Dear Commons Community,

Edward L. Glaeser and Carlo Ratti had a featured article earlier this week focusing on New York City as epitomizing the toll remote working is taking on the Big Apple and other large cities.  Entitled, “26 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York’s Empty Office Space. That’s a Sign.” starkly illustrates the commercial rental malaise (maybe catastrophe) that is plaguing big cities.

They comment:

“New York is undergoing a metamorphosis from a city dedicated to productivity to one built around pleasure. Many office buildings still feel eerily empty, with occupancy around 50 percent of prepandemic levels, harming landlords and the local economy. But 56 million people visited New York last year, making Fifth Avenue in December feel as crowded as Ipanema Beach during Carnival.

The economic future of the city that never sleeps depends on embracing this shift from vocation to recreation and ensuring that New Yorkers with a wide range of talents want to spend their nights downtown, even if they are spending their days on Zoom. We are witnessing the dawn of a new kind of urban area: the Playground City.

In downtowns from Chicago to Los Angeles, the physical layout of the 20th-century city is clashing with the new economy. Since the 1920s, single-use zoning has divided our cities into separate neighborhoods for home, work and play. Work-from-home and Netflix have made these distinctions irrelevant, but our partitioned urban fabric has yet to catch up.

To create a city vibrant enough to compete with the convenience of the internet, we need to end the era of single-use zoning and create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods that bring libraries, offices, movie theaters, grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants and bars closer together. We must reconfigure the city into an experience worth leaving the house for. Streets once filled by commuting crowds can be reinvigorated by those who really want to be there.”

As a life-long worker in New York City who now teaches almost exclusively remotely,  I believe Glaeser and Ratti might be right.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Farhood Manjoo, had a piece yesterday describing the popularity of remote work that the pandemic ushered in three years ago.  A growing concern for our major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago, workers are opting to stay at home to conduct their business rather than going to the office.  Manhjoo’s main argument is that it is not the office that is a problem for these workers, it is the commute. 

Below is an excerpt.

Manjoo is on to something!

Tony

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Elon Musk says we should all get off our duffs and go back to the office. People who want to work from home aren’t just “phoning it in” from “some remote pseudo-office” as he’s put it in the past. Now he says we’re immoral, too.

“The whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, ‘Let them eat cake,’” Musk told CNBC this week. Factory workers, service workers and construction workers can’t work from home, so why do people in the “laptop classes” think they should be able to do so? “It’s not just a productivity thing,” he said. “I think it’s morally wrong.”

A cynic might note that factory workers can’t work from private jets, either, yet Musk’s commitment to worker equity didn’t prevent his plane from making a reported 171 trips last year. A cynic might also point out that a man who makes cars for a living has a stake in the perpetuation of Americans driving to and from work day after day.

But I’m not so cynical. Musk isn’t alone among corporate executives in seeing employees’ reluctance to return to the office as a genuine economic problem. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Bob Iger of Disney, Andy Jassy of Amazon, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and others have been pleading with or arm-twisting workers to come back. Companies have tried carrots — redesigning offices — and they’ve tried sticks, like reversing remote work policies at the same time they announce huge layoffs. But in a tight labor market, the office has been a tough sell. The average office occupancy rate across 10 major cities has plateaued at around 50 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing data from Kastle Systems. Remote work seems to be turning from a pandemic necessity into a permanent feature of the American workplace.

Is this a big problem? For some local economies, it could be shattering, but I’ll get to that in a bit. First let’s address why folks aren’t coming back and why they probably won’t unless we fix a big problem with office work that few C.E.O.s seem to mention: getting to and getting home from the office. Survey after survey bears this out. If we want people to go to the office more often, we have to do something about the daily commute, a ritual of American life that’s time-consuming, emotionally taxing, environmentally toxic and expensive.

In 2019 the average one-way commute in the United States hit a record of almost 28 minutes, according to the Census Bureau. Nearly 40 percent of Americans commuted a half-hour or more, one way, and almost 10 percent traveled for more than an hour one way.

For many, the pandemic-era shift to remote work proved that all the schlepping was unnecessary. They can’t unsee all the wasted time, and questioning their morality isn’t going to change that. They aren’t taking a moral stance; they’re just making a rational calculation: They can get a lot more done — in their work lives and in the rest of their lives — if they skip the commute.

