Politics

Democrats find hope in state legislative races

Published

2 years ago

November 22, 2024

As Democrats regroup after the 2024 election, some are finding cautious optimism in an unlikely place: state legislatures.

While the party faced disappointing results such as losing the Michigan state House, it did not face the kind of devastating wreckage down-ballot that often accompanies other national elections.

The state legislative results were far from a triumph for Democrats. But they stand apart from the presidential race, in which Vice President Kamala Harris lost every single swing state — including states where Democrats made gains in state government or preserved their majorities. Democrats held onto a one-seat majority in the Pennsylvania House, flipped 14 seats in Wisconsin under new electoral maps, and broke the GOP supermajority in North Carolina, giving weight to Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein’s veto power.

“I just can’t recall an election that we have been in the same presidential battlegrounds and have been able to maintain the successes that we did have, and mitigate the losses in the way that we did,” said Heather Williams, the head of Democrats’ state legislative campaign arm. “To be able to hold our own in Pennsylvania and maintain that majority with the losses up-ticket, there’s definitely stuff to learn from that.”

It’s not the kind of sweeping dominance that Democrats had hoped for this election cycle, but strategists focused on these races say those results prove Democrats have figured out what it takes to be successful in the states.

Republicans find the idea laughable.

“I don’t know how anyone over there could look at this as anything other than an utter disaster,” said Republican State Leadership Committee President Dee Duncan, who is stepping down from his role at the end of the year.

While Democrats acknowledge they fell short, they see this year’s results as laying the groundwork for upcoming cycles — even if they can’t help what’s happening at the top of the ticket.

“We know that cycle after cycle we build the best sailboat we can in state legislatures but we don’t control the wind at the higher level of the ballot,” said Leslie Martes, chief strategy officer for Forward Majority, a PAC that spent $45 million this cycle on supporting Democratic state legislative candidates.

One lesson down-ballot Democratic groups are emphasizing: They need more money and attention from the rest of the party.

“While we are obviously encouraged by Democrats’ resilience in state legislative races, we should also be clear about one thing: this overperformance happened in spite of the national party’s efforts at the state legislative level, not because of them,” reads a post-election memo from Democratic group the States Project shared exclusively with POLITICO.

Founded in 2017 by former New York lawmaker Daniel Squadron and Democratic donor Adam Pritzker, the group has emerged as a top player in Democratic state legislative circles — spending more than $70 million on electing Democrats this cycle.

“Put simply, national Democrats continue to overlook and underfund state legislative campaigns,” the memo reads.

Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, had also forewarned a lack of investment in the leadup to the election.

It’s routine for committees to sound the alarm over money problems — and it is a particularly perennial complaint down-ballot, a level that often gets overshadowed.

Democrats credit a record amount of money poured into these races as one of the main reasons why their state legislative candidates largely bucked national electoral trends. The DLCC received $2.5 million from Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee — a historic sum, though still a tiny amount considering the massive political spending further up the ticket. The DNC also put more than $260 million into state parties this cycle — money that, in part, went toward these down-ballot races.

Virginia will also have a high-stakes battle for the state House next year.

In a key race for the Pennsylvania state House majority, eight-term Democratic state Rep. Frank Burns, running in a heavily Republican district, put in more than $4 million on advertising, while Republicans spent $2.5 million, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Two years ago, total spending was $1.5 million.

In Arizona, outside Democratic groups funneled in millions of dollars. The States Project alone spent $9.3 million in the state, according to the memo, which it said was 13 times more than the next largest national funder. Still, despite being outspent by Democrats in key races, Republicans ended up gaining ground.

The sole Democrat to flip a seat in the legislature, Rep.-elect Kevin Volk, said he’s still focused on his top issues, like improving public education and affordable housing, but Democrats’ failure to take control “changes the parameters of what’s possible.”

Now Democrats are looking ahead, because the power struggle in the states is far from over. Because of state legislators being elected to Congress, there are a handful of vacancies in Virginia and Michigan that could lead to ties in their state legislatures.

Democrats in Michigan face the potential of a tied Senate. A special election will be held to succeed Democratic Rep.-elect Kristen McDonald-Rivet in a swing seat, and if Republicans pick it up, they’ll have to rely on Democratic Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist to be the tiebreaker.

Virginia will hold a special election in January for Democratic Rep.-elect Suhas Subramanyam’s seat in the state Senate. It’s a district that Democrats are favored to hold, which will be important given their one-seat majority. If Republicans can flip it, it would bring the state Senate to a tie, leading to Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears casting tie-breaking votes. There will also be a special election for a safe Democratic seat in the state House.

A special election has not yet been scheduled for Republican Rep.-elect John McGuire’s seat in the state Senate, though it is expected to remain in Republican hands.

Virginia will also have a high-stakes battle for the state House next year. Democrats had a huge win in 2023, when they flipped control of the lower chamber, claiming full control of the state legislature.

“The dynamics change a little bit from election year to election year, and we’re in new, uncharted territory, but the basics stay the same, and we have pretty good results from year to year,” said Democratic Party of Virginia Chair Susan Swecker.

Swecker said she was emboldened by some of the recent results in Virginia. Based off of data that is still being finalized, Harris won 59 out of 100 state House districts — just one fewer than President Joe Biden did in 2020 — and 25 out of 40 state Senate districts, one more than Biden did.

But she also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from this month’s election, and urged against finger-pointing.

“We are two weeks out from an earth shattering election, and we’re still trying to figure it out,” she said. “I think the worst thing you could do as a leader is stand out there and go, ‘Here’s the three things we need to change and the three things that we didn’t do right.’ How about taking a hot second and actually really look at stuff and figure out what happened.”

