Governing magazine’s Louis Jacobson pays special attention to state legislatures across the country, and he’s out this month with a review of a dozen legislators to watch – six from each party – just in time for the New Year.

Some of the Democratic names may be familiar to you because of the leadership they’ve already shown in 2011 and in recent years:

• Stacey Abrams - Georgia House (D)
  House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who is the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly, earned degrees from Spelman College, Yale Law School and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She’s a tax attorney and a former deputy city attorney for Atlanta. Despite being in the minority in the Legislature, observers credit her with winning concessions from freshman Republican Gov. Nathan Deal on a revamp of the HOPE scholarship program, a merit-based higher education fund for Georgia residents, and for putting up a strong fight against a GOP tax plan….
  

• Reuven Carlyle - Washington House (D)
  …After a career in the cellphone and software industries, Carlyle won an open seat in 2008 representing a trendy area of Seattle. He has made a point of crossing party lines and taking on figures in his own party. “I believe the people of our district elected me in 2008 to vigorously seek intellectual and moral independence from old-fashioned orthodoxies,” he wrote on his campaign website. “We live in a 21st-century global community and stereotypical positions -- liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican -- have little bearing on our children’s future…”
  

• Wendy Davis - Texas Senate (D)
  …Sen. Wendy Davis, who represents Fort Worth, used the limited tools available to her to achieve spectacular results. Hours before last year’s session was to end, Davis filibustered a bill that included $4 billion in school cuts. That forced Republican Gov. Rick Perry -- who was on his way to becoming a presidential candidate -- to call a special session. It also turned Davis into “an icon among Democratic activists in Texas,” says Mark P. Jones, a Rice University political scientist….
  

• Ted Lieu - California Senate (D)
  ...Before election to the Senate in 2011, Lieu chaired the Assembly’s Rules, and Banking and Finance committees, where he was a key mover of legislation on such topics as foreclosure prevention, child sex offenders, domestic violence, cyberbullying, sewage spills and health insurance.
  “Ted Lieu is that rare Democratic political figure who combines it all,” says California-based Democratic strategist Garry South. “He’s smart and well educated, articulate, pleasant and professional to deal with, center-left while also being a former JAG and current reserve officer in the Air Force, has a photogenic young family, and is part of the fastest-growing ethnic group in the largest state....
  

• Vincent Sheheen - South Carolina Senate (D)
  Sen. Vincent Sheheen exceeded all expectations in his 2010 race for governor. Running in a strongly Republican state in a strongly Republican year, he lost to Nikki Haley -- who attracted considerable national media attention -- by just four percentage points. An effective legislator, he had sponsored 18 bills that became state law prior to his gubernatorial campaign….
  

• Darrin Williams - Arkansas House (D)
  Rep. Darrin Williams was adopted and raised in Little Rock. He’s a second-termer in a state with a three-term limit for state representatives, so he’s positioned to become a strong contender for speaker -- which would make him the first African-American to hold the position. He has already chaired the House Judiciary Committee, where he won a measure of bipartisan support for legislation….
  

Please read the full column for longer profiles of each legislator. We expect big things from all six of them, in addition to the many accomplishments they've already racked up.

Texas GOP state Rep. Joe Driver has learned the hard way that public corruption is like a one-way street: once you’ve gone too far, there’s no turning around.

Driver, an 18-year veteran of the Texas House, pled guilty on Election Night to charges that he illegally pocketed nearly $50,000 in taxpayer funds over his two decades in office:

State Rep. Joe Driver, who candidly acknowledged pocketing taxpayer reimbursements for travel paid by his campaign, will enter a guilty plea on abuse-of-office charges, a third-degree felony, a top prosecutor said Tuesday night.

“He is going to plea to the third degree felony,” said Assistant Travis County District Attorney Gregg Cox, head of the Travis County Public Integrity Unit. “It is a plea of guilt.”

