Howard Franklin on The Special Report Podcast

Howard Franklin talks with host Mariva Martin about the reshaping of political power underway across the country

Transcript:

Welcome back to the special report. I’m Mariva Martin. Two weeks ago, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Louisiana versus Klay that could reshape voting rights across America for decades. But the real story isn’t in the courtroom. It’s actually on the streets. This week, thousands of people gathered in Alabama to protest something most Americans don’t even know is happening: the systemic erasure of voting power. And I’m not going to sugarcoat this. What’s happening in Alabama isn’t a voting rights issue. It’s a democracy issue. And if you think this doesn’t affect you because you’re not black, think again. When voting power gets systemically taken away, everyone’s democracy gets weaker. What’s happening right now in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama is a coordinated effort to convert population growth into Republican seats. It’s sophisticated, it’s legal thanks to the Supreme Court, and sadly, it’s working. And if we don’t fight back now, the shape of American democracy for the next decade is already written.

We’re here today with Howard Franklin. He’s the CEO of Ohio River South, one of the nation’s largest black-owned lobbying firms. He has been inside these fights in southern politics for decades. He helped run Atlanta’s mayoral campaign. He runs Firehouse Phones, which has consulted on over 1,000 campaigns in 48 states across this country. And he publishes Friendly Amendment, a newsletter with 30,000 subscribers focused on southern public policy. Thank you so much for joining me today, Howard. It’s really good to see you. A lot going on. I just want to jump right into this. Let’s start with Alabama, what we’re seeing right now on the ground. Thousands of people were in the streets this weekend. And they’re not just angry, they’re scared. What are they responding to?

Yeah, Oriva, thank you for having me. I think you stated it very accurately. I mean, it’s not just an issue about access to the ballot that we’re seeing from the decision from the US Supreme Court. I think we’re really talking about preserving a democracy and whether or not there will be fairness in elections going forward in terms of representation at the federal level and even below the federal level at this point. So, I think you’re 100% right to acknowledge that there is something very serious going on and that most Americans are not fully aware of how that erasure of representation and particularly black political power is marching forward and with all deliberate speed.

And this isn’t abstract, Howard. We should state that in the 2020 census, Alabama gained population. Black voters drove a lot of that growth. And what the legislature did, what they are allowed to do now thanks to this Supreme Court ruling, is they look at where that population was, where that growth was, and they basically said, “We’re going to carve it up.” So, they’re using really precise gerrymandering. They’ve got the maps down to the precinct. They know exactly where black voters live and they’re splitting those neighborhoods. And it’s clear that this isn’t accidental. It’s not a side effect. This is the entire point. Explain that to folks who maybe don’t understand. When states like Alabama have population growth, and particularly when they have black population growth, how dangerous is what we’re seeing?

Yeah, I think it’s incredibly dangerous. Typically, if you were following the traditional rules of reapportionment, you’d be looking for population growth every 10 years, not through a mid-census reapportionment process. And you would actually draw lines that respected the boundaries of existing jurisdictions, maybe cities or counties, or other political precinct levels. So typically, when we don’t see gerrymandering at play, you see lines that are drawn that really respect the boundaries and try to keep neighborhoods and communities contiguous. As you noted, in this case in Alabama and a number of other states, we are seeing very intentional breaking of those communities. They are trying to draw lines in ways that separate and basically defenestrate black political power and minority political power. They do this by basically taking districts that would be naturally majority-minority districts and carving them up in ways that move those minority populations across a number of different districts and undercut black and brown political power. That’s what we’re talking about here.

So Howard, before the US Supreme Court decision in Klay, courts had a standard. So if you were packing black voters—like concentrating them so their voting power got diluted—federal judges could look at that and say no. They could say it’s unconstitutional because you’re diluting the voting strength of a protected class. But this Supreme Court just said in this decision, there’s basically no federal standard for that anymore. And states can pack and they can split voters however they want as long as they follow their own state laws and the Voting Rights Act. But here’s the thing: we know the Voting Rights Act has been gutted. Section five is gone. So what are we really left with? We have these Republican states that you just identified that can gerrymander however they want and there’s almost no federal remedy. The federal courts won’t intervene, and that’s the road map that we see Republican legislators around this country starting to follow. And the court is saying go ahead, do it, we’re not going to stop you. That’s very, very scary. Howard, I don’t want to exaggerate this or seem overly dramatic at all.

