The arm of the national Democratic Party focused on state legislative races will spend more than $10 million to boost lower-polling candidates as part of a broader effort that also aims to help President Joe Biden in key swing states.
Officials with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said the investment, first shared with NBC News, marks the first time the organization has allocated so much money so early in the cycle.
The campaign, the first of several that the group plans to do in the current cycle as part of a $60 million spending goal, is the latest announced in recent weeks for state legislative races by Democratic and nonpartisan groups, whose spending will far exceed $100 million during the 2024 elections.
It also underscores the growing attention paid to state House and Senate races, where policies on issues like reproductive rights and voting rights can often have a more direct impact on people’s lives.
DLCC’s latest investment will be allocated to competitive legislative races in eight states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Funding will go through local Democratic parties and groups and candidate campaigns, focusing on messaging, organizing, door knocking and voter education, DLCC officials said.
In Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, the DLCC aims to help Democrats maintain their slim majorities in one or both chambers of the legislatures. In Arizona and New Hampshire, the group aims to help Democrats transfer control of one or both chambers of those legislatures. In Wisconsin and Kansas, states that have Democratic governors but whose legislatures are firmly controlled by Republicans, the DLCC aims to win enough competitive seats to avoid Republican supermajorities and preserve the governors’ veto power.
A broader goal of the investment, DLCC officials said, is to help give Biden a boost from the bottom.
“We know that strong legislative campaigns and candidates are really strong messengers and are fundamentally very close to their communities,” DLCC President Heather Williams said in an interview. “They are a critical part” of a broader effort that includes “not just telling the story of their campaigns and their priorities,” Williams said, “but also the story of the values of the Democratic Party, of how we are promoting them, and the history of the president’s agenda.”
“These conversations are incredibly powerful and bring people into the process in a way that certainly supports the entire ticket — up and down the ballot,” Williams said.
Asked whether the investment was specifically intended to help Biden in some swing states where polls show him trailing or in a tight race with former President Donald Trump, Williams said “there’s a lot of overlap” in the states being DLCC target between legislative races. and “the path to the presidency.”
But helping Democratic legislative candidates, Williams added, will also help strengthen the party’s power in those states, regardless of who wins the White House in November.
“We’ve known for a long time that much of the Republican agenda was moving forward or being tested in the states,” she said. “And this will continue to happen whether Trump wins the White House or not.”
As part of the effort, the DLCC has launched a new website that will highlight the specific races the group is targeting to further raise awareness around the down-ballot candidates.
In addition to DLCC, the States Project, a left-leaning group that works to build Democratic majorities in state legislatures, said last week that it would spend at least $70 million in state legislative races in nine states this cycle – the largest planned spending on such competitions by any outside group in the 2024 cycle so far.
And earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union said he will spend more of $25 million in electoral disputes across the country focused on issues such as abortion rights, its largest investment ever in a single election cycle.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
