In a year with an unprecedented amount of campaign spending, it should come as no surprise that legislative races are becoming more expensive.

Yesterday, the Florida Herald-Tribune looked at the amount of money spent by lawmakers in the state in 2008:

According to the Florida Division of Elections, the 316 candidates who ran for the 120 seats in the House spent a combined $29.7 million. The 50 candidates running for the larger Senate districts spent a combined $11.9 million.

The paper calculated that the average House race cost $94,000, while an average Senate race cost $238,000.

The 2008 election isn't over just yet.

On November 5th, Democrat Chris Bell finished first in a field of six candidates running for the state senate in the 17th District of Texas. Now he's in a runoff, facing Republican Joan Huffman.

Voters will head back to the polls tomorrow to decide the race.

Bell is a former congressman, who lost his seat due to the Tom Delay-led, mid-cycle redistricting effort in 2003. He ran for governor in 2004 and previously served on the Houston City Council.

If Bell wins tomorrow, Democrats will only need to pick up three seats in 2010 to hold a majority in the chamber.

The DLCC is focused on this race. Check out Burnt Orange Report for ways you can get involved.

First off, I want to apologize for the lack of a post yesterday. I was on the road much of the day to make it down to Charleston for the State Legislative Leaders Foundation's meeting on the 2008 Election.

This morning, bright and early, I sat on a panel with Tim Storey from NCSL, Jennifer Duffy from the Cook Report, and Tim Garon -- one of the political directors from the Republican State Leadership Committee.

I've pasted my remarks below, but the stage was set up for audio recording, so I'm going to try to get a copy to share later because I think it went well.

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In 1994, two years into Bill Clinton’s presidency, Democrats suffered a major defeat, losing around 500 state legislative seats nationwide in the midterm election.

In 2002, two years into the presidency of George W. Bush, the GOP became the first party of presidential power to gain state legislative seats in a mid-term election cycle since FDR.

What was the difference?

Organization.

In the early 1990s, Republicans began to develop a concerted effort to win local races. They raised money, hired staff, conducted polls, and tested messages.

1994 was just the start.

In the 2000 Election, Republicans gained control of a majority of the nation’s legislative chambers.

They held complete control of all three branches of government in states that we all recognize as competitive: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

In doing so, they gained a significant advantage over the redistricting process which happens every decade—both for congressional seats and state legislative districts.

In the next election, Republicans won control of five state legislative chambers, left two additional chambers tied, and finished the year with more Republican state legislators than Democrats nationwide for the first time since the 1950s.

After 2002, Republicans began talking about building a permanent majority, and some observers took them at their word.

But then something unexpected happened over the course of the past six years -- Democrats won more legislative seats than they lost in 2003 and we have gone on to make net gains in every election since.

No matter how you parse it, that is a remarkable turnaround of our fortunes at the state level.

In 2004, when Democrats were losing seats in Congress, losing seats in the Senate, and losing races for governor, our state legislative candidates won control of seven new chambers and forced two more chambers into a tie.

In 2006, we made even stronger gains. In that year, we won control of 11 new chambers.

And this year, we continued the trend, picking up five new chambers and forcing two ties.

What does the shift look like in terms of total control?

In 2002, Republicans held majorities in 54 chambers, Democrats controlled 41 chambers, and three chambers were tied.

After this year’s election, Democrats control 60 chambers, Republicans control 36 chambers, and two different chambers are tied.

Let’s look at this year’s election.

In 2008, our political team targeted nine Republican-held chambers as possible pickup opportunities. On Election Day, we won new majorities in five of them: the Delaware House, Ohio House, Wisconsin Assembly, New York Senate, and the Nevada Senate.

The victories in Nevada, Delaware, New York, and Wisconsin are notable because they give Democrats complete control of the legislature in these states. The current political landscape represents the smallest number of divided chambers since 1982.

We also made serious gains in two other targeted chambers -- the Montana House and Texas House.

Democrats in Texas picked up four seats, to cut the GOP margin to 76/74. In fact, we came with in 20 votes of winning a fifth race that would have tied the chamber. The new margins present the opportunity for a leadership battle to displace hyperpartisan GOP Speaker Tom Craddick.

In Montana, Democrats picked up enough seats to tie the lower chamber, 50/50, and the Democratic governor appointed the new Speaker of the House.

Because of the ground we'd picked up in past elections, we knew that we had to focus on consolidating these past victories and improving Democratic margins in these states.

