk to the Black community, majority of them want a stronger police force.

So do you think that it wasn’t because of their perspectives on this? Was it the money behind it? Was it the unions’ backing? Was it, was Paul Vallas just a bad candidate? What do you make of it?

May Mailman:

I mostly make of it as Brandon Johnson ran as the more Democrat candidate, whatever that means. That doesn’t necessarily come with, “I’m going to do this for you” or not, but I live in Cleveland, these are very democratic areas, and you have to run as the stronger Democrat. I think for Republicans, maybe if you live in MAGA country and you’ve got two different candidates and one is… Whether or not you even know what their policies are, but they run as the more MAGA candidate, they’re probably going to win. I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing in Chicago, which is just like, “I identify as Democrat, so I have to vote for the more Democrat candidate.”

And yes, he used a lot of terms that people like. So we can’t just incarcerate people. We have to also address the root causes. Every person agrees with that statement, but the problem is, and as we’ve done with experimentation now, they don’t actually mean it. They don’t mean we’re going to do both; we’re going to incarcerate and we’re going to pour money into our schools. That we’re going to stop incarcerating people because somehow that seems unfair, and what you’ve done is you’ve prevented people from actually getting an education because they can’t go to school or they’re not enforcing rules against truism and things like that. So the, “Oh, you know, we’re going to have it both,” well, if you don’t have incarceration, guess what you’re not going to have? You’re not going to be able to address root causes.

Beverly Hallberg:

I also think that this is a tactic that we are going to see from progressives, where they are going to talk about a candidate as leaning very Republican. So like you said, there was this attack against Paul Vallas saying that he was a Republican. I mistakenly said he was as we started the program. But maybe that’s a sign of how good their labeling works, that that’s what they were saying that he was. And so in these more liberal cities, more liberal districts, is this a tactic we’re going to see, where Republican just becomes this dirty word to so many people and that’s how the attacks are going to take place?

May Mailman:

Yeah, I definitely think that’s the case. I think as we’re going to talk about Wisconsin, people are fine with issues when you explain them. And if you don’t tie, “Hey, should we have a voter ID?” Everyone’s like, “Yeah, sure. That seems fine.” But then if you say Republicans like voter ID, all of a sudden that’s voter suppression. So there is this stigma, this negativity that comes around being labeled a Republican. I definitely think you saw that in Chicago. That said, some of these cities are going to… I mean, it might have to get a lot worse before it gets better.

New Orleans is…. Chicago kind of reminds me of a little bit of New Orleans, a very unpopular mayor in New Orleans. Lot of crime. I was there over Christmas. All the business owners have these signs that said to recall the mayor. There was a petition to try and get her recalled. Huge effort. I mean, just walking on the street, people would say, “Don’t go down that street. There’s crime. Also, I hate the mayor.” They couldn’t recall her. Wildly unpopular mayor. These are just Democrat areas. They vote for the strongest Democrat candidate. And it’s very unfortunate because Chicago’s a great city, New Orleans’ a great city, and you hate to see what’s going to happen.

Beverly Hallberg:

And there does seem to be this big disconnect where you can see polling where people are very concerned and upset and rightly so about crime, but it doesn’t seem to change their votes a whole lot. Or maybe they’re more willing to get rid of somebody, let’s say Lori Lightfoot for example, versus finding an adequate person to come in. And so a lot of this I think can come down to messaging and talking about what you’re for, and those who want to talk about making sure our streets are safe need to have a better message.

I want to move on to Wisconsin and messaging because I do think that played a vital role in this election as well. So for context, this was a race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, and you found that the more progressive candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, she defeated Dan Kelly with 55% of the vote. And what this does is it really turns the Wisconsin State Supreme Court liberal for the first time in 15 years with one more liberal than conservative on that state Supreme Court. So this is a major race because one of the issues that they talked about a lot was abortion. That seems to be an issue that works really well for progressives. And this is a state that may actually change what their laws are on abortion. It’s one of the more stricter states when it comes to abortion. And so interested in your take on this race.

May Mailman:

Yeah, this is super unfortunate because this is a race with national implications. On one hand, I do and I don’t care who’s the mayor of Chicago. So why should I care — I don’t live in Wisconsin — who’s on the Wisconsin Supreme Court? Well, I should because Wisconsin is a swing state, and the Supreme Court is going to strike down or not voter ID laws, redistricting proposals, by having a liberal supreme Court. This woman didn’t even run as, “Justice is blind. I’m going to take the issues as they come before me and I’m going to see whether they’re legal or not.” She ran on being a politician. It’s a little bit remarkable.

And so by losing the Supreme Court, Republicans are now at a huge disadvantage for national elections. So this is not just something that pro-lifers or Wisconsin people or anybody should care about. This is every single person who cares about elections and the fairness of elections should have cared about more, and so I think there’s a lot of conversations that the Republicans did not put enough money into the race, and the Republicans were outspent tremendously in this race. $5 million, if you look at it, is the total difference in spending, but the delta is much bigger if you look at candidate spending because candidate spending, they get to buy ads for cheaper. And so the candidate there was much better funded than the Republican candidate.

So the difference between the candidates, you have Judge Kelly, who was kind of a pro-life guy, but he was associated with Trump in some way earlier, and so they just hung Trump around him, they hung pro-life around him. And then you had the woman, Janet. I’m going to call her Janet because her last name is not pronounceable to me, which I know lots of people in Wisconsin have these not-pronounceable last names.

