Nevada primaries: Democrats are playing defense in two competitive House races

Republicans are hoping to flip two seats currently held by Susie Lee and Steven Horsford.

Republicans are eyeing Nevada’s primaries on June 9 for opportunities to unseat a pair of Democrats facing tough reelection campaigns.

There aren’t any statewide positions up for grabs this election cycle in Nevada. But a couple of House races could prove competitive: Republicans are targeting the historically swingy District 3, as well as District 4, one of Nevada’s largest congressional districts. The incumbent Democrats, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford, first have to win primaries against a handful of challengers. But they have also both received funding from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Frontline Program, which aims to help vulnerable candidates defend their seats — now and in the general election, assuming they win their primaries.

Nevada has shifted almost entirely to mail-in voting in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus, though it will still have some in-person polling locations. That makes turnout difficult to predict, but more Nevada voters have already cast their ballots in this year’s primaries than they did in 2016.

Roughly 19 percent of active registered voters submitted their ballots as of Friday, either through mail-in voting or in-person early voting, according to data from the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office.

Nevada has voted blue in three of the last four presidential elections, but it’s a battleground state this year. Just a few months ago, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders captured a sweeping victory in the state’s Democratic presidential presidential primary, buttressed in part by the state’s many Latino voters. Those voters could be key to keeping the state blue, but they’re up against an aging, increasingly conservative population.

Nevada polls close at 7 pm PT. Vox will have live results provided by Decision Desk. Here’s what you need to know about the state’s races.

District 3

Lee, a first-term member of Congress, has managed to amass a sizable pot of $2 million in campaign contributions — well above what her three major GOP rivals have raised. But while she is in a position of relative financial strength, her district, which encompasses the area south of Las Vegas, could still turn red in 2020. And on the eve of the primaries, she has come under fire for pushing the Trump administration to offer small business loans to the gaming industry as part of its coronavirus relief efforts — a measure that benefited her husband’s business.

The Daily Beast reported Monday that her husband, who owns a casino that incurred significant losses as businesses were forced to shut down, consequently received two federally backed small business loans amounting to a total of $5.6 million. A spokesperson for Lee, however, told the Daily Beast that she had “no influence over the decision to file the application [for the loans], and she had no influence over whether or not that application was approved or denied.”

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Susie Lee is one of two incumbent Democrats in Nevada facing a primary challenge from Republicans.

Democrats have held the district since 2016, when Lee’s predecessor and now Nevada’s junior US Sen. Jacky Rosen narrowly won, flipping the district for the first time in six years. Lee, a former nonprofit manager in Las Vegas, managed to continue that winning streak in 2018, bolstered by a blue wave in the midterms.

But Lee doesn’t have much of an edge this year in terms of Democratic voter registrations, which are just 3 percent above GOP registrations. And President Donald Trump narrowly won the district in 2016, suggesting that voters’ preferences don’t strictly align with a particular party.

She is also facing two primary challenges, one from Dennis Sullivan, a US Navy veteran and newcomer to politics who has criticized her education policy, and the other from Tiffany Ann Watson, a self-described “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” Democrat who has advocated against a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

The GOP field is more crowded with six candidates: Brian Nadell, a professional poker player; Corwin Newberry, who worked in the apparel industry for decades; Mindy Robinson, a reality television star; Dan Rodimer, a former professional wrestler; Dan Schwartz, the former Nevada state treasurer; and Victor Willert, a former school principal.

Rodimer, who was endorsed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Schwartz are leading the pack, having each raised more than $600,000 in campaign funds. Rodimer has sought to paint Schwartz as a liberal in disguise, even though Schwartz says he supports Trump and Second Amendment rights and opposes federal funding for abortions.

District 4

To keep his seat in District 4, Horsford will have to fend off five primary challengers, some of whom called on him to drop out of the race after he admitted to having a prolonged extramarital affair with a former intern for then-Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. Republicans are hoping that the infighting among Democrats will clear the way for them to recapture the seat.