The genesis of this scandal was an excellent piece of reporting by the Associated Press over a year ago, in which reporters noticed that Driver had been billing both his campaign and the State of Texas for “luxury hotels, airline tickets, meals, fees and incidentals” related to travel – and then pocketing the extra cash.

That AP’s article included a brief interview with Driver, who not only admitted double-dipping, but also offered up this classic explanation of his actions:

"Now you're scaring the heck out of me," Driver told the AP, adding: "It pretty well screws my week." (…)

Driver insists he thought the double-billing was perfectly appropriate - until talking about it with the AP.

"Well, it doesn't sound like it is now. If you bring it up that way," he said.

“If you bring it up that way,” illegally taking $50,000 sounds almost wrong, doesn’t it?

Driver has announced his retirement from office next year, but that’s not good enough for the people of Texas. He pocketed at least $50,000 of their tax dollars, and we’ll never know if there was more because reimbursement records prior to 2005 have been destroyed.

Now Driver wants to serve the rest of his term with a felony conviction for public corruption. He would spend another 15 months as a lawmaker who, for instance, remains eligible for official travel reimbursements at taxpayer expense.

Driver should resign today.

The DLCC hosted an important panel at last week's Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis. “Where Crazy Comes From: Reckless Republicans in State Legislatures” drew a full house as statehouse experts discussed the extreme right-wing agendas sweeping through state legislatures, as well as how to organize, highlight the extremism, and fight back.

The DLCC's Carolyn Fiddler moderated the panel that included DLCC Executive Director Michael Sargeant, Texas Progress Executive Director Matt Glazer, Minnesota Independent Senior Reporter Andy Birkey, and Minnesota state Rep. Paul Thissen.

All participants brought unique perspectives to the epidemic of anti-equality, anti-middle class, anti-common sense policies working their way through statehouses across the country. Sargeant presented a broad, national-level analysis and concrete examples of the growing backlash, including recent special election wins in unfavorable territory. He also emphasized that Republican extremism is more than a talking point or even a cause to rally against; these destructive policies affect real people in tangible ways. Glazer provided an effective discussion of translating news and knowledge of the Republican agenda into action – namely, organizing and energizing progressive voters online and off. Birkey highlighted the American Independent's role in providing in-depth reporting on state legislative politics from a progressive viewpoint. Rep. Thissen provided a valuable "in the trenches" perspective on right-wing antics in GOP legislatures around the country, including his own chamber. He described how the GOP wins in 2010 have had a destructive influence on sound policy making, and he provided a broad roadmap for how legislative leaders and grassroots activists can work together to shine a light on the very worst of GOP extremism.

The full panel video is posted below, and it’s also available at netrootsnation.org (introductions begin at the 52 second mark).

Thank you to all of our panelists, and to the approximately 200 people who attended the session.

In a state whose GOP leaders are still fighting to criminalize homosexuality and flirting with abolishing Medicaid, a leader with a great deal of skill, commitment, and persistence is often the only hope for even remotely progressive legislation.

Texas has such a leader in Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, a DLCC Board of Directors member, who capped off a multi-year fight with two critically important legislative victories this session: a new suicide-prevention law and a law to dramatically increase access to health care in rural areas.

SB 984, the rural health care bill, solves a problem that has been vexing hospitals in rural communities for decades: how to ensure there are enough doctors. Enrique Rangel of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal explains the solution:

Coleman, who is considered one of the leading health care experts in the Legislature, said the legislation he and Duncan worked on is a milestone.

“This is a major shift in state policy,” Coleman said. “Doctors will have the choice between hanging up their own shingle, or, working directly for a hospital.”

Jeff Barnhart, CEO of Ochiltree General Hospital in Perryton, said he is just as happy that after years in the works, Duncan and Coleman finally succeeded.

“In the future, when we need a doctor, this will make it easier for us to recruit and hire the doctor or doctors we need,” Barnhart said.