Liberty Street Economics, a blog that features writing from New York Fed analysts, reported last year that collectively, Americans now spend 60 million fewer hours per day traveling to work. That’s 60 million hours for which they weren’t being compensated that they can now spend exercising, taking care of their children, getting a bit more sleep and starting their workday earlier or ending it later.

Workers are delighted by the switch. According to a survey by the Conference Board, overall job satisfaction in 2022 was at just over 62 percent, a high not seen in decades, and people with hybrid jobs that allowed them to work at home and at a job site were the happiest. A working paper published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research even found that the rise of remote work “lessens wage-growth pressures and (modestly) eases the challenge facing monetary policymakers in their efforts to bring inflation down without stalling the economy.”

What about workers’ productivity? Has working from home led to a lot of slacking off? Not obviously. Another N.B.E.R. working paper published last year found that among workers at a large tech company, hybrid work arrangements did not significantly affect workers’ productivity even though people worked slightly less on days they were at home and slightly more on days they were in the office. Hybrid work improved job satisfaction measures and reduced attrition by 33 percent, especially among those with the longest commutes.

So what’s the downside to remote work? It might be hurting cities. Many of America’s largest and most prosperous urban areas rely on the rhythms of the daily commute — the perpetual need for morning caffeine, sad desk salads at lunch and beer gardens at happy hour buoy downtown and office-park economies.

The shift to remote work abruptly disrupted this pattern, setting off what has been called an apocalypse in the market for office real estate and, for some cities, a death spiral for public transportation systems — things that can contribute to a cycle that further damages economies. (I embrace the soft pants revolution as much as the next person, but imagine running a downtown mom-and-pop dry cleaning service over the past three years.)

But if potential urban ruination is the danger, it isn’t a problem for C.E.O.s to solve — at least not by grumbling about their lazy workers. Rather, it’s a problem of infrastructure and policy; it’s a problem for local, state and national governments to address through long-range planning and a more realistic approach to urban development.

Like what? In theory, we know how to do this. If people are sick of commuting to work, we could aim to make commuting much less of a hassle. The ways to do that would likely involve some combination of reducing the distance between people’s homes and offices; improving the modes of transportation along these routes; and reducing the other costs of going to work — by providing more accessible and affordable child care, for example.

If it sounds as though I’m using the shift to remote work as an opportunity to advocate lefty urbanist pipe dreams — Better public transit! Fewer cars and more bikes! Denser development! An improved social safety net! — you’re right. I am.

A collection of shoes that belonged to child victims of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.  (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk)

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article this morning describing the work of preserving the shoes of children killed during the Holocaust at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Below is the entire article. 

Read it and never forget

Tony

———————————————————————————————————-

The Associated Press

Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children

By Vanesa Gera

May 19, 2023

In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers.

Colleagues at the other end of a long work table rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths and careful circular motions on the leather of the fragile objects. The shoes are then scanned and photographed in a neighboring room and catalogued in a database.

The work is part of a two-year effort launched last month to preserve 8,000 children’s shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II. Most of the victims were Jews killed in dictator Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

The site was located during the war in a part of Poland occupied by German forces and annexed to the German Reich. Today it is a memorial and museum managed by the Polish state, to whom the solemn responsibility has fallen to preserve the evidence of the site, where Poles were also among the victims. The Germans destroyed evidence of their atrocities at Treblinka and other camps, but they failed to do so entirely at the enormous site of Auschwitz as they fled the approaching Soviet forces in chaos toward the war’s end.

Eight decades later, some evidence is fading away under the pressures of time and mass tourism. Hair sheared from victims to make cloth is considered a sacred human remain which cannot be photographed and is not subjected to conservation efforts. It is turning to dust.

But more than 100,000 shoes of victims remain, some 80,000 of them in huge heaps on display in a room where visitors file by daily. Many are warped, their original colors fading, shoe laces disintegrated, yet they endure as testaments of lives brutally cut short.

The tiny shoes and slippers are especially heartrending.

“Children’s shoes are the most moving object for me because there is no greater tragedy than the tragedy of children,” said Mirosław Maciaszczyk, a conservation specialist from the museum’s conservation laboratories.

“A shoe is an object closely related to a person, to a child. It is a trace, sometimes it’s the only trace left of the child.”

Maciaszczyk said that he and the other conservation workers never lose sight of the human tragedy behind the shoes, even as they focus on the technical aspects of their conservation work. Sometimes they are overcome by emotion and need breaks. Volunteers working with adult shoes in the past have asked for new assignments.

