ICYMI — A new report in The Washington Post details how the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is leading an unprecedented campaign to flip state legislatures from red to blue in the crucial 2020 redistricting cycle.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which focuses on statehouse elections, has set a $50 million spending goal for 2020 — five times more than the group spent before the last round of redistricting in 2010. The group plans to target statehouses in Texas, North Carolina and several battleground states.
With the decennial redistricting process just around the corner, state races this cycle will have an outsized impact on governance that will reverberate for years. Republicans’ success in 2010 helped the party gerrymander control at the state and national levels. Democrats are vowing to prevent Republicans from rigging another decade of elections.
“We have a generational opportunity to flip state legislatures from red to blue,” said Jessica Post, the [DLCC’s] president. “We’ve seen this gridlock in Washington, that hopefully will not continue, but if it does . . . we want progress. We’ve got to see it happen in the states.”
The DLCC begins 2020 having flipped 10 chambers since President Donald Trump’s election, most recently winning control of Virginia’s General Assembly for the first time in two decades in November. The committee is working to replicate that successful strategy in a wide array of target states next year.
By replicating the DLCC’s Virginia strategy, Post said, the group plans to target vulnerable GOP incumbents with negative advertisements months before the election, including linking some of them to Trump. The DLLC [sic] expects national Democratic super PACs — which usually focus opposition research efforts on presidential or congressional candidates — to also be engaged on closely monitoring vulnerable GOP state legislators next year.
Republicans, after struggling with fundraising and suffering devastating losses this year, are starting to sound the alarm, although their efforts have been hindered by scandal and infighting at the Republican State Leadership Committee.
“The biggest lesson for Republicans is don’t underestimate the task that is ahead of you in 2020,” said Matt Moran, the former chief of staff to Virginia’s outgoing Republican House speaker, Kirk Cox. “Everybody thinks their state is different, and their state is unique, but the reality is the environment and the money is on [Democrats’] side right now.”
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