Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap this week's elections, starting with the massive upset in New York's 19th—a race Republicans expected to win handily. There were also two colossal Democratic primaries for neighboring House seats in New York City that finally got resolved, plus a near-win by the very worst MAGA candidate of them all in a district near Orlando, Florida. And we update the ongoing vote tally in Alaska, where a Democrat is in surprising contention for the state's lone House seat.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. We have a ton to talk about today, but we want to make sure that you've had a chance to listen to last week's episode, where we invited on none other than Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of Seinfeld and Veep, who has also been a committed activist for many years. We discuss with Julia state Supreme Court races, which are often overlooked but where progressives can make a huge difference. We encourage you to check out that episode and also contribute to our slate of endorsed candidates running for state Supreme Courts in Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio. You can do that by going to justicewithjulia.com.
David Beard:
This week was one of the last big primary weeks of the year, so we've still got a lot to cover. What are we going to be talking about today?
David Nir:
We had primaries in New York and Florida and Oklahoma, but above all else, we had some special elections in New York where Democrats scored a major and unexpected victory. There is also a still-unresolved special election for Alaska's lone House seat that could, amazingly, go Democrats’ way. We will dive into that one. And then our guest this week is Aaron Kleinman, who is the research director at The States Project, an organization devoted to electing candidates to state legislatures nationwide and flipping competitive legislatures. He is also a longtime Daily Kos Elections community member. So we are very excited to talk to him. Plenty to discuss. Let's get rolling.
David Nir:
Holy crap, Tuesday night was amazing. What a huge win. Beard, you got to get us started with the special election in New York's 19th District. Tell us everything.
David Beard:
Yeah. So New York 19 had a special election after Representative Antonio Delgado was appointed to the lieutenant governorship. And so it was expected to be a race that Republicans would likely win, even though Biden carried the district narrowly because as we've talked about over and over again this year, it looked like it was going to be a good year for Republicans. And so in this district that Biden won very narrowly, Republicans should be able to pick it up, but that is not what happened. Democrat Pat Ryan, who's an Army veteran and Ulster county executive, narrowly defeated Republican Marc Molinaro, who is the county executive of nearby Dutchess County by a 51 to 49 margin. This is in the Hudson Valley area.
David Beard:
It was really expected that Molinaro was going to win right up until polls closed and the results came in. The polling—which was sparse—but it all showed Molinaro ahead. And so it's certainly the kind of result that makes you rethink, particularly in combination with the other special election results that we've had recently and that we've talked about pointing towards better Democratic results than you would've expected in a red year that makes you rethink the entire sort of state of the 2022 election and makes you consider like, are Democrats potentially going to stave off a Republican wave year, going to have a neutral year, maybe even conceivably have a slightly better than neutral year? It really is a result that makes you stop and think, because as we've talked about, special elections are the best evidence that you can get as to how an election is going to go.
David Beard:
And with the election less than 100 days away, there's only so much time for things to change. And with special election after special election now showing Democrats outperforming what you would expect, it makes you think that things are possible that we thought would not have been possible if we had been talking about it six months ago.
David Nir:
Yeah. We can't emphasize that enough because the thing with special elections is you never want to read too much into just one race, but now we have multiple races. We had the special election in Nebraska's 1st District, which came about right after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Democrats vastly outperformed the presidential margins in that district. Then we had the special election in Minnesota's 1st District—again, same thing, conservative district, Democrats lost, but they performed much better than the presidential results in that district.
David Nir:
Okay. That's two races. Except now on Tuesday night, we had another two races because not only the Democrats win in New York's 19th District, but they also outperformed the presidential margins in another special election in the much more conservative 23rd District as well. And on top of that, you of course have the constitutional amendment in Kansas that went down in absolute flames. So I think at this point we have enough data to say that the outlook really has changed. And the other thing that I have to add specific to the race in the 19th is that Marc Molinaro was a highly touted recruit. Republicans had wanted him to run for this seat in 2020. They were super stoked that he had finally said yes for 2022. He serves Dutchess County, as Beard mentioned, which is one of the largest counties in the district. He had something of a moderate profile.
David Nir:
He really is the kind of candidate that Republicans would love to be able to run everywhere and yet he still lost. And I should also add that Molinaro is going to be running for a full term in the new 19th District. The special took place in the old 19th District, but the new 19th District is even bluer than the old 19th. And also it doesn't contain any part of Dutchess County. So he doesn't have his base. Pat Ryan, the Democrat who won in the old 19th, is actually running for a full term in the new 18th. And that is also much bluer than the 19th. So Democrats by this unlikely victory have not only added such important data points to this post-Dobbs world, but they put themselves in much better position in this part of upstate New York vis-à-vis holding the House.
