Chasing Amy
If there’s one statistic operatives like Polizzi and candidates at the state level bring up from 2020 to underscore the Democratic Party’s misplaced priorities, it’s how much money Democratic Senate candidate Amy McGrath raised to lose to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by almost exactly 20 points.
“Nothing makes me angrier than looking back at, you know, in the last cycle in 2020, Democratic donors donated $94 million to Amy McGrath to try to defeat Mitch McConnell,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow told The Daily Beast, taking a beat in her critique of Democratic donors overlooking state legislatures.
Roughly 60 percent of those donations to McGrath were less than $200.
“And it was all of this messaging about like, if we just take out Mitch McConnell, we're gonna fix everything,” McMorrow continued. “And in comparison, the DLCC’s budget for that entire cycle—for every single state legislature around the country—was $51 million.”
Soft War
Brooke Goren, a spokesperson for the DNC, said in a statement that the party works with the DLCC in other ways to “maximize the DNC’s hard federal dollars,” which she differentiated from “the soft non-federal funds the DLCC raises” because the organization is not subject to federal max-out limits for individual donors.
“The DNC works closely with the DLCC team while investing directly in states to fund resources like staff and data and targeting information that support candidates up and down the ticket, including in every one of the DLCC’s targeted chambers,” Goren said.
The DNC has also been spending in states where the party is trying to hold onto majorities, including Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, and New Mexico, as well as efforts to flip chambers in Michigan, New Hampshire, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Minnesota’s Senate.
Redmap
Even with increased attention on Democratic state legislature efforts following the repeal of Roe v. Wade—the DLCC’s best 48-hour fundraising period came after the Dobbs decision, breaking the previous record of the two days following the SCOTUS leak—the GOP’s counterpart, the RLSC, continues to eat the DLCC’s lunch.
While the DLCC broke its quarterly fundraising record with a $6.75 million haul in Q2 2022, the RLSC brought in $10.7 million that same quarter.
The McGrath phenomenon became a reckoning of sorts among some Democratic campaign consultants, still digging out from the loss of 958 state legislature seats during Barack Obama’s administration and then a disappointing 2020, where the party’s inability to flip any chambers cost them control of redistricting during a census year.
The GOP’s 2010 blowout left Democrats with state majority control of just 10 percent of U.S. House seats after redistricting, while the Republicans ballooned up to 40 percent of the seats. The rest fell under states with either a court-drawn system, divided governments, or independent commissions.
‘Down-Ballot Collapse’
Beyond the redistricting ramifications, the party botching so many state-level campaigns paved the way for Republican majorities to pass abortion restrictions ready to launch after the Dobbs decision.
“It was because of a down-ballot collapse for Democrats in state legislatures,” McMorrow said. “So we lost nearly a thousand state legislature seats all around the country, starting in 2009, and lost control of 29 chambers across 19 states. And that is where all of these horrific bills are being introduced and passed, knowing that they will be challenged at the Supreme Court.”
RLSC spokesperson Stephanie Rivera said if Democrats want to replicate the GOP’s success at the state level, they should “stop mimicking Joe Biden's failed policies.”
“State Republicans will have a big November because they are countering Biden's agenda by cutting taxes, supporting law enforcement, and empowering parents to have a say in their children's education,” Rivera told The Daily Beast in a statement.
Read Jake Lahut’s full story here.
