2 years ago
Democrats’ main political group focused on redistricting is expanding its scope, sketching out a midterm target list focused on countering the Trump-backed push to take over election administration offices around the country.
The National Democratic Redistricting Committee’s “2022 democracy targets,” shared first with POLITICO, includes midterm races across 17 states. In addition to state legislative and gubernatorial elections — which the group has targeted in the past, as part of its mandate to set the stage for redistricting — the NDRC plans to get involved in five secretary of state races, including in states where the chief election officer doesn’t have a direct role in the mapmaking process.
“Redistricting is part of that larger fight for democracy, and always has been,” said Kelly Burton, the NDRC’s president. “What we are seeing is that this is a moment in time where we have a really effective model that really worked on redistricting … and we need to all band together to protect against this larger threat.”
The NDRC will invest in races for secretary of state in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio, along with races for governor in states where the chief executive appoints election officials, like Pennsylvania. Burton said the threat of election conspiracy theorists taking some of those offices spurred the group’s action.
“They are electing candidates that don’t believe that Biden is the [fairly elected] president of this nation,” Burton said, pointing to former Nevada state Assemblyman Jim Marchant’s victory in the GOP primary for secretary of state there on Tuesday, as well as Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano winning the GOP nomination for governor of his state last month.
The NDRC will also be heavily involved in races that align with the group’s focus on redistricting, including state legislative chambers and, increasingly, state Supreme Courts, which have decided several maps this cycle.
Eric Holder, the NDRC’s chair, will be pushing donors and “is going to be traveling a ton to these races” to support Democratic-backed candidates, Burton said.
The group’s initial target list does not include which specific legislative seats it will play in, nor how much money it plans to spend in individual states, let alone races.
“We’re taking the next couple of summer months to fully assess where we can fit into the landscape, based on what we have on the target list,” said Garrett Arwa, the group’s interim executive director.
But he said the organization has plans for a “seven figure” investment in the battlefield and, at a minimum, is prepared to endorse candidates across its target states and plug them to a network of both donors and grassroot supporters. Arwa said the group had 44,000 “action takers” — people who attended a NDRC training, went to a hearing or engaged with lawmakers — from the redistricting process that they plan on drawing on for November.
Arwa acknowledged that not every one of these targets, particularly state legislative chambers, are ones that Democrats could realistically flip come November. But the group wants to work on long-term paths toward blocking GOP supermajorities or taking control in some states.
“Some of these fights are immediate,” Arwa said, “and some of these fights are long term and existential. We have to make the investment, not only every cycle, but every year to make sure we're prepared for the redistricting fights in the future.”
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