David Beard:
And one thing that we saw both in 2010 and 2014 was when Democrats had bad years, they had really bad years in upstate New York. And this is more evidence that is not going to be the case this year, the way it was in both of those midterms during the Obama presidency. The other thing that I want to flag from here was the differential turnout that we saw in different counties. Pat Ryan won two counties in the 19th District. He won Columbia County and Ulster County. And both of those counties way outperformed the turnout compared to 2020. If you look at how many votes were cast in the special compared to how many votes were cast in 2020 and how that sort of works as a percentage of the turnout, Columbia and Ulster County—the Democratic counties—way outperformed all the Republican counties that did not cast as many votes as you would expect if it was sort of equal across the board going back to 2020. And we've seen similar things happen in Lincoln, in Nebraska's 1st District, and in Rochester, in Minnesota's 1st District.
David Beard:
So this is both good news. Obviously we want to see this good positive turnout in these urban and suburban areas where Democrats are motivated and voting, and also a little bit of a cautionary tale obviously. If that is less of the case in November, if more rural turnout spikes or comes back up, that obviously could bring things back a little bit. So it's something to watch, but I think right now you have to take it as a good sign.
David Nir:
So one amusing thing is that on Wednesday, the day after the election, Molinaro tried to blame his loss on the fact that Democrats scheduled a special election for the same day as the state's congressional and state Senate primaries. And I find that deeply amusing because it just shows Republicans only think they can win if they suppress the vote and have the smallest electorate possible.
I realize that's no laughing matter, but in the case of Molinaro, it's totally pathetic. But that does mean that we did have a whole bunch of primaries that we ought to discuss. And in particular, there were two House races in very blue districts in New York City that received a ton of attention. In New York's 10th District, this was an open seat in Lower Manhattan and nearby liberal neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Dan Goldman was the winner there. He is a self-funder who had served as the House Democrats’ chief counsel during Trump's first impeachment. He beat Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou by just a 26 to 24 margin. Congressman Mondaire Jones who represents the 17th District in the Hudson Valley, that's well to the north of the city, took third with just 18%. This one led to a lot of gnashing of teeth. Goldman, who is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and put a ton of money into the race and ran tons and tons of ads, was generally considered among the more moderate options in the race.
And progressives really split that vote. He only won just over a quarter of the vote. So perhaps in a future year, he might be more vulnerable in a primary if progressives rally around a single candidate, but for now he's on his way to Congress. This is a dark blue seat where he is assured of victory in November.
Just to the north is the revamped 12th District. This district takes in Manhattan's upper east side and upper west side. It's the first time in more than a century that a single congressional district has incorporated both of those neighborhoods. And it set up a titanic conflict between two 30-year veterans of the House: Congressman Jerry Nadler and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Nadler's base was on the West Side. Maloney's on the East Side. But if you look at a map of the results, it scarcely looks that way. Nadler destroyed Maloney 55-24. A third candidate took the rest of the vote. This again is a safely blue seat. So Nadler will get another term in Congress and Maloney's career will come to an end.
David Beard:
We also had primary night in Florida on Tuesday where most races went as predicted, but there was a near major upset in Florida's 11th Congressional District on the Republican side where incumbent Republican Representative Dan Webster narrowly held off far-right troll Laura Loomer by just a 51-44 margin. Loomer is—of the many, many crazy MAGA candidates that we have discussed on this podcast and seen across the country, she is one of the top. She describes herself as a proud Islamophobe. She is banned on numerous different social media apps. She is banned on rideshares. She's so far out there she almost goes past a lot of the Trumpist stuff.
It is very, very strange candidate. She, of course, refused to concede when faced with this narrow loss. She is already spreading conspiracy theories about the primary, but more than anything, this is a huge warning sign to Webster, who is among a number of Republicans, incumbent Republicans, who have faced scares from these far-right Trump candidates and who really regardless of their sort of personal views—and clearly they're happy to endorse and work with Trump, to support Trump—are forced into these increasingly right-wing conspiracy theorist campaigns to prevent being beaten in these primaries by wild and crazy people.