Horsford, a former state senator and executive at the Culinary Workers Union, the largest union in the state, has not indicated any intention to drop out of the race. Some of his Democratic opponents have said that the affair is a personal matter that does not necessarily impact his ability to serve voters. But others — including Gabrielle “Brie” D’Ayr, a US Navy veteran and former candidate for the Nevada State Assembly — have suggested that it is disqualifying.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Steven Horsford, at the US Capitol on March 27.

Eight Republicans are competing to unseat him: Rosalie Bingham, an investor and entrepreneur; Leo Blundo, a restaurant owner and the current Nye County commissioner; Jim Marchant, a former Nevada assemblyman; Charles Navarro, a US Navy veteran; Sam Peters, an Air Force veteran who started his own insurance business; Randi Reed, who works in commercial real estate; Lisa Song Sutton, a small business owner and former Miss Nevada; and Rebecca Wood, another small business owner. No clear frontrunner has emerged.

It’s not the first time that District 4’s representative has been mired in scandal. Ruben Kihuen, who held the seat from 2017 to 2019, decided not to run for reelection amid sexual misconduct allegations brought by a woman staffer on his campaign. Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had asked him to resign.

Reid’s former intern, Gabriela Linder, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Horsford had “offered her financial support, introduced her to political connections and filmed a segment for her young son’s YouTube show using his congressional staff.” She has also spoken about the affair on Twitter and the podcast Mistress for Congress. In the podcast, she claims that the affair began in 2009 and lasted more than a decade.

Horsford has not contested her claims.

“It is true that I had a previous relationship outside of my marriage, over the course of several years,” he told the Review-Journal. “I’m deeply sorry to all of those who have been impacted by this very poor decision, most importantly my wife and family. Out of concern for my family during this challenging time, I ask that our privacy is respected.”

District 4 spans North Las Vegas as well as large swaths of rural land. Horsford first held the seat from 2013 to 2015, losing it to a Republican before reclaiming it again in 2018.

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5 races to watch in Tuesday’s West Virginia election

Democrats are long shots in the increasingly red state, but they aren’t entirely shut out of power.

Once upon a time, West Virginia was a Democratic stronghold. It was one of just a few states that preferred President Jimmy Carter over challenger Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, and the state had two Democratic senators as recently as 2015.

But those days are long gone.

On Tuesday, Democrats are set to choose which of their candidates will try to retake two positions currently held by Republicans: the governor’s mansion, and one of the state’s US Senate seats. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice — who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 2017, at a time when Democrats in most of the country were gearing up for major electoral victories in the next midterm election — will face a primary of his own.

Whichever Democrat wins the Senate primary will face a steep uphill battle to unseat Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito this fall. President Donald Trump crushed Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 40 points in 2016. It is a testament to the political skill of Sen. Joe Manchin, a right-leaning Democrat who has held statewide office for nearly two decades and is not up for reelection this year, that his political career remains alive even as his state transforms into one of the reddest in the nation.

Tuesday’s West Virginia primary won’t just reveal much about how Democrats hope to weather the challenges facing them in the Mountain State, however. It will also reshape the state’s highest court.

Three of the state’s five state Supreme Court seats are up for grabs

Judicial elections are always a fraught enterprise. Most voters who aren’t practicing attorneys know little about the judges in their state. And judges are supposed to follow the law without partisan favor, rather than being loyal to the constituencies that got them their job.

In West Virginia, state Supreme Court elections are especially worrisome. In 2004, coal baron Don Blankenship essentially bought a seat on the state Supreme Court for $3 million. Blankenship spent that much to elect his preferred candidate to the state’s highest court, after which the justice went on to strike down a $50 million verdict against Blankenship’s company. (The US Supreme Court later ruled that the justice should have recused himself, effectively requiring the state Supreme Court to rehear the case.)

Moreover, in 2016 the state made its judicial races “nonpartisan.” In practice, that doesn’t mean that political parties are indifferent about who wins this election. It simply means that the ballot will not inform voters which party each candidate prefers.

But because these races are nominally nonpartisan, there is no primary election to choose each party’s candidate. The winners of Tuesday’s races will join the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, the state’s highest court. It is unusual for so many seats to be up for grabs at once, but it’s the result of a scandal that forced three justices to resign in 2018 (the details of this scandal, which include a $32,000 couch, can be found here).

