Democrats Plan to Turn Statehouses Blue by Dishing Out Green

Hi there. Today, my colleague Nick Corasaniti, who covers voting and elections, joins us with an exclusive look at the big money pouring into small races. Then, I ask whether a surprising election result last night in Ohio tells us anything about November. — Jess Bidgood

They’re the races often listed near the bottom of the ballot, with what may be unfamiliar names running for state legislative seats. But these little-known contests are drawing big money.

Democrats are poised to flood the country’s most consequential state house and senate elections with a spending blitz that will add up to nine figures, showcasing the critical role state legislatures play in some of the nation’s most pressing issues — and building on a cash advantage over Republicans.

The States Project, a Democratic-aligned group, is set to announce a plan to spend $70 million in legislative battles in nine states, according to a memo I obtained, one of the largest investments in such races by a single outside Democratic-leaning group in recent history. They plan to send the funds directly to candidates and groups on the ground, who can decide how best to use it.

Combined with a previously announced $60 million target from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and $35 million from the aligned group Forward Majority, the total cash coming to help Democratic state legislative candidates will most likely exceed $160 million.

These investments in down-ballot races underscore the growing realization by national Democratic organizations that state legislative fights will probably have a greater influence on many of the issues affecting voters’ day-to-day lives than other contests this cycle — even the presidential race. And the torrent of cash from the left shows how Democrats have surpassed what had long been a Republican advantage in funding campaigns for state legislatures.

“In the last decade, whether it comes to the right to reproductive health care or policies to raise wages for full-time workers, state legislatures have done more good — and more harm — than any other level of government,” said Daniel Squadron, a former Democratic state senator from New York and co-founder of the States Project. “So that’s what’s on the ballot across these states this election.”

And, in often-underfunded local races that compete for a smaller sliver of votes, dollars usually go much further.

“You can fund a lot more elections and policy in state legislatures,” said Adam Pritzker, the other co-founder of the States Project and a Democratic donor (and a cousin to Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois). “And there’s plenty of money in the presidential election.”

A difference of a few seats

The States Project, which has emerged as a crucial weapon for Democrats focused solely on state legislatures, is targeting competitive races in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while also hoping to build a Democratic supermajority in Nevada. The organization is also aiming to break up Republican supermajorities in North Carolina and Kansas, arguing that it can often take just a seat or two to have a major impact on state policy.

“In North Carolina, for example, the difference between just like a draconian abortion ban and a more moderate policy can come down to one seat,” Pritzker said. “That really demonstrates the impact legislatures have kind of under this framework of American federalism.”

The group has raised $45 million so far, and said it was well on its way to reaching, and potentially surpassing, its $70 million target.

Republicans lose their edge

In the early 2000s, it was Republicans who enjoyed a significant cash and strategy advantage, which helped them secure majorities and win battles over redistricting and welfare.

They don’t have an outside entity quite like the States Project that serves as both a major source of cash and helps shape policy exclusively at the state level, though state-focused interest groups aligned with the G.O.P. have often contributed significant sums in past years.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, the arm of the Republican National Committee that focuses on state legislative races (along with secretary of state, lieutenant governor, agricultural commissioners and state supreme court elections) has not announced its fund-raising goal for 2024. The organization raised $12 million in the first quarter of this year, bringing its total raised this cycle to $47 million.

Still, Republicans say their edge has evaporated, as they were vastly outspent by Democrats in the 2022 midterms and lost control of battleground state chambers in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“It’s already been a warning call,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who helped steer Republicans to focus on state legislatures as part of the redistricting battle in 2010. He noted that state legislatures were not only critical policy laboratories, but they also serve as the “farm team where future members of Congress and senators and statewide elected officials” get their start.

In a statement to The New York Times, Dee Duncan, the president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, conceded that “the constellation of Democrat outside groups will outspend us,” but he pointed to strategic spending by the group, including an eight-figure investment in mail voting in Pennsylvania, as reasons that the organization is “confident that Republicans are in a strong position to stave off the massive onslaught of money pouring in from the Democrats.”

The democracy subplot

Since the Supreme Court eliminated a national right to abortion access and handed authority to the states in 2022, state legislatures have become the front lines in the fight for abortion access, and many Democratic candidates have campaigned on the issue successfully in special elections.

But the increasing import of state legislatures came into focus for Democrats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when disputed legal theories posited that legislatures could unilaterally send their own slates of presidential electors to the Electoral College, regardless of the popular vote, in an attempt to subvert the victory of Joe Biden. Though the Supreme Court knocked down that theory, known as the independent state legislature doctrine, in a decision last year, the threat of state legislatures not certifying elections or trying to delay official results remains a concern for democracy activists.

And a wrinkle in how state legislatures are seated means that elections in 2024 could directly affect the security of this year’s election.

“It would shock most people to know that whoever wins the state legislative elections in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Hampshire this year will take office before those states send presidential electors to Congress,” Squadron said. “That raises the stakes enormously.”

What to read tonight

A tale of two electorates: Ohio’s Version

It has practically become a ritual of U.S. politics over the last couple of years.

A special election is held. A Democrat performs far better than expected. And then come the questions: Was it a one-off? Or a sign that the next big election might go better for the party than the polls suggest?

Last night, in a special election for a congressional seat in Eastern Ohio, a Democratic Air Force veteran and former actor, Michael Kripchak, lost by just nine percentage points to a Republican state senator, Michael Rulli, in a district that former President Donald Trump won by 29 percentage points in 2020.

David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that it was part of a pattern of Democrats doing well since the fall of Roe v. Wade in special elections from New York to Alabama — and that he hopes the results will be a “shot in the arm” for his party November.

“One side continuously overperforms the other side in energy, but it also overperforms the polling,” Pepper said.

I called up my colleague Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times, who warned me that low-turnout special elections really aren’t a way to read the tea leaves for November, because the electorates in each election are simply too different.

President Biden and the Democrats, he said, perform well among the high-frequency, highly engaged voters who turn out in special elections. It’s a good thing for Democrats, he said, but it’s not the whole story.

“We have a lot of signs that they’re weaker in the rest of the electorate,” Nate told me. “They very clearly do worse when you increase the turnout.”

Kripchak is nevertheless hoping his surprise performance Tuesday night will help him do better when he’s on the ballot again in the fall — if only because it could tug some hard-won attention and fund-raising his way.

“This is what we were able to accomplish in three months’ time with next to no support from the Democratic apparatus,” he said of his Tuesday night result. “We can accomplish even more in the next five months.”

— Jess Bidgood