David Beard:
And so it's not a great sign. The fact that these Republican seats are being increasingly contested by these fringe far-right candidates, but there's very little that Democrats can do other than try to beat them when that happens.
David Nir:
It's also important to bear in mind that Webster himself is an ultra-conservative. He voted against recognizing the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania. He tried to run against John Boehner when Boehner was trying to win another term as speaker of the House. And that totally fell apart, but it just shows what an extreme conservative he is, but he's just not extreme enough.
David Nir:
Loomer is truly scary. Beard, you said that she's one of the worst. I think she might have been the single worst candidate on the ballot from the MAGA wing of the GOP. I mean, this is a woman who is so crazy, she was kicked out of CPAC—banned from CPAC. How nuts do you have to be to manage that? But her policy prescriptions are completely terrifying. She wants to deport millions of immigrants to this country. She wants to shut down legal immigration for 10 years.
David Nir:
She, of course, does not recognize Biden as the president of the United States. She is truly, truly scary. Someone like her is going to win and that person will make Marjorie Taylor Greene look normal.
David Beard:
And that's what you get with this extreme creep to the far right, where you get somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is clearly crazy and way out there on the far right. And then you get somebody even further to the right, like Laura Loomer, and then all of a suddenly you're like, oh, well I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't that crazy, if you've got someone like Laura Loomer almost in Congress and it's a scary situation. But again, all Democrats can do is go and try to win as many elections as we can and keep them out of Congress.
David Nir:
Speaking of winning as many elections as Democrats can, there's something really interesting brewing up north in Alaska.
David Beard:
So this special election in Alaska actually took place last week, but we're still waiting for the results to be finalized, and then for the runoff tabulations to take place. This is the second round. We talked about the first round where Democrat Mary Peltola and Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich advanced, and then Alaskans voted. And what they could do is rank those three candidates, one, two, three, and then after this first round and all of the votes are tabulate, there would be a runoff. The third place candidate would be eliminated and their votes would be assigned to one of the top two candidates.
David Beard:
Right now, we're still waiting on the final results. There's still some more votes that they're waiting to get, but right now we have the Democrat Mary Peltola at 39%, Sarah Palin at 31%, and Nick Begich at 28%, and we don't expect those places to change. So in that case, Begich would be eliminated and his votes would be split between Peltola and Palin, depending on how his voters ranked them in terms of what their second choice was.
David Beard:
And of course, some of his voters may not have ranked a second choice at all. As you can imagine, if you are a modern Republican or conservative-leaning independent in Alaska, and you don't like Sarah Palin, but you don't really want to have your vote go to a Democrat either, you go—you vote for Begich and then you leave the second or third spot blank and that benefits Peltola because she's ahead in this initial round; any votes that are dropped that don't go to either candidate is beneficial to her. So it certainly seems conceivable that Peltola could get maybe a third of Begich's vote, have some other votes dropped, and actually narrowly come out in front of Palin.
David Beard:
I don't think that's necessarily the most likely result, but I do think it's very possible. So it's something we'll want to keep an eye on. We expect the final results and the runoff tabulation to take place next week sometime. So then we should know who's going to be going to Congress for the rest of 2022 from Alaska.
David Nir:
And while Sarah Palin is a special creature all of her own, the final round results between herself and Peltola should be interesting because that'll be just a straight-up Democrat versus Republican race. And we'll be able to compare those to Alaska's presidential lean, just like we've been talking about in all these other specials. And Alaska, of course, is quite a red state, supported Trump by double digits, and it's almost certain, though, that Peltola will outperform that. So again, it's looking like another good data point pushing back on the idea of any sort of red wave.
David Nir:
Well, that does it for our weekly hits. Coming up, we are talking with Aaron Kleinman from the States Project, which helps to flip competitive state legislatures around the country. We have so many interesting things to discuss with him, so please stick with us.
David Nir:
Joining us today is Aaron Kleinman, who is the director of research for the States Project, which works to raise money for targeted state legislative races. But he is also a longtime community member at the Swing State Project and Daily Kos Elections. So we are very excited to have him on. Aaron, thank you for joining us.
Aaron Kleinman:
Thanks so much. Even though I was a member of the community, but unfortunately, I was never on Seinfeld. So I feel like, a little out of place here.
David Nir:
I think you might go for the Kramer role though in the remake.
Aaron Kleinman:
Maybe I could be the back of George Steinbrenner's head again.