This is crazy. I mean, I think it’s even worse than what you’re describing. You know, we used to have, as you mentioned, section five. We used to have pre-clearance that would require, before new lines or a new reapportionment process could take effect, that you had to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice at the federal level. As you mentioned, obviously the VRA, Voting Rights Act, is slowly being gutted, and obviously a big step backwards was taken just a couple weeks ago. I do want to answer your question, though. I do think we’ve got to look for silver linings here, and we also have to be really intentional about the fact that litigation is not going to guarantee what organizing has to deliver ultimately, right? Like before these protections were in place, black Americans, black and brown Americans, organized and found ways to make their voices heard. They won races that they weren’t expected to win. They pushed through policies at the federal and the state level that did eventually protect the right to vote and the right to actually have representation at every level of government. And I think we’re going to have to return to the basics at some level. We’re going to have to do a couple things that right now might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I think ultimately will redound to the benefit of our democracy.

Most of my career I’ve made at the state and local level, working around state houses and city halls and school boards around the southeast. I would say in this case, one of the issues and one of the rallying cries that folks like me, my firm, and other leaders have made for a really long time is that we’ve watched conservative legislators really focus on state legislatures, taking control of them because they realize that so much power sits at the state legislature. All of the reapportionment or gerrymandering ability stems from control of a general assembly—not from the White House, not from one of the houses of Congress, but from the lowly state house in each of our states. And I think it’s been very well documented over the last several decades that conservatives have made a very concerted effort both for a play for state legislatures, as well as a play for the lower courts, which are really the levers of power that determine how these outcomes are decided.

I’m glad you mentioned that, Howard, because yes, definitely there’s been a concerted strategy on the part of Republicans to take over state houses so they could do exactly what you said: pass legislation that allows them to divide these districts up in the way that we’ve been talking about, and then, as you said, pack the courts so the courts can back the play that they make inside those legislatures. But what happened with Eric Holder and Obama? Several years ago, we heard a lot about the Democrats under Holder and Obama going after those state houses, recognizing that that’s where the power was and that the Democrats needed to do more to disrupt the Republican play. Did that ever materialize, and what are we to make of how the Dems are fighting back—not just at the level of litigation, as you said, but at the level of these state houses?

Yeah, unfortunately, I would say that especially in the parts where I represent clients, I would say that has not happened. I think there’s been a lot of acknowledgment of the success that the Obama administration had at the federal level, right? Winning both the House and the Senate, having two years to push through the Affordable Care Act, etc. But at the same time, in part because of the rise of the Tea Party, we saw state legislatures folding and flipping to conservative in ways and at a speed that we hadn’t seen before. I don’t remember the exact number, but I want to say north of a thousand legislative seats during the Obama years flipped from Democrat to Republican. I would say the majority of those took place those last six years. So the first two years, obviously, when Obama rode in on a wave of optimism and stunning victory across the country and across the electoral college, I think we had a tremendous boost in activity at the local level. People were excited. I remember my friends, because I was in my late 20s at the time, saying, “Hey, this advocacy, this campaign world, working on policy is something I might want to pivot to from my career as an accountant or a consultant or a lawyer and really get more involved in.” And I do think there was a lot of energy around making that change permanent. We also talked a lot about this coming majority-minority population, the rising American majority, which we expected to be a black and brown electorate that would usher in this progressive wave of politicians and with it all this policy that we thought would stand on the books forever. But the pendulum swings, and in the second half of the Obama term, I think it did swing back at the state legislature. A lot of the fights that were sucking the oxygen out of the room or that were really focusing Americans’ attention were at the federal level, while conservatives were winning state legislative seats at an alarming rate at the local level. And I don’t think the Democrats have figured out exactly how to reverse those trends. I think we have had some big wins in the last couple election cycles in specific states, but by and large, I think we’re still at a deficit in terms of trifectas—state houses that are controlled by one party. I think that Republicans are rounding close to 30 trifectas and Democrats do not have 20 yet.