Dr. Bruce Malone of Austin, who today becomes president of TMA — which in previous sessions opposed similar proposals Duncan and Coleman filed — said the 45,000-member organization supported the bill this year because it recognizes that rural hospitals “have special needs.”

Under current law, doctors shoulder the financial risk themselves if they choose to practice in under-served areas. For younger doctors carrying potentially hundreds of thousands in medical school debt, that risk is often simply too heavy.

Another Coleman victory this session was the passage of Asher’s Law (HB 1386), which will provide new guidance and resources for Texas schools to help prevent suicide among students. This law, and a new anti-bullying law which was passed the same day, will ensure that more Texas youths have someplace (and someone) to turn to when it matters most:

Tonight, the Senate voted 28-3 to pass a suicide prevention bill by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. This is the bill that was originally called Asher’s Law in honor of Asher Brown, the 13-year gay youth from the Houston area who took his own life last year in response to bullying at school.

Neither bill in its final form contains specific references or protections for LGBT youth. But the fact is that if they did, they wouldn’t have had any chance of passing the Republican-dominated Legislature.

Daniel Williams at Legislative Queery reports on Coleman’s bill:

HB 1386, the teen suicide prevention bill by Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) has passed the Texas Senate on a 28 to 3 vote. The bill instructs the Texas Department of State Health Services to develop resources designed to prevent teen suicide, including mental health counseling, crisis prevention tools and suicide prevention eduction. Schools would then have the option of implementing those programs, but would not be required to do so.

Congratulations to Rep. Coleman on these legislative victories, both of which were years in the making – Rep. Coleman is proving once again that he is a friend to the people of Texas.

After President Obama released his long-form birth certificate over a week ago, it seemed reasonable to expect the outbreak of “birther” bills in state legislatures around the country to abate. 

However, since there was nothing reasonable about birtherism to begin with, anyone who expected these bills to die was bound to be disappointed. 

The very day the President shared his long-form birth certificate, one of the original state legislative birthers revealed that its release raised more doubts in him than it allayed. GOP Texas state Rep. Leo Berman, who achieved notoriety for his birther bill last November, wasn’t going to let “proof” dispel his suspicions. 

"If this is the true birth certificate, I'm very happy to finally see it," [Berman] said. But today's news didn't answer his lingering doubts; if anything, it raised even more questions. Berman was comparing the White House release with another birth certificate he said was from Mombasa, Kenya. "There are two hospitals [in Honolulu] at the time and neither hospital will claim him," Berman said. "Today, if you have a hospital where the president was born they'd probably take the room where he was born and make a shrine out of it." Plus, the Kenyan certificate just seemed more compelling: "When I look at the one from Kenya, there is a British lord who is the clerk for registering all births in Kenya at that time." He added, "The one from Mombasa even has a footprint on it. Like a human footprint." 

On the fate of his own proposed birther legislation, 

Berman said he has no plans to drop his bill but wasn't optimistic it would become law. "I don't think it's going anywhere," he said.  

But continued legislative birtherism isn’t confined to Texas. In fact, the GOP-controlled Missouri House of Representatives passed its own birther bill just last Thursday—more than a week after President Obama released his certificate. 

Per the measure: "When certifying presidential and vice presidential nominees and requesting that such nominees be placed on the ballot, the state committees of each political party shall provide verifiable evidence of identity and proof of natural born citizenship."

…[T]he Missouri bill is not as hysterical as some of the other proposals that have been introduced (there's no long-form requirement, for instance). But it's born out of the same hysterical climate, in which prominent conservatives sought to propagate a myth that the President was a foreign agent involved in an elaborate conspiracy to defraud the Republic. Missouri's provision, which is part of a broader package that includes a new voter ID law, still has to pass the Senate and win the approval of [Democratic]Governor Jay Nixon.

(Fun fact: House Majority Leader Timothy Jones takes birtherism seriously enough to sign on as a plaintiff in one of “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz’s frivolous lawsuits. Upon Rep. Jones’ election as Majority Leader, Taitz blogged about her hope that he bring this “issue to the floor of the state House of Reps.” Rep. Jones must have been paying attention.)

