Super Monday
Supreme court slams Colorado's attempt to bar Trump from primaries, wins 14 of 15 by landslide, while de la Cruz dominates District 15. Socialist Workers Party announces presidential ticket.
The March 5th elections this past Tuesday saw Donald Trump secure the Republican nomination, winning 14 out of 16 primaries nationwide by gigantic leads over Nikki Haley who won only in Vermont and Washington D.C., the latter of which, as is commonly known, possesses no delegates. Trump won 77.9% of the vote in Texas, just to name my state.
This came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a right-on-time verdict, declaring that states could not remove Trump off their ballots, maintaining that only Congress can exercise such authority per the U.S. Constitution, in a unanimous 9-0 ruling. They wrote:
“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse” (p.1).
After a learned discussion about the origins of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and its applications after the Civil War, the court said:
“This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3. We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal office holders, especially the Presidency” (p.6).
Citing case law, the court added that the idea of States possessing the legal authority to bar political candidates from federal office would:
flout the principle that “the Constitution guarantees ‘the entire independence of the General Government from any control by the respective States’” (p.7).
Noting that the respondents in the case had failed to provide any historical tradition of states applying the 14th Amendment in the way Colorado attempted to, the high court added, “Such a lack of historical precedent is generally a “‘telling indication’” of a “‘severe constitutional problem’” with the asserted power” (p. 9).
After referencing laws that further reinforce the authority of disqualifying candidates solely with the Congress, such as the Enforcement Act of 1870, the court described the Colorado Supreme Court’s reading of the 14th Amendment as, “simply implausible” (p. 11).
Considering the consequences of some states allowing certain candidates on the ballot while others not, they concluded, “The “patchwork” that would likely result from state enforcement would likely “sever the direct link that the Framers found so critical between the National Government and the people of the United States” as a whole” (p. 12). Of the likely results of such application of the Constitution, the court went on, “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.”
For the reasons given, the court said, “responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States. The judgement of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand” (p.12-13).
Writing in concurrent opinions, some associate justices specified which aspects of the judgement they agreed with, arguing that additional parts of it were unnecessary, given that certain portions were sufficient to overrule the Colorado court on their own. Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett specified:
“I agree that States lack the power to enforce Section 3 against Presidential candidates. That principle is sufficient to resolve this case, and I would decide no more than that” (p. 14).
Barrett argued that commenting beyond the basic principle she described was unnecessary, especially during a heated time such as election season. Nevertheless, Coney Barrett was clear: “For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity. All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home,” she wrote (p.14).
The remaining liberal justices — Sotomayor, Kagan, Brown Jackson — also added qualifications to their concurrence (p. 15-20). Like Barrett, they agree with the principle that individual states cannot interfere with the national government’s federalism, holding it right there, and saying no more.
The qualifiers add that the view of the majority-within-the-majority on Section 5 is an attempt to “insulate” Trump, and others, from future questions of disqualification, maintaining that “judicial restraint” had been violated.
At the opening of their statement, the Sotomayor faction references Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark case which overturned Roe v. Wade, in which the high court concluded, “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.”
They argue that this principle was violated. However, the majority in Dobbs actually did comment on legislative procedures, similarly to this Colorado case. The majority in Dobbs argued that the question of abortion rights is left to the people and their elected representatives, rather than the judicial system, which is correct. In actuality, that same democratic principle is being applied here, as in Dobbs: In other words, only the people, in the form of Congress, can take such an awesome measure of barring a former president from office.
Some liberal news outlets have exaggerated the fact that four associate justices added qualifications to their concurring opinions, in order to suggest that the ruling was actually “5-4.” However, as even the qualifiers acknowledged, the high court was of one mind on the main principle being decided. As mentioned above, the 5 justices criticized by the minorities indeed constitute a majority within a super majority.
In other words, all 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices fundamentally agree that Colorado or any other state may not bar candidates from running for federal office. 5 of the 9 justices argued that, since Section 5 designates Congress with the authority to bar candidates from federal office, only legislation may enforce the provision. 1 of the 9 justices (Coney Barrett) believes that the majority’s Section 5 discussion was unnecessary. While 3 of the 9 — Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown Jackson — also think so, but add anti-Trump flare of their own.
Dems continue despairing over district 15, in south Texas
While Biden also sailed to the nomination, running virtually unopposed, his and Trump’s electoral waves extended to Congressional primaries. In the Rio Grande Valley, Democrat, Michelle Vallejo, and Trump-Republican, Monica de la Cruz, won their party’s nominations in the race for District 15, de la Cruz doing especially well. In neighboring District 34, incumbent, Vicente Gonzalez, and Republican, Mayra Flores, also won their primaries without breaking a sweat.
Vallejo, a small business owner from Mission, won 74.7% of the vote, over John Villarreal Rigney, an attorney and business owner. As I reported Monday, Rigney zeroed in on Vallejo’s loss against de la Cruz in 2022, which saw the seat go Republican for the first time in its 119-year history. Vallejo fell 9 points short of de la Cruz, in a race some pollsters believed would only advantage the Republicans by 2 points, others going so far as to predict a “toss up” win for Democrats. Although Rigney may have come up short again this time, having placed third in 2022, one of his predictions proved correct:
“This seat has always been Democrat its entire existence,” he said at a candidate forum in McAllen this past February. “The only reason we lost it to the Republicans was ‘cause we brought forth a candidate that did not have the qualifications and the education necessary to beat Monica de la Cruz, and now we’re going to do this again.”
