As 2009 draws to a close, we want to take a moment to thank you for all you've done for the DLCC throughout the year. As clichéd as it may sound, our organization relies on the support of individuals like you. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate the time you spend visiting our website, reading our emails, and the contributions you make to Democratic state lawmakers everywhere.

We know that 2010 will be a year full of challenges. Across the country, more than 6,000 legislators will be on the ballot. Republicans believe that this election offers them an opportunity to beat back the Democratic gains of the past decade and position themselves to control the next redistricting process.

At the DLCC, we're confident that we can meet this challenge. Our incumbents will be prepared for the GOP attacks, and we'll have our own opportunities to target Republicans where they are vulnerable. We won't be able to do any of that, however, without plenty of help from supporters like you.

We'll have much more to say about the 2010 election, redistricting, the next legislative session, and the work of Democratic state lawmakers in the months ahead.

But for now, again, thank you.

Happy Holidays!

Michael Sargeant
Executive Director
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

Moderate Republican State Rep. Jim Campbell has finally had it with the Maine Republican Party, led by the state’s two U.S. Senators, which has spent the better part of a year working to obstruct meaningful health care reform:

This move has been a long time coming for me. I have been very frustrated with the Republican Party in Maine, and nationally, for their failure to address the health care crisis in a meaningful way. Nobody has all the answers, but the Republican Party has none when it comes to health care reform.

This move is about the working people and our seniors who need action. I became a Republican because I believed the party stood for something. I hope to send a message to the Republican Party — and the Democratic Party — that enough is enough; it is time to stop blocking progress in the hope of partisan gain.

Rep. Campbell’s switch leaves the Maine House of Representatives with 95 Democrats, 55 Republicans and Campbell as the lone independent.

It’s rare for us to talk about former (rather than current) legislators – mainly because the 7000+ sitting legislators actually get to pass laws. But this story about a Republican in South Dakota is just too irredeemably weird:

A former South Dakota lawmaker convicted of raping his two foster daughters has sent news organizations what he claims is a copyright notice that seeks to prevent the use of his name without his consent.

A letter and an accompanying document labeled "Common Law Copyright Notice" said former state Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt is reserving a common-law copyright of a trade name or trademark for his name. It said no one can use his name without his consent, and anyone who does would owe him $500,000.

Klaudt was convicted in 2007 on four counts of second-degree rape for touching his teenage foster daughters' breasts and genitals in phony examinations he said could help them sell their eggs to infertile couples. He was sentenced to 44 years in prison for rape and 10 more years after pleading guilty to two counts of witness tampering.

The rapes occurred in 2005 and 2006, while Klaudt was still in office. He later lost a close State Senate race by 566 votes to Democrat Ryan Maher, whose constituents must have breathed a huge sigh of relief later. Our best guess is that Klaudt’s “copyright” letters are just a bizarre effort to get attention, but then again we are talking about a man who thought this was a compelling argument:

His lawyer had argued in the appeal that while Klaudt's actions were terrible, they did not amount to rape because the girls gave their consent in the belief they could make money by donating eggs to infertile couples.

Seriously – where do the Republicans find these people?

With all eyes on Copenhagen for the big climate change summit, now is a good time to talk about the “cap and trade” carbon reduction idea. What most people don’t know is that some parts of the United States already use a cap and trade system passed at the state level, and the year-old program is already debunking many of the most persistent criticisms of the idea:

Some business groups and conservative critics have warned that cap-and-trade regulation of greenhouse gases could cripple the U.S. economy, driving energy prices through the roof and putting millions out of work. Some economists and environmentalists also oppose the approach, arguing that it's too complicated and fraught with loopholes to make a real dent in emissions that threaten to drastically alter the world's climate.

But power companies in Maryland and the nine other states have been paying for the rights to emit greenhouse gases for more than a year with slight impact on consumers' electric bills. Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s residential customers are paying perhaps $1.25 a month more as the costs of the carbon-dioxide permits are passed through, said Constellation Energy spokesman John Quinn. That represents about 1 percent of the average household's electric bill.

Meanwhile, the state has collected more than $96 million in revenue from the six carbon-dioxide auctions held since September 2008, with the funds earmarked for providing relief from energy costs and ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

About half of the money Maryland collects is used to help the state’s poorest residents pay their electric bills, with much of the rest split between conservation programs and renewable energy projects. The actual “cap” part of the program declines between now and 2018, until carbon emissions are ten percent lower than they are now.

