The strategists responsible for electing Democrats to statehouses keep breaking fundraising records. But that doesn’t mean they’re satisfied.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and affiliated groups brought in $6.9 million in the first three months of the year, a historic first-quarter sum for the group in charge of electing Democrats to statehouses, according to information first shared with The Daily Beast. In total, the committee has now raised $28 million for the 2024 election, nearly half of its $60 million target. Still, that number pales in comparison to the money going into federal races, and the DLCC wants donors to know it.
“For a fraction of the billions of dollars being spent at the top of the ticket, we can fundamentally shift the balance of power in this country by building and expanding Democratic majorities at the state level,” DLCC President Heather Williams said in a statement. “Investments in this ballot level this year will determine the future of fundamental freedoms for millions of Americans.”
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According to the FEC, the 2020 election cost presidential candidates $4 billion, to say nothing of spending by outside groups. Between their swanky fundraisers and appeals to deep-pocketed donors, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump appear to have no intention of tightening their belts this time around. Their March intakes each numbered in the tens of millions.
At the congressional level, a top House candidate can rake in a million dollars per quarter, and a top Senate candidate several times that much. While it’s not always clear how much fundraising translates to votes in those races, state legislative contests are a different beast. When it comes to state legislative races, some districts have just a few thousand people, candidates have plenty of room to grow their name recognition, and even a small sum can move a significant number of votes.
Not all national Democrats seem to agree about the need to prioritize this level of the ballot. For the entirety of the last decade, Republicans have dominated in the states. Nonetheless, ahead of the 2022 midterms, the Democratic National Committee directed exactly zero dollars to the DLCC.
Over the past few years, however, voters have appeared increasingly enthusiastic about these races. A third of the DLCC’s first-quarter haul came from small-dollar donations, prompted in part by a new recurring donor program. Anastasia Apa, the DLCC’s vice president of development, said she’s seeing more and earlier engagement than ever, though the committee still faces roadblocks.
“The challenge really relies around information and access to information about what has been at stake in the states,” Apa said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Voters and donors hear more about what's happening in the president's office and what's happening in Congress, and they tend to hear less about what's happening in the state legislatures, until this point. Right now, they understand that the battle is happening at the state level.”
With Congress gridlocked as usual, states are deciding many of the issues that most directly affect Americans’ lives, like the minimum wage, the legal status of weed, and—especially after the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade—abortion rights.
Just this week, the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a 160-year-old abortion ban in the state, prompting even anti-abortion GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake to reverse course and urge the state legislature to do something about it.
(On Wednesday, Republican legislators voted to recess instead.)
Apa, who speaks regularly to Democratic donors, suggested this abortion debacle in Arizona is exactly the sort of situation grabbing their attention.
“In having a conversation with a donor, you are going to hear concerns about how our fundamental freedoms are being stripped from us,” Apa said. “They are talking about the chilling consequences of this patchwork of state laws.”
Arizona, where Republicans hold a slim margin in each chamber, is one of the legislatures the DLCC is hoping to flip this year. The committee is also investing heavily in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—all battlegrounds where control of state government is at stake.
Apa added that donors are very interested in learning where they can get the most bang for their buck, and about the reverse-coattail effect, the theory that investment in state-level candidates can impact the top of the ticket.
State legislative candidates, the thinking goes, can provide a sort of built-in relational organizing program when they knock doors.
That may be a tough sell to the Democrats at higher levels of the ballot who are used to soaking up most of the attention. But it’s a theory the DLCC is hoping donors will buy into.
“With increased funding, we can fuel important conversations that are happening with legislators who are living in their communities and are connected to the voters in a way that is just not possible, let’s say, at the federal level,” Apa said.