Birther bills aren’t filed by state legislators under the sway of logic and reason. This strain of legislation seeks to codify a demonstrably false conspiracy theory. Don’t expect little things like “facts” and “proof” to cure the birther bill epidemic any time soon.

(h/t Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy)

The thoroughly debunked, racially charged conspiracy theory of “birtherism” has its roots in the 2008 presidential election. Fringe elements of the Republican Party fixated on the false notion that Barack Obama was not eligible to be president of the United States because he supposedly was born in another country. No major GOP candidates promoted this lie at the time, and birthers continued to scratch at the fringe of the Republican Party for a couple of years.

In the year following President Obama’s inauguration, it seemed as though birtherism would remain the purview of ultra-conservative media personalities like Jerome “Swift Boat” Corsi and Rush Limbaugh. But the nature and scope of birtherism have since changed dramatically.

Just a few months ago, Republican state legislators began working feverishly to mainstream the birther lie. Supporters of “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz ascended to leadership positions in their caucuses. Legislation based around the notion that Obama’s presidency is illegitimate began popping up in statehouses. With slight variations here and there, these “birther bills” question the validity of President Obama’s Certification of Live Birth by requiring presidential candidates to provide various documents proving they were born in the United States in order to qualify for a state’s ballot.

Birther bills have been filed in legislatures all over the country this year, and not just in “red” states. While this list may well continue expanding, it currently includes

• Arkansas
• Arizona (GOP Gov. Brewer just vetoed this birther bill.)
• Connecticut
• Georgia
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Louisiana*
• Maine
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Texas

*Republican Governor Bobby Jindal has stated publicly that he would sign a birther bill, should the Louisiana legislature send one to his desk.

Meanwhile, on the federal level birtherism began attract renewed attention as the potential 2012 GOP presidential field addressed the “issue.”

Enter Donald Trump.

Shortly after announcing that he may launch a long-shot run for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump began pushing birtherism in a big way.

Why?

Months of Republican state legislators’ attempts to legitimize the birther lie through legislation has helped validate the GOP base’s suspicions that President Obama is not “one of us.” This cementing of conservatives’ views on the issue is demonstrated by polling that reveals 45 percent of Republicans believe he was born in another country, as The New York Times reported yesterday. Last July, a poll revealed that 41 percent of Republicans believed President Obama was “probably” or “definitely” born in another country.

Republican state legislators helped provide Donald Trump with a path to credibility with the conservative base.

Will Trump’s next issue position involve union-busting? Perhaps he’ll take a stand against the non-existent problem of sharia law. Or maybe he’ll advocate for the use of gold and silver as currency.

Whatever Trump’s next political move may be, look for its roots in GOP statehouse crazy.

A couple of weeks ago we introduced you Texas Republican state Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler), who filed a bill that would require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state.

The fact that GOP Rep. Berman has proposed legislation as a result of his belief in a soundly disproved, racially charged conspiracy theory has attracted the attention of some national media outlets.

One such outlet was CNN. On Monday night, Anderson Cooper aired an interview he’d conducted with Rep. Berman on his nightly show. In a segment over 12 minutes in length, a patient and respectful Cooper took on and tore down each of Rep. Berman’s supposed “facts” and assumptions.

Check out the video:

While too long to post in its entirety, here are some excerpts from the transcript, in which Cooper takes on the birth certificate nonsense and explains that any American could travel to Pakistan during the time Obama visited that country as a student. Cooper also helpfully points out that while Rep. Berman insists on seeing President Barack Obama’s college records, he raised no objections to President George W. Bush withholding his own.

COOPER: Representative Berman, you've said this bill is needed because -- and I quote -- "we have a president who the American people don't know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place." Do you personally believe that President Obama was not born in Hawaii?

