We of course know that the November 2, 2010, elections were
historical on many different levels. The Republican gains of 63
seats in the House and 6 in the Senate dwarf the Republican
Revolution of 1994 and double the historical average gains in the
Senate for a party out of power. These gains were made despite a
cash-strapped Republican National Committee (RNC), strategic
decisions by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to
spend $8 million in the long-shot California Senate race instead of
Washington and Colorado, and the fact that the RNC, NRSC, and
National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had a zero
ground game.
But what the November midterm elections did do was confirm and
destroy some of the most talked-about conventional wisdom about the
so-called Tea Party movement, as well as raise some warning flags
for Republicans moving into the 2012 election cycle.
Tea Party activists revealed themselves to be, if not completely
organized, at the very least politically pragmatic, engaged, and
ready to press their agenda on the local, state, and federal level
well after Election Day. How the relationship between the Tea Party
movement and establishment Republicans will develop is going to be
one of the most closely watched storylines of the next year. But if
you dig deeper into what took place on Election Day, you notice
some incredible missed opportunities for the Tea Party and
Republicans to build on. And if Republicans expect to make a
greater impact in 2012, those missed opportunities will have to be
addressed.
The gains of November extend beyond the achievements at the
federal level and are staggering in their implications. Consider
for a moment the gubernatorial races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and
Florida — all won by Republican governors in a redistricting year
leading up to the 2012 presidential elections. But go past the
gubernatorial races: in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republicans won the
secretary of state races, despite George Soros’s S.O.S. project,
and in Florida, Republicans retained that position. Again, having
Republican secretaries of states in charge of the elections in
Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania will have considerable implications
for 2012. With the governorships, secretaries of state, and state
legislatures firmly in Republican hands in the three most important
battleground states, Obama’s path back to the White House in 2012
did not get any easier.
If you go deeper into the state-level elections, you see
Republicans ran roughshod over the Democrats. On November 1,
according to Ballotpedia.org, Democrats had a 783-member advantage
over Republicans. On November 3, Republicans held a 523-member
advantage, a swing of more than 1,300 seats. Across the country,
conservatives and Republicans saw historic results: Republicans
will hold the Minnesota state for the first time in history, the
Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, and
the North Carolina legislature for the first time since 1870. In
Maine, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, states that Obama won
definitively in 2008, Republicans won control of both the state
senate and house chambers. And those changes were not by one or two
seats: in the Wisconsin state assembly, Democrats had a 52-46
advantage before Election Night. After the dust settled,
Republicans now hold a 60-38 advantage. Even in states where
Republicans did not gain the majority, they made significant gains:
before the elections, Republicans in the Arkansas state house held
only 25 seats of 100. Now they hold 45, with serious talk of some
Democrats switching parties.
With 11 congressional districts to be reapportioned before 2012,
the state legislative races will impact the federal level. Consider
Texas, which stands to gain four congressional seats in 2012.
Before Election Night, Republicans held a slim two-seat advantage
in the Texas house. Now Republicans have a 99-51 advantage in the
house, 19-12 in the senate, and hold the governor’s mansion, enough
of a margin to ensure reapportionment in favor of a Republicans
should go more smoothly than in previous attempts.
These election results will have a long-term impact beyond
redistricting and presidential races. Consider that roughly 70
percent of the 111th Congress began their careers at the state and
local level. Some of our future congressional leaders will come
from the state legislative victories of November 2.
THERE WERE MISSED opportunities. The easy ones to highlight are
the U.S. Senate races in Colorado and Nevada and even Washington.
(I’m sorry, Delaware was not a lost opportunity; Christine
O’Donnell was a deeply flawed candidate, but Mike Castle would have
lost the race as well.) Poorly run campaigns (Nevada), combined
with mismanaged funds (NRSC) and a nonexistent ground game, caused
many of the GOP Senate candidates to underperform by two to four
points from their last pre-election poll numbers and final
results.
What was also missed amid the euphoria and the staggering
state-level gains is that more than 26 percent of incumbent state
legislators, or nearly 1,300, were not challenged in the general
election. In what was generally viewed as a wave election, it makes
one wonder what could have happened had more state legislative
candidates been groomed to run.
Much of the blame for a lack of contested races on the state
level lies with Republican state parties. But this is where a happy
by-product of the so-called “Tea Party” movement comes in: a
growing network of grassroots conservative organizations not
aligned with the Republican Party that are recruiting, training,
and running candidates on the local and state levels, and preparing
for the 2012 election cycle. These organizations are spreading the
word about what is increasingly being called “constitutional
conservatism,” and news of what these organizations are undertaking
and how they undertake their activities is what this column will be
about moving forward.