Prior to Election Day, our political team identified 13 chambers held by Democratic majorities that we needed to protect.

We successfully defended chambers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Colorado, and we made serious gains in two chambers we originally thought we'd be hard pressed to hold -- the Michigan House and Oregon House.

Of our 13 targeted chambers, we only lost Democratic majorities in two places: the Tennessee House and Montana Senate. The Montana Senate is among the most competitive in the country and has changed hands in nine of the last 15 elections. Democrats in the state were hampered by a number of term-limit-forced retirements in low-Democratic performance districts.

Republicans also gained control of the upper chambers in Tennessee and the Oklahoma. Both chambers were tied before last week's election.

On Election Day, voters in these states came out strongly to support the national GOP ticket, suggesting some coattail effect.

Sen. John McCain's margin of victory over Sen. Barack Obama in the Sooner State was nearly two to one. Oklahoma is the only state in the country where the Democratic presidential candidate failed to win a single county.

Obama's support in Tennessee was stronger, due in large part to the Democratic turnout in urban areas -- he only lost the state by 15 points. But the Republican Party in the state made a point to target Democratic legislative candidates running in rural areas and was clearly able to make gains.

Across the country, Democrats now control more than 55 percent of the nation's partisan legislative seats. We once again made net gains, adding approximately 100 seats to our column. Democrats now control both the legislature and governor’s office in 17 states. Republicans hold equivalent control of governments in just eight states.

There are clearly many different factors at play which help to explain this new political alignment. As much as I would like for the DLCC to take credit for masterminding every seat won and every chamber flipped, the big picture is just too complicated for that.

But DLCC has been an integral part of the success that Democrats have had winning at the legislative level and there are a number of strategies that we have employed that I think offer a vision of success for the future. As the Republicans began to organize so did we.

Our political directors work with legislators, activists, and allies in each state to build successful, modern campaign organizations and develop state-specific strategies to reach voters.

We're unique in that we don't dictate any message. We recruit strong candidates who know their districts well, and we encourage them to run on local issues. We work with leaders and staff in each state to develop effective messaging operations.

We then help give these candidates access to tools like polling, communications, research, and online fundraising. Many of these basic political resources are too expensive for state legislative races, so providing an economy of scale and making them accessible is a huge strategic advantage for our side.

Developing services like this, which we offer to every candidate whether she is running in one of our top targeted districts in one of our most competitive states or whether she is challenging Republican incumbent in a district that hasn’t voted for a Democrat in 30 years, will be a significant part of the future for our organization.

For instance, one year ago, the DLCC began working with Wired for Change, a progressive web vendor, to develop an Internet toolset for all of our candidates. We wanted to make online politics simple and affordable. The result of this effort is DLCCWeb.

This service provides candidates with a web site, online fundraising capabilities, unlimited blast e-mailing, and a range of additional advocacy tools. To make DLCCWeb affordable, we negotiated an economy of scale price and our candidates pay just $40 a month for access to everything.

In its first year, DLCCWeb was an unquestionable success.

We had more than 350 campaigns in more than 30 states sign up to the use the service. Of the active campaigns this cycle, most were challengers and more than half won their races. We had victors in states stretching from Alaska to Kansas to Texas.

The numbers in many ways speak for themselves:

Websites run by DLCCWeb candidates generated 13,903,917 total hits in 2008;

Candidates using the service sent 2,798,496 emails to their supporters;

DLCCWeb candidates raised $444,098.89 through online fundraising using the service.

In online business, retailers talk about reaching the Long Tail of consumers. The Internet now allows companies to make a profit by selling small volumes of hard-to-find items or services to large numbers of costumers instead of relying on the sales of a ubiquitous hit product.

For us, DLCCWeb represents an opportunity to achieve new victories by relying on the Long Tail of political campaigns. There are 7,382 partisan state legislative seats in this country. We cannot begin to identify the Democratic candidate running in each of these races, but we can offer this service and others like it to every single one of them.

We’ll continue to offer targeted support as well, of course. But with DLCCWeb, we’ll make gains that surprise even us. There will be more Democrats winning races by tapping into local energy in places like Kansas, Alaska, and Utah.

As we head into the final set of elections before the next round of redistricting, this is our strategy moving forward. We will empower campaigns from the ground up and give individual candidates the cutting edge tools so that they can develop innovative strategies to win.

We think we've got plenty of reason to be proud of DLCCWeb, and we're pretty happy that this service is starting to get some attention online.