BERMAN: Well, you know, I really don't know. If you look at my white hair, you can tell I have been around for a while. And I have known everything about every president that I have come across for the last 70-some-odd years. I don't know anything about President Obama. I wish I did.

COOPER: How can you say that?... Because, I mean, there is a -- a birth certificate. There's a certificate of live birth, which is what the State of Hawaii sends out. We're showing a picture of it to our viewers. It's got a raised seal. And it's got the stamp of the -- the -- the -- the health register from the state. Why -- why isn't that good enough?

BERMAN: Well, because it's not an original birth certificate. It doesn't show the parents' place of birth. And, also, we know for certain that President Obama's father was born in Kenya. Since he was born in Kenya, in -- that was a British protectorate. President Obama was born in 1961. And with his father being a British citizen, at least, President Obama, we think holds dual citizenship.

COOPER: Well, actually, technically that's not correct. He may have been born with dual citizenship because of the technicality of his father being under the British -- a British subject, being from Kenya, but he automatically lost that in -- in -- when he -- at the age of 23, as anybody -- anybody does. And -- and to say that that document is not –

BERMAN: How do you lose that?

COOPER: To say -- it's just -- it's the way it happened. To say that that document, though, is not the original birth certificate that is what the state sends out when anybody asks for a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. And it's accepted by the U.S. State Department as valid for a U.S. passport. And -- and the Hawaii state health director has acknowledged that, back in 2008, she has -- and I quote -- "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Senator Obama's original birth certificate on record, in accordance with state policies and procedures."
….
COOPER: -- do you not acknowledge that the state of Hawaii has the original birth certificate? The health director there says it. The governor of Hawaii says this is not an issue. The governor of Hawaii, who is a Republican, was quoted as saying: "I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records at the Department of Health. We issued a news release at the time saying the president was, in fact, born at Kapi'olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that is just a fact." Is she lying?

BERMAN: Well, my question to you, then Anderson, is why -- did you see it? I would like to see it.

COOPER: Well, you can go … You can go and see it. The nonpartisan fact-checking organization FactCheck.org, they -- they looked at it. It has a raised seal. They say it's legit.

BERMAN: A raised seal could be put on by any type of machinery. But what I'm saying is where are the president's passports? Where are his travel documents? Where are his school records? Why don't we know anything at all about a president who has such a radical agenda? There is a radical agenda. And I would like to know something about the President of United States.
…
BERMAN: You haven't answered me. You haven't -- tell me, where are his passports?

COOPER: I am answering it. The state of Hawaii, for a fact, has verified the original birth certificate is there. When you -- if you request one, as the Obama campaign did, what they are sent is the certificate of live birth. It's the short form. It's what they send out. Hawaii doesn't send out the long form. Yet, for some reason, in this man's case, it's not acceptable to you.

BERMAN: Well, let me -- let -- let's say it is acceptable to me. Now, let's answer -- let's get on to another point. Where are the president's passports and his travel records which got him to Pakistan in the early '90s, when no U.S. citizen could get to Pakistan at all?
…
COOPER: Sir, I don't mean to contradict you.
BERMAN: I'm sorry?
COOPER: I -- I respect you. And I respect, certainly, your service to this country, but where do you get your information? Because that -- that -- what you have just said is factually incorrect.

BERMAN: I'm getting my information the same place you are getting your information.

COOPER: Ok. Well, how do you know the president traveled to Pakistan, what did you say, in the late '90s, late '80s?

BERMAN: I think it -- late '80s, early '90s. That's common knowledge.
COOPER: That's actually not true, sir.
BERMAN: Everybody knows he traveled to Pakistan -- he had a passport -- when -- U.S. citizens couldn't travel to Pakistan. So, which country –

COOPER: Ok. Sir, he traveled to Pakistan in 1981, and -- and when he was a student. And -- and, actually, Americans could travel to Pakistan then. In fact, I -- we have an article from "The New York Times" from 1981 from the travel section about the joys of traveling in Pakistan. You needed a -- American citizens, I think they needed a 30-day visa, but American citizens could go and travel in Pakistan. That's just an Internet rumor that you're spreading.