Politics

Gavin Newsom’s first 2028 test: This fall, in Nevada

Published

5 hours ago

September 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LAS VEGAS — If California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president in 2028, next-door Nevada will be a crucial test. This fall’s governor’s race is offering a preview.

As GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo runs for reelection, he’s trying to pin high Nevada fuel prices — a majority of which is imported from California — on “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies.” He lambasts California as too expensive and too regulated. And he’s hammering his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for accepting Newsom’s endorsement, betting that it will turn off Nevada swing voters.

“The contrast is simple: I’m fighting Gavin Newsom’s agenda and Aaron Ford is trying to import it into Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement to Blue Light News.

This could be a test run for 2028, when Newsom may call upon Nevadans — one-fifth of whom were born in California — to deliver him a primary victory in the early-voting state, and possibly a presidential victory.

“They understand California costs more,” Donna West, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party’s senior caucus, said of Nevada’s California expats. “They also understand that California is the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and that Gavin Newsom ran that as effectively as he possibly can.”

Newsom’s office declined to comment. A person close to the governor, granted anonymity to discuss the sentiment in his orbit, said they are “thrilled” Republicans are spending money to “plaster Newsom’s name across a key early state.”

“Republicans seem awfully concerned about an endorsement from someone who leads the 2028 Democratic field in Nevada by nearly 2-to-1,” the person said, pointing to a November 2025 Emerson poll of a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field.

Ford, for his part, shrugs off the attacks.

“Lombardo tries to cast blame elsewhere, but everyone knows that when the war started in February, that we saw our gas prices increase almost immediately,” Ford told Blue Light News after a recent town hall in Las Vegas. “People believe their own eyes, and they remember their experiences.”

The demonization of California is nothing new in Nevada politics: For years, Republicans have blasted their western neighbor as too expensive and too woke.

But the stakes are higher, and the connection more palpable, this year, as Newsom explores a presidential bid. He would likely need to perform very well in Nevada, now second on the Democratic calendar, to build early momentum toward the party nomination. And come November 2028, he’d need to fare well in Nevada again, this time among the state’s general electorate, a plurality of which are independents.

Newsom has stumped for Democrats across the country this cycle, and he blitzed through the South this week, including a swing through South Carolina, whose Democrats will vote first, right before Nevada, in 2028.

But Republicans are looking to weaponize Newsom’s Silver State swing in July, where Ford introduced him at a new Las Vegas field office as “the governor of the great state of California.”

“Our next president!” an audience member shouted, eliciting cheers.

The Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC shared polling with Blue Light News in July showing Newsom’s favorability 20 points underwater in Nevada and losing a hypothetical 2028 head-to-head with Vice President JD Vance. Shortly thereafter, the PAC began an ad blitz tying Ford to the California governor.

Billboards touting Newsom’s endorsement of Ford, paid for by the PAC, now line highways across Nevada, and digital and streaming ads have run consistently since the visit. “Newsom and Ford: Shared vision. Shared values,” one ad says.

A person familiar with the PAC’s internal polling, granted anonymity to discuss private data, said it shows Newsom’s endorsement is now the second-most-known datapoint about the attorney general.

“Gavin Newsom is the singular most unpopular elected official in Nevada,” said Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Nevada GOP strategist running the Lombardo-aligned PAC. “Aaron Ford brought him into the state. … There’s no better way to help him out than to put up these signs and run ads, letting people know that he’s excited about being endorsed by Gavin Newsom.”

Republicans in the state have long blamed Californian expats for housing shortages and rising prices and connect their opponents to California liberals. A surge of ex-Californians leaving the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, some fleeing high taxes and cost of living, accelerated the trend.

Sam Brown, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, blasted the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom”; in 2018, GOP governor nominee Adam Laxalt lamented the “Californization” of Nevada, even as Californians bankrolled his campaign. During Lombardo’s first run for governor in 2022, he slammed incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak for taking his cues from Newsom: “Don’t let Steve Sisolak turn Nevada into California,” one post said. Republicans tied their opponents to Nancy Pelosi for decades.

Lombardo’s argument this time around is more focused. He notes that the vast majority of Nevada’s gasoline comes from California, and argues that California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have caused fuel prices to soar. A gallon of gas in Nevada costs nearly $5, according to AAA, one of the highest prices in the nation.

“The policies coming from Gavin Newsom and California Democrats … don’t stop at their state line,” Lombardo said in a statement. “Nevada and other states import a significant portion of our fuel from California, so when Governor Newsom shuts down refineries and imposes regulations that reduce supply and increase costs, Nevada families feel the consequences at the pump.”

It’s a strategy that allows Lombardo — running in a difficult national environment for incumbent Republicans — to acknowledge voters’ economic pain without blaming President Donald Trump or his own party. Indeed, Lombardo shared an April column in the Nevada Independent that placed blame at the feet of both Newsom and Trump. (Lombardo, in his post, blamed only Newsom.)

Democrats don’t think voters will buy it. ‘“As far as gas prices, it’s so obviously increased since the war,” Rep. Dina Titus said. “People in Nevada aren’t stupid.”

Ford has his own millstone to saddle Lombardo with: the president. At a recent town hall in Las Vegas, he repeatedly blasted the “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “making everything too expensive.”

“Voters absolutely tie the handling of the economy to Trump,” said Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based pollster who works in Nevada regularly. “Instead of blaming Trump, why not tie it to the boogeyman next door and blame California?”

Politics

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

Published

1 day ago

September 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing

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Politics

Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.

In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.

Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.

Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.

“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.

Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.

“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.

He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.

“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”

The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.

In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.

“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.

He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”

The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.

“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.

Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.

“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.

He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”

While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.

“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”

Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.

Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.

“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.

He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”