In all, nine states participate in the program (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont). All nine of them are northeastern, and all nine have solidly Democratic state legislatures.

Part of our job at the DLCC is help make sure Democrats in all 50 states are ready for redistricting in 2011. But two new web applications are letting everyday citizens try their hand at the process.

Longtime Swing State Project readers are already familiar with Dave’s Redistricting App. Basically, it’s a program that uses existing precinct and demographic data from 43 states to let you redistrict any state any way you want, precinct-by-precinct, and it gives you a real-time demographic breakdown as you build your districts. As a bonus, you get to decide how many districts to draw, so the same program can be used to game out state legislative districts, too.

Dave’s app is extremely addictive, and dozens of redistricting proposals have been popping up at Swing State for months. The program is probably more powerful than anything state legislators had at their disposal as late as the 1991 redistricting cycle, and it puts in sharp relief the enormous impact redistricting has on future elections. It’s so popular that Swing State Project is actually holding a redistricting contest, which we’d encourage anyone to enter.

The second application we want to highlight is much newer, and it comes from Redistricting the Nation. It allows you to check the compactness of every congressional and state legislative district in the country, along with municipal districts in select major cities, according to four objective criteria. After checking different states and their districts, the application lets you draw your own district and check its compactness scores.

Programs like these are helping to open up redistricting to a wider audience than ever before, and considering what's at stake, we think that’s generally a good thing for the health of our democracy.

The Arizona Daily Star has a nice summary this morning of state Republicans’ incompetence at passing a budget. Basically, they want to raise sales taxes, but they’re too afraid to vote for it. That’s a problem - since Republicans are in the majority, nothing gets passed without Republican votes.

Meanwhile, a sensible Democratic alternative which would actually cut the sales tax rate goes ignored:

The sales-tax increase is pretty much the only tool the Legislature's GOP leadership has produced — other than devastating cuts in spending and putting property up for sale — as a revenue stream to address the state's estimated budget gap of $1.6 billion this fiscal year.

House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, and Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, cannot get enough Republican votes to send a measure raising the sales tax to the ballot this spring, Capitol Media Services reported Tuesday. Thus they say, they're going after Democrats' votes.

But many Democrats oppose the increase on the grounds that sales taxes disproportionately affect lower-income taxpayers. We agree; there are better ways to increase revenues, among them the Democrats' proposal to reduce the tax but apply it more widely. (…)

Former Gov. Janet Napolitano left a budget plan when she moved on to the Department of Homeland Security, but it was ignored by the GOP majority. Democrats developed a proposal and posted it online — www.strongerarizona.com — but it was ignored as well.

Arizona Democrats are quietly showing the whole country how a “loyal opposition” is supposed to behave. They’re out-front on the key issues. They’re looking out for the struggling middle class instead of the special interests. And most importantly, when they vote against a proposal, they follow up with alternatives and solutions of their own.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are still the “Party of NO” even when they’re in charge.

California has quietly become a major front in the national Republican Party’s civil war. It’s gotten so bad in the Golden State that a Republican legislator faced death threats, angry family members, and even a recall attempt over a single tax vote.

Yesterday’s Washington Post told the inside story of what happened to a conservative back-bencher in the Republican Assembly Caucus when he broke ranks to support a budget plan that would have avoided a government shutdown:

When he cast an aye vote for Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2009-2010 state budget, which included about $12.5 billion in tax increases, [Assemblyman Anthony] Adams instantly became a pariah in conservative GOP circles -- targeted for political extinction.

Criticism and threats of doom came from unusual sources. His irate mother-in-law, a devout conservative named Bonnie Ebright, called him to say he was betraying his party and country. A hugely popular Los Angeles radio show, hosted by a pair of commentators beloved by the right, responded to news of his vote by demanding his swift ouster. Conservative Rep. Tom McClintock called for Adams's immediate removal from office via California's recall process. (…)

What happened next was the political equivalent of an unchecked California wildfire. Adams received anonymous death threats, prompting the state Highway Patrol to provide him and his wife with around-the-clock protection for three days. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher joined fellow California conservative McClintock in announcing support for the recall effort, which soon included signature gatherers lining up at supermarkets and malls.