Elżbieta Cajzer, head of the Collections, said conservation work always turns up some individual details of those killed at the camp — suitcases, in particular, can offer up clues because they bear names and addresses. She expects that the work on children’s shoes will also reveal some new personal details.

They also open a window into a bygone era when shoes were a valuable good passed from child to child. Some have traces of mended soles and other repairs.

The museum is able to conserve about 100 shoes a week, and has processed 400 since the project began last month. The aim is not to restore them to their original state but to render them as close to how they were found at war’s end as possible. Most of the shoes are single objects. One pair still bound by shoelaces is a rarity.

Last year, workers conserving adult shoes found an Italian 100 lire banknote in a lady’s high-heeled shoe that was also imprinted with the name Ranzini, which was a shoe manufacturer in Trieste. The owner was likely Italian, but nothing else is known about her.

They also found the name of Věra Vohryzková on a child’s shoe. By coincidence, a museum worker had noticed that family name on a suitcase and the museum was able to piece together details about the family. Vera was born Jan. 11, 1939, into a Jewish Czech family and was sent to Auschwitz in a transport from the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 with her mother and brother. Her father, Max Vohryzek, was sent in a separate transport. They all perished.

Cajzer described the shoes as powerful testimony also because the huge heaps of shoes that remain give some idea of the enormous scale of the crimes, even though what is left is only a fraction of what was.

Before the SS men sent people into the gas chambers, they ordered them to undress and told them they were going into showers to be disinfected.

“We are able to imagine how many people came here, hoping that they would be able to put those shoes back on after a shower. They thought they would take their shoes back and keep using them. But they never returned to their owners,” Cajzer said.

In most cases, the shoes and other possessions were collected and the material used to help the Third Reich in its war effort. The 110,000 shoes in the museum’s collection — while massive — most likely came from only the last transports to the camp, Cajzer said.

The project’s cost of 450,000 euros ($492,000) is funded by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, to which Germany has been a key donor, as well as the International March of the Living, a Holocaust education program.

Both Cajzer and Maciaszczyk said that it is impossible to save the shoes forever, but the goal is to preserve them for more years to come.

“Our conservation today slows down these processes (of decay), but for how long, it’s hard to say,” Maciaszczyk said.

Dear Commons Community,

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) announced earlier this week,  the publication of the 2022 Blended Learning Symposium Report.  The purpose of the report is to capture the key themes and insights from the 2022 OLC Blended Learning events and to function as a sort of “living memory” of the conversations shared. It is the hope of the authors that it inspires new conversations about the future of blended learning.

This free report includes a plethora of information on blended learning themes (see below) such as instructional design, equity, evaluation, assessment, faculty support, and administrative challenges written by a group of international colleagues. The timing of this report could not be better as the world hopefully exits from the scourge of COVID.  Prior to the pandemic, higher education was evolving into a “blended university” model where all aspects of teaching, learning, counseling, advising, and administration were becoming dependent upon online technology. An irreversible evolution in higher education has become for better or for worse, fully enmeshed in the blended model.

Congratulations to OLC and the authors of this timely report.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Idaho State Board of Education yesterday unanimously approved the $550-million purchase of the University of Phoenix. The approval came only one day after the potential deal was announced to the public, and with little input from Idaho’s faculty.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Adding to the drama, the University of Arkansas system had been considering for months a similar proposal to purchase the University of Phoenix. Arkansas administrators, faculty members, and trustees had debated Phoenix’s debt burden, the potential governance structure of the new entity, and academic quality.

Since the buyer would have been a nonprofit affiliate of the Arkansas system — and not the institution itself — the university’s board didn’t have to sign off on the deal. But the board took up the matter last month anyway and, in a symbolic vote, narrowly rejected the idea, with a top trustee complaining that the University of Phoenix had a “terrible reputation.”

After Arkansas seemed to shut the door, Phoenix found an eager partner in Idaho.

Under the deal, which still faces review by accreditors, the University of Phoenix will be converted to a nonprofit institution that Idaho officials referred to as “New U.”

The new college would pay the University of Idaho at least $10 million annually, and Idaho officials said those payments could add up to as much as $170 million by 2030.

But there is also a risk that the University of Idaho would have to contribute financially if the joint endeavor struggled to turn a profit.

The $550-million purchase price breaks down this way: The University of Phoenix will contribute $200 million to the new college, and the new institution will finance the remaining $350 million with bonds.