Wow, stunning numbers and disappointing, I guess I would say, to hear that based on your analysis, Democrats have not come up with a comprehensive strategy to disrupt those gains being made by Republicans at the state level. Let’s talk about the optimism coming into this year. There was a lot of optimism around the Democrats winning back the House, and then we started to see Donald Trump putting pressure on state legislators to redraw these maps—like you said, kind of mid-census to redraw—and states doing it. Texas gained three congressional seats right now, Florida has gained two, and Arizona gained one seat. Given how Republicans have responded to Donald Trump’s directive to redraw their maps, and given what we’ve seen in Virginia when a Democratic state like Virginia tried to do that and what happened at the court level, are you still optimistic that going into these midterms, November of this year, Democrats are going to win back the House?

That’s a great question. I don’t have my crystal ball handy, but I will say I do want to underscore two things. One, you mentioned a very important word: strategy. And I think it’s important for us to talk about strategy in part because we have seen the pendulum swing back in the opposite direction. In 2018, President Trump’s first midterm election, state houses across the country saw record numbers of Democrats elected. I’m sitting here in Georgia and Atlanta, and I want to say we won 14 new seats in the lower house of our state legislature, and I think it was for a net gain of 11 after losing a couple of incumbents. That was a big jump for Georgia, and I do think there was enthusiasm, expectation, fundraising, etc. What hasn’t continued, to the point you make, Reva, is strategically figuring out how to continue those sorts of gains. So since the 2018 race, I would say every two years in our legislative cycle in this state in particular, we look at picking up one to three new House Democratic seats. Not nearly enough to pick up the 10 that would give Georgia Democrats control of the lower house and the ability to have a meaningful say in reapportionment going forward. So, I do want to acknowledge that when folks get excited when they see what they don’t like at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or from Congress, we do see an uptick in younger voters, sometimes overlooked voters, and minority voters, etc. And I do think it’s redounded to the benefit of progressives in state houses, but it is not sustained because there is not a strategy.

The second thing I would just mention is to say it’s difficult to hold on to some of those gains in the absence of a leader who really represents the entire party, the progressive party, the Democratic party, right? We’ve got folks like Governor Gavin Newsom who have rallied in his state and led the charge to pick up additional seats for Democrats, but you have some folks in the Democratic party speaking against that, right? You’ve got other Democratically-led states that are figuring out how to do the exact same thing: Illinois, Virginia (which obviously is undergoing another court challenge), Maryland, etc. But I think part of what is also at issue here is that strategy typically is better led or more effective when you’ve got a single mouthpiece, a single voice saying, “Hey, here’s what we’re going to do in order to counter what the single mouthpiece of Donald Trump is encouraging governors and state legislators across the country to do.”

Okay, Howard, hold on. You’re talking about a single voice and Democrats needing a single leader. When we look across the field, all the faces, all the names we know who are jockeying for 2028, who’s your favorite? Who’s that guy or woman that can be that single voice to rally the troops and have us move forward with the kind of strategy you’re talking about?

Yeah, regardless of what I think, I think it’s going to be very difficult to land on that voice until we start to get through these primaries. I think that we’ve had some leadership that’s been shown. Again, I give Governor Newsom some credit. I think Governor Spanberger deserves some credit, and others, you know, Hakeem Jeffries in New York there. I think there are others who’ve spoken up. But I do think whether or not you have a singular voice, it would be nice to have a singular playbook, something along the lines or akin to that Project 2025 that we heard so much about just two years ago. And I think that’s part of where you mentioned strategy—I think that’s part of what we’ve got to invest in going forward.

But wait a minute, I know we are not going to as a country or as a party turn to the ’28 election until after the November elections, but we also know anybody that’s going to be a serious contender in ’28 is already laying the foundation and the groundwork now. They’re not going to just pop out of nowhere. And you look at numbers, you look at polls, you know what’s happening around the states, across the country, I should say, with Democratic voters. Where is the momentum right now? You mentioned Gavin Newsom. I’m actually in Los Angeles myself, so I feel some of the momentum you’re talking about around Newsom. He’s doing some things at the state level that are kind of irritating our Democratically-led state legislature as he tries to position himself for a nationwide campaign. But where is the momentum on the ground with Democrats?