Writing for TechPresident, Kevin Thurman says:

[It] doesn’t surprise me that many have missed one of the more fascinating online programs this cycle: The Democratic Legisative Campaign Committee’s DLCCWeb program.

Developed for the DLCC by Wired for Change the concept is simple: For $40 a month any Demcoratic State legislative candidate can have a website, online contribution system with ActBlue, and the web marketing tools they need to make their web program successful.

Compared to just one cycle ago and the dizzying array options at the time – ranging from too expensive to taking too much time – the DLCCWeb is a much simpler and cheaper option for your state legislative campaigns. With this price tag everyone from low-cost campaigns in New Hampshire to high-cost large campaigns in states like Texas and California found ways to use it to help their campaign.

We're already beginning to see campaigns sign up for this service for races they'll run in the next two years, and we think that DLCCWeb has a bright future. In fact, we'll soon begin discussing ways that we can improve the program.

If you've got any feedback about where DLCCWeb should go, let me know.

As hard as it is to believe, more than two week have already passed since the Election.

That doesn't, however, mean that the results are final everywhere.

For instance, this week in Texas, Democrat Bob Romano filed paperwork for a formal recount of the votes in his race for House District 150.

He is currently 20 votes down, and if he were to finish ahead of the GOP incumbent, Democrats would be able to force a tie in the chamber.

We also know of results still being contested in Washington, Indiana, and Montana. Today we just heard about another race being finalized in North Carolina.

As soon as the final recounts get settled, we'll be posting a new version of our chart outlining chamber margins.

Keep your eyes open.

As lawmakers convene to choose new leadership in the wake of the 2008 election, we plan to profile many of the new Democratic Speakers and Majority Leaders.

Before last week, this country had never seen a legislature where the presiding officers of both chambers were African Americans.

That changed when Democrats in the Colorado General Assembly elected State Representative Terrance Carroll to serve as Speaker of the House alongside reelected Senate President Peter Groff.

Carroll is a four-term state representative, as well as an attorney and an ordained minister.

He grew up in Washington DC and graduated with a bachelor of arts from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He then moved to Colorado and earned both a law degree from University of Denver and Masters of Divinity from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

Carroll is also a graduate of the Summer of Leadership Institute at Harvard University Divinity School's Center for the Study of Values and Public Life and John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In the legislature, Carroll has served as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and assistant majority leader. He is a leading advocate for education reform in the state.

The future speaker has already begun to lay out an agenda for the next legislative session that includes balancing the state budget, revitalizing the states transportation network, and reforming the school financing system.

We're beginning to analyze the impact of our DLCCWeb program. We had around 350 campaigns sign up, of which a little more than 300 were active candidates in this election (the rest were caucus organizations or candidates with races in 2009 and 2010 who wanted to get a jump on things).

Some fast facts:

1) We viewed this service as something for all Democratic legislative candidates -- from the challenger with the longest odds to the incumbent without opposition. This year, many of those who took advantage of the program were in fact challengers. Even still, more than half of our candidates won their races.

2) We had active victors in states stretching from Alaska (http://scottforalaska.com/) to Kansas (http://jimwardforkansas.org) to Texas (http://solomonortizjr.com) and plenty of places in between. In many ways DLCCWeb represents the Long Tail of political campaign services.

3) These DLCCWeb candidates put up some serious numbers online. They generated 13,903,917 total hits to their websites, sent out nearly 3 million emails, and raised well over $400,000.

In 2008, the DLCC tried something new.

For the first time, we published a list of legislative candidates who were running what we believed to be essential races. This was never a list of people who were sure to win -- these were the races that we believed needed national attention.

Our friends and allies did their part. We heard from one supporter, for instance, who sent campaigns a check to pay for postage. Local bloggers promoted these candidates and then the press wrote stories putting these candidates in the spotlight. And of course more a thousand of you offered suggestions about additional campaigns that needed our support.

From the start, we had big hopes for this program. And now, we're happy to report that results on Election Day were very successful.

Thirty of our Essential candidates won their races -- fully 55 percent of our list. Among them were those winning important races in Ohio, New York, Wisconsin, Delaware, and Nevada -- all places where Democrats were able to win new legislative majorities.

We are all to aware that these victories would not have been possible without the support of friends like you. Thank you, once again, for all that you do.

