Ugh, seriously Mike Johnson?!

But hope springs eternal in local and state elections

I see you eyeing Canada, ladies, but put away those suitcases. I know it sucks that we have a Mike Johnson (insert juvenile dick jokes here) as third in line to the Presidency, but we just have to buckle up for a year and hope that Republicans choosing this misogynist Christian nationalist will kick them in the teeth in 2024. (Lyz Lenz tried to take the sting out by nominating him as one of her Dingi of the Week, if you’re not already subscribing to her, you should be.)

Even as I start sewing my modest garments and practice not making eye contact with men, I remain optimistic that we can still do things. In Greenville, we have local elections coming up November 7^th (if you’re in the States, I bet you do, too! You better be registered to vote or I’m telling Taylor Swift) and two amazing women leaders are on the ballot, Michelle Shain for Mayor and Dorothy Dowe for Greenville City Council. Shain is running against incumbent Knox White, who has been Mayor for about 90 years. I say time for some new lady blood in there. Shain was on the city council for 8 years, and I think she’d do great things for the city.

Photo from Shain’s Twitter page (I’m just not going to call it X, I’m not).

Many city council positions nationally are non-partisan, but not in Greenville. The Council currently has a 4-3 Democratic majority, so even though Dowe’s opponent Randall Fowler is our neighbor and seems nice enough (even though he’s running as a Republican), we definitely want Dowe to keep the seat so we don’t have dumb shit like the City Council declaring Greenville a “sanctuary city for life” and trying to pass travel restrictions for women seeking healthcare, as towns in Texas and throughout the South are doing.

You’ve heard me say it before, but local elections are so important. Our favorite white supremacist group Moms for Liberty has a majority on the Charleston County school board, and they just drove away another Black superintendent, who they hired in July (as Paul Bowers notes, this is right out of their playbook, firing a Black superintendent in neighboring Berkeley County last year). The terms of the separation include paying Dr. Gallien hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance (which he fully deserves for what they put him through) but this is just another example of the costs of racism. I hope these incompetent and harmful school board members get voted out ASAP.

Early voting info for Greenville Municipal elections. To find your polling place for November 7th, check here. Schools are in session, so it might be a different polling place than usual.

We’ll have to wait to vote on our Greenville County Council, but they’re the folks who appoint our bigoted Greenville County Library Board members. To make sure librarians can’t fully do their jobs, and in an effort to make sure only straight white Christians like Mike Johnson feel welcome in our libraries, they recently passed a policy that library displays can only reflect “paid holidays observed by both Greenville County Government and the Greenville County Library System” i.e. Christian holidays. MLK, Jr. Day is in there, so maybe they can sneak some civil rights in, but obviously it’s meant to block the Pride displays. South Carolina state employees still get Confederate Memorial Day as a paid holiday, so at least we won’t have that display? (Also I just cannot believe that is still a holiday FFS.)

To end on good news, Tameika Isaac Devine won the Democratic primary in a special election to fill a state Senate seat in Richland County District 19. The district leans heavily Democratic, so it is widely expected she will win the general election and become the sixth woman senator (of 46 total Senators). Glad she’ll be joining the Sister Senators—they’ll have their work cut out for them. Maybe they can get Confederate Memorial Day off the books.

Congrats to Tameika Isaac Devine! You can donate to her campaign here.