Yeah, I think the momentum is firmly against the Trump-led and Trump-aligned Congress.

You’re kind of dodging my question, Howard. I want to keep pressing you on this.

Because I don’t know that I can pinpoint it from one direction. I think Governor Spanberger deserves a ton of credit for muscling through. I was in DC watching those commercials on television, watching Republicans go on television and campaign against reapportionment or against the Democrats’ plan, for instance, and I think that was a big win for her. I think, you know, the mayor of New York City deserves a lot of credit for shining a light on a lot of the issues that now dawn the title of affordability, which we hadn’t really given a name to before he came along from out of nowhere and won the mayorship of the largest city in the country. So, it’s hard to say where it comes from or where it nets out. I do think we have to have some degree of consensus about what is in bounds. The Democratic Party—and I could talk about this all day long, so I’ll try to keep this part brief—is a little different structurally than the Republican party. It is a constellation of very sophisticated and individualistic initiatives, goals, and policy preferences that all are sort of gathered under a single tent. And what ends up happening oftentimes, Reva, is because you’ve got these folks who are used to fending for themselves, we go in a bunch of different directions. We’re not always rowing in one direction. I think that the Republican party does have the structural benefit of being a bit more of a command-and-control party, and being able to say, “Hey, we believe this, but we’re only going to legislate that.” And I think that Democrats today won’t allow a national leader to believe and to pay lip service to one thing like I think Donald Trump does—you know, no new wars, bringing down the cost of living, all sorts of promises that were made on the 2024 campaign trail and then pivot completely less than a year later and not hold them to account. I remember when Barack Obama took office in ’09 and I remember all the various parts of his very broad political coalition really tugging on his coat-strings when it was time to govern. And I just think that that’s a structural challenge that could be a benefit, but it is something we have to acknowledge when we get into kind of these quandaries.

Yes, I hear you and you’re right. We are different structurally than the Republican party, but we are at a crisis in this country. Our democracy is on the line. And can we afford to be that party that you just described? Because that party, with the way we are watching what the Republicans are doing, that’s going to far outlive Donald Trump. I mean, today you probably saw the headline: a billion-plus dollars being set aside for those people who have quote-unquote “suffered some kind of weaponization of the government,” basically a redistribution of wealth from the US government, which most Republicans on any given day say they are against. But let’s give a billion-plus dollars to a bunch of his allies who are whining about being mistreated when they’re already in the most privileged positions in this country. So what they are doing, being the Republicans under Donald Trump, is cementing systems in place in this country that are going to last for decades, that are going to benefit Republicans—let’s be clear, mostly white folks in this country—and work to the detriment of black and brown people. So, can the Democrats continue to be that party you just described?

No, we can’t. We can’t, and I think we’re going to have to elevate our game. We’re going to have to acknowledge that the goalposts continue to move. One of the things that does give me a modicum of confidence and even optimism is that we’ve seen increasingly—and I’ve watched a couple of your interviews recently where you feature some of these folks—candidates of color who have been able to pull together political coalitions and win districts and jurisdictions that they were not the majority of, right? I think that we have celebrated over time and historically black and brown candidates who can win districts that are not a majority black and brown. I think that’s going to have to be one of the tools in the progressive toolkit that we’re going to have to figure out how to rely upon at a much higher level than we did before. No longer expecting that we can hold on to the seats that are made for black representation or brown representation, but now having to figure out how to put together not only a political coalition, but also a governing coalition to stay in those seats. One of the things that has also been super alarming—we’re not even talking about it, and it sort of goes in the face or undercuts a little bit of my optimism—is that we’ve lost a tremendous number of black mayors of major American cities since Donald Trump took office in 2025. I would say rounding about a dozen black mayors who were made one-term mayors. Even though the president wasn’t calling them out directly, wasn’t necessarily sending the National Guard to their cities, somehow something in the water is changing. And the point I’m making ultimately is that the playbook is going to have to change. I think the one silver lining that I take from the jurisprudence and these outcomes that are being handed down from these higher courts is that now we at least know the playing field. We know that, like many times before over decades and centuries, the odds and the deck will be stacked against us, and we’re going to figure out how to do what our forebears have done so many times before to try to level the playing field. And to your point, it will not come overnight. You’re 100% right.