Brian Foisy, the University of Idaho’s vice president for finance, told the State Board of Education that the university’s credit rating might drop from A1 to A2 as a result of the purchase, although he added “that’s only one notch,” and the lowered rating “is still well within investment grade.”

Just before the board’s vote, the University of Idaho’s president, C. Scott Green, said that the sale negotiations had been subject to “pretty strict” nondisclosure agreements, which he said had prevented the university from disclosing information sooner.

Green said Faculty Senate leaders had been invited to help evaluate the proposal.

“I regret it, but there’s not a lot we could have done differently, so I just want our faculty to know that,” said Green. He added that an extensive FAQ page, posted by the university on Wednesday, showed that campus officials were still being “very transparent.”

The Idaho Statesman newspaper did not agree: It blasted the secretive process in a blistering editorial, noting that “while the vote to create the entity to acquire the University of Phoenix had not yet taken place, the Q&A treated the matter as a fait accompli — giving us serious concerns about whether the outcome of the vote had been determined in nonpublic meetings beforehand.”

In a statement, University of Phoenix representatives expressed optimism about this new chapter.

“The university has focused on student outcomes, support, and upskilling, as well as understanding and reacting to marketplace trends from employers, and innovating ways to make online higher education more accessible and achievable,” said Chris Lynne, the president. “We are excited to build on the great legacy of our institution by working with University of Idaho, one of our nation’s leading public universities.”

Idaho’s announcement comes as colleges across the country feel increasing urgency to respond to the so-called demographic cliff, in which the number of college-going students is projected to decline in many states. A top University of Arkansas official said as much last month at a board meeting to discuss the Phoenix deal: “The enrollment cliff is coming.”

The University of Phoenix was once the largest university in the United States, with a staggering enrollment of nearly 470,000 in 2010. The university became a symbol of the for-profit college boom, which was fueled by online courses, slick marketing materials, and a surge of students who weren’t 18-year-old residential undergraduates but were working parents, military veterans, and immigrants.

Students are wary about taking a chance on universities that have had some reputational problems in the past.

But more recently, many students who attended for-profit colleges — including the University of Phoenix — alleged they had been deceived by admissions recruiters and lured into poor-quality degree programs that left them with a lot of student-loan debt and no meaningful job prospects.

Enrollment at the University of Phoenix declined in recent years, and now stands at about 85,000.

In 2019 the university agreed to pay a record $191 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission after being accused of deceptive advertising.

The FTC alleged that the university’s ads had falsely implied its graduates would have future job opportunities with large companies such as AT&T, Microsoft, and Yahoo. As part of the settlement, the university did not admit wrongdoing.

That settlement, combined with other accusations of unethical business practices, took a toll on the University of Phoenix’s ability to attract new students.

“Students are wary about taking a chance on universities that have had some reputational problems in the past,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank. “And so we’ll see if the University of Idaho can turn that around.”

While we wish the University of Idaho well in this new venture, the process by which it was consummated is highly questionable.

Tony

Sen. John Cornyn and former President Donald Trump in 2018.  MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a longtime ally of Donald Trump,  made it clear yesterday where he stands with the former president’s 2024 campaign.

“We need to come up with an alternative,” Cornyn told reporters, per The Dallas Morning News. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.”

It “all boils down to electability,” said Corynyn, who pointed out “there’s no prize for coming in second” in an election.

Cornyn suggested that Trump, the current frontrunner in the race to become the Republican nominee, doesn’t understand “that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”

“There’s no question that President Trump has some enthusiastic supporters as part of his base,” the senator added. “That works well for him in a Republican primary, but not well when you need to expand your appeal in a general election.”

“I just want to win and we need a candidate who can win,” he added.

Run, Trump, Run!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Disney has cancelled a new office complex, which would have created more than 2,000 jobs, because of “changing business conditions” based in part on the feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.  As reported by The New York Times.

In March, Disney called Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “anti-business” for his scorched-earth attempt to tighten oversight of the company’s theme park resort near Orlando. Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.

“Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said on an earnings-related conference call with analysts last week.

Yesterday, Mr. Iger and Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chairman, showed that they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on an office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando at a cost of roughly $1 billion. It would have brought more than 2,000 Disney jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

The project, near Lake Nona Town Center, was supposed to cost $864 million, but recent price estimates have been closer to $1.3 billion. Disney had planned to relocate as many as 2,000 employees from Southern California, including most of a department known as Imagineering, which works with Disney’s movie studios to develop theme park attractions.

