What I'll Be Watching on Election Day
Besides the obvious.
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Tuesday is Election Day, which I imagine you all know due to the inescapable torrent of fundraising and get-out-the-vote texts you’re receiving, or the volume of fliers arriving in your mailbox. (It’s not just me, right?)
Of course, the presidential contest is the headline — and you can find analysis, predictions, and hand-wringing about that just about anywhere — but there’s a lot of other stuff on the ballot too, from statehouse races to various ballot questions. The decline in local news, combined with the nationalization of all political offices, has pushed a lot of this stuff under the radar, even though it’s vitally important not just to those who live and work in the states I mention, but to all of us, as trends in one place inevitably drip out to others.
Here, then, is what I’ll be watching come Election Night as an indicator of what sort of corporate power-related issues will be ascendant or on the decline at the state and local level in 2025.
Public Utility Commissions: Eight of the 10 states that elect public utility commissioners — who regulate the rates monopoly utilities can charge and the other rules they have to follow — have seats on the ballot: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. With the amount of federal money flowing into the energy sector in the coming years, the ways in which utilities are regulated, both in terms of what they’re allowed to charge customers and how much they're investing in the clean energy transition, is extremely important. Historically, PUCs, as they’re known, have been dominated by industry interests, but some states are slowly trying to change that dynamic, and more industry-friendly PUC activity could certainly supercharge those efforts.
State Attorney General Races: I recently wrote about how important state attorneys general are. 10 states have AG races on the ballot this year, but only two races are considered toss-ups: North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both of those states have serious hospital monopoly problems, with which the next AG is certainly going to have to grapple. More broadly, the way in which the presidential contest goes could determine the fate of several high-profile joint federal-state antitrust cases — such a lawsuits against Ticketmaster/Live Nation and Google — and whether or not states are left to go it alone, making the national makeup of the 2025 AG class even more important.
Washington State’s Governor Race: Speaking of attorneys general, one of the better ones — Washington State’s Bob Ferguson — is running for governor, fulfilling the joke that AG actually stands for “aspiring governor.” Ferguson was ahead of the curve in challenging Amazon on antitrust grounds, seeking to block the Kroger-Albertsons grocery mega-merger, as well as prosecuting price-fixing in the agriculture industry, and he pushed for key increases to the possible penalties imposed under Washington State’s antitrust law. He’s comfortably ahead in the polls, but I’ll still be watching the results, because one never knows. More importantly, how he governs if he does win will be a bellwether for similarly inclined politicians across the country.
Three Key Statehouses Up for Grabs: Legislative chambers in three states where corporate power issues have been at the forefront of recent legislative sessions — Minnesota, Arizona, and Pennsylvania — are potentially changing hands. All three states have Democratic governors, but in Minnesota, Democrats are protecting slim legislative minorities, while it’s Republicans who barely hold both chambers in Arizona. In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Democrats hold the House, while Republicans hold the Senate, making it — remarkably — the only split legislature in the country. A few seats in either direction in either chamber in any of those states could totally change their partisan mix. To be sure, corporate power and antitrust issues have not been strictly partisan in any of them, but the exact breakdowns in each will determine just how much progress is possible next year.
Oregon’s Corporate Tax Ballot Question: Oregon has a ballot question — Measure 118 — that, if approved, would increase the state’s minimum corporate tax and distribute the revenue raised to every resident. The measure, perhaps surprisingly given the consistent popularity of raising corporate taxes, is polling deeply underwater. Most of the money spent by proponents has been raised out of state, and business groups and corporations are heavily spending against it. But the difference maker may be that progressive advocates and lawmakers who are inclined to support higher corporate taxes are opposing the measure due to the universal rebate program, believing that if there’s political will to raise corporate taxes, the money raised would be better spent on something else.
Massachusetts’ Gig Driver Ballot Question: Ballot Question 3 in the Bay State would provide drivers for corporations such as Uber and Lyft a path to collective bargaining supervised by the state (and not subject to the federal National Labor Relations Act), without eliminating their status as independent contractors. The measure, which is not being opposed by the rideshare corporations, has divided the labor community, with some unions such as SEIU supporting it as a viable path to something that looks like unionization, but others criticizing it for maintaining drivers’ independent contractor status. A win for supporters likely sets this model as a precedent other states will follow, or at the very least sets up future battles over similar measures.
There’s no way to do justice do a nation’s worth of elections in a quick post, but I hope this gave you a few things of interest that aren’t about who lands in the White House.
Finally, if you haven’t already, please go out and vote tomorrow. For the record, I voted for Vice President Harris, and I voted in favor of Washington, D.C.’s, Initiative 83, which would institute ranked-choice voting and open primaries.
UPDATE: I’ve written several times before about algorithmic price-fixing in rental housing, and how corporate landlords are using software platforms to share data and set common prices across local rental markets. My organization recently launched a campaign — End Rental Price-Fixing — to help state and local leaders combat this practice.
Already, San Francisco has passed a municipal level ban, and similar proposals are moving in several other states and cities. Learn more about the issue and the campaign here.
I also went up to Trenton, New Jersey, to testify in person in favor of a proposed ban on algorithmic rent-setting in that state. You can give my testimony a listen here.
SIMPLY STATED: Here are links to a few stories that caught my eye this week.
Pluribus News put together a good overview of state actions to beef up antitrust enforcement.
Intel is receiving the most federal CHIPS money of any corporation, but it’s not doing so great.
Officials in several Virginia municipalities have signed non-disclosure agreements with data center developers.
California lawmakers rolled out a truly bonkers plan to increase the state’s film and television production tax credit to $750 million per year.
Delaware publicly subsidized a Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturer that may get blacklisted by Congress.
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— Pat Garofalo