Vallejo also received staunch criticism from the ultra-left/Islamist flank of the local party, and the broader petty bourgeois far-left of the RGV, for her refusal to adopt pro-Hamas demands, which Rigney shamelessly attempted to capitalize on during a disrupted debate. He received the most votes in Hidalgo County with 27%, earning a total of 7,250 district-wide votes, versus Vallejo’s 21,408.
Despite Vallejo’s fairly large lead over Villarreal Rigney, who appeared to be running more of a protest campaign, in an appeal to fellow Democrats against putting her at the top of the ticket again, both candidates hardly even got on the scoreboard in the northern rural counties of the district. District 15 runs from western Hidalgo County, all the way through Brooks, Jim Wells, Live Oak, Karnes, Wilson and Guadalupe County.
Democrats received over 22,000 votes in Hidalgo, versus Republicans’ 12,395. Similarly in Brooks, which neighbors Hidalgo, Democrats outperformed Republicans. But in counties like Guadalupe, Republicans earned 8,537 against 1,362 Democratic votes. In Wilson County, Republicans earned 7,312 votes against 981 Democratic votes. In Karnes, Dems earned 199 votes against de la Cruz’s 2,577 votes. And in Live Oak, Republicans surpassed 2,000 votes while Democrats didn’t surpass 200.
No matter who the Democratic Party candidate for 15 is, the party as a whole has virtually no presence in the rural counties of the district, whereas Republicans and de la Cruz in particular possess several strongholds. Sources familiar with Vallejo’s last campaign told me her platform was too radical and that she didn’t even try in the northern counties. She expressed her contempt for those voters in a February debate at the McAllen library, during closing statements, in which she touted the fact that de la Cruz didn’t win in Hidalgo County, saying, “she [referring to de la Cruz] is not Hidalgo’s representative!”
Meanwhile, De la Cruz won her primary, with 88.2% of the vote, or 30,943 votes, over Vangela Churchill, who earned 4,135 votes in total, or 11.8% of the vote. Another 6,420 more people voted in the Republican primaries than did in the Democratic primaries, 35,078 in the GOP, and 28,658 voting blue no matter who. In 2022, Vallejo came up 12,881 votes short of de la Cruz’s 80,978. As referenced earlier, de la Cruz’s 2022 victory constituted a seat ‘flip.’
The former incumbent, Vicente Gonzalez, who won 3 consecutive campaigns from 2016-2020, switched districts to neighboring 34 where his pal, Filemon Vela, also a successful politician, retired from Congress to become a lobbyist in 2022. Vela opting to retire before the end of his term, a special election was called, which saw Republican, Mayra Flores, win District 34, becoming only the second person to serve in the seat, Vela having been the first in 2010.
Flores served in office for about four months before the 2022 general elections, becoming the first Republican, first woman, and first Mexican-born U.S. citizen to ever represent the RGV in Congress. The Democratic candidate who lost the special election, Dan Sanchez, sharply criticized the party for letting the race go. Their plan was to focus resources on the upcoming general election, whereas Republicans really fought to get Flores elected for the obvious political, symbolic and historic victory it would — and ultimately did — entail. Flores outspent Sanchez by ten-fold and received major party nominations.
Nevertheless, focusing on the general elections turned out to be the right call for Dems, as Gonzalez handily won. Like de la Cruz, Flores won her primary this past Tuesday, Gonzalez running unopposed.
Unfortunately, there are no Socialist Workers Party candidates running for office in the Rio Grande Valley, although I predict that there will be, in the coming years. Those of us who support the SWP should come together to spread the party’s message. Thankfully, nevertheless, the party announced Feb. 17 that Rachele Fruit of Miami will be the SWP candidate for U.S. president and Margaret Trowe of Oakland will be her running mate for vice president.
According to their biographies, Fruit joined the party in 1970 in Philadelphia, where “she was active in the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. She participated in civil rights protests, including one in Trenton, New Jersey, after the 1964 murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner during Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Still a high school student, she attended the first national march on Washington, D.C., against the war in Vietnam in 1965.”
Trowe joined the party in 1975 at 27. “She had been drawn into the fight for Black rights as a high school student in the 1960s, when she joined efforts to desegregate the Oakland, California, schools. She also took part in protests against Washington’s war in Vietnam,” her biography read on the Militant newspaper.
Both major capitalist parties find themselves in immense crisis, as the pressures of global capitalism and the predicaments it necessarily forces upon imperialism drives them into a posture of repression against the working class and of democratic rights, in the case of the Democrats, while nationalism and patriotism that looks to illegal immigration and obnoxious liberals as the source of society’s ills makes up the Republican platform. Neither has been able to hold on to steady majorities in order to govern in recent years, leaving it to executive edicts and politicized criminal prosecutions to achieve their aims.
Meanwhile, both unite in crushing strikes and doing all they can to keep alternative parties, like the SWP, off the ballot wherever they can. Neither have answers for working people, even though one clearly poses more of a threat to democratic rights than the other. We need to break from both capitalist parties, and their reformist third parties, and join the struggle to form a Leninist working-class party in the U.S., as the SWP encourages us and leads the struggle in doing.
jonathansalinas@substack.com