The state’s Republican Party endorsed three candidates: incumbent Justice Tim Armstead, Fifth Judicial Circuit Judge Lora Dyer, and Putnam County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kris Raynes. The Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect these candidates. Meanwhile, a rival group called ReSet West Virginia has spent similar sums of money supporting a different ticket of candidates: incumbent Justice John Hutchison, former Justice Richard Neely, and 13th Judicial Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit.

Both parties will pick gubernatorial nominees

Incumbent Gov. Jim Justice, a billionaire former Democrat who switched to the GOP after he took office, attracted two reasonably serious challengers in the state’s Republican primary. But neither one seems to have caught fire. A recent poll showed Justice winning his primary with over 53 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile, the Democratic primary contest resembles, at least on the surface, the cultural divide between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the top two contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kanawha County Commissioner Ben Salango, whom Manchin endorsed, plays the role of the establishment favorite. Salango’s strongest opponent, meanwhile, is community organizer Stephen Smith.

A recent poll showed Salango winning with just over 30 percent of the vote, while Smith received a little more than 27 percent support. The poll also found more than a quarter of the electorate undecided, with three long-shot candidates winning about 14 percent of the vote in total.

Democrats will pick a US Senate candidate

The Democratic primary also features a three-way race between former state Sen. Richard Ojeda, former South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb, and activist Paula Jean Swearengin for the party’s US Senate nomination.

Whoever prevails, however, is likely to face a very difficult race. Capito, the incumbent Republican, clobbered her Democratic opponent by nearly 28 points in 2014.

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The 6 most competitive primaries in Georgia, briefly explained

Amanda Northrop/Vox

A lot of candidates are running in primaries for the US Senate and House.

Some Republicans in Georgia are warning that 2020 is the year the longtime red state could turn blue.

“Here’s the reality: The state of Georgia is in play,” Sen. David Perdue (R) warned Republican activists on a “Women for Trump” call obtained by CNN in late April. “The Democrats have made it that way.” Perdue should know; he’s up for reelection in a Senate race that is looking more competitive by the week.

Perdue isn’t getting primaried, but Tuesday’s elections will decide which Democrat challenges him in the fall. There won’t be any action in Georgia’s other, highly watched Senate special election — that race will go down to the wire with an all-party primary on November 3. But in addition to the Senate race, there are four other interesting US House primaries playing out around the state.

Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold, but Democrats made gains in 2018 by flipping the Sixth Congressional District, which encompasses Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and with Democrat Stacey Abrams coming within 1.4 percent of winning the governor’s race. And Georgia is a desirable target for Democrats in 2020. Not only does it have a strong African American voting bloc and moderate suburban white voters who are trending more Democratic, it also has two Senate races up for grabs this year and a smaller, less expensive media market than states like Florida and Texas.

Democrats will still have to spend and organize heavily to make the state truly competitive in the fall, but they could get a lot of bang for their buck in the process. Georgia polls close by 8 pm ET. Shortly after, Vox will have live results provided by Decision Desk. Here’s what you need to know about each of the state’s races.

Georgia US Senate race

Who’s the Republican? Sen. David Perdue, a former CEO of companies including Reebok and Dollar General. Perdue is a conservative ally of President Donald Trump and is running unopposed.

Who are the Democrats? Former congressional candidate and media executive Jon Ossoff, former Columbus, Georgia, Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, and 2018 candidate for lieutenant governor Sarah Riggs Amico. Other candidates include civil rights attorney Maya Dillard Smith, Tricia Carpenter McCracken, James Knox, and Marckeith DeJesus. Ossoff has been leading Democratic fundraising and at least one primary poll, but he’ll still have to clear 50 percent of the vote in order to avoid an August 11 runoff.

What are the odds? Cook Political Report rates this race Lean Republican.

What’s the state of play? Out of the two Senate races in Georgia, Perdue’s was initially expected to be easier for Republicans to win. Perdue is a known entity with Georgia Republicans and largely votes in line with Trump’s agenda. But new polling has shown a tightening race with Ossoff as the hypothetical Democrat (a recent poll showed he’s leading the Democratic field).