David Nir:
Aaron, we would love to chit chat about our favorite Seinfeld episodes all day, but why don't you tell us about the States Project, what it does and how it got started?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah. So I want to take you back way before we were started, all the way to the early 70s when future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum for the Chamber of Commerce about how the right wing could defeat kind of the post-war liberal hegemony that had existed in the United States, basically since the end of World War II.
What became known as the Powell Memo highlighted a number of different areas. So one of them was building their own institutions, both media and academics. So that's how you got things like Fox News, The Heritage Foundation, and all these kind of right-wing funded think-tanks, basically. They also said we need to take over the federal judiciary. That's why you have the Federalist Society and really a 50-year concerted effort by the right wing to install ideological judges who will focus on outcomes beneficial to them and the Republican Party.
And the third element of it was state legislatures. And there was a real focus by the right, starting in the early seventies, to take over state legislatures. And what you saw, the group ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, was a big player here. But there are others founded by people—members of the new right like Paul Weyrich and Grover Norquist that really focused on state legislatures making it harder to govern states, making them more in hock to corporate special interests. And this was a decades-long effort that really you saw in 2010, for example, really almost culminated then with the Red Map initiative where the right really poured unprecedented resources into state legislative races, so they could gerrymander the country for the next decade.
And I think a lot of people woke up on Nov. 9, 2016 being like, how did we get here? And a lot of people looked at state legislatures like one of the reasons why is because we just haven't built the institutions here that the right has. And so in 2017, our executive director, Daniel Squadron, who used to be a New York state senator, founded what became the States Project. And we started working just trying to figure out how we as an organization can focus grassroots attention toward flipping state legislative seats and winning majorities that are in line with our values that will not work for corporate special interests, but will work to achieve the common good.
David Nir:
So I'm sure there are a million different answers to this question. It's one that I've thought about a lot, I've gnashed my teeth over a lot, but why do you think that Democrats spent decades really without a Powell Memo of their own? Why did conservatives seize these levers of power and progressives, Democrats to the left, whatever you want to call it, kind of almost abdicated the playing field?
Aaron Kleinman:
I actually love this question because I've been thinking about it a lot too. I think one reason is I think what you saw the new left that emerged in the late 60s, early 70s, you had a new right and a new left emerge, and the new left was really focused on a kind of litigation-forward strategy almost, kind of setting up ways for basically people to sue to get or stop things. And I think that litigation-forward strategy ended up backfiring. When that works is when you have a federal judiciary in state courts that are appointed by Democrats, but as kind of the right’s taking over judiciaries across the country, it's made it harder and harder.
And it's also kind of a move away from the organized labor movement as well has really led to declines in people really organizing around things that are really close to them, like state legislatures. And so it kind of left this vacuum there. And also I think, again, the right-wing effort, it took a really long time. I mean, if you look at before the 2010 elections, Democrats, they controlled legislatures in states like Alabama. Even in 2012, they were in the majority in Arkansas and West Virginia. And so it took a really long time for really the far-right to take over these state legislatures. Yeah. I mean, think that's a big part of it was just kind of how the new left constituted itself in a very kind of litigation and D.C.-centric way that channeled activists’ energy toward those areas.
David Nir:
I think that's a really interesting answer. So in a way, it's almost sort of like a multidecade frog boil.
Aaron Kleinman:
Yes.
David Nir:
This conservative plan unfolding over such a long period of time. And then in a way, as you pointed out with 2010, it suddenly sort of seemed to come to a head all at once.
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah, I think that's right.
David Nir:
So Democrats haven't ignored this issue obviously. Earlier this year we interviewed Jessica Post, who leads the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is the state legislative equivalent of the DSCC or DCCC, and they were founded 30 years ago, but how does the States Project differ from the DLCC and how do you complement one another?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah. I mean, I think that the biggest differentiator between us is, it's fundamental where the DLCC is a party organization and we are a nonpartisan organization. And so we will work with any lawmakers that share our values regardless of their party. And so you can see that in a state like Alaska for example, where you have the state House is governed by a faction of Democrats, independents, and Republicans who are opposed to their governor's really kind of far-right stances cutting social services for the people of the state. Being nonpartisan gives us the flexibility to work with a group like that. Another state that's like that is Nebraska, because in Nebraska you have nonpartisan state legislative elections. And so that gives you more wiggle room to try to find candidates that share your values but maybe not necessarily the party.
David Beard:
And so with these huge number of state legislative chambers and races, just into the thousands, how do you go and narrow down into the competitive chambers and competitive races that you want to focus on?
