Democrats Kicked Ass In The State Legislative Races Around The Country Last Night

In the last few weeks leading up to the election, Blue America moved away from talking to congressional candidates to talking with state legislative candidates and to state leaders of ProgressiveMajority, the folks who are building a progressive base of local officials within the Democratic Party so that we wind up with more candidates like Martin Heinrich, Debbie Cook, John Adler, Gary Peters, Judy Baker and Mark Schauer and less like Heath Shuler, Tim Mahoney and Christine Jennings, Republicans handpicked by Rahm Emanuel to advance his insidious and completely evil agenda. (Good thing he won't have much influence in the future, huh?)

So our first local candidate was Matt Patten (check out the discussion we had with him on October 18) and he won his race and helped the Democrats win a majority in the Ohio state house. Same thing happened with Fred Clark, our awesome Wisconsin candidate who won his tough race and helped deliver the State Assembly to the Democrats. Saturday we've asked Dean Nielsen of Progressive Majority to come back and talk with us about the legislative races across the country and how they play into the redrawing of congressional districts in two years.

Democrats were outspent by the Republicans and their corporate allies in Ohio two to one and still will wind up with between 51 and 54 seats in a 99 person chamber. A friend suggested looking at last night's state legislative results as part of the build up that started in 2006 to the 2010 redistricting. In that time, Democrats-- progressives in many cases-- have won majorities, and expanded majorities where they already had them, in all regions across the country. Democrats now control 60 of 98 partisan chambers. After taking over the Delaware House of Representatives (and defeating Republican Speaker Terry Spence in the process), Democrats now control every legislative chamber in the Northeast, with the exception of the Pennsylvania senate. By winning in New York (the state Senate went blue last night-- the first time that's happened in my lifetime!) and Wisconsin, they now have both houses and the governor. I'm hoping that McHugh's seat in upstate NY will cease to exist and that Peter King will find himself with some more solidly Democratic constituents on Long Island. The Nevada Senate also went Democratic and Merkley is leaving Oregon with a super-majority in the House, having helped elect 8 new members last night.

Democrats also expanded their majorities in Connecticut, Washington and Michigan and beat back close calls in New Hampshire and Maine, where the GOP nearly mustered the strength to win back control. And in California it looks like Democrats will have a net gain of 2 seats in the Assemby and maybe one in the state Senate, where Hanna-Beth Jackson is stuck in a deadlock with right-wing nut Tony Strickland. Bad news in Montana was that while Gov. Schweitzer was coasting to re-election, the state Senate flipped to the dark side. Bad news in Tennessee and Oklahoma brought ties to the Senates there, leaving them unable to keep the far right from devastating working families in those states.