An early May poll from a Republican firm showed Perdue leading Ossoff by just 2 points, following another Republican poll showing Perdue with a 6-point lead. These polls have caused Cook Political Report to recently move the race from Likely Republican to Lean Republican. The Democratic primary has yet to play out, and Perdue has the upper hand in terms of fundraising. But this is still a race to watch.

Georgia US Senate race special election

Who are the Republicans? Incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins are the top Republicans to watch, but others in the GOP field include Derrick Grayson, Annette Davis Jackson, A. Wayne Johnson, and Kandiss Taylor.

Who are the Democrats? The DSCC has backed Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Another Democratic candidate to watch is Matt Lieberman, the son of former Sen. Joe Lieberman. Other Democratic candidates include Deborah Jackson, Jamesia James, Tamara Johnson-Shealey, Joy Felicia Slade, Ed Tarver, and Richard Dien Winfield.

What are the odds? Cook Political Report rates this race Lean Republican.

What’s the state of play? There’s an extra dash of weirdness in this special Senate election to replace retired Sen. Johnny Isakson (R). Rather than a straightforward Republican-versus-Democrat primary contest on Tuesday, there will instead be an all-party primary on Election Day, November 3. The presence of Doug Collins, a Trump ally in the US House of Representatives, could be a massive thorn in Loeffler’s side. If no one wins a majority in November, the election could go to a January runoff where the top two candidates would compete.

Add to all of this that Loeffler is getting heavy scrutiny for earlier allegations that she dumped millions in stock and subsequently bought stock in a teleworking company after being briefed on the coronavirus in the Senate (Loeffler has said the stock sales were made without her knowledge). Loeffler is extremely wealthy and is so far self-funding her campaign. But with an uncertain economy that’s left millions out of work, that could be a liability as much as an asset. On the Democratic side, Warnock and Lieberman are seen as the top contenders, with Warnock reporting fundraising around $1.5 million in April, just a few months since he entered the race in January.

Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District

Who are the Republicans? Former Rep. Karen Handel, who lost to Lucy McBath in 2018, is back running for her old seat. Other Republicans include Mykel Lynn Barthelemy, Blake Harbin, Joe Profit, and Paulette Smith.

Who is the Democrat? Rep. Lucy McBath, who flipped the district blue in 2018. McBath was a gun control activist before running for Congress; her 17-year-old son was shot and killed in 2012.

What are the odds? Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up.

What’s the state of play? Handel is considered the Republican frontrunner to face McBath in the November election (McBath is running unopposed). The Sixth Congressional District was Georgia Democrats’ big win in 2018, and it signified how the politics of the suburbs around Atlanta are shifting in Democrats’ favor. Handel is fairly conservative; she’s a prominent anti-abortion advocate in the state and recently endorsed Collins’s Senate bid. McBath, meanwhile, has cut a fairly moderate profile and focused on issues including gun control and veterans’ issues in the House.

Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District

Who are the Republicans? With Rep. Randall Woodall retiring, a large number of Republicans are vying to replace him. Executive Lynne Homrich, state Sen. Renee Unterman, and businessman Mark Gonsalves are considered the most competitive. Others in the race include Lisa Babbage, Zachary Kennemore, Rich McCormick, and Eugene Yu.

Who are the Democrats? Carolyn Bourdeaux, the Democratic candidate who came within around 500 votes of beating Woodall in 2018, is running again, but she has some real competition in the primary field. Other Democratic candidates include state Sen. Zahra Karinshak, state Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero, former Fulton County Commission chair John Eaves, activist Nabilah Islam, and entrepreneur Rashid Malik.

What are the odds? Cook Political Report rates this race a toss-up.

What’s the state of play? Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall after his razor-thin victory in 2018, Woodall announced he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2020. That leaves this seat in Atlanta’s suburbs open, with a whole host of Democrats and Republicans running. Top candidates in both parties are women, showcasing the growing trend of women running for congressional seats. This election will be another test of Democratic strength in the Atlanta suburbs, which will be a key one for the party to win if it hopes to take back the White House and US Senate. Health care is likely to be a continued issue in this district, especially in a state that did not fully expand Medicaid.

