From a smart organization comes a very smart political organizing maneuver:
With over 6,000 state legislative races on ballots across the country this November, state legislative races seldom get the attention even of sophisticated political observers. Individual districts are rarely polled publicly. The Essential Races program helps identify the races that will be most significant in 2010. At just 40 contests, the Essential Races list constitutes only a fraction of the competitive state legislative campaigns this year.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), since its inception in 1994, has focused on the Democratic effort to gain and maintain control of the dozens of state legislative chambers that are up for grabs in every election cycle. This cycle, for this particular cause, matters more than most because the specter of redistricting looms in the next two years.
Most of the 40 races in this program represent races in states where Democrats either might be able to play some offense and swipe a chamber, or where the Democrats are defending tenuous majorities. Given that the redistricting process will be carried out by whichever party emerges victorious in November, the control of the state legislatures from coast-to-coast is an incredibly important (and often forgotten) part of the 2010 election cycle.
The program began with the unveiling of 20 critical state legislative battles last week, with an additional 20 added to the program this week. In sum, that has generated a list of 40 races, which you can find at the link.
For those with a unique interest in state legislative races, the DLCC is actually inviting you to participate in this process as well. They have set up a contest of sorts by asking the public to submit nominations to determine the next ten entrants into the program. Those nominees will be announced in mid-October.