Aaron Kleinman:
So it basically starts the month after the previous election. And that's when we start collecting electoral data for all the legislative districts. Actually, this cycle, it's a little bit different because of redistricting. So it was really kind of as soon as states enacted new maps, we were trying to hit the ground running as quickly as possible with the electoral and demographic information about those new maps. And it's collecting all of that and then seeing which states have legislative chambers where we could either change, first of all the majority where either party has a path to change the majority or where there's a possibility to hit an important nonmajority threshold like preventing veto overrides or filibusters or things like that.
So we look at the electoral demographic debt and say, okay, the range of seats that a party could win based on these is roughly between X and Y. And if it's possible that there could be a change in control of a legislature, then we have to start looking at kind of, okay, are we going to go into this legislative chamber? Who are we going to work with? How are we going to do that? And then using that district-level analysis, we try to go into all those competitive seats and then we try to find the candidates who really match our values in those competitive seats. And then we try to see if there's a way for us to work effectively with them to increase their chances of winning.
David Beard:
And so let's talk about some of those competitive chambers that are up this year, and we can start off with Michigan and Pennsylvania, which are really notable. As you mentioned about redistricting this cycle, both of those states have fair or pretty fair maps for the first time, really, in decades after repeated Republican gerrymanders. Do you feel like the Democrats have done enough in terms of candidates, in terms of the races that they're running to put themselves in contention for one or more of those chambers in those states?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah. Well, I'll start with Michigan because in Michigan you're as likely to flip a chamber in Michigan as you are in any other state in the country. There are only two seats away from breaking GOP control of state House, and only three seats away from breaking GOP control of the state Senate. Moreover, as you noted, they have fair maps for the first time in decades. You also have term limits there, which overall social science showed probably lead to worse outcomes at the state level, but it means in this particular election there's just a lot of open seats, especially with gerrymandering really kind of changing districts around a lot because they went from basically legislative drawn gerrymander to an independent redistricting commission that just threw everything they'd done out the window before. So taking all that into account with the thin margins and again, relatively fair maps, in Michigan, we are very, very close.
Pennsylvania we're a little further away from winning the majority there in terms of just you have to flip 12 seats in the state House out of 203, but still that's a bigger percentage than in Michigan. And another issue with Pennsylvania is that they do have fair maps and a lot of right-wing incumbents decided that now that they're in fair districts they'd rather retire than run for reelection, but there are a number that are running for reelection. In Pennsylvania, incumbents tend to win at higher rates than they do in other states, really outrunning their party. And this goes for both parties. There are Democrats in the Pennsylvania House who represent seats that Trump won by 40 points. And what we think is the case of Pennsylvania is they have a full-time legislature with kind of really robust staffing and relatively small districts and so it's just very easy for incumbents to have everyone in-district get to know them personally, and they can establish these personal brands that just become very difficult to beat.
Well, what does that all mean for 2022? It means that there are 103 seats that went for Biden in the House, 100 that went for Trump. There's a clear path there, but it's going to be really hard to beat every single Republican incumbent in a Biden seat. But what you can do is you can make a lot of progress this year. Again, it is possible that we could win all the Biden seats in a good year if it ends up being a good year. But even if it isn't, what you can do is you can really set yourself up to really narrow those margins, really make it so that the majority has less wiggle room in the next 2023, 2024 session. And then you can try to really flip it in 2024 when you'll have presidential level turnout and maybe the partisan fundamentals in those districts will override any incumbency advantage.
Another important point about Pennsylvania is lawmakers there can get sworn in at the start of December. Now that's important because if they try any post-election shenanigans in 2024, you could flip the chamber and get a majority of the legislature who doesn't want to end democracy in America. So that two-cycle play in Pennsylvania would still be really critical for that.
David Nir:
That's super interesting. I want to dig into something you mentioned. I was unaware of the fact that Pennsylvania had an uncommonly high incumbency retention rate at the legislative level. Are there any other states that also fall into this bucket or conversely on the other end of things of elect a lower rate of incumbents?
Aaron Kleinman:
I would say that Pennsylvania has an abnormally high number of incumbents in seats that can win—seats that basically go way against their party. You have Republican who won seats that Biden won by 20. You have Democrat seats that Trump won by 40. You just don't really see that outside of states like West Virginia or Massachusetts, for example, where one party is just so dominant that people who just want to put some type of check on that party will vote at the state legislative level for the other one. So in terms of a big swing state, I think Pennsylvania stands alone for that.
