http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/13/gop-state-gains-threaten-dems-national-power-source/GOP state gains threaten Dems’ national power source
By Chris StirewaltPublished January 13, 2015 FoxNews.com
GOP STATE GAINS THREATEN DEMS’ NATIONAL POWER SOURCE
CHARLESTON, W.VA. -- West Virginia is reeling from a political earthquake. The last Republican to serve as speaker of the state House of Delegates, John William Cummins, left office 84 years ago. That was also the last time that both houses of the Mountain State’s legislature were in Republican control. (By comparison, the U.S. House has changed hands eight times over the same span.) So despite trending Republican on the federal level for 14 years, few here believed that things would really change on the state level. But as the freshly stenciled doors attest, that’s exactly what will happen on Wednesday. And while the change is breathtaking on the state level, West Virginia is just one part of the biggest political story almost no one is talking about.
The GOP now controls more state legislative chambers than at any point in the party’s history: 68 out of 98 partisan state legislative chambers, up from 59 prior to the 2014 cycle. And while West Virginia still has a Democratic governor, 23 states have Republican chief executives and GOP-controlled legislatures compared to just seven for Democrats. And while much of that is a function of dismal years nationally for Democrats in 2010 and 2014, it also reflects a sea change in Republican thinking after the 2008 presidential election, when states began to matter to a party that had been almost singularly focused on the White House for three generations.
After the back-to-back beatings the party took in 2006 and 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee and other groups like GOPAC and the he Redistricting Majority Project got deadly serious about winning on the state level. The goal, laid out by party leaders like former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie, was to build a ground-up party as opposed to the prior Republican approach of trickle-down political prosperity. Given the clout of government worker unions in state politics, Democrats had ridden out Republican waves of the past secure in their state-level primacy. They could draw the new congressional maps, develop candidates and organize for the next cycle and advance their preferred policies. But after President Obama’s win, Republicans decided it was time for payback. While Democrats shoveled everything they had at keeping the White House, they got swamped on the state level. That money and organization, combined with the new phalanx of energetic first-time office seekers spurred by outrage over Obama’s agenda, proved unstoppable.
And the success hasn’t just been in swing and red states. Republicans now control 31 governorships, including deep-blue states Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois. Republicans control legislative bodies in Nevada, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and New Hampshire. And those defeats came after Democrats had tried to get back on offense in 2014, but mostly failed. As the National Council of State Legislatures reported “The GOP’s November landslide gave the party control of both chambers in 30 states, the most since 1920. Republicans bagged 11 formerly Democratic chambers and gained roughly 290 new House and Senate seats for control of about 4,100 of the nation’s 7,383 legislative seats.” (Statescape has the breakdown by state and party here.)
And like many of the 29 other state legislatures that are beginning legislative sessions under Republican control this winter, West Virginia lawmakers are preparing a nightmarish list of legislation for Democrats. New restrictions on late-term abortion, tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks are all part of the plan, but so too are measures aimed at breaking up the still-potent collaboration between government worker unions, trial lawyers and the Democratic party. When Republicans here talk about tort reform and changes to union power similar to those that have already been put place in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, they are talking about cutting off the multi-generation revenue stream for the Democratic Party.
While West Virginia Democrats say they are confident they can retake at least the House and retain the governorship in 2010 – “Nothing could be worse than Obama was for us,” one longtime Democratic lawmaker told Fox News First -- the realization here is like it is in much of the country: Republicans have figured out how to pull the plug on the Democratic power source, and that means big trouble.