BERMAN: No, it's -- it's not an Internet rumor that I'm spreading. I'm sorry, it's not.

COOPER: Sir -- Barack Obama went to Pakistan in 1981, when Americans could go there. It -- it is an Internet rumor that Americans couldn't travel there. And you had the dates completely wrong. You're saying the early '90s.
...
BERMAN: Why won't you show us the long birth certificate or the passport? And why didn't the United States Congress -- we have 535 members of the United States Congress. They are the only body of the federal government in a Constitution that really should be vetting the president of the United States -- because they take an oath of office in which they will support and defend the Constitution against -- of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and they will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, so help me God…. Not a single member of the -- United States Congress raised their hand when they were counting the electoral votes in 2008 -- to say, show us. I want to see it.

COOPER: Sir, just of the points you -- of the points you have raised, the factual points to -- to -- I mean, you're basing legislation on stuff that's basically just rumors and -- and stuff that's been proven to be false. I mean, you -- you say that -- that President didn't release college records. That's true. He hasn't released college records. But, under federal law, the schools can't release them, and he doesn't want to, for whatever reason. And you know what? George W. Bush didn't want to, for whatever reason, from Andover and from Yale. You didn't seem to object about that. You've raised medical records issue, that he didn't fully release his medical records. Well, you know what? John McCain didn't fully release his medical records either. They both did in a very limited way.
…
COOPER: But how much of this is about -- purely about politics? Because look, you -- you -- you are a good person, and you've served your country remarkably in the military, and you're a public servant now. But you're basing legislation on things which have been disproven. And you've said -- in the past, you said -- and I quote -- "I believe that Barack Obama's God's punishment on us today." Is this just about politics? That you don't like this guy, and, therefore, you're raising these objections about him?

BERMAN: Well, it's -- it's a lot more than politics.

Serving the people of Texas in the state House is a lot more than politics, too. Hopefully Republican Rep. Berman will approach real issues facing Texans with the same zeal he’s bringing to the pursuit of a demonstrably false internet rumor.

Birther fever seems to be sweeping the GOP in state legislatures across the country.

A couple of weeks ago, the Missouri House Republicans elected an unapologetic birther as their Majority Leader.

And on Tuesday, Texas state House Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) filed a bill that would require any candidate for president or vice president of the United States to show his or her birth certificate to the Texas secretary of state.

When asked to justify the filing of such a ludicrous piece of legislation giving credence to the thoroughly debunked and false allegations that President Obama was not born in this country, GOP Rep. Berman responded:

“This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place,” Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, said in reference to President Barack Obama and of House Bill 295. “If you are running for president or vice president, you’ve got to show here in Texas that you were born in the United States and the birth certificate is your proof.”

This explanation seemed to satisfy a particularly notorious peddler of this racially-charged conspiracy theory.

From Rush Limbaugh’s November 17 show:

There’s a leadership race brewing in the Texas House, with incumbent Speaker Joe Strauss facing revolt by right-wing allies of former Speaker Tom Craddick. And one contender, Warren Chisum of Pampa, is already basing his campaign on his opposition to one of the most important health care reforms in American History.

No, not that one - Chisum is actually proposing that Texas pull out of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. And the idea is so extreme that even some of Chisum’s initial allies are already thinking twice:

State Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, an anesthesiologist who authored the bill commissioning the Medicaid study, said early indications are that dropping out of the program would have a tremendous ripple effect monetarily. He is not ready to discount the idea, he said, but he worries about who would carry the burden of care without Medicaid’s “financial mechanism.”

“Because of the substantial amount of matching money that comes from the federal government, there’s an economic impact that comes from that,” Zerwas said. “If we start to look at what that impact is, we have to consider whether it’s feasible to not participate.”