David Nir:
So switching gears from the big swing states where we all have a pretty good sense of the ones that are going to be most contested and most at play, and certainly just the ones that both parties want to win most. We want to talk about some of the smaller states that are on your list. And you mentioned Alaska a little bit earlier, where there's a bipartisan coalition that runs the House, but also we'd love to talk about New Hampshire, which tends to be a really swingy state where majorities seem to get swept in and out from both parties all the time. Maine also is another state that Democrats took control of not that long ago and is potentially up for grabs. So, on the smaller states that maybe are somewhat below the radar, what do you see that's interesting? What do you think progressives should be paying attention to this year?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah, Alaska, especially for all the real ... If you're listening to this podcast, I think you're going to really be interested in what happens in Alaska because they have this democracy reform that I think is fascinating and I wonder if other states might ultimately try to replicate it, which is the top four candidates from a primary make the general election ballot and then they do instant runoff voting with those four candidates. We're hoping that in Alaska independent candidates who, again, are really focused on improving the lives of people in the state, they tend to overperform the fundamentals of their district and we hope to support a number of those. And it'll be interesting to see what happens with this new top four instant runoff voting system. And so that's something to really keep your eye on. Though, I will say Alaska tends to not count ... They're already kind of on the very western edge of the country and their returns come in late. So you might want to be patient as those come in on election night.
New Hampshire, like you mentioned, unfortunately they did sign basically a Republican gerrymander into law that makes it harder for us to take the majority, but definitely not impossible. The state Senate has 24 seats in it and half of them went for Trump, half of them went for Biden. Considering the state went for Biden by seven, that's not exactly fair. But it does at least provide a path to breaking control of the chamber and you do need a majority of votes to advance anything out of the Senate. So at the very least you can stop the worst things if you could do that.
And then thinking about the House, a majority of seats there did go for Biden, though the median seat in the House is still to the right of the state overall. And the New Hampshire House has 400 seats in it, it's the largest legislature in the country, other than the House of Representatives. And also the average lawmaker in the House represents about 4,000 people. So in addition, they might be smaller than the high school you went to.
David Nir:
I think that if the U.S. House of Representatives had the same population proportion as the New Hampshire House, we'd have 97,000 members in Congress.
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah. Yep. It's a very idiosyncratic chamber. We are looking at the best ways to intervene in the state. I think in elections that small, I think really what's important is making it so that candidates make face-to-face contact with as many voters as possible, which means getting them to knock on doors as much as possible. And so we're looking at ways that we can really do that. And hopefully that can be a way for us to break ... Again, because in New Hampshire, a lot of really bad right-wing laws get passed out of the legislature and the governor's—he's a Republican, but he's cagey enough to maybe not sign the worst of them. But he still will sign very partisan and unfortunate bills into law. And so just being able to stop the flow of those to his desk will be really critical.
And then across the border you have Maine, which is kind of the opposite story, where in 2018, we helped flip the state Senate, which led to a trifecta there. And basically right away people in Maine—the Maine legislature started passing a raft of really great bills that improved people's lives. One of them, for example, you might have seen that there weren't enough Republican votes to get a cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs for all patients into the IRA. Well, you could still pass such caps at the state level and Maine did that. So now in Maine, if you need insulin there's a cap on how much you have to spend out of pocket per month. And other bills protecting clean air, clean water, bills protecting the right to vote. And so in 2020, as Susan Collins carried the state, we actually increased the number of members of the state Senate, Democratic members of the state Senate. We spent about 1% of what Sara Gideon had left over in her account to do that.
That's something that I do want to hit on is, the average state legislative race, competitive state legislative race not just kind of a sleepy safe district affair, costs about 3% of a competitive U.S. Senate race. And so when you're talking about donating to these candidates, you can make just such a bigger impact at the state legislative level as a donor.
David Nir:
Obviously it varies a lot from state to state, but in dollar terms, what would be a common amount for a budget for a state legislative price?
Aaron Kleinman:
I mean, in Maine, it's like $40,000. In a state like Pennsylvania or Michigan, it will be higher, but still far, far less. It'll be six figures in a state like that, whereas any competitive federal election now, you're talking seven or eight. So by orders of magnitude, it's just so much easier to make a difference as a donor at the state legislative level.
