Christian Right Electoral Hegemony, Rising in the States
Frederick Clarkson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Sun Nov 22, 2015 at 04:28:27 PM EST
This is a revised, updated and retitled post I did on the long term trend of significant political progress of the Christian Right and the increasing electoral hegemony of the Republican Party, where the Christian Right plays a major role. -- FC

Recently, journalist Matthew Yglesias published an influential article in which he points out that currently, “70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state – are in Republican hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress.”

While Republicans have done all this, he observes, “Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot.” The failure to develop an effective electoral response to the growing influence of the Right is especially remarkable because journalists and other political observers have seen the situation developing for years. Republicans have control of the legislative and executive branch in 25 states, making erosions of reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and labor rights likely, and reforms and advances, unlikely. And yet, there is a remarkable degree of denialism of the seriousness and magnitude of the problem.

The Washington Post underscored, earlier this year that over the past three elections, Republicans have made historic gains in state legislative seats. It is not likely that the Democrats will get very many of these seats back anytime soon, the usual swings of the mythic electoral pendulum, not withstanding.

Also eye opening is that a key to their success in flipping state legislative chambers has been a successful program of minority outreach. After the 2014 Democratic electoral downsizing, The New York Times reported that G.O.P. Gains by Tapping Democrats' Base for State Candidates

WASHINGTON -- As Republicans took control of an unprecedented 69 of 99 statehouse chambers in the midterm elections, they did not rely solely on a bench of older white men. Key races hinged on the strategic recruitment of women and minorities, many of them first-time candidates who are now learning the ropes and joining the pool of prospects for higher office.

They include Jill Upson, the first black Republican woman elected to the West Virginia House; Victoria Seaman, the first Latina Republican elected to the Nevada Assembly; Beth Martinez Humenik, whose win gave Republicans a one-seat edge in the Colorado Senate; and Young Kim, a Korean-American woman who was elected to the California Assembly, helping to break the Democratic supermajority in the State Legislature.

In Pennsylvania, Harry Lewis Jr., a retired black educator, won in a new House district that was expected to be a Democratic stronghold; he printed his campaign materials in English and Spanish. Of the 12 Latinos who will serve in statewide offices across the nation in 2015, eight are Republican.

"This is not just rhetoric -- we spent over $6 million to identify new women and new candidates of diversity and bring them in," said Matt Walter, the executive director of the Republican State Leadership Committee. "Most of these chambers were flipped because there was a woman or a person of diverse ethnicity in a key targeted seat."

That's a pretty remarkable achievement for a party that many thought were about to go the way of the Whigs just a few years ago -- and largely because of the party's obvious problems with diversity and the Dems remarkable ability to run up the numbers with African American and Latino voters in the age of Obama. But the Republican diversity wins are closely related to a long term effort to target state legislatures.

The Dem's wins in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections obscured the setbacks for the party in the states. As National Journal put it, the GOP "wiped the floor with Democrats" in the 2010 midterm elections, setting a record in the modern era by picking up 680 seats in state legislatures. The next-largest harvest of legislative seats was the Democrats' 628-seat gain in the Watergate-dominated election of 1974. The 2010 landslide gave the GOP the upper hand in the subsequent Congressional redistricting process, allowing Republicans to tilt the playing field in their favor and shape U.S. elections for years to come. In the meantime, conservatives have used friendly, GOP-dominated state legislatures to ram their agenda through legislatures--in "red" states and even some states that lean "blue"--on a range of issues: imposing harsh voter restrictions in North Carolina, for example, and passing dramatic anti-labor legislation in Michigan.

It wouldn't much matter what model bills the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network and the Family Policy Councils put forward -- if they did not have the votes to pass them in state legislatures.  

The Democrats and related interest groups know that they have some catching up to do. The Times reported:

"The midterms were a wake-up call that this is something we need greater focus and resources around, and not just simply to take for granted and believe that we have some sort of monopoly on minority elected officials," said Nick Rathod, a former Obama administration official who leads a new organization, the State Innovation Exchange, that will seek to bolster liberal policies and candidates and to counter the success of conservative state-focused groups.

But by the same token, the development of model liberal bills won't much matter if the votes aren't there to pass them.  Old political habits die hard, and policy development alone do cannot win elections and pass legislation, no matter how good the communications strategy may be.

(I should add here, that the State Innovation Exchange acknowledged this in the wake of the recent off year elections in Kentucky and Virginia.

This is a structural issue that won’t be fixed by a reliance on demographic shifts or millions of dollars spent in television ads during election cycles. In order to truly compete, progressives need a long game that involves a comprehensive strategy with deep investments like pipeline development of compelling candidates, state policy platforms that allow progressives to promote policy not just play defense against proposals that will hurt working families, and research and communications support for legislators.

I would go farther still. I think the missing ingredient is an authentic grassroots movement dedicated to building for power and electing authentic progressives to state legislatures in all 50 states. We are seeing some of this in the Moral Mondays movement led by Rev. William Barber in North Carolina. The model is spreading to other states. Similarly, Democracy for America, is a progressive Democratic organization that picked up where the 50 State Strategy that was the focus of the tenure of Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee, left off. (The 50 state strategy was abandoned when the Obama administration arrived.) Also, Wellstone Action, named for the late Senator from Minnesota, seeks to build a broad and deep bench of political leaders and activists with the grassroots electoral skills to help.

How Did It Come To This?

