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Personal stories matter in politics. Personal stories connect us to the issues. They tie large, abstract issues to personal, human events. They help us empathize. They help us connect to each other, allowing us to understand, even if we don’t agree. It’s personal stories that change opinions. At a Centrist Project event last week, I met Jimmy LaSalvia, a gay conservative who has left the Republican Party. For years Jimmy worked inside his party as founder of GOProud and as national staff for th

While a majority of Americans - 52 percent - now favor weed legalization, the federal government has done very little to act on the changing views of the nation. Many states, however, have taken matters into their own hands, passing legislation to better represent the changing attitudes of their residents. Today, 4 states - Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and Alaska - plus our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, 24 states have legalized medical ma

In June, Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, made waves in the world of political punditry when he suggested in a letter to the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee that the party should sanction more primary debates, and that some of those debates should even include Republican candidates for the presidency. Paul Singer of USA Today wrote at the time that “Sanders said inter-party debates would show a clear co

It’s tough to imagine a scenario in which both U.S. Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are nominated by their respective parties in the 2016 presidential race. But in a hypothetical world where Sanders and Paul are both nominated, there would be significant overlap in their supporters, just as there is with their platforms. Already in New Hampshire, where unaffiliated and independent voters can vote in either primary, Sanders and Paul are targeting similar supporters. Ron Pau

Florida's Supreme Court struck down much of the state's congressional districting map on July 9, ordering the redrawing of what it termed "constitutionally invalid" districts in 2 of the 27 districts (requiring a change to 8 congressional districts). Each district represents about 710,000 voters, making this one of the most significant court cases ever involving the practice of gerrymandering. In 2010, Florida's voters overwhelmingly approved (62.9%) a constitutional amendment with some of the

On July 1, Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed on a popular pier in San Francisco. Her murderer, 45-year-old Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, had taken sleeping pills he found in a dumpster hours before the shooting. He claims he found a gun wrapped in a T-shirt on a bench and accidentally let off a shot, not realizing he had struck Steinle until he was apprehended an hour later. San Francisco has drawn criticism since the discovery that Sanchez was in the country illegally and had a long criminal

On June 26, I attended an event in Cambridge, Massachusetts called the City Dance Party. Every year thousands of people flock to this event from all over the Greater Boston Area. The streets ringing City Hall are closed down, and for a few hours the square in front of City Hall is turned into an enormous dance party. At night, the front of City Hall is lit up with swirling lights while colored spotlights pan over the jubilant crowd. As the event neared its end, the energy of the crowd was surgi

Since the movement launched in 2006, National Popular Vote has made significant progress to reform the way Americans elect their president. The group's plan involves a state-by-state approach. States that join the National Popular Voter Interstate Compact (NPVIC) agree that rather than having their electors cast their ballots for president according to whichever candidate won the most votes in their respective states, the electors will instead vote for the candidate who won the most votes natio

For being the presumed front-runner of the Republican field, Jeb Bush's failure to launch a consistent message to the media has many taking notice -- inside and outside of the party's faithful. One media guffaw could be excusable, but Bush is creating a consistent pattern of evading, poorly answering, and/or ignoring the media's questions -- a pattern that simply cannot be blamed on "gotcha" politics. Bush seems to have the disease of "moderate-itis," and it seems to be a terminal case -- if n

FairVote on June 12 released Government of the Few in the “Decided Dozen" -- Frozen Representation and the Distorted Demographics of Decisive Primary Elections. Report authors Andrew Douglas and Zack Avre zero in on the “Decided Dozen”—12 states where control over the state legislature and the outcome of the great majority of general election races is never in doubt, leaving the only meaningful choices and power to voters in low turnout, unrepresentative primary contests. Source: FairVote: The