Whether or not you weathered the weather that Hurricane Isaias flung at big chunks of the eastern seaboard this week, metaphorical storms continue to rage everywhere.
Amid this, a number of states also held their primary elections.
One of those states was Arizona, which is a pretty good excuse to highlight its House and Senate in this week’s installation of my multi-part look at top legislative chamber targets this fall.
As you are no doubt aware as an erudite consumer of this missive, November 3 is Democrats’ last chance to win the legislative chamber majorities that will give them the power to thwart extreme GOP gerrymanders in the 2021 round of redistricting.
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To that end, it behooves smart Democrats to dig into data and target specific chambers that are especially important to—and ripe for—this effort.
Determining top chamber targets involves weighing a number of factors, like:
- How many seats do Democrats need to flip to win a majority in the chamber?
- Do past election results, political trends, or other factors indicate that Democrats can flip that many seats in a single election?
- Was Democratic recruitment strong?
- Do legislators in that state impact redistricting (some states, like California, task independent commissions with drawing legislative and congressional maps)?
These considerations place the following states among my top targets (in alphabetical order, nothing to read into here):
- Arizona House (Dems need to flip two for a majority)
- Arizona Senate (Dems need to flip three)
- Michigan House (Dems need to flip four)
- Minnesota Senate (flip two)
- North Carolina House (flip six)
- North Carolina Senate (flip five)
- Pennsylvania House (flip nine)
- Texas House (flip nine)
You can read more details about why each of these chambers is important here, if you like, but let’s also get back to Arizona.
- The Grand Canyon state is important this cycle because flipping either chamber would break the Republican trifecta here.
- While Arizona’s legislative and congressional maps are drawn by an independent redistricting commission, Republicans have spent the entire decade trying to undermine and dismantle the body; as long as the GOP has complete control of the state, fair redistricting is in real danger.
So how do Democrats go about flipping these chambers?
So glad you asked!
- My Daily Kos Elections colleagues, as ever, have the deep-dive analysis on the matter, and yes, despite the fact that Republicans have controlled the Arizona legislature for decades, there’s very much a path to the majority in each chamber.
First, a quick primer on how legislative districts, like, work in Arizona, because its setup is a little different from most other states.
- Arizona is divided into 30 legislative districts, and each one of these districts elects one senator and two state representatives every two years.
- The districts are exactly the same for both chambers.
- Each party can nominate up to two candidates for each House district, and voters can vote for their top two choices in the general election.
- The two candidates with the most votes are elected.
- Currently, Republicans have a 17-13 majority in the state Senate and a 31-29 majority in the House.
- Neither chambers has a presiding tie-breaking entity (fun fact: Arizona doesn't have a lieutenant governor!), so a tie in either chamber would result in either
- A power-sharing agreement, or
- Defections from one party or the other.
- Either way, it’s better to have that outright majority.
- In 2016, Clinton carried 14 of the state’s 30 legislative districts as she lost the state to Donald Trump 49-45.
- In 2018, Sinema carried those 14 districts and also won two districts that went for Trump.
- These Sinema/Trump districts are LD-17 and LD-20.
- LD-17 moved from 51-43 Trump to 50-47 Sinema.
- LD-20 went from 49-45 Trump to 51-47 Sinema.
Let’s take a closer look at LD-17.
- In 2018, Republican J.D. Mesnard won an open Senate race by a narrow 51-49 margin, so he’s a prime Democratic target for 2020.
- He’s being challenged by Democrat AJ Kurdoglu, an immigrant and naturalized citizen who’s a small business owner and an ardent supporter of fully-funded public education and expanded access to quality health care.
- This district is also the only seat in the state that split its state House vote in 2018 and elected one Democrat and one Republican to the chamber.
- Hopefully we’ll get a repeat of that this year, but Democrats will not have the opportunity to capture that second seat; incumbent Jennifer Pawlik is the only Democrat on the ballot for the House here in 2020.
- Incumbent Republican Jeff Weninger is joined on the ticket by GOPer Liz Harris.
And now for LD-20.
- This district currently has an all-GOP delegation.
- In the 2018 Senate race, Paul Boyer won an open seat 48-44.
- He faces Democrat and Arizona native Doug Ervin this November.
- In the 2018 House election, Republicans Anthony Kern and Shawnna Bolick took first and second place with 26 percent of the vote each, while a pair of Democrats were close behind with 24 percent apiece.
- Teacher and community leader Judy Schwiebert is the only Democrat on the ballot in the district this year.
But possibly the most tantalizing prospect for Arizona Democrats this year is LD-28.
- You see, this district went for both Clinton (50-45) and Sinema (55-43), but it still has a Republican in its legislative delegation.
- GOP state Sen. Kate McGee barely managed to win re-election in 2018 by a margin of just 265 votes.
- This fall, she’s in a rematch with Democrat Christine Marsh, a longtime educator (Arizona’s 2016 teacher of the year).
Both Trump and McSally won LD-06 (by 52-42 and 49-47, respectively), but this one may actually be something of a sleeper target.
So, the paths to Democratic majorities in the Arizona House and Senate are challenging, but they very much exist.
Stay tuned!
Arizona, of course, wasn’t the only state with primary elections this week.
Kansas held primaries, too.
And while all the buzz is about Kris Kobach’s loss, interesting things were happening in down-ballot contests.
- To fully appreciate what went down, though, you may need a little background.
- Once upon a time, in the long-ago year of 2016, Kansas Republicans were facing something of a reckoning.
- The Sunflower State was in a whole world of fiscal hurt, thanks to then-Gov. Sam Brownback and the extreme tax cuts he and his GOP cronies passed in 2012 (known as the Kansas Experiment in some circles).
- Kansas found itself in an increasingly untenable financial situation, unable to fund its schools and stealing money away from its own highway funds in failed attempts to make ends meet.
- As a result, the Kansas legislature underwent a significant facelift, so to speak, in 2016.
- That year, even as Trump was winning the presidency, not only did Democrats flip 13 seats in November, but 14 moderate Republicans ousted conservative incumbents while seven more centrists won nominations for open seats in that year’s primary.
- In 2018, however, things … changed.
- Even as Democrat Laura Kelly was winning the governorship, the legislative GOP caucus was regressing.
- And the 2020 primaries were no more forgiving to centrist Republicans, thanks in part to the clear priorities of conservative campaign funders like the Kansas Chamber and Kansans for Life.
- On Tuesday night, at least seven Republican state senators lost their primaries.
- At least five House Republicans were bumped off, mostly from the right.
The resurgence of hard-right conservatives in the GOP-controlled legislature is more than internal partisan warfare; it also spells likely doom for Gov. Kelly’s key priorities of Medicaid expansion and legitimate tax reform (not the Republican version of tax “reform,” which is just slash-and-burn revenue cutting).
- But there’s some good news in Kansas, too!
- The legislature is probably going to elect its first openly transgender member this fall.
- Democrat Stephanie Byers was unopposed in Tuesday’s primary and is heavily favored to win the general in the longtime left-leaning 86th House District.
- Her victory would have her joining at least four other openly transgender state legislators across the country: history-making Del. Danica Roem of Virginia, New Hampshire state Reps. Lisa Bunker and Gerri Cannon, and Colorado Rep. Brianna Titone.
- Byers is a retired music teacher and a member of the Chickasaw Nation.
Welp, that’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for hanging in through all the numbers and stuff.
Stay cool (it’s hot out!), and stay awesome.
You’re important.
We need you.
