WASHINGTON — This morning, DLCC President Heather Williams joined Mika Brzezinski, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Jen Psaki on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss the outlook and importance of state legislative races for protecting democracy and fundamental freedoms. With just 5 days left until Election Day, the DLCC is dominating the airwaves to underscore that it’s mission-critical to vote all of the way down the ballot to prevent Project 2025 and MAGA extremism from taking hold across the states – regardless of who wins the White House.
To watch the full video click here.
Read the full transcript below:
Mika Brzezinski: Donald Trump’s impact on the Republican Party is being felt all the way down the ballot this cycle, in several state races across the country, Republicans are running candidates who are not only staunch election deniers, but were also in Washington, D.C. on January 6. Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2022 and lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro, is expected to win his re-election bid. And Republican Mark Finchem, an election denier who lost Arizona’s Secretary of State race two years ago, is also expected to be elected to the state Senate this November. This matters. Let’s bring in the President of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Heather Williams. Heather, tell us more about this, I would call it a wave of Republicans that are making sure they get in on every level.
DLCC President Heather Williams: It’s great to be here with you this morning. I think the biggest takeaway here is that the Republican antics that we are seeing Donald Trump peddle is happening in our own backyard, in the state legislative races and in the state legislatures. This brand of Republican is not just federal. It’s not just Trump. It is every member of this Republican Party running everywhere, and that’s why it’s so critically important that people are paying attention to what’s happening in their own backyard.
Rev. Al Sharpton: Heather, I spent yesterday in Las Vegas and other parts of Nevada, and there was a lot of emphasis on the down-ballot races, because people need to understand that even if Kamala Harris is elected president, a lot of the policies that she would try to get through and is committed to can, in many ways, be tackled or sandbagged by state office holders, and of course, people in the Congress or the Senate. Talk about how there must be this in the last few days left this dual strategy of telling people to vote at the top of the ticket, but you have to vote all the way down to empower the top of the ticket to have promises kept, that promises were being made during the campaign.
Heather Williams: That’s such a great point. Voting up and down the ballot is so critically important. And what we know about Project 2025, and again, this Republican agenda, is that it is not solely contingent on putting Donald Trump in the White House. We know that these really, really terrible policies, these unpopular policies, these policies that question women, that question our communities, are going to be run through the states. And that’s why it’s so important that as people are getting ready to vote, or maybe voting now, that they are filling out the entire ballot because both of it matters.
Jen Psaki: Thank you so much for being here and what you’re doing. I know you love all of the state legislative races, of course, but for people out there who are trying to focus on the races in the states that will determine the outcome in this presidential race, and what could happen after – tell us a little bit about, say, a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania, where are there states where the outcome could really matter, and who in the state legislative races and who controls the House or Senate?
Heather Williams: Jen, you hit it on the head. Pennsylvania, Michigan: nested battlegrounds [are] critically important on the path to the presidency, critically important for state legislative power. We won those majorities in 2022 and now we are here to defend them, and we need a coalition all across the state to ensure that the Republican MAGA agenda that Project 2025 is stopped in the states.
###