As Bill Berkowitz and Pro-Publica reported, The Republican State Leadership Committee has been in business since 2002, but changed focus in 2010 and created a "Project REDMAP" -- with an eye to redistricting following the Census.  

And their success was astounding.

The "Final REDMAP Report," dated December 21, 2010 and posted on the Redistricting Majority Project website, pointed out that "Twenty legislative bodies which were previously split or under Democratic control are now under Republican control. This includes key chambers where the RSLC devoted significant resources, including the Michigan House, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House and the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate."

The report also noted that "In comparison to past elections, Republicans had more success than either party has seen in modern history. Republicans gained nearly 700 seats on Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, outperforming the 628-seat Democratic gains in 1974, 472-seat Republican gains of 1994 and more than doubling the 322-seat Democratic gains of 2006. Before Election Day 2010, Democrats controlled 60 state legislative chambers to the Republicans' 36. After the November 2nd elections, Democrats control 40 chambers, Republicans control 55 chambers, two remain tied and one (NE) is unicameral/non-partisan."

We can't say we weren't warned and that the stunning successes of conservative Republicans and the policy consequences are not real. But we can say that the great electoral changes believed to be inevitable because of evolving demographics, such as the increase in the number of Latinos and the supposed decline of white evangelical voters should be considered with great skepticism. There are always many factors at work than can be measured by demographics alone.

(We should also take hard looks at claims,that the Religious Right is dead, dying, or breathing its last; that the culture wars are over, or that related issues are losing potency.)

Journalist Sarah Posner demonstrated this in a slam dunk discussion after election day.  There is some remarkable detail in her full report, but here is the key point:

"The religious right spent decades building get-out-the-vote operations and candidate recruitment and training grounds. Those efforts do not vanish with demographic changes, particularly if evangelical turnout is outsized compared to other demographic groups." That's why white evangelicals may only make up 32% of the population, as in Kentucky, but make up 52% of the electorate. Turnout matters.

Certainly one of the take-aways of 2014 is that false optimism in the face of well-financed and well-organized opponents is a fool's game.




Display:
I suspect that given the history of the past few decades, we will probably no more take the lessons of the last election to heart any more this year than we have before.

by Frederick Clarkson on Sun Nov 30, 2014 at 05:34:03 PM EST

Been thought out and implemented. Even if they are started separately they are coming together. That with the backing of Plutocrats who agree with it and with their own machinations to control us and eventually the world it is seems to be coming ever closer to fruition. The ones they are against, the rest of us are poorly organized, funded and don't have clue.

That is sad for us and the world. The might of the new Holy American Empire, should it rise from the shell of the USA will be many times worse than what our external empire has already wrought. It doesn't have to be.

by Nightgaunt on Sat Jan 31, 2015 at 08:17:10 PM EST


I should add that there is an effort to go around the usual obstacles, and to Crowdsource the 50 state strategy over at Daily Kos

by Frederick Clarkson on Sun Nov 22, 2015 at 07:20:11 PM EST

The Republicans want to cut back substantially on census worker hiring and specifically on field worker hiring. Field workers typically track down the homeless, transient hotel occupants, and frequently moving renters. I daresay that the move will be billed as economical.

by NancyP on Mon Nov 23, 2015 at 01:52:40 PM EST

part of the problem is what you alluded to: "electing authentic progressives".  I know a lot of democrats in this state were turned off when Republican Lite candidates were forced on us, and that carried through the entire list of candidates (I think a combination of lack of name recognition with being turned off by Republican Lite candidates is why so many good Democrats loose in this state).  Those of us "in the trenches" so to speak often hear people almost crying for real progressive candidates, but the party elites just refuse to listen - they know better what the country does than those of us who actually listen.

They think that a real progressive is just "too liberal" for the country - and the rest of us are too "old school".  (You'll also hear all sorts of neoliberal ideas coming from them if you listen.)

Another factor is church electioneering.  Yeah, they're not supposed to, but it's pretty obvious when you pass some church with a huge piece of property and there are hundreds of Republican and conservative issue signs, but not ONE Democrat - and they're all right on the property line (almost like they used a transit to line them up).  Add to that all of the other things we hear about after every election - destroyed Democrat signs (some replaced with Republican), anti-abortion and anti-liberal banners high in the rafters but where they can be seen from the voting booth (I heard about that once, a few years ago), and so on.  It's disheartening to only see one yard with signs for Democrats in the entire area (and pass by hundreds of conservative/Republican signs) - and then those signs are gone the next day (the week before the election).  Sometimes I'll later learn from the landowner that the signs were vandalized - and in a few cases (as I mentioned) replaced with Republican signs (and nobody listens when you complain).  It's also quite hard to get signs from the Democrats... they want you to man a phone, not have a sign (forget name recognition).  I have to admit that it's someone dangerous in this immediate area to be known as a liberal or democrat.

People have asked me why Republicans do so well down here, and I tell them about the power of the churches and about some of the dirty tricks I've seen or had people tell about.  Until that's somehow limited or broken, it's going to be an uphill battle.

I also point to the sort of things that have happened in this state - dirty dealing and lawbreaking by Republicans in order to not only stay in power, but to increase their control (like gerrymandering, ignoring constitutional amendments directing certain moneys to go for purchasing environmentally sensitive lands, etc.).  Ex-politician Paula Dockery (Republican) and others have spoken at length about this.


by ArchaeoBob on Mon Nov 23, 2015 at 02:02:52 PM EST


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