Shifting strategy in state elections

Democrats target supermajorities

Democrats are planning to spend millions of dollars next year on just a few state legislative elections in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Wisconsin — states where they have little to no chance of winning control of a chamber.

Yet what might appear to be an aimless move is decidedly strategic: Democrats are pushing to break up Republican supermajorities in states with Democratic governors, effectively battling to win back the veto pen district by district. Such supermajorities result when a single political party has enough votes in both chambers of a legislature to override a governor’s veto, often, though not always, by controlling twothirds of the chamber.

The extraordinary political dissonance of having a governor of one party and a supermajority of an opposing party in the legislature is one of the starkest effects of gerrymandering, revealing how parties cling to evaporating power.

As gerrymanders built by both parties for decades have tipped the scales to favor the party of the map-drawers, legislative chambers have been resistant to shifting political winds at the state level. At times, those gerrymanders have locked in minority rule in legislatures while statewide offices, like the governor’s, adhere to the desires of a simple majority of voters.

Although both parties employed aggressive gerrymanders during the last round of redistricting in 2021, Republicans entered the cycle with a distinct advantage: In 2010, GOP-controlled state legislatures across the country drew aggressive gerrymanders in state governments. Democrats were caught off guard.

“The bottom fell out,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “And we’ve been building back since then.”

As a result, Republicans now control resilient supermajorities in Kansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky, even as Democrats hold the executive branch. And in Wisconsin, Republicans control a supermajority of the state Senate, which can act unilaterally on issues such as impeachment, and are just two seats shy of a supermajority in the state Assembly, though last year Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, won reelection.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has committed “more than seven figures” of its initial $60 million budget for 2024 to breaking up these four supermajorities, with the caveat that redistricting efforts in North Carolina and Wisconsin could shift resources.

“Republicans in these legislatures are not moderate,” Williams said. “They are governing very extremely, and we need a stopgap, and it is critical that governors have veto power where their legislature and their legislative maps are so gerrymandered.”

The only example where the parties are flipped is in Vermont, where a Democratic supermajority in the legislature overrode multiple vetoes by Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, this year. And in Nevada, Democrats control a supermajority of the state Assembly and are just one vote shy of a supermajority in the state Senate, while Governor Joe Lombardo, a Republican, was elected in 2022.

A spokesperson for the Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to questions about similar strategies for Republicans.