You may not have heard about this one…
This is an unsung story that’s hugely significant. Bolt’s Magazine takes a look at the huge Democratic gains in state houses in 2022, achieved against all odds:
Republicans were confident that they would build up power in statehouses and inflict a “bloodbath” on Democrats. Instead, they failed to win any new legislative chamber, their seat gains are minuscule by recent standards, and their strongest showings are concentrated in places they already dominate.
Democrats, meanwhile, flipped four legislative chambers and allied with centrist Republicans to wrestle a fifth chamber away from the GOP.
The results have deflated conservative ambitions to channel backlash against the sitting president to leap ahead in states, like they did in 2010 and 2014. Two years into President Barack Obama’s term, in 2010, the GOP gained more than 600 legislative seats and unleashed a torrent of right-wing laws that undercut unions and restricted voting rights. In 2014, they gained roughly 250 seats, according to data compiled by Ballotpedia. Democrats returned the favor in 2018 by gaining more than 300 legislative seats, powered by President Donald Trump’s widespread unpopularity.
No such wave occurred in 2022. Republicans gained only 22 legislative seats this fall out of more than 6,000 that were on the ballot, according to Bolts’s review of the latest available results. (Bolts has identified roughly a dozen seats across the country whose results are pending potential recounts and will adjust its calculations as the final results are known. One legislative race in New Hampshire has ended in an exact tie after a recount.)
And it gets worse for Republicans. While they managed to net a few seats overall, their biggest gains came in chambers that they already massively control, such as the West Virginia or South Carolina houses, or else in New York, where they are deeply in the minority.
By contrast, Democrats soared in closely-divided legislatures and seized four previously GOP-held chambers: Michigan’s House and Senate, Minnesota’s Senate, and Pennsylvania’s House. In addition, the GOP seems to have lost control of Alaska’s Senate; a group made up of centrist Republicans and Democratic senators announced on Friday that they would form a coalition to run the chamber. We may not know until 2023 if a similar coalition emerges in the Alaska House, or if the GOP can coalesce to win control of that chamber.
What does it mean?
Michigan and Minnesota may be the two most intriguing states heading into the 2023 legislative sessions given their new Democratic majorities. In 2018 and 2019, Colorado and Virginia Democrats similarly gained control of a legislature after long being locked out of power, and they rapidly adopted a flurry of progressive priorities such as abolishing the death penalty.
Democrats in Michigan and Minnesota have already signaled a desire to strengthen labor and environmental laws. The shifts will also have major repercussions for criminal justice policy and voting rights. Minnesota Democrats are pushing for legislation legalizing marijuana, while Michigan Democrats lawmakers will now be in power to oversee the implementation of new voting protections that the electorate approved in November.
Pennsylvania Democrats won’t control the entire state government since the GOP retains the state Senate, but their new majority in the House has huge implications: It immediately kills a package of constitutional amendments that would have restricted abortion rights, among other drastic changes. Republicans in the legislature were looking to get around the governor’s veto power, but this required them to pass amendments they adopted this year in next year’s session again. “We stopped these constitutional amendments in their tracks,” a Pennsylvania Democrat told CBS.
In the 35 states where one of the parties defended their existing trifecta—including California, Illinois, and New York for Democrats, and Georgia, Florida, and Texas for Republicans—upcoming legislative sessions will see the heaviest activity, with measures strengthening or restricting access to abortion likely to be at the frontlines.
Among many issues, Bolts will track the fate of abortion rights in states run by the GOP, as Florida Republicans have already signaled they will champion new restrictions, and whether New Mexico and Oregon Democrats return to landmark voting rights bills that stalled this year.
Red states solidified their majorities so they will be doing their thing too as will Blue states which likewise cemented their power. With a Supreme Court throwing our rights back to the states there is going to be a lot of action there as well.
Read the whole story over at Bolts. It should make us feel a little bit better about the possibilities for the future. The sane people are fighting back. It’s going to be a pitched battle for some time but the other side certainly isn’t running away with it.
By the way, Bolts is a reader supported site that’s worth a donation. You can do that here.