Georgia’s Ninth Congressional District

Who are the Republicans? There’s a large field of nine Republicans for this open seat, including state Sen. John Wilkinson, former US Rep. Paul Broun, and state Reps. Kevin Tanner and Matt Gurtler. Other candidates include Michael Boggus, Andrew Clyde, Maria Strickland, Ethan Underwood, and Kellie Weeks.

Who are the Democrats? Business owner Brooke Siskin, veteran Devin Pandy, and retired minister Dan Wilson.

What are the odds? Cook hasn’t rated this district, but it’s considered safely Republican.

What’s the state of play? This is an open race, after Rep. Doug Collins announced he’d pursue the US Senate seat. The large, northeastern district is considered pretty safely Republican, so the primary battle on the GOP side will be the one to watch. Current state representatives and senators including Wilkinson, Tanner, and Gurtler, as well as Broun — who served in the US Congress from 2007 to 2015 — are likely the most competitive candidates. Many candidates are running on their records of trying to cut government spending and promising to limit the size of government in Washington, per a recent virtual debate hosted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. If there’s no clear winner, the race could go to a runoff election on August 11.

Georgia’s 14th Congressional District

Who are the Republicans? Former Georgia schools superintendent John Barge, state Rep. Kevin Cooke, attorney Clayton Fuller, former state Sen. Bill Hembree, neurosurgeon John Cowan, and businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Other candidates include Ben Bullock, Andy Gunther, and Matt Laughridge.

Who is the Democrat? Businessman Kevin Van Ausdal.

What are the odds? Cook hasn’t rated this district, but it’s considered safely Republican.

What’s the state of play? This is another open district with the surprise announcement from incumbent Rep. Tom Graves that he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2020. Much like the Ninth Congressional District, this one in northwestern Georgia is considered pretty conservative, and Democrats probably won’t spend a lot of effort on flipping it. The Republican primary is pretty competitive, with current and former state legislators running, along with businesspeople in the state. A few candidates were initially running for Georgia’s Sixth and Seventh District races but switched to this more Republican-friendly district after Graves announced his retirement. All candidates are fairly Trump-friendly and have promised to side with the president on policy issues; if there’s been a hot-button issue, it’s mostly been the question of candidates moving to the district to run there. Again, if there’s no clear winner, this race could head to a runoff election on August 11.

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Money Talks: They’ve been together for 15 years and are never getting married. It makes money complicated.

Christina Animashaun/Getty Images

The surprisingly complex finances of a couple who are choosing not to walk down the aisle.

Kim Steins and Geoff Marshall have been together for 15 years, but they don’t ever plan to get married. The pair met at the College of Idaho when Kim needed a car to report on a college newspaper assignment at a cemetery and Geoff offered to drive her.

Post-college, they continued to live in Idaho, but when Geoff was diagnosed with cancer, they moved in with Geoff’s parents in Oregon. He was in treatment for two and a half years and racked up close to $15,000 in medical debt. At the time, Kim was facing her own debt: $50,000 in student loans.

Now, Geoff is cancer-free, they live in an apartment in Washington, DC, and both work at nonprofits. Kim makes $85,000 a year; Geoff makes less than half that. In some ways, marriage would ease their finances — most couples find that it’s better to file joint taxes — but for them, there are plenty of reasons, both personal and financial, to never tie the knot. When does skipping the “I dos” make sense, and when is it actually financially beneficial for you and your partner to get hitched?

Kim: I realized I didn’t want to get married sometime during college, but I’m honestly not totally sure what started it for me. I was a girly-girl who had spent a significant amount of time in my childhood looking at wedding dresses and cakes, and thinking about color schemes. I love the aesthetics of weddings and formal events. But the whole institution seemed gross to me. And even when I was in college, my sister had already been married and divorced, I had other friends who were starting to divorce. It just seemed like a big hassle.

Geoff: I think for me the appeal of married life, or long-term relationships, or whatever, was the sense of companionship and friendship, so the idea of signing a legal contract to promise to like or love someone just felt weird and unnecessary.

Kim: I kind of miss the opportunity to wear a big fancy dress and have a bouquet. But outside of that, nope.

Geoff: There was a concern about not getting housewares as wedding gifts.