The recall petitioners eventually submitted more than enough signatures to force a recall election, but not enough of them were found to be valid.

No one really knows what would have happened if the recall had gone forward, but Adams doesn’t mince words when describing the forces that rose up against him:

"I will not allow myself to be intimidated by the extreme purists in our party," he said. He added: "I cast one vote essentially that they didn't like -- one vote. (…) This Taliban mentality: it's trying to get rid of people in our party. It makes it impossible to grow the party."

Indeed, “growing the party” is one thing state Republicans have failed to do over the last two decades. An all-time low of 31 percent of California’s registered voters are Republicans, and it’s unclear how the party expects to boost that number while kicking even mainline conservatives like Adams out the door.

There's been a lot of news on the state level about redistricting lately. Here are a few of the key stories from around the country:

• Alaska: A bipartisan group of Alaska legislators wants to expand the State Legislature in time for 2011 redistricting. The problem now is that, as the largest state in the union and home to one of the smallest state legislatures, it’s extremely difficult to draw districts that truly reflect a “community of interest.” Senate District C, for instance, covers an area the size of Texas, and recent growth in the cities will only worsen the problem unless the legislature expands.
  
  

• California: Starting Tuesday, the California State Auditor is accepting applications for the newly-created Citizens’ Redistricting Commission, created by a ballot initiative in 2008. A bipartisan group of applicants will eventually be screened by both parties and then chosen at random. Apply online here, or check out RedistrictingFacts.com for more details on the process.
  
  

• Kansas: The 2009 Redistricting Advisory Group, formed to advise legislators as they prepare to redraw congressional and legislative boundaries in 2011, met in Topeka last week. A hot topic in the meeting was whether the city of Lawrence would remain split between the 2nd and 3rd Congressional districts.
  
  

• Illinois: Add Illinois to the list of states where redistricting reform ballot measures are being considered. The so-called Fair Map Amendment would hand redistricting to a nine-member independent commission, with the Illinois Supreme Court selecting the 9th member. Currently, if the legislature is unable to meet a redistricting deadline, a random process hands control of the redistricting process to one party or the other.
  
  

• Montana: Montana has selected all five members of the state’s Districting and Reapportionment Commission, which will redraw state legislative districts in 2011. Each party appointed two commissioners, and the Montana Supreme Court unanimously chose former State Supreme Court Justice Jim Regnier to chair the commission. As a justice, Regnier was officially non-partisan, and he is well-respected by officials in both parties.

When former Missouri Republican House Speaker Rod Jetton was arrested on assault charges last week, the probable cause document left out a key detail from the police incident report: the victim told police she never consented to sexual intercourse, violent or otherwise, and in fact told Jetton “no” before she became incapacitated.

That omission led early media reports (including those cited here at DLCC.org) to describe the incident as an “S&M session gone wrong,” but the official police incident report describes a much more brutal and unexpected alleged assault by Mr. Jetton:

[WOMAN] stated she and Mr. jetton had been friends for several years. She stated she had not seen or talked to him in several years and they had never been in a relationship. [WOMAN] stated Mr. Jetton had been texting her and he wanted to stop by her residence on 11/15/2009 (…)

[WOMAN] stated she remembered putting the movie "Haunting in Connecticut" in the DVD player at approximately 2300 hours. They began to watch the movie and Mr. Jetton attempted to remove her pants and she told him “no”.

[WOMAN] stated the next thing she remembered, she was on the floor in the living room and Mr. Jetton was trying to restrain both of her hands with what appeared to be a leather belt. She stated she was very groggy and unable to speak but was able to pull her hands free from the restraint. She stated at this point, Mr. Jetton began to strike her on the left side of her face with an open hand. She stated after the fourth blow to the left side of her face, she began to see stars and blacked out.

The report, obtained through a public records request by the liberal blog Fired Up! Missouri, obviously describes an even more serious incident than the one previously outlined in earlier media accounts.

Details continue to emerge, and obviously the complete story is not yet known.

Assemblyman John Pérez is set to make history. On Thursday he was chosen by the Democratic caucus of the California Assembly to succeed Speaker Karen Bass as the lower chamber's new leader. When the next legislative session begins in January, he will become the body's first openly gay leader.