Most of the affected employees complained bitterly about having to move — some quit — but Disney held firm, partly because of a Florida tax credit that would have allowed the company to recoup as much as $570 million over 20 years for building and occupying the complex.

When he announced the project in 2021, Mr. D’Amaro cited “Florida’s business-friendly climate” as justification.

Mr. D’Amaro’s tone in an email to employees on Thursday was notably chillier. He cited “changing business conditions” as a reason for canceling the Lake Nona project. “I remain optimistic about the direction of our Walt Disney World business,” Mr. D’Amaro said in the memo. He noted that $17 billion was still earmarked for construction at Disney World over the next decade — growth that would create an estimated 13,000 jobs. “I hope we’re able to,” he said.

The memo, which was viewed by The New York Times, did not mention Mr. DeSantis. But the company’s battle with the governor and his allies in the Florida Legislature figured prominently into Disney’s decision to cancel the Lake Nona project, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. A spokeswoman for Mr. Iger said he was not available for an interview.

Florida officials have repeatedly pointed to the Lake Nona development as an example of economic vibrancy in Orlando, which suffered mightily during the pandemic. Noting that hotel chains and retailers were moving into the Lake Nona area in anticipation of Disney’s arrival, The Orlando Business Journal in January called the complex “a major economic driver for the region.”

In a statement, Jerry L. Demings, the mayor of Orange County, which includes Orlando, said it was “unfortunate” that Disney canceled its plans. “However, these are the consequences when there isn’t an inclusive and collaborative work environment between the state of Florida and the business community,” Mr. Demings said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California thanked Disney. “That’s 2,000+ jobs that will be welcomed back with open arms to the Golden State,” Mr. Newsom said on Twitter.

California gains and Florida loses!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A team of scientists working with Atlantic Productions scanned the historic Titanic shipwreck off the coast of Canada and created a 3-D model of the site (see video below).

Pretty cool!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

CNN said Kaitlan Collins will host a new hourlong show at the 9:00 PM slot left vacant since the firing of Chris Cuomo.

Collins will begin regularly hosting the 9 p.m. Eastern show next month, the network said yesterday..

Collins, an ex-White House correspondent moderated CNN’s town hall with former President Donald Trump last week, but was generally held blameless for criticism the event received. AS reported by the Associated Press.

“She is a smart and gifted journalist who we’ve all seen hold lawmakers and newsmakers accountable,” CNN Chairman Chris Licht said in a memo to staff members. “She pushes politicians off their talking points, gets real answers — and as everyone who’s worked with her knows — breaks a lot of news.”

It’s the biggest move by Licht, who became CNN’s leader last year, to put his imprint on the prime-time lineup, which has lagged far behind Fox News and MSNBC in viewership.

In continuing Collins’ meteoric rise at CNN, Licht has something in common with his predecessor Jeff Zucker, who noticed and hired Collins full-time based on her occasional guest appearances on CNN. Collins had been working for The Daily Caller, a conservative website launched by Tucker Carlson.

Licht had named Collins to host a revamped morning show with Poppy Harlow and Don Lemon that began last November. With Lemon fired and Collins elevated, Harlow will work with guest anchors until morning changes are announced in the months ahead, Licht said in his memo.

CNN has rotated guest hosts in the evening since December 2021, when Cuomo was fired after the network said he was not forthcoming about help offered to his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. At the time, Cuomo hosted CNN’s top-rated show.

The network has struggled to gain traction without him. On Monday, for example, CNN averaged 454,000 viewers in the time slot, compared to Rachel Maddow’s 2.41 million viewers on MSNBC and Sean Hannity’s 1.97 million on Fox, the Nielsen company said.

Last Friday, with Anderson Cooper on duty for a second hour at 9 p.m. and reaching an audience of 293,000, CNN slipped behind the conservative Newsmax network and host Chris Plante’s “Right Squad” in viewership, Nielsen said.

CNN last month announced the pairing of Charles Barkley and Gayle King for another prime-time show starting later this year, although that will be once a week.

In his appearance, Licht emphasized CNN’s newsgathering and said it was more important now than ever. “We prioritize reporting over punditry and separate the news from the noise,” he said.

Good luck to Ms. Collins! Very deserving!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tuesday saw a number of key races in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Florida, which underscored former President Trump’s grip on the Republican base and Democrats’ relative strength in suburban areas..