Indeed. In addition to taking away health care from 3.6 million Texans, ending the Lone Star State’s involvement in Medicaid would forfeit at least $24 billion in annual federal funding for the program.

Which means even if all of those people are able to find and pay for health care on their own (they’re not), and even if the GOP’s utopian fantasy that private insurance is more efficient than Medicare or Medicaid turns out to be true (it isn’t – Medicaid is more efficient), pulling out of Medicaid and CHIP will suck at least a quarter of a trillion dollars out of the Texas economy over the course of ten years.

The reality is, some portion of those 3.6 million Texans will find insurance, but at a significantly higher cost than Medicaid would have spent to provide care. The vast majority of those 3.6 million will simply do without, because they cannot afford insurance. And when their un-detected and un-treated medical problems become so severe that the emergency room is the only option, the people of Texas will foot the bill.

That bill will be on top of the quarter-trillion-dollar guaranteed loss.

But this is health care we’re talking about, and an important question went unasked in the Texas Tribune article: How many of those 3.6 million Texans (including nearly half a million blind and disabled individuals, another quarter million pregnant mothers and newborns, and over 2.3 million children) will lose their lives because they’ll lack adequate health care?

And how many dollars saved will each of those lives be worth to the GOP?

Today marks a pivotal moment for the Democratic Party.

Voters will cast ballots in over 6100 state legislative races across the country. Over 4200 of those races will impact the redrawing of congressional districts.

After the dust settles tonight (recounts notwithstanding), we’ll know which party has a seat at 36 states’ redistricting tables next year (7 states redistrict by commission, and 7 states have at-large members of congress).

We actually already know a few. Virginia’s odd-year elections have produced at recipe for a potential compromise (or stalemate) on new district maps; the governor is a Republican, the state House is controlled by Republicans, and Democrats hold a majority in the state Senate.

Similarly, we already know who has a say in redistricting in Louisiana and Mississippi (Republican governors, Democratic majorities in both states’ Houses and Senates).

But while we’re waiting to learn the redistricting fate of the rest of the country, here’s a look back at the last round of redistricting, in terms of who controlled what where.

Republicans completely controlled (Republican governor and majorities in the state House/Assembly and Senate) the redistricting process in 8 states: Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. These Republicans drew 127 congressional districts without meaningful input from Democrats. (A note on this list, though, since some may quibble with the inclusion of Texas. Republicans completely controlled the Texas re-redistricting of 2003, and that’s the map currently in effect.)

Those numbers can arguably be bumped up if Nebraska is included in the “complete R control” column. Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is nonpartisan, but their governor at the time was a Republican. So that’s 9 states and 130 districts drawn by Republicans in the last round of redistricting.

Democrats had the governor’s mansion and majorities in the state House/Assembly and Senate in 7 states in 2001: Alabama, California, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Consequently, Democrats had complete partisan control over the drawing of 101 congressional districts.

That’s an awful lot of numbers to throw around all at once, but these figures are useful as evidence and historical context for some strongly-worded statements made via Mother Jones yesterday:

Forget the Senate and House. That's short-term thinking. The real prize in Tuesday's midterm elections is the power to draw congressional seats and determine the country's balance of power for the next decade.

If either party can achieve what politicos call the "trifecta"—control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature—in a given state, it will be able to draw congressional districts within that state unencumbered by any need to compromise with the other party. That's the kind of power that creates electoral maps like the one former GOP Majority Leader Tom Delay helped bring to Texas in 2003—a map that pushed four of the state's Democrats out of their seats.

Five states bordering the Great Lakes—Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—are the central battleground in the fight to control redistricting. Sure, the Republicans might take back the House of Representatives on election night. But winning gubernatorial and state legislative races in these five states could allow the GOP to dominate the House for much longer than the next few years.

So while some will be fixated on House race results tonight, those interested in which party will have a leg up on holding a majority in Congress for the next decade should be monitoring state legislative races.