Kim: The biggest benefit to not being married, at this point, is that we can make big financial commitments without involving the other person at all. So, after Geoff’s medical stuff, he was in collections for a lot of bills and had really bad credit. But I had really good credit, so we didn’t have a problem getting an apartment. Now, he has really great credit too, so if I wanted to take on something riskier, it wouldn’t impact his credit even if it tanked mine.

Geoff: I joked this year about doing counterfactual taxes just to see how much the difference would be for us [if we were married], but then I decided I had other things I’d rather spend my time on.

Kim: We haven’t made living wills or advance directives, but it’s on the list, and we’re planning to do it soon. And we don’t share a health insurance plan because we both get it through our jobs.

Geoff: If she were making less then there would be a lot more stress about money generally, but because she’s making more I feel like it’s a bit easier for me to relax about spending. I still get twinges and I’m naturally going to sort of be hesitant to spend, but I think Kim earning more helps me feel less worried.

Kim: Happily, my organization works on recession response policy, so my job is pretty recession-proof. It’s been nice to have that security right now!

Geoff: The funding for my organization definitely became a lot more precarious, due to Covid-19. We changed our major annual event to an online one, that was a big deal. We did manage to get a loan through the Payroll Protection Program and that has helped secure things, at least for a while. But there’s still big question marks for the future.

Kim: We have some specific savings accounts for various big-ticket items. We have a travel account, a general savings account, a computer savings account, and a couple others. The main thing Geoff likes to spend money on is computer and home network stuff, so I think it’s comforting for him to have a dollar amount that we know we’ve set aside for this specific purpose.

I grew up poor, and I think that makes me a more impulsive spender. There were always clothes, toys, food, events, all that kind of stuff that I couldn’t have, and I always felt really limited. So for me, it’s about freedom. I never felt free to really express myself or live the life I wanted to live. But now I feel like I have a lot more real freedom.

Geoff: My family was pretty thrifty while I was growing up. Definitely middle class, but my mom especially liked to spend money on experiences instead of things. So we didn’t have a lot of the sort of middle-class status objects, but we had a nice house and got to take cool trips.

We didn’t have a honeymoon, obviously, but Kim and I have actually said that one of our New Year’s resolutions is to take more short trips because we found ourselves in the position where we would go back to Idaho to see Kim’s family and Oregon to see my family — and that ended up being like seven years. We’re not doing well at our goal. We’re certainly not going out and about to do that kind of stuff; it feels reckless and dangerous. We are saving money, though. And we’ve had a couple long weekends as well, as little “staycations.” It’s something. Especially with Covid, with us both working from home, there’s an especially big problem of blurring work life and personal life. So we take an extra day off here and there.

If you have a compelling story about how money comes into play in one of your relationships — whether with a partner, a friend, a sibling, a coworker — we want to hear about it! Email alanna.okun@vox.com and karen.turner@vox.com with a little about yourself.

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New York State Assembly Passes The Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Bill

Following the recent protests behind the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, many have been calling for a complete overhaul of policing practices across the country as well as defunding police departments. The New York State Assembly passed the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act.

The bill is named after Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014 after New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a chokehold during an arrest in Staten Island. Garner was allegedly selling individual cigarettes in front of a grocery store. In a video recording of the incident, Garner is seen crying out “I can’t breathe” almost a dozen times before passing out.

The video went viral on social media generating widespread national attention. Since then, politicians in the state have been working at pushing a bill to make use of the chokehold by law enforcement illegal in the state of New York.

The bill was overwhelmingly supported by New York Assembly members in a 140-3 vote. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already promised to sign the new legislation once it arrives at his desk.

“We’re going to make sure next time this happens in New York State, police officers will be going to jail,” said Assembly Member Walter Mosely, who sponsored the bill, to Patch. “They are here to enforce the law, not to be above it.”

In addition to the chokehold bill, several other pieces of legislation were also passed surrounding police reform including a bill that will create a civil penalty for the biased misuse of emergency workers including racially-biased 911 calls.

“New York should have passed this a long time ago,” Rev. Al Sharpton said at a Foley Square press conference last week according to Patch. “Maybe the police would not have thought they could have gotten away with it with Floyd if they saw the signal in New York.”

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