When Tennessee Republicans expelled two young, Black Democratic lawmakers from the state House last week, the national reaction was swift and intense.
Videos of their defiant speeches racked up millions of views on social media. Top figures in the Democratic Party, like Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), marshaled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of online, grassroots campaign contributions to Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and to the Tennessee Democratic Party.
Vice President Kamala Harris met with the “Tennessee Three” in Nashville; President Joe Biden, as well as former President Barack Obama, issued statements condemning their expulsion.
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Millions of people who might not otherwise have cared about the machinations and players in the state house of a deep red state were, all of a sudden, devouring information about it.
Those striking responses reflected a sea change within the Democratic Party: national energy, outrage, and dollars flowing to fierce battles unfolding in the state capitals they once neglected.
After losing hundreds of state legislative seats nationwide in the 2010s, Democrats began reversing the trend in 2022. Backlash to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, among other things, fueled successful campaigns to flip state houses in places like Michigan and Minnesota.
To Democrats who have toiled for years to rebuild state level power, the reaction to what unfolded in Tennessee not only crystallizes the party’s recent shift, but signals the increased investment they believe is coming to states where Democrats hope to make gains in the 2024 election cycle.
Christina Polizzi, communications director for Democrats’ official state legislative campaign arm, said the breadth and depth to the reaction would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
“That transition has been starting to happen,” Polizzi said. “There’s still work that needs to be done, but we’re thrilled so many members have spoken up on behalf of Tennessee Democrats.”
Last year, the viral response to a speech by a little-known Michigan state senator named Mallory McMorrow, pushing back against GOP culture war talking points, heralded Democrats’ renewed energy for state-level battles.
McMorrow told The Daily Beast she was “shocked by how quick” the party mobilized in the wake of the Tennessee expulsions, “but also really relieved, because these are the things that happen in state houses around the country.”
“People need to pay attention to what happens in state houses,” McMorrow said. “I do think Democrats are realizing how important it is. It feels like screaming into the abyss, but… I think that this has angered people in what very much feels the same way that the Dobbs decision did.”
There’s more than just anecdotal evidence behind those claims. Hendrell Remus, the chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, told The Daily Beast they’ve welcomed “an outpouring of interest and support from around the country,” raising some half a million dollars since last Thursday—a huge spike from what the party is accustomed to bringing in. They’ve also seen an influx in potential volunteers and potential candidates from within the state.
“Really, it’s put into perspective what we’ve been saying to people for so long. Tennessee has gone unnoticed and under the radar,” he said of the national response. “I’m glad the nation is watching this moment. Hopefully it helps to pump the brakes on this being a reckless road map for Republicans to use in other states.”
Indeed, Democrats agree that state level battles hardly feel confined to their respective borders in an era of not just viral floor speeches but copycat legislation and coordinated policy pushes across state lines.
Faced with a gridlocked Congress and seismic federal court decisions, state legislatures are increasingly emerging as the country’s top venues for resolving urgent policy questions—like abortion rights, gun safety, and LGBTQ rights—while lawmakers also litigate the most hot-button culture war issues.
“All of these in-state stories that might have stayed in state are bubbling over, because with gridlock in Congress, it’s sinking in,” Polizzi said. “These are the places that are going to have the biggest say on the issues of today.”
The DLCC’s newly released target list for the 2024 cycle identifies the battlegrounds where flipping legislative chambers could yield the most political gains, like Arizona, which has a Democratic governor but GOP control of the legislature, and Pennsylvania, where flipping the state Senate could yield a Democratic “trifecta.”
With the DLCC still vastly under-resourced compared to their Democratic counterparts for Congress—it had gotten no money from the DNC by the September before last year’s election—Polizzi said the group has to be strategic about where it invests.
In Tennessee and other red states, success for Democrats looks much different. In Nashville, the GOP commands legislative supermajorities, essentially making the minority party irrelevant. Just clawing a few seats into those deep majorities, Remus says, would go a long way toward giving the party more influence, even without flipping the chambers.
The quick cash injection after the Tennessee Three drama will no doubt help the party, Remus said. With sustained national and state investment, he suggested Democrats could one day be very competitive in Tennessee, arguing that the state’s abysmal voter turnout represents an opportunity for them.
“Nothing is going to happen in the state overnight,” he cautioned. “It’s going to take a concerted effort.”
National Democrats agree that the party needs to think about building power in states like Tennessee as a long-term investment—one that may not pay dividends immediately but is nevertheless worth making. McMorrow, who helped spearhead Democrats’ successful flip of the Michigan legislature in 2022, framed the effort as a multi-decade project to combat sustained GOP contributions.
“In Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, people think, ‘It’s a lost cause, let’s focus on the presidency,’” McMorrow said. “We’re not going to have actual power unless we have the dedication that Republicans have had since Roe was decided.”
Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive candidate recruitment organization Run For Something, said that despite recent state-level gains, “most organizations, most donors in particular, have their eye on the prize in terms of the Electoral College, Senate battlegrounds.”
“They don’t think of Tennessee as a state worth investing in,” she said. “That is really short sighted.”
Last year, many Republican candidates for local office ran without opposition in Tennessee, Litman said. That could change in 2024: the last week was the group’s best for signups since last July, shortly after the Dobbs decision came down.
Notably, fully 10 percent of their 680 sign-ups came from Tennessee—which has only 2 percent of the U.S. population—with the top five ZIP codes all in Tennessee.
For those elsewhere in the country who registered their interest in running for office, Litman pointed to the powerful emotional resonance to the Tennessee Three for many Democrats.
“What happened in Tennessee has national ramifications, but it doesn’t have national consequences,” she said. “It’s really a ‘fuck those guys’ response.”
For those focused on the most competitive battleground states of 2024, the Tennessee example is compelling in that it connects to the broader arguments Democrats are making about GOP control of states. Democrats in states elsewhere may not argue, “Don’t turn ‘X’ into ‘XYZ’ state,” Polizzi said, but instead focus on their opponents’ shared agendas. She also argued that slim GOP majorities in states like Arizona behave very similarly to GOP supermajorities in places like Tennessee in pursuing a hard-right agenda.
“It’s important to ramp up the pressure on Republicans electorally,” Polizzi said. “That’s the only answer to this.”