Though a first term lawmaker, the 40-year-old will bring a wealth of political experience to the position:

Pérez, a former union organizer who is the cousin of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has deep ties to labor, most recently working as political director for a Southern California local of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. He also served as chairman of the Democratic Caucus this year and took the lead securing votes during last month's contentious negotiations on water policy

Pérez will face a series of steep challenges, as experts estimate that California will faces annual $20 billion budget shortfalls for at least the next five years. But with his proven ability to build coalitions and the unamimous support of Assembly Democrats, he is in a strong position to assume this new role.

Democratic victories are always tough to come by in Republican-led legislatures, but one Florida Democrat played a key role in building bipartisan support for a rail-funding package designed to revolutionize transportation in the Sunshine State:

A key player: Sen. Jeremy Ring of Margate, who sponsored the bill and kept wooing fellow Democrats and the unions to his side.

Ring's pitch for the bill was all about jobs. Not only would construction workers and engineers find employment, he said, but the state's economy would be changed by a network of commuter, light and high-speed rail systems that would link the major urban areas of the state from Jacksonville to Miami to Orlando to Tampa.

``This will transform the future of Florida,'' Ring said. ``Today, the Florida Senate took the bold step of planning for a 21st century transportation system.''

Though imperfect, there’s a lot to like about the rail funding bill. It provides crucial support for two longstanding commuter rail projects -- SunRail and Tri-Rail -- and it significantly increases Florida’s odds of winning a $2.6 billion federal stimulus request for a bullet train between Tampa and Orlando. If successful, the three projects would add thousands of new jobs to the state economy and provide important new choices for commuters and travelers.

Naturally, Florida’s conservative base opposed the bipartisan plan, and their anger could reshape many of the key legislative and state-wide races in 2010:

But anti-tax advocates and "tea party" types are already vowing to use passage of the sweeping package against its supporters, from Crist on down.

So is Sen. Paula Dockery, the Lakeland Republican and SunRail critic who's hoping her fierce opposition to the $1.2 billion SunRail project will give a lift to her GOP primary campaign for governor against Bill McCollum.

Governor Crist and many state legislators in both parties supported the plan, and with Florida Democrats likely poised to make gains in the legislature, it will be interesting to see how this issue will impact Republican primary races.

Colin Delany -- the founder of epolitics.com and a former legislative staffer in Texas -- has written a new guide on how to use the Internet to campaign for office.

This free manual -- available for download here -- puts particular emphasis on lessons that down ballot candidates can gain from exploring the examples of the Obama campaign and other efforts in 2008.

Delany has compiled information on how to choose the tools to power an online effort, how to go about building a following, and how to tap online supporters to become volunteers and donors.

While 2010 will be a very different election from 2008, there are still plenty of important that the winning strategies from previous races can be put to use by candidates looking to come out on top next year. For any campaign looking for a set of good ideas, Delany's new guide is a good place to start.

Rod Jetton, the Republican former Speaker of the Missouri House, has been arrested for allegedly drugging and woman and beating her after she became too incapacitated to say the “safe word” during an S&M session gone wrong.

No, we are not making this up – from KY3 News:

"(The woman) said she did not see him pour the wine because she did not follow him into the kitchen, but he returned to the living room and handed her a glass of wine. (The woman) remembers watching a football game and said once she finished the glass of wine, she began 'fading' in and out and remembered losing consciousness several times during the evening," wrote Detective Bethany McDermott in her report.

McDermott reports that Jetton and the woman agreed on a safe word of "green ballons" [sic] to use as a stop word during intercourse.

"(The woman) recalls Jetton hitting her on the face very hard. She then remembers waking up, lying on the floor and Jetton was choking her."

Jetton appears to have known he went too far because the next morning, he told the woman, “You should have said green balloons,” according to police reports.

Two years ago, then-Speaker Jetton made headlines for stripping fellow Republican Scott Lipke of his committee chairmanship out of anger over the repeal of a state law banning same-sex intercourse. At the time, Jetton told a local newspaper:

Lipke chose to use the bill to delete 14 words from our laws in order to repeal the gay sex ban in Missouri.

Thanks to that deletion, it is now legal to engage in deviate sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex here in Missouri. This law had been on our books for decades.

