It was a good night.
Tuesday, mean.
I mean, it was long (note to self: don’t get in front of a camera at 1 AM after being up for 20 hours without at least checking my hair), and it was by no means perfect.
But it was tasty as heck, especially down-ballot.
And you’ve shown great Patience hanging in here over the course of the cycle for campaign updates and statehouse news and election predictions.
(By the by, I did pretty well in terms of prognostication—all of the Lean and Likely D chambers on this list were won or flipped by Democrats, as well as two of the four Tossup chambers and one Lean R chamber.)
So here’s what happened while you were sad about the U.S. Senate.
Campaign Action
Paradise Capital City: The bottom line: Democrats came out of Election Day 2018 with a lot more power in statehouses—and in states generally.
By flipping key state legislatures and governorships, passing game-changing ballot measures, and stripping Republicans of total government control in key swing states, Democrats made significant progress towards building real power at all levels of the ballot this weekend.
Democrats flipped over 350 statehouse seats on Tuesday, but as I’ve pointed out (with some ire) before, that number doesn't actually matter. Here are the numbers that do:
- Democrats flipped six legislative chambers:
- Colorado Senate
- Maine Senate
- Minnesota House
- New Hampshire House
- New Hampshire Senate
- New York Senate
- Republicans, on the other hand, might not have flipped a single chamber.
- Democrats entered the election with a majority coalition in the Alaska House, and we won’t know if that holds or not until the parties have their leadership elections in a few days.
- On top of flipping chambers, Democrats won four new supermajorities by picking up seats in the Connecticut Senate, Nevada Assembly, the Oregon House, and the Oregon Senate.
- More importantly (since all those states have Democratic governors, so how many vetoes do we really expect them to need to override, anyway?), Democrats stripped Republicans of supermajorities in four chambers:
- Michigan Senate
- North Carolina House
- North Carolina Senate
- Pennsylvania Senate
- Of these, North Carolina is the real game-changer.
- With Republican supermajorities broken, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper will be able to veto the GOP-controlled legislature's terrible bills without Republicans basically saying "Oh, how adorable" and just overriding him.
- It’s super weedy (you’ve met me, right?), but the Pennsylvania Senate Republicans’ loss of their supermajority is significant, too.
- Early this year, you may recall that the House had threatened to impeach the state Supreme Court justices who had overturned their congressional gerrymander.
- Articles of impeachment need only a majority to pass the lower chamber, but actually impeaching and removing justices requires a supermajority in the Senate—which Republicans most definitely were in possession of at the time this drama unfolded.
- Republicans ultimately backed off their attempt to usurp the court, but the existential threat to Democratic justices remained.
- Now, though, with the GOP’s loss of at least five Senate seats, the independence of the state’s highest court is quite a bit more secure.
- While some results are still outstanding as of this writing, and other races are expected to go to recounts, we know that Democrats also picked up seats in a number of heavily Republican states, including some of the most heinously gerrymandered chambers.
- In Texas, Democrats flipped at least 12 House seats and two Senate seats.
- In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped at least 16 House seats and five Senate seats.
- In Florida, Democrats flipped seven House seats and one Senate seat.
- In Michigan, Democrats flipped five House seats and five Senate seats.
- In Iowa, Democrats flipped five House seats.
- In West Virginia, Democrats flipped five House seats and two Senate seats.
Triple Talkin’ Jive: One of the biggest impacts the election had on Democratic power was giving the party trifecta control of six new states, bringing the total number of Democratic trifectas to 14.
- The new trifectas are:
- Colorado
- Illinois
- Maine
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- New York
- Republicans, on the other hand, might not have picked up a single new trifecta. (See above note about the Alaska House.)
- Democrats also broke Republican trifectas in several states last night. States with previously unified GOP control that lost it via chamber or gubernatorial flip are:
- Kansas
- Michigan
- New Hampshire
- Wisconsin
Civil Suit War: Democrats picked up other key state offices on Tuesday, too.
- Four states will replace GOP attorneys general with Democrats:
- Phil Weiser in Colorado
- Dana Nessel in Michigan
- Aaron Ford in Nevada
- Josh Kaul in Wisconsin
- The power vested in the office of the attorney general is significant, and placing it in the hands of Democrats is a massive win for progressives.