Our victories on Election Night were the subject of significant media coverage in the wake of the election:

The Associate Press led with the headline, "In state legislatures, Democrats build on majority." Robert Tanner wrote:

"Democrats expanded their one-party control from 23 states to 27 states, while Republicans held steady at 14 states, according to preliminary results. It was the third election cycle in a row that showed benefits for Democrats. "

Stateline.org reported that:

"Democrats emerged from Election Day gaining control over more state governments, and they now dominate both the legislature and governor’s office in 17 states, compared to just eight for Republicans."

Tim Storey and Edward Smith, writing for State Legislatures Magazine, had this to say:

"Democrats took control of four legislatures—Delaware, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin. Those gains helped the Northeast take on a deeper shade of blue, with every chamber north of Virginia in Democratic hands except for the lone splash of Republican red—the Pennsylvania Senate. Based on preliminary, unofficial results, Democrats now control both chambers in 27 states."

Overview:

The 2008 election showed the strength of our nation's Democratic leaders up and down the ticket. Just as they have done in each of the five previous elections, our state lawmakers made important gains.

Our prior wins significantly increased the number of chambers that we needed to defend, and heading into Election Day, Republicans were telling the press that this might be their year to reverse the Democratic trend and win a slew of legislative victories.

It simply wasn't.

Prior to this election, we held majorities 57 chambers. We now control at least 60. Each of those wins is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and skill of our state Democratic lawmakers all over the country.

Pick-Ups:

In 2008, our political team targeted nine Republican-held chambers as possible pickup opportunities. On Election Day, we won new majorities in five of these chambers: the Delaware House, Ohio House, Wisconsin House, New York Senate, and the Nevada Senate.

Our win in Nevada was particularly hard fought, and observers on the ground believe that support from the DLCC proved to be decisive.

Victories there -- as well as Delaware, New York, and Wisconsin -- are notably significant because they give Democrats complete control of the legislature in these states. The current political landscape represents the smallest number of divided chambers since 1982.

We also made serious gains in two other targeted chambers -- the Montana House and Texas House.

Democrats in Texas picked up four seats, to cut the GOP margin to 76/74. In fact, we came with in 20 votes of winning a fifth race that would have tied the chamber. The new margins present the opportunity for a leadership battle to displace hyperpartisan GOP Speaker Tom Craddick.

In Montana, though one race is still being recounted, Democrats appear to have picked up enough seats to tie the chamber, 50/50. In this event, the Democratic governor will appoint the new Speaker of the House.

Two additional spots of good news: Democrats forced a tie in the Alaska Senate, despite the presence of the Gov. Sarah Palin on the GOP's presidential ticket. Democrats also defeated reelection bids by Republican Speakers in Delaware and Utah.

Defends:

Two years ago, Democrats won 10 new chambers, and during the last presidential election, we had a net gain of 6 chambers. In 2008, we knew that we had to focus on consolidating these past victories and improving Democratic margins in these states.

Prior to Election Day, our political team identified 13 chambers held by Democratic majorities that we needed to protect.

We successfully defended chambers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Colorado, and we made serious gains in two chambers we originally thought we'd be hard pressed to hold -- the Michigan House and Oregon House.

Setbacks:

Of our 13 targeted chambers, we only lost Democratic majorities in two places: the Tennessee House and Montana Senate. The Montana Senate is among the most competitive in the country and has changed hands in nine of the last 15 elections. Democrats in the state were hampered by a number of term-limit-forced retirements in low-Democratic performance districts.

Republicans also gained control of the upper chambers in Tennessee and the Oklahoma. Both chambers were tied before last week's election.

On Tuesday, voters in Tennessee and Oklahoma came out strongly to support the national GOP ticket, suggesting some coattail effect.

As The New York Times reports, Sen. John McCain's margin of victory over Sen. Barack Obama in the Sooner State was nearly two to one. Oklahoma is the only state in the country where the Democratic presidential candidate failed to win a single county.

Obama's support in Tennessee was stronger, due in large part to the Democratic turnout in urban areas -- he only lost the state by 15 points. But the Republican Party in the state made a point to target Democratic legislative candidates running in rural areas and were clearly able to make gains.

Conclusion:

Across the country, Democrats now control more than 55 percent of the nation's partisan legislative seats. We once again made net gains, adding approximately 100 seats to our column. Democrats now control both the legislature and governor’s office in 17 states. Republicans similarly dominate governments in just eight states.

Our current position is a solid one heading into the final election cycle before the Census and the next round of Congressional and legislative redistricting.