Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The Underground House Majority Fight

On the last Wed­nes­day of April, as Don­ald Trump reveled on cable talk shows over his Acela primary sweep the night be­fore, some 60 Demo­crat­ic state le­gis­lat­ive cam­paign op­er­at­ives from around the coun­try gathered in a boutique hotel ball­room just off Scott Circle in Wash­ing­ton to kick-start the fi­nal six months of the elec­tion cycle—and fig­ure out how to take ad­vant­age of Trump’s pres­ence on the bal­lot.

Lurk­ing just be­low the dom­in­ant ques­tion of Trump’s vi­ab­il­ity against likely Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee Hil­lary Clin­ton is the un­known ef­fect the real-es­tate mogul will have on Re­pub­lic­ans’ con­trol of Con­gress. Zoom in on the map even fur­ther, and there are the 80 per­cent of state le­gis­lat­ive seats up for grabs, and the keys to Demo­crats’ multi-cycle ef­fort to po­s­i­tion the party for re­dis­trict­ing fol­low­ing the 2020 census.

The Obama era has not been kind to down-bal­lot Demo­crats, as two dis­mal midterm cycles res­ul­ted in a net loss of more than 900 state le­gis­lat­ive seats, put­ting the party in a his­tor­ic hole as it works to come back at both the le­gis­lat­ive and con­gres­sion­al levels. They are in­ex­tric­ably linked, as the party’s hopes for House con­trol could come down to what hap­pens at the state level over the next three elec­tion cycles.

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/626463?unlock=2YIRFNO0QHBS5YYY&mref=homepage-free

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