David Beard:
So on your list, you've also got a couple of states that are focused on preventing Republican super majorities, namely Nebraska and North Carolina. Now, that might not be as exciting as taking a chamber, or holding a chamber like Maine, where we've been doing a lot of good progressive stuff, but that's still pretty important. So what are the stakes in those states, if we are able to prevent that?
Aaron Kleinman:
I can start with Nebraska. So in Nebraska you have a very strong filibuster tradition, where you need two-thirds vote to get most bills onto the floor. That is important in a lot of different ways. You might have seen recently that they were able to block a really restrictive abortion bill by preventing it from getting to the floor. The state budget, which we don't often think about at the national level, but they're really important, just the lives of the people in the state. The state budget needs a two-thirds vote. And so you can make sure that the state budget is providing the services that the people of the state need. And finally, for democracy, I'm sure most of the listers here know, that Nebraska allocates its electoral votes by congressional district. And the Omaha-based district is a swing seat, and it swung pretty heavily toward Democrats in 2020.
And being able to protect that both before and after the election will require us to keep having more than one-third of the seats in the legislature. And by the way, Nebraska is also the only state to have a unicameral legislature. And it's also the only state that has officially nonpartisan elections. So it's just a really unique and interesting state that people don't always think of as a real big political battleground, but it's a really important state if you want to make a difference in people's lives. North Carolina, their state government has been in the news a lot, especially their fights over fair districts. But for this cycle, the House has, not the map that I would have drawn, but is a map that provides a path to the majority in a good year, but also potential for Republicans to hold the supermajority if they have a good year.
And so, in North Carolina, you have a governor, Roy Cooper, who really is dedicated to improving the lives of the people in his state, but if he faces a legislature that can override his vetos, they could pass a lot of really restrictive laws, especially, again, around abortion. And as with Nebraska, these are both states that have a lot of very red states bordering them. And so you're talking about not just the people of that state, but also people in neighboring states. Really protecting those rights is really, really critical, just almost at the national level. So two states you might not think of as big state legislative places, but have huge consequences.
David Beard:
So as a native North Carolinian, there's always a ton of work put into these state legislative races. Breaking the supermajority is something that's been worked on in the past. I notice there's periodic optimism about trying to take one or more chambers.
David Beard:
You mentioned with a fair map in a good year, there's a potential for Democrats to take the state House. There's been talk in the past few weeks about this being a better year for Democrats than maybe we expected earlier in the year. Is that something you see as realistic? And if so, do you change how you're working in the state at all, if it seems like the situation is changing nationwide?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah, and one great thing that we have as a group is that we really have great relationships with the caucuses in these states. So we can be flexible in how we allocate resources, especially down the home stretch there. And we've really worked at ways to improve the efficiency of how dollars are spent, ways that we can kind of purchase [inaudible 00:40:02] time, for example. That could be applied to a number of different candidates, because there are a lot of overlapping media areas because the districts are so small.
So yeah, I think we'll have the flexibility to adapt as circumstances on the ground change in North Carolina. Listen, Republicans are still the out-party in a midterm. So even though special election results have pointed to perhaps a more favorable atmosphere, we really need to make sure that we're protecting as many vulnerable seats as possible. And in North Carolina, especially with the VRA being eroded, you have a lot of rural areas with Black representatives that their district's got more Republican. And the federal courts are just less and less likely to put a check on that. And so we want to make sure that we're protecting these areas, because a lot of these representatives represent areas that really can benefit from a more active state government. And so we want to be sure in North Carolina that we're really protecting people in vulnerable districts as much as possible. In addition to potentially going for as many seats as possible narrowing it.
So even if maybe we can't necessarily flip the North Carolina house in 2022, we can set ourselves up for 2024. But when you think about the risk of potentially losing the super majority, that's just so important that it's hard to ignore the seats that are around the tipping point of the super majority.
David Nir:
So Aaron, when you talk to candidates or other folks on the ground, operatives, folks in caucuses, campaign staff, what are they telling you about what they're hearing on abortion from voters? And how are they talking about it, particularly in these sorts of swing districts that Democrats need to win in order to actually win or hold majorities in the legislatures?
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah. It's a huge concern, and it's an area where the state legislature is particularly important. If you want to go back to what we started talking about, the Powell Memo, the overturning Roe. It's part of that three-legged stool, where you have these right-wing institutions that are promoting the idea that it's a good thing.