In one of the night’s major races, Trump’s endorsed candidate in the Kentucky GOP gubernatorial primary, Daniel Cameron, prevailed against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s pick, former U.N. Ambassador Kelly Craft. The Florida governor’s choice in the Jacksonville, Fla., mayoral race also lost, in one of the biggest upsets of the night.

Meanwhile, Democrats scored a key victory in the Philadelphia suburbs in a race that largely hinged on abortion.

Here are five takeaways from Tuesday night’s elections compliments of The Hill.

Trump notches a win over DeSantis in Kentucky

Trump scored a win over his chief rival in Kentucky on Tuesday night, when his endorsed candidate won the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Cameron, who was favored by the former president, won the Republican primary to take on Gov. Andy Beshear (D) this November. Craft, who received a last-minute endorsement from DeSantis on election day, placed third in the primary.

DeSantis’s decision to back Craft comes against the backdrop of a burgeoning 2024 Republican presidential primary field. The Florida governor is expected to formally launch his presidential bid in the coming weeks and is seen as Trump’s fiercest opponent.

DeSantis wasn’t the only high-profile Republican to back Craft — declared 2024 candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also endorsed her.

Cameron, a rising star in the GOP, touted the former president’s endorsement, even after Trump was held liable for sexual battery and defamation against the writer E. Jean Carroll.

A good night for Dems

Democrats had a lot to celebrate Tuesday night.

In one of the most closely watched races of the year, Democratic candidate Heather Boyd beat Republican Katie Ford in the special election for a Pennsylvania state House seat outside Philadelphia, allowing the Democrats to keep control of the state’s lower chamber.

The race was seen as particularly critical because Democrats feared the GOP would use a potential majority to push through restrictive measures relating to abortion and LGBTQ issues.

Meanwhile, in Jacksonville, Fla., Democrats scored an upset with Donna Deegan (D) winning the mayoral race against Republican Daniel Davis, who was backed by DeSantis. The election offered Democrats some relief given Duval County’s red leanings, suggesting that Democrats may still be able to compete in the state, even as Florida has trended Republican in recent years.

Meanwhile, in Colorado Springs, independent candidate Yemi Mobolade won the mayoral race against Republican Wayne Williams, a former Colorado secretary of state. The result was a blow to Republicans; Trump won El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs, by 11 points in 2020.

Progressives’ big-city winning streak suffers a blow

Not all Democrats were celebrating the primary results, though, as progressives suffered a blow in the Philadelphia mayoral race. Their favored candidate, Helen Gym, finished third.

Gym, who received endorsements from high-profile progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), lost the race to become Philadelphia’s next top executive to former City Council member Cherelle Parker. Former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart placed second.

Parker is almost certain to prevail in the heavily blue city’s November election against Republican David Oh.

Crime has been one of the driving issues in the race, and Parker, who is Black, has notably vocalized support for the use of the controversial stop-and-frisk policing strategy. Her safety and policing platform on her website also calls for hiring 300 more police officers who would be designated to a neighborhood beat.

A surprise upset in Florida

Deegan’s win in the Jacksonville mayoral race was perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, flipping an office that’s been helmed by Republican Mayor Lenny Curry since 2015.

The race also further dented DeSantis, given that he endorsed Davis in March.

Surveys ahead of election day indicated a tight race. Polling from the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida (UNF) last month found 48 percent of respondents backing Deegan while Davis received 47 percent support, falling well within the poll’s margin of error at plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

That polling also found that the highest percentage of respondents believed crime to be the most important issue facing the city.

Davis’s loss is a blow to Republicans in a county that has become friendlier to the GOP in recent years. DeSantis won Duval County, where Jacksonville is situated, by 12 points during the November midterms. But in 2018, Democrat Andrew Gillum won the county over DeSantis by 4 points.

Voter turnout was mixed 

Voter turnout in some of the biggest elections turned out to be a mixed bag.

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams (R) had previously warned that turnout for the GOP gubernatorial primary might end up around 10 percent, and data from the secretary of state’s website as of Tuesday night showed turnout around 14 percent.

Turnout also appeared relatively light in Pennsylvania, with one election official saying early on that the levels were “historically low,” according to WKBN-TV.

But in Duval County, where Jacksonville, Fla., is situated, turnout was at 33 percent as of Tuesday night. Broken down by voter party affiliation, close to 99,000 Republicans voted, while about 92,000 Democrats and roughly 25,000 voters with no party affiliation turned out. More than 2,600 votes came from voters identified as “other.”

Interesting results!

Tony