By Alec Appelbaum for Flippable.org
Shortly after Leanne Krueger-Braneky was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 2015, she witnessed something astonishing.
“A Republican lawmaker invited a white supremacist to testify on making English the official state language,” Leanne says. “A Latina legislator objected and [the Republican lawmaker] turned off her microphone.”
She soon realized that it wasn’t just fellow legislators who were being silenced by a red state government. Thanks to unfair redistricting that lets Republicans stay in power, Democrats in Pennsylvania can’t seem to make their voices heard — even when major issues like water pollution and climate change are at stake.
Leanne’s out to change that. She’s trying to get Pennsylvania to join America’s Pledge, the voluntary association of states, cities, universities, and businesses working together to combat global warming.
It’s a long shot, and Leanne knows it: the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania state legislature is unlikely to sign the pledge. But pursuing this important goal gives Leanne a chance to build public excitement, so she can inspire more progressives to get involved in state politics.
More Democratic voters will eventually lead to a bluer state government — and that will bring America’s Pledge, more renewable energy, and a cleaner environment within reach for Pennsylvanians.
Being a Democrat in this red state legislature can be hard work, with endless strategizing, compromising, and listening. But caucusing with Pennsylvania’s voters has actually deepened this progressive legislator’s faith in the system. As Leanne says, “Things will get better because they have to.”
A microcosm of national politics
At first sight, Leanne looks like an ordinary neighbor in a suburban coffee shop. Wearing a denim skirt, sleeveless white top, and angular glasses, she’s checking her email and looking concerned. We’ve met at a coffee shop in suburban Philadelphia, a few blocks south of Swarthmore College, where the barista wears a baggy black t-shirt and flyers promote acoustic evenings.
“All the same bad things that happen in DC also happen in Harrisburg,” Leanne says at one point in our meeting, “but people don’t know it.”
Harrisburg is Pennsylvania’s state capital, a city of roughly 50,000 people about a two-hour drive west of these lattes and acoustic evenings. Today, Leanne is waiting for a text calling her back to Harrisburg for a vote. As she explains to me, when the House is on call, the Speaker of the General Assembly can summon her from wherever she is back to the Capital with only six hours of notice.
What exactly does a state legislator do? Leanne takes some time to explain.
“I read analyses for every committee that I’m on, looking for updates on bad things I need to be defensive on,” Leanne said in an earlier interview. She relies on staff and Capitol gossip to sniff out what might lurk within bills. Some bills, she says, grant leeway to oil and gas companies to drill without adequately protecting schools or wells.
She also works closely with her colleagues in both parties to keep the government up and running. In 2015, the budget ended up nine months late. “Woman legislators would talk in the bathroom,” Leanne said, and these negotiations eventually led to a workable budget.
Back in her home district — which voted for Hillary in 2016, but sent Republicans to the statehouse for decades — she meets with constituents and does a lot of door-knocking. This kind of personal contact, she says, helps people believe that lawmakers can speak for them.
On a typical day this past July, she tried to defend Medicaid from what she called a “sneak attack” in the human services code. She returned to Swarthmore the next day, met with a fire chief, and organized a press call.
Three years ago, she ran for office because she sensed that her community’s concerns — about job growth and clean air — had too little purchase in state politics. As a mom, she felt the deep urgency of keeping fracking and other forms of oil and gas pollution out of Pennsylvania. Her career in the nonprofit sector, for organizations that support local business and good environmental policy, had prepared her to work on the issues that matter most to constituents.
Now she’s taking on one of the biggest challenges of her career: getting the deep-red state legislature to tackle climate change.
On playing the long game
America’s Pledge (originally the Climate Alliance) came together in the days after Donald Trump moved to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, which all but two other United Nations members had embraced as a framework for growing their economies without burning dangerous amounts of the fossil fuels that cause climate change.
When Leanne proposed in July that Pennsylvania join nine other states as a signatory on America’s Pledge, she knew this would almost certainly not happen. “As of last count I had 39 cosponsors,” she told me then, referring to other legislators who put their names on a proposed bill. Given that the Pennsylvania state legislature has 253 lawmakers — and two-thirds of them are Republicans — the odds that her bill will come up for a vote are slim.
But for Leanne, sponsoring this bill isn’t about quick results. It’s about getting the public’s attention — and building public momentum.
“We are using it to build popular support,” she says, “which is more important than legislative support.”
Leanne feels that she’s in a good position to mount this offensive — and push for a greener Pennsylvania.
“I am one of a very small handful of legislators who will actively oppose bad environmental policy,” she says, “and I look forward to the day when we have numbers to promote good environmental policy.”
By focusing on an issue that matters so much to Pennsylvanians, she’s honoring voters’ values and inviting them into the conversation. She hopes that this will inspire more Democrats to vote in state elections.
The longer-term goal? To bring more Democrats into the state legislature. By Leanne’s math, being one of 82 Democrats in a 203-member body severely limits impact on debate. But adding 10 more Democrats could tip debates to a place where her caucus and the Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, can compel some back and forth.
By supporting bills like America’s Pledge, Leanne shows voters that she cares, she’s listening, and she’s doing everything possible to get the whole body listening as well.
Once more Democrats are in office, they can tackle the deepest problem of all: undoing the gerrymandering that gives the GOP an unfair advantage in state elections.
“The long game,” Leanne says, “is flipping the House and getting more representative district lines drawn.”
And in the meantime, she’ll keep up the good fight on issues large and small. Today, that means voting No on a bill that would limit oversight of fracking. Tomorrow and every day, it means speaking up for Pennsylvanians — and giving the people a full voice in their government.
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