You have a right-wing judiciary actually overturning it, and then right-wing state legislatures restricting it. And so I don't know how to end Fox News. I don't know what to do about the federal courts, but I do know that state lawmakers are the people who are most ... They now own this issue. And if you want to change the laws in your state, you have to change your state lawmakers. So because it's so proximate to their elections, it's just an issue that keeps coming up. And we are endorsing candidates that are going to side with women. And so we are really committed to that. So yeah, it's definitely something that comes up. It's definitely something that they're campaigning on. It's definitely something that's really important to state legislatures specifically. And so, you're just going to keep hearing a lot about it.
There's a reason why we keep talking about it, because it's such an important issue. And it also relates at a broader level to the idea that a lot of these right-wing state legislatures are restricting people's freedoms more broadly. Not just the freedom to choose, but also the freedom to choose their own president. Because there are so many state lawmakers, in really swing states that are on the right-wing side, that are willing to ignore the will of voters and want to choose electors contradicting the will of the people of their state. And it really plays into the broader message of a right-wing legislature is a threat to your freedoms.
David Beard:
So you've got a couple ways that people can get involved. You've got a GiveSmart slate of six candidates, and then you've got what's called giving circles. So tell us about how folks could get involved with the state's project through those two ways.
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. So StatesProject.org, everyone should go there, and you'll find all sorts of ways to get involved. A giving circle is when you and your friends and your network want to get together and be like, we want to work together. We want to find a state where the state lets ... Or choose your own state where the state legislature is really important and work together to try and flip it. And so you can pool your resources. And you can have all sorts of programming associated with that. We really try to make the experiences enjoyable and social as possible, if you want to do that. But if you're just like, "I got some money burning a hole in my pocket, and I want to donate to the candidates who need it the most right now."
Well, that's where our GiveSmart program is for. And so if you go to StatesProject.org, and you click on our GiveSmart page, right now we have six candidates: Cindy Hans, Kevin Hertel, Maurice Imhoff, Veronica Klinefelt, Christine Marsh, and Sam Singh. They're all in Arizona or Michigan. And they are the candidates that, based on our knowledge of those states and the campaigns, are the ones who need donations the most right now. And feel free to go there, check that out, and give whatever you think they need.
David Nir:
And does that slate change from time to time?
Aaron Kleinman:
So yeah, we update it pretty regularly, because we rotate candidates in and out based on the moment. Right now, those candidates, a bunch of them actually just got out of competitive primaries, because Arizona and Michigan had them at the start of the month. And so they need more resources now.
And I think as we head into the stretch run, in September and October, we end up kind of rotating them a little more frequently, because money tends to come in more often. And we are talking every day basically about who needs resources at the moment. And so, please do keep checking it, just to see when we update it. And I would hope we update it probably around Labor Day again. And then after Labor Day, I'm sure as you guys know, donations really start pouring in and they're just constantly checking to see if there are new opportunities for us. And also we get a better idea of how the election's going to look as we get closer to it. And we can see which districts candidates may need a boost in a little more clearly. But for now, those are the six where if you want to make a difference right now, they're the ones who really need the money the most.
David Nir:
And Aaron, you are a popular, and often very hilarious, presence on Twitter. Where could people find you?
Aaron Kleinman:
Oh, I'm @BobbyBigWheel. I chose that name more than a decade ago, and I still haven't changed it to my real name. I've been in it for so long. But yeah, maybe one of these days I'll change it. You guys still have a Hell of a Sandwich on staff, so ...
David Nir:
That's right, and our site is called Daily Kos, which was named after our founder's Army nickname. And he said he picked it, assuming that he would change it very shortly. And that was 20 years ago and we still have the same name.
Aaron Kleinman:
Yeah, so Markos and I are in the same boat on that one.
David Nir:
Aaron Kleinman, director of research for the States Project, which works on targeting state legislative raises and flipping chambers. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was really illuminating.
Aaron Kleinman:
Thank you so much for having me. I love that you guys have this now, and I am a Daily Kos Elections and Swing State Project partisan for life. And I encourage all listeners, I'm sure you already know Daily Kos Elections ... Especially before I really became full-time in politics, that's one of the best places to spend your time.
David Nir:
Well, we couldn't agree more. Thanks again, Aaron.
Aaron Kleinman:
Thank you.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. Thanks to you, Aaron Kleinman for joining us today. The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing TheDownballot@DailyKos.com. If you haven't already please subscribe to The Downballot, and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks also to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor, Tim Einenkel.