Yeah, let’s talk about North Carolina. It’s another flashpoint right now. They just passed new maps in North Carolina. It’s a perfect example of the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana versus Klay in action. The state is getting more competitive, more diverse, more urban. You’d think that would help Democrats, but that’s not what we’re seeing.

To me, this feels like the last gasps of Republican power, though. North Carolina is an interesting state because it does have Democrats elected to statewide constitutional posts, but it doesn’t have Democratic control in the general assembly. So, even the state’s legislative makeup is an anomaly unto itself, right? The majority of folks who are voting at the top of the ticket are Democratic, but then when you look at the lines and the way they’re drawn, it’s very clear that gerrymandering is at play. You’re entirely right. I think this is another one of those examples where you’ve also got to hope and pray that Republicans overplay their hands. I think a lot of conservatives, particularly at the congressional level, are going to be quiet about this because they know where their bread is buttered. They know who the loudest mouthpiece is in national politics. We’ve seen President Trump go after his enemies and work against incumbent members of Congress and knock them out of Congress. But what I will say is that some of those moderate Republicans, some of those moderate policymakers, are also on the chopping block. The more you play with those lines and the more you try to break up that minority voting power, those blocks, the more you’ve got to move those oftentimes progressive voters into districts that used to be a soft seat for a Republican incumbent, that used to be an easy win. Some of those 70/30 districts get closer to 60/40 or 55/45, and I think that’s when you have an opportunity to meaningfully break through. I think also acknowledging that we will have reapportionment in four years after the 2030 census—that’s what we should be aiming at strategically, as opposed to only thinking about the 2026 midterms, which are obviously very important. I still believe, to answer your earlier question, that Democrats will find a way to win the House back, and then we’ll see what divided government does for the last two years of the Trump term. But I do think we’ve also got to be playing for that slightly longer game, and I think that’s what Republicans have done as it relates to state legislatures and census tracks over the last, let’s call it, at least two decades.

So, you talked about litigation not being the remedy for what we’re seeing happening with the redistricting and the gerrymandering because the courts are stacked against us, and the Supreme Court, we know, is not friendly to Democrats on this issue. They are leading the charge in some ways, definitely from a legal standpoint, in terms of what we’re seeing with the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. So, if we’re not going to have success in the courts, what can we expect to happen when folks do take to the streets, and what else can they do? You know, we talked about Alabama, all these folks gathering at the Edmund Pettis Bridge over the weekend and folks going into Alabama—what else should folks be doing in this moment?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I want to be clear: I don’t think we should back away from legal action. I think that there are procedural issues with some of the actions that have been taken, and some of them will be walked back. So I do think all the groups on the front lines that are filing briefs and filing cases against what we’ve seen just over the last two weeks, I think that should continue. But I do think we need to also pivot to organizing. I think being able to deliver tens of thousands of voters, of volunteers, of donors who show up for rallies or show up in the cradles of the civil rights movement is key. We have to make sure those people are also prepared to get involved not just in November in general elections, but also picking the very strongest candidates in these primary elections so that we have candidates who can reach across the aisle, who can get disaffected Republicans and independents to go along with the broader Democratic and progressive majority. I think there’s a tremendous array of activities for us to be involved in, and I think protesting certainly remains a part of that. I think practicing law and opposing these changes wherever we possibly can is part of it, but I think that at the end of the day, the only poll that really matters is the one that happens at the ballot box. And if we can win in ’26, it will certainly open the doors wider for us having success in successive elections as we get ready for the next census.

Assuming we do win the House, and some folks say there’s even a chance we could win the Senate, what do you think the Democrats really have the stomach to get done? I was at a fundraiser recently for a US senator—I won’t mention his name—but the question came up about the court, the Supreme Court, and Supreme Court reform. And the specific question from this woman in the audience was, “If you know you are reelected, will you vote to expand the Supreme Court?” Because right now, with the 6-3 majority that’s on the Supreme Court, even if we win back the House, even if we win back the Senate, there’s still the Supreme Court, which is so inherently biased at this point towards Donald Trump, towards Republicans. And many people in the Democratic party feel like the only way we can address that is by expanding the court, giving it more numbers, giving a president—hopefully a Democratic president that gets elected—an opportunity to appoint more members to that court to make it more balanced, more fair. The senator’s response was very timid, tepid, non-committal, basically saying, “Well, yeah, the courts need some reform, blah blah blah,” but not a firm, “You’re right, the court is a part of the problem and we have to address this from the legislative standpoint.” We have to address the executive office and the judicial branch of our government. Are Democrats, even if we win, going to have the stomach to do what’s necessary to inject some fairness back into this system?