Beverly Hallberg:

I did have to look it up when I saw a video. Protasiewicz is what I believe was the actual pronunciation. Protasiewicz.

May Mailman:

Yeah, the Wisconsinites, I’m sure we get this one right. But yeah, she ran on a, “Abortion is health care, and I’m going to preserve health care in Wisconsin.” And I think the big issue for Republicans is, “Well, we got a lot of right-leaning people to the polls.” They had some ballot measures on the polls. One of them was, “Do you think that people who take welfare should work?”

80% of the voters said yes; that is a very conservative position. Most even conservative states don’t have work requirements for welfare. So very conservative voters going to the polls voting for the liberal justice and not the conservative. So why is that? Why do you have people who like Republican ideas but don’t like Republicans? I think that is a huge problem for the Republican party. There’s a lot of solutions. I don’t know if anybody’s going to do that.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, it makes me wonder, let’s say abortion wasn’t on the table and that wasn’t something that was in the messaging, what would the results have been? How much is that playing a role? I think most people think that the topic of abortion is playing a huge role. You don’t just have to look at this race. You can also look at the midterms in 2022, which seem to sway a lot of the reason because of the abortion topic. So I think that’s something that I think Republicans, regardless of where somebody is on the life scale, needs to be messaged better for the party, the Republican party itself. I think that’s evident. But I want to talk a little bit about what you were saying about the work requirements. 80%. Over 80%. That is astonishing. Maybe you don’t know this, but was there something specific about the messaging on that? Was there a big campaign behind pushing for that? Why do you think that was so successful, that so many people came out and voted in favor of work requirements for welfare, which is typically one of those issues that’s hard to get past?

May Mailman:

Yeah, I think maybe because it was a very preliminary question, there’s not a action that’s going to immediately happen, it was “this is the first step in a long series of steps.” So it’s kind of like a grand jury; you’re not actually putting in anyone in jail. You’re just saying it’s okay to move to trial. So there was, I think, the initialness of this question. But it’s not entirely different. There was another question about whether defendants should be required to post bail because we know that bail has been attacked as somehow discriminatory. And yes, 66% of Wisconsin voters said yes to bail requirements. So I think this speaks to maybe not so much any coordinated campaign, but the general conservativeness of Wisconsin voters and yet their deep dislike of Republicans.

Beverly Hallberg:

So let’s take kind of a zoom back and look at all of this especially as 2024 is right around the corner and big elections, and they’re also going to be some big governor races this coming fall as well. So there are elections going on that are important. What do you think the takeaway is for those who care about more conservative policies who are really concerned when we see what have happened in elections? What are the silver linings? What are the takeaways? And what needs to change? Is it, is a lot of it about money and messaging?

May Mailman:

So I do think there is a money problem when the Republican party, when the GOP sees races with national implications. So no, not the Chicago mayoral race, but yes, the Wisconsin Supreme Court election; there needs to be national money flowing there. We are going to get outspent, but I think being outspent is okay because, as you can see in Wisconsin, the voters already agree with us. They like conservative positions, so you don’t need as much money to convince them.

I think another big takeaway is we can’t shy away from talking about abortion. So they looked at the ads run by the liberal justice candidate and the conservative. The liberal said it basically in every single ad, multiple, multiple times. The conservative never said it. If this is going to be a problem that conservatives asked to have back to the states, we need to be able to speak about it, and we need to be able to speak about it well. So maybe that means you need to have an ad where you’ve got women talking, not men. You need to figure out what messaging works, what messaging doesn’t work. But this is not a fight that you can just hide under a rock and hope that the abortion issue goes away. It’s with the states now. You need to figure out how to talk about it.

Beverly Hallberg:

And then final question for you is I think it’s also interesting that there is this big focus on races that are about judges, that the judicial side of elections has become such an important side. What do you think that says about maybe progressives who want to use the court to get their agenda across?

May Mailman:

Yeah, it is truly remarkable. The concession speech of the conservative justice…. We’re used to these concession speeches that are like, “Oh, I’m sorry I lost, but better luck next time.” He said she was beneath contempt, that this was a horrible race, that there is no redeeming quality about her at all, no redeeming quality about her campaign. That is shocking. And I think it shows the depths to which the left will go to win these races. And if you look at law firms like Marc Elias’s law firm, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars and bring hundreds of cases in all of the swing states to try and eliminate things like deadlines for when you have to turn your mail-in ballot in, eliminate voter ID laws.

So there is a huge concerted effort on the left for litigation to basically make our elections less secure and just more favorable to Democrats to pass their types of redistricting, all that type thing, because they know they have the stronger ground game, because they have all the urban areas. So I do think that we need to pay a lot of attention to our state Supreme Courts, but not just that. We need to pay a lot of attention to the cases that the left is bringing, too, because those cases need to be vigorously, vigorously opposed.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, there’s no doubt that elections are heating up. Even if we think that 2024 is a long time away, it’s important for us to study the election results, figure out when conservative policies are not enacted or conservatives are not elected, what is the reason for that. So I think it’s always good to break it down. May Mailman, senior fellow at Independent Women’s Law Center, we so appreciate you coming and giving us the breakdown of your opinion of these elections. Thank you.

May Mailman:

Thanks, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

And thank you all. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That is iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or a review. It does help, and we’d love it if you shared this episode so your friends can know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at IWF, thanks for watching.