Something tells us "deviate sexual intercourse" is not a phrase Jetton will be throwing around much longer.

Whatever the outcome of his assault trial, Jetton is unlikely to regain his place as Missouri Republicans’ moralizer-in-chief. It remains to be seen whether he’ll regain his position as one of the busiest Republican political consultants in Missouri – he’s already shut down his consulting firm, and many of his clients had already fled the sinking ship.

Lately, Republicans have had their knickers in a twist over polls that say some Americans (12% of them, to be exact) think race is a factor for some opponents of President Obama. It’s shocking, we know – shocking that 88% of Americans actually agree on something as divisive as race.

But for Republican State Rep. Rob Schaaf of Missouri, the poll was just another opportunity to fan the flames of division. So Schaaf decided to star in a YouTube video showing a series of people saying, “I guess I’m a racist.” Here he is, right on cue, at the 13-second mark:

Coming from someone who once called the State Children’s Health Insurance Program a form of slavery, it’s an open question whether Schaaf knew his line was meant to be ironic. (He should put out a news release clarifying the matter – it would be horrible, just horrible, to see his remarks taken out of context.)

We think Schaaf should stop hyperventilating about this poll and start offering real solutions on his state’s healthcare system.

Reliable broadband service is one of the key ingredients for job-creation in the 21st Century, and Sen. Sean Burrage, a DLCC Board Member, is working hard to make sure his rural Oklahoma district doesn’t get left behind.

Last week, Burrage lent his star-power to a meeting between AT&T and local officials in Pryor, Oklahoma to help determine the fastest way get broadband available in Pryor:

Key officials met at City Hall on Monday morning to discuss Internet upgrades in Pryor and surrounding areas.

Senator Sean Burrage, Representative Ben Sherrer and Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy were among those attending the informal meeting. They joined Mayor Jimmy Tramel, Lucy Belle Schultz, Barbara Hawkins, Bruce Taylor, John Hawkins and others to hear from AT&T representatives.

AT&T Director – Regulatory Jason Constable, and Craig Cromley, Area Manager, were there to discuss broadband service in general and to field questions on how Pryor can be progressive regarding Internet service availability.

As telecommunications evolve, it takes time for the latest advances to reach every part of the country, but Pryor is on its way. Three quarters of the town is now DSL-capable, though upgrading to a 3G or 4G network remains a challenge.

With the benefits of a global marketplace and potential new job development at stake, Sen. Burrage is determined to help Pryor and all of rural Oklahoma meet that challenge successfully.

In Massachusetts, a program created to offer a credit for business and homeowners who install solar panels has been hit by ovewhelming demand. Policymakers initially set aside $68 million for the effort, expecting those funds to last three to four years. But no one was prepared for this degree of success.

With some applications still being processed, the first program will end up subsidizing the installation of more than 1,200 solar projects that, when complete, will be able to generate as much as 29 megawatts of electricity - much more than originally expected.

State officials are already at work on crafting a successor to the initial Commonwealth Solar program and expect to have new resources in place by January 1.

A typical solar panel system can cover nearly 50 percent of the electricity a household uses over the course of the year.

Conflicts of interest. Abuses of power. Violent threats against his ex-wife. Throw in an extra-marital affair with a lobbyist, and you have a rough picture of the bombshell that rocked Georgia politics this week and forced the resignation of State House Speaker Glenn Richardson on Thursday:

Richardson’s political career suffered a massive hit this week when his ex-wife, Susan, spilled a lifetime of secrets in an interview with an Atlanta television station. Susan Richardson told WAGA that she caught her then-husband in an affair with a lobbyist for Atlanta Gas Light while Richardson was advocating legislation that would have benefited the utility. (…)

She also said that she recently started dating again and left their children with Glenn Richardson to go out of town with a new boyfriend. This enraged him, she said, and he sent her 49 text messages and voice mails threatening to beat her up, accusing her of abandoning her children and threatening to turn her into DFACS and to have the state patrol and GBI come track her down.

Glenn Richardson has not responded to — or refuted — anything that his ex-wife has said. [emphasis added]

The likely reason Richardson declined to refute the allegations is that Susan Richardson provided emails and text messages proving each allegation during her interview. This is the rare case in politics where “spin” and “damage control” simply aren’t possible.

