Building a Progressive Majority in the States:
Policy Options for 2008

Updated August 2007

About the Progressive States Network

The Progressive States Network was founded in 2005 to drive public policy debates and change the political landscape in the United States, by focusing on attainable, progressive state actions. The Progressive States Network advances this agenda by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state policymakers, legislative staff, and non-profit organizations. We function as a meeting space for progressive legislators, activists, and citizens, and serve as a hotbed of information exchange. We track legislation in all 50 states, helping to spark change across the country. We make it easier for people to learn more about how to get good ideas passed into law—and take power into their own hands.

Progressive States Task Forces

Representatives from the following organizations have already agreed to serve on task forces relevant to specific issues and to act as a resource to legislators and local organizations. Progressive States works with these and additional allies to provide support to state campaigns seeking to enact these policies into law.

ACORN

AFL-CIO

AFSCME

Americans for Health Care
Americas Agenda

Apollo Alliance
Center for American Progress

Center for Housing Policy
Center for Policy Alternatives
Citizens for Tax Justice

Community Catalyst

COWS

Economic Policy Institute
Families USA
Federation of State PIRGs

Free Press

Herndon Alliance

Gamaliel Foundation

JR Commons Center
Labor Project on Working Families
Inclusion- CPER
MomsRising
Multi-States Working Families Consortium
National Caucus of Environmental Legislators
National Employment Law Project

National Housing Conference
National Partnership for Women & Families
National Womens Law Center

Northeast Action
People for the American Way

PolicyLink
Public Campaign
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Skyline Public Works

Smart Growth America

State Environmental Leadership Program

UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research

Universal Health Care Action Network (UHCAN)

Vote by Mail Project

Progressive States Board of Directors

Joel Barkin, Progressive States Network, Executive Director

Steve Doherty, Founding Co-Chair

David Sirota, Founding Co-Chair

Wes Boyd, MoveOn.org

David Brock, Media Matters for America

Asm. Adriano Espaillat, New York State Assembly

Rep. Garnet Coleman, Texas State Assembly

Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers

Ellen Golombek,, SEIU

Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Skyline Public Works

Joe Hoeffel, Former PA Congressman and state legislator

Steve Kest, ACORN

George Lakoff, Rockridge Institute

Robert McChesney, Free Press

Rep. Hannah Pingree, Maine House of Representatives

John Podesta, Center for American Progress

Lee Saunders, AFSCME

Naomi Walker, AFL-CIO

Rep. Neva Walker, Minnesota State House

Rep. David Zuckerman, Vermont State House

For More Information

For more information on policy options discussed in this program or help in your states, we will be adding additional details in coming months at www.progressivestates.org and feel free to contact:

Nathan Newman, Policy Director at Progressive States Network

(212) 680-3114 nnewman@progressivestates.org

Introduction

Last November, we saw voters taking the first steps to repudiate the rightwing ideology and institutions that have long dominated much of the political landscape in our states. For too long, we have seen rightwing politicians, backed by corporate money and by conservative think tanks, blocking communities from improving wages, impeding expansion of health care, and auctioning off public assets and public contracts to big monied interests.

But now we can build on these progressive victories to build towards a progressive majority in all our states. On issue after issue of concern to working families, there are solid majorities for enacting progressive policies. What we need is a coordinated strategy across states to highlight those issues that can broaden the coalition of progressive voters and reframe the debate about why it matters to working families that progressives hold office in our statehouses.

In 2005, a group of legislators, non-profit leaders and advocates formed the Progressive States Network (PSN) to provide day-to-day support to state legislators and community organizations in each state to help make that happen. This accompanying package of issues is not designed to be an exhaustive set of policies but instead strategically focuses on those that can attract support from potential voters and thereby "wedge" those rightwing politicians whose allegiance to campaign contributors clashes with the desires of many of the voters who put them into office. And Progressive States as an organization has committed to providing legislative support to campaigns in states advancing these policies.

The efforts of PSN and the progressive allies we work with in the states are beginning to bear fruit, as we detailed in our recently published Taking the Lead: A Report on State Legislative Successes in Enacting Progressive Policy. But these achievements are only the beginning. The need for bold progressive leadership has never been greater as our states confront challenges of stagnant wages, global warming, exploding health care costs, and civic disgust with elections dominated by monied interests. The following package of reforms provides a range of options progressive legislators and allied advocates can use to build an enduring progressive legacy in our states.

Supporting the Program

The policy options in the following pages are meant to be just that: a set of options that can each illustrate the values associated with each set of issues. Some are simple, common-sense reforms while others are more ambitious, comprehensive policies, but all would make concrete improvements in the lives of working families and improve our communities. Each policy builds on the others to reinforce the progressive message. The idea is that local legislators can promote those options most appropriate for the political environment and needs of their states.

As an organization, Progressive States Network provides progressive legislators with both the technical and messaging support needed to turn these policies into law. Our constant goal is to help legislators by promoting best practices for these issues, providing background research, drafting versions of the policy appropriate to their individual states, and helping them advance related legislation that has already been introduced in their states.

Through partnerships with think tanks, national political partners, and local grassroots organizations, we build support for these state-specific legislative campaigns, while promoting message continuity across states that reinforces the progressive message nationally. By strengthening communication between legislators and grassroots organizations across different states, rogressive States acts as an information hub so that legislators can keep up-to-date on news from other states, anticipate trends that are coming their way, and educate each other on how to win.

Progressive States also acts as a "war room" to help legislators respond quickly with legislative amendments, provide expert policy testimony, and generally act as surrogate staff members to support passage of legislation. Our aim is to promote campaigns, including innovative online communication strategies, that generate a crescendo of interest that sweeps across multiple states simultaneously and raises progressive issues to a political prominence that redefines state politics.

What Progressives Face

Even with last November's victories, progressives confront a political landscape shaped by a well-organized rightwing network that has worked for decades to establish political power in the states. In a February 2006 report, Governing the Nation From the Statehouses: The Rightwing Agenda in the States and How Progressives Can Fight Back, the Progressive States Network outlined how groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other allied rightwing groups

Building a Progressive Majority in the States: Policy Options for 2008

Introduction

Supporting the Program

What Progressives Face

Building a Progressive Majority in the States:
Policy Options for 2008