- Weiser, Nessel, Ford, and Kaul will be in positions to help check GOP abuses of power at every level of government—including fighting the Trump administration in court—and they’ll have crucial roles in the fight to protect civil rights and access to affordable health care.
- Also, if you don’t live in Michigan but the name “Dana Nessel” rings a bell, it may be because of her amazing launch video, in which she urged voters to ask themselves, “Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting?”
- Turns out voters do trust her to not do that. Hooray!
Sweet Vote O’ Mine: In two states, Democrats flipped secretary of state offices:
- Jena Griswold in Colorado
- Jocelyn Benson in Michigan
- These new secretaries of state will be able to improve voting in myriad ways:
- Fighting to stem the tide of dark money; implementing automatic voter registration; improving election security; and increasing turnout among voters of color and other communities often underrepresented at the ballot box.
- Also, progressives had big wins for voting rights in Florida and Michigan with the passage of key ballot measures.
- Florida's Amendment 4 will end the racist practice of disenfranchising those with past felony convictions in that state and restore the voting rights of more than 1.4 million residents.
- Michigan's Proposition 2 will reform the state’s partisan redistricting process with an independent commission and transparent standards for both state and congressional map-drawing, and Proposition 3 will dramatically expand and protect voting rights in Michigan.
- Considering that 2018 was the fourth consecutive election since the last round of redistricting in which Democrats running for the state House won more votes statewide than Republicans but yet again failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber, a little redistricting reform could go a long way towards building Democratic power in the legislature.
Tar Heel’s Revenge: Yeah, I spend a lot of time in this space talking about North Carolina, but that’s because the GOP-controlled legislature keeps doing terrible things that folks outside of the state should know about.
- But on Tuesday, voters put another check on GOP lawmakers’ power-hungry nature when Democrats flipped a seat on the bench of North Carolina’s highest court.
- Because of Anita Earls’ victory, progressives will now have a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court until at least 2022.
- Additionally, voters rejected two deceptively written GOP-authored constitutional amendments intended as end-runs around state court decisions invalidating laws closely resembling those amendments.
- One would have let them pack the state Supreme Court.
- The other would have usurped Cooper's power to appoint members of the state Board of Elections, something Republicans have been trying to do since he took office in their quest to prevent Democrats from expanding early voting or otherwise exercise authority over election administration.
- Unfortunately, North Carolina voters did pass a voter ID amendment.
Welcome to the Jungle: Speaking of North Carolina, Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin seem ready to deploy some decidedly NCGOP-ish tactics in response to voters having the audacity to elect a Democrat as their governor.
- You may remember that, just after Democrat Roy Cooper upset North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016, Republicans convened during for a lame duck special session to strip the incoming Democrat of as much of his power as they could.
- Republicans cut Cooper’s appointment authority by more than half, and they required that high-level appointments be confirmed by the (GOP-controlled) state Senate.
- And that was just round one—North Carolina GOPers went on to try to usurp the governor’s authority over election boards, judicial appointments, and more.
- Now it looks like Wisconsin GOP lawmakers are gearing up to do the same kind of thing.
- Less than 24 hours after Democrat Tony Evers defeated Gov. Scott Walker, Republican House Speaker Robin Vos began publicly discussing plans to limit the incoming governor’s power.
- His counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, is reportedly “open to the idea”—meaning there’s no stopping this power-grabby train once it leaves the station.
- I mean, Evers was already going to have a hard enough time working with a legislature controlled by the other party that’s enjoyed virtually unchecked power for the past eight years.
- But keep your eye on the Badger State—we’ll see how low Republicans are willing to stoop to use the artificial majorities they enjoy because of their own partisan gerrymandering to usurp the power of a governor who was actually fairly elected statewide.
Knockin’ on Majority’s Door: A few votes are still being counted in a couple of incredibly close races, but if current leads hold, the Nevada Assembly will become the first legislative chamber with a majority of women members.
Pretty pretty cool.
Welp, that’s a whole lotta new power for Democrats in states to talk about in a single statehouse update, and I’m sure you’d like to knock off for the week to … reflect on what you’ve read. Why not celebrate this week’s election results by starting the weekend early? Just print this out and show it to your boss, I’m sure she’ll agree.