Instead, Richardson resigned at 4pm Thursday, though he claims he'll remain in the legislature until January 1st.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has more details on the story, as well as a video of the shocking interview that started the frenzy:

One last note about this scandal is the typically classless way Georgia’s Republican establishment chose to respond -- they tried to keep it private and, failing that, showed more concern for Glenn Richardson’s pocketbook than for the shattered public trust he leaves behind. Again, from the AJC:

By sunset Wednesday, calls went out to the three Republican leaders of the House: Richardson, Speaker pro tem Mark Burkhalter of Johns Creek, and Majority Leader Jerry Keen of St. Simons Island, asking them to assemble at the residence of Gov. Sonny Perdue for an evening discussion.

One item on the agenda, we’re told, was how to ease Richardson’s exit. The $99,082.95 he earns each year as speaker is his primary source of income, and times are hard.

CQ has an interesting article this week about Gerrymandering, an action-packed thrill ride of a movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger in his return to the silver screen. (Or at least that’s what it will feel like for those of us who obsess about redistricting.)

Still in production, Gerrymandering takes a nationwide approach to the issue while filling it in with local (and sometimes infamous) stories of redistricting in action:

Part of the film’s mission is educational, [filmmaker Jeff] Reichert noted, with its centerpiece an animation he calls Gerrymandering 101 that explains the process.

But he hopes to bring the subject to life with vignettes, collected in travels across the country, that illustrate how the die cast by redistricting affects how we govern and are governed for an extended period of time.

Reichert said his interest in the topic was piqued by the one recent redistricting battle that got a lot of national press: The effort in 2003 by Texas Republicans, who had captured control of the state legislature, to alter a redistricting map that already had been put in place for the 2002 election.

The film generally comes down on the side of redistricting reform, but Reichert declines to endorse any one-size-fits-all proposals, noting that “every state is different, every state has a different character, every state has a different legislature.”

Gerrymandering has an expected release date sometime in 2010.

After disgraced Republican Phil Hamilton lost his Delegate seat to Democrat Robin Abbott, Hamilton short-circuited a House ethics panel investigation by resigning from the State House. The investigation was being conducted behind closed doors – over the objection of House Democrats who felt a public inquiry would help win back the public’s trust in their leaders.

But with Hamilton gone, even the secret investigation has been called off, and Republican Speaker Bill Howell has faced mounting criticism for his mishandling of the case. In response, Howell announced he was releasing the ethics panel’s full report…

…which apparently doesn’t exist:

In direct response, House Speaker Bill Howell (R-Stafford) "voluntarily" released today the report of the House Ethics Advisory Panel.

The only problem? There is no report.

The five-member House Ethics Advisory Panel, led by Judge William Sweeney, did not turn over the testimony or documents it collected before it halted the investigation after Hamilton resigned last week.

Howell's office says that even the Speaker and his staff do not have access to the confidential information collect by the ethics panel.

How embarrassing for the Speaker. If Howell had simply listened to his Democratic colleagues and conducted the investigation in public, all the information would be out in the open. But instead of proving that Virginia holds its elected officials accountable, the Hamilton case has become just another example of Republicans sweeping corruption under the rug.

And now Virginians may never learn the full story.

With the books closed on the 2009 Election (a few important specials notwithstanding), focus is now beginning to shift to the stakes for 2010, which puts redistricting squarely in the spotlight. We're now seeing the first of what will likely be many stories from the national media about next year's election.

Bob Benenson, writing for CQ, offers a particularly good breakdown of what to expect in 2010:

What’s not at all clear now is whether one party will dominate redistricting and have the latitude to go for broke, or whether each party will control maps with comparable numbers of seats, giving the process more of a play-it-safe mood. That’s because, 48 weeks from Election Day 2010, the political climates in the states are far from fully formed, and so it’s too soon to predict the overall winner of the campaigns for the governors’ mansions and statehouse gavels.

To maximize their chances, each party has a related organization — the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee — to provide advice and money to state legislative candidates. The Democratic group plans to spend $20 million or more, and the GOP group plans on spending as much as $22 million on such 2010 races.

At the DLCC, we are ready. We've been preparing for this for some time. But that doesn't mean we won't need plenty of help from supporters like you.

Check out RedistrictingFacts.com to learn more about the process and continue coming to DLCC.org for breaking news and important updates.