Inside the Dems' secret plan to win state legislatures again

One of the many ways Democrats defied the typical midterm defeat for the governing party in 2022 was in state legislative elections. Governing parties tend to lose hundreds of seats in state legislatures across the country in a midterm. But this year, Democrats only lost a few dozen on net — mostly in red states where Republicans already controlled the legislature — while making gains strategically in key swing states, winning new majorities in the Michigan House and Senate, Minnesota Senate, and Pennsylvania House, and winning enough seats in the Alaska Senate to form a bipartisan coalition government there.

None of this is an accident, according to The Daily Beast: Democrats had a novel strategy for competing in state legislative races in 2022 that paid off — and they are vowing to expand it for 2024.

"In a memo obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast, the theory of the case goes something like this: For just $25,000, you can win a competitive seat. It just depends on when you spend the money, and, who — not what — you spend it on," reported Jake Lahut.

"As Managing Partner Lauren Baer put it, the pilot program led by Arena — a nonprofit group backing Democrats and looking to 'expand and diversify who can enter politics' — targets spending earlier in the cycle and delivering trained staff to campaigns that otherwise couldn’t afford them. They won eight out of the 11 battleground races in Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania where a staffer on a six-month contract earned $25,000, usually as a field organizer or director."

Field organizers prove to be an essential investment, because they can quickly train staff and volunteers how to actually reach voters. And importantly, hiring them early in the cycle makes the largest impact, as it means the campaign is in full swing and knocking doors much earlier than the opposition.

"Arena’s trainees were on the trail for an average of five months. But they would like to see that number pushed up if they can get donors on board," said the report. "'There is still an overwhelming bias in Democratic politics in late cycle investment, when dollars have the least flexibility in terms of how they can be deployed,' [Baer] said. 'So we’ve really hit on a low-cost and effective way of deploying resources, but it fundamentally depends on donors being willing to put in money earlier in the cycle.'"

Trevor Southerland, the executive director of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee, told The Beast that he is hopeful the program is "scalable" but also warned the strategy can't rely on a single organization: “We’re supposed to be the party of the people,. And we have to understand that our people are a big part of why we’re able to do what we do, and that we need to look at really putting investments into our staff for the long term.”