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After years of watching Republicans dominate down-ballot races, Democrats reversed their own advantage in the midterm elections, handing some legislative chambers control of the GOP and blocking efforts to create veto-proof majorities in others.
In Pennsylvania, where votes continued to be counted, Democrats are poised to take control of the state House for the first time since 2008. Democrats also won the Michigan House and Senate, as well as the Minnesota Senate. The re-election victories of Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) and Tim Walz (Minn.) give Democrats full control of those two states, the first in Michigan since the 1982 election.
On Nov. 9, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) made a comment after being re-elected as governor. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Nick Hagen/The Washington Post)
If early results hold in states where some races remain undecided, Democrats won’t have lost control of a single legislature they previously held, a feat the president’s party hasn’t accomplished in a midterm election since 1934 .
The victories slowed Republican plans to push for more restrictions on abortion, transgender rights, school curricula and spending, and in some states expanded Democrats’ chances of passing their own priorities.
Among those newly elected in districts that were key to the Democratic surge in the Pennsylvania House was Tim Brennan, who prevailed by 5,000 votes against a Republican opponent who had worked for state lawmakers who opposed rights on abortion and supported voting restrictions.
Brennan, 45, who lives in Bucks County, a suburb of Philadelphia, ran unsuccessfully in 2018 and lost in the primary by 55 votes. After the 2020 election, he served as a local county attorney where Donald Trump challenged the results. He attributed his victory Tuesday to the 10,000 door knocks he personally knocked on, out of his campaign’s 40,000, and voters who split their tickets because of a dislike of extreme Republican candidates, especially the GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano.
“People told me they wanted a functioning government. They were upset with the top of the ticket in Republican races. They were upset with election denials and election loss,” said Brennan, who attributed the Democrat success in “talking about functional government and not going down these rabbit holes.”
Brennan was excited by the prospect of a Democratic House with the clout to pressure Senate Republicans to moderate abortion, education and other issues.
“Being there and having your voice heard is one thing, but being part of the majority and having the opportunity to do politics is something I really look forward to,” he said.
With some states still counting, Republicans control both houses of 26 state legislatures, down from 30 before the election. Democrats control 19 outright, up from 17 before Tuesday.
“A couple of legislative races won by a few votes mean the difference between some of the most draconian laws on abortion, restrictions on elections, stopping the destruction of a state’s ability to protect people from pollutants,” said Daniel Squadron, a former state senator. of New York and founder of the super PAC the States Project, which helped finance some of the races.
The Democratic victories appeared to have been fueled by a wave of liberal outrage over the Supreme Court’s ruling that returned the power to determine abortion rights to state capitals and the Trump-led effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
At polling places across the country on Tuesday, voters expressed frustration over the rising cost of living, but also indicated their biggest fear was the government’s right-wing extremism.
For Matt Kroski, 43, who dislikes both major parties, Tuesday was about voting against the candidates more than anything else, and these days, he said outside a polling station of Phoenix, Republicans scare him more.
“I’m looking for people who are more in tune with the public and more in tune with what’s right for people, rather than what’s right for their pockets,” he said.
In Grand Rapids, Cody Canfield, 30, a self-described independent who leans Democratic, said his vote was driven in large part by his support for the successful referendum enshrining reproductive rights in Michigan’s constitution.
“I have a girlfriend that I’m going to marry and I don’t need her life in danger just because someone says so,” he said. “He’s afraid that that right will be taken away from him.”
The party’s unexpected legislative successes came after a new laser focus on state races by longtime operatives at places like the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which rarely gets much help from the national party , and other relative newcomers to this low profile. battlefield
Democrats have complained for years that while Republicans targeted state legislative races with big financial investments, their own party and its donors focused on higher-profile contests with splashier candidates, until and all those condemned to almost certain probabilities of defeat. Last year’s redistricting, in which Republican-controlled legislatures were able to carve up maps to their advantage, brought a fresh reminder of the gamble of ignoring these races.
“National Democrats see state legislatures as the minor leagues,” Squadron said. The midterm elections “proved that it’s a game of its own and one to focus on.”
The Squadron group spent about $60 million on state legislative races, particularly in Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, in the belief that those legislatures were most at risk of GOP lawmakers overturning a race presidential in favor of Trump or another Republican. Another Democratic PAC, Forward Majority, invested $20 million. The DLCC spent $50 million and its Republican counterpart, the Republican State Leadership Committee, spent $30 million.
“Republicans had everything in their favor — record fundraising and a midterm political environment under a Democratic president — and they have little to show for it,” DLCC President Jessica Post said. Democrats, he said, “gained critical ground for the next decade.”
That combined budget is a pittance compared to how Democratic donors focus on long-term Senate races: Democrats running in Iowa, Maine and South Carolina two years ago raised more than $250 million for their Senate bids, and all three lost by wide margins. .
Republicans did have reason to celebrate this week. In Kansas, they maintained veto-proof supermajorities in the legislature, allowing them to impose their will even after incumbent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won re-election on Tuesday.
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) not only won another term in a landslide, but the GOP-controlled legislature held supermajorities in both houses and may chart a deeply conservative course in the coming years. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott won re-election to a third term as fellow Republicans extended their majorities in the legislature. The party also made gains in Iowa and South Carolina.
And in Florida, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won a second term in a rout, Republicans claimed supermajorities in both legislatures, the largest in a decade.
“The days of Florida being a swing state are over,” said Dee Duncan, chairwoman of the Republican legislative campaign group.
But Republican hopes for trifecta victories (governor and both houses) in several other states were dashed. Their bids to win supermajorities in the legislatures of North Carolina and Wisconsin, so they could override the Democratic governors of those states, fell short.
In Nevada, where votes were still being counted, experts say Democrats can hold on to their legislative majorities despite the loss of Gov. Steve Sisolak (D). And although Vermont re-elected its Republican governor, a coalition of Democrats and members of the state’s Progressive Party in the legislature maintained its supermajority. The Arizona gubernatorial and legislative races remain too close to call.
Some of the Democratic victories came after redistricting battles that ended on more favorable lines than the gerrymandered districts of the previous decade, either on the strength of Democratic governors who had a voice or through successful legal challenges to the redrawn maps by the GOP
“A fair map is everything,” said Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, D-Farmer-Labor.
Hortman said Democrats outside Minnesota’s blue towns also received targeted help from safer districts. US Somali State Representative Mohamud Noor of St. Paul reached out to Somali voters in St. Cloud and connected them with volunteers and fundraisers on behalf of state representative Dan Wolgamott. He eventually won re-election by 540 votes.
“What he did to help us overcome that language barrier was what helped us win,” Hortman said. “This is how we should govern. We will have a great diversity of opinions. We’re a big marquee party.”
In Michigan, the Democratic takeover benefited from the tail end of Whitmer’s re-election loss, the large margin given to referendums that put reproductive rights in the state constitution, and district lines drawn by a nonpartisan commission.
Republican candidates against Democrats also took some extreme positions, such as denying the results of the 2020 presidential election, which prompted many voters to overcome their concerns about the economy under President Biden.
“He really leaned into the culture wars, and voters are tired of that,” said state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D). McMorrow gained national attention last spring with a viral speech condemning Republicans’ “empty and hateful scheme” against LGBTQ rights after a colleague accused her of “grooming” children.
“Inflation and gas prices is one thing that changes, but losing a fundamental right…