Yeah, Reva, I want to answer your question honestly. I want to preserve the spirit of optimism that we’re riding on right now, but I feel the same way you do. I feel like there is a lot of timidness around some of these very large swings at remaking our democracy. I will say this, you know, packing the courts was a proposal that we heard quite a bit in 2024, and we were asking whether or not—I think if we had gotten to a contest to choose our nominee, this would have absolutely been an issue. It would have been a litmus test for a lot of Democrats. But because we didn’t have a real contest, I don’t think this issue got the hearing it deserves. But I’ll return us to the point you made earlier, which is strategy. I feel like we are very worked up about the courts because President Trump has this 6-3 majority that he put in place. I heard very few whispers, very few discussions about what President Obama or even President Biden should do in order to make sure that current members of the court who would be exiting at some point—acknowledging that it’s a lifetime appointment—would be replaced by jurists that we could trust to uphold the expectations, the traditions, the norms of the court that we’ve come to expect over all these years, right? So, it’s easy right now to say, “Will you pack the court?” And unfortunately, I am not confident that we’re going to return a Senate that’s going to say overwhelmingly that we will pack the courts. I agree with you and I worry about that. But I think if we are concerned about courts, we can’t just start at the Supreme Court. We have to look at these federal courts, we have to look at these state supreme courts. And those, unfortunately, are just not the sexiest campaigns, the sexiest contests. And it’s why we sometimes get outpointed, and when we look up, there is this whole pipeline of conservative jurists who are ready to do President Trump’s bidding or his will on some of these issues. I think that that is, again, backing away a little bit and saying strategically: what do we have to have, when are these opportunities going to present themselves, and what can we do today to be prepared for them when they come?

Yeah, and the courts are just one example. I mean, obviously the Republicans have taken a huge swing to swing this country to the right, to dismantle so many systems that have been in place. We haven’t even talked about the attacks on DEI, the attacks on universities, the attacks on health care, SNAP benefits—I mean, the list just goes on and on. The attacks, basically, are on working-class people and the safety net that supports people who live in poverty or near poverty in this country. And the Republicans have been just unapologetic about remaking the country in a way that benefits privilege, that benefits the 1%. Conversations used to be about millionaires, now it’s about billionaires and trillionaires. And I just think as Democrats, we all should be putting pressure on each other to ensure that when Democrats do take back the House—and hopefully they will—that we’re going to do something with that vote, with that majority. We can’t just continue to be the party that wants everything to be bipartisan and play by the old rule book, because the old rule book has been torn up, stepped on, driven on, thrown out the window, and we have to just come to that reality.

So, I’m telling voters, yes, vote like your life depends on it, but also hold the folks you’re voting for accountable and ask them the tough questions—the big, bold questions about what they are willing to do to address all of these systemic changes that we have seen just in this brief year and a half, almost two years of this presidency. I mean, the notion that the January 6th attackers, the rioters, would, one, be pardoned, and two, now have access potentially to hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars just has to be sickening to everyone, and particularly anyone that’s going into elected office in terms of how you must respond in this moment. A lot going on. I want to thank you, Howard, for the work that you do continuously. Thank you for keeping us on point, keeping us abreast of what’s happening particularly in the South, because that’s where there’s such a large concentration and growing population of black and Latino voters. I guess some of us thought, and I remember some thought leaders saying, black folks move to the South because we can have this concentrated power, and Republicans are saying, “Oh no no no, not so fast, you can move here but you’re not going to have power.” So, we really depend on folks like you to help us stay abreast and on top of these issues so that we can respond in real time. Again, thank you so much, Howard, for joining me. That’s been the special report, and stay with me. Continue to follow me on all things social, share this show with folks that you know who say politics don’t matter, because we know politics matters all day, every day.