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

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.

Voters head to the polls today in elections across the country. Here are the voting hours for the legislative races we will be following most closely.

Virginia: 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

New Jersey: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Should your state forge its own path to universal health care? How much should we invest in education? Are renewable energy projects a wise use of your tax dollars?

Right now, more than 4,000 Democratic state senators and representatives around the country are struggling to answer those questions, and we want to tell them what you think. That's why we hope you'll participate in our 2009 Legislative Priorities Survey.

The questions are quick and easy, and they are a great way to make your voice heard by your lawmakers. With the recession squeezing every state's budget, it's never been more important to tell our elected officials how we feel about the critical issues we face. In the coming months, legislators will have to choose between improving our schools and making health care more affordable; promoting renewable energy and adding new road and rail lines.

They need to hear from us.

Take a minute to fill out the 2009 Legislative Priorities Survey, and show your legislators what it is that you care about.

This Saturday, Democrats Norbert “Norby” Chabert and Ledricka Johnson Thierry successfully defended the vacant 20th Senate and 40th House districts in closely-fought special election runoffs. The heavily-Democratic HD-40 was never seriously in doubt for the party, but the overwhelmingly-conservative SD-20 supported John McCain by a 72%-28% margin in November and featured a well-financed Republican campaign by Brent Callais of Cutoff, LA.

Chabert won the contest by a convincing 54.3% to 45.7%, for a total margin of 1526 votes in the Terrebonne- and Lafourche-based 20th District:

In addition to the district’s conservative leanings, Callais had the advantage of a high-profile campaign and fundraising visit from Republican Governor Bobby Jindal (which reportedly netted nearly $100,000) and heavy spending by the Louisiana Republican Party. Callais and the Republicans blanketed the district with mailers accusing Chabert of supporting President Obama’s healthcare initiative, but Chabert wisely focused his campaign on local issues like the South Louisiana shrimping industry, coastal levee protection, and the future of public hospitals in Houma, LA.

Just like in last week’s special election in Kentucky, the national attacks clearly fell flat, and the Democrat’s mastery of local issues won the race.

More and more candidates for public office at the local level are taking their campaigns online, and web tools are changing the ways that lawmakers and voters interact.

Blogs, email, and social networking offer public officials the opportunity to communicate directly with voters and their constituents in a way that promotes a type of participatory democracy that is new and exciting.

If you're going to Pittsburgh for Netroots Nation, we hope you'll join us tomorrow from 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM for a conversation on the state of online campaigns.

I'll be joined by Jim Walsh from Wired for Change, Kim Rogers from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, Erin Hill from ActBlue, and Adam Conner from Facebook.

We'll discuss examples of how some technologies are helping candidates breach the divide that exists between voters and politicians, and debate the implications these developments hold for the future of government and public life.

If you have questions, follow the DLCC on Twitter @demlegislators and ask questions using the hashtag #DLCC

From August 13-16, a team from the DLCC will head to Pittsburgh for Netroots Nation.

There, we will join thousands of Democrats and progressives from across the country to discuss politics, policy, and strategy. The DLCC is helping to organize two panels at this year's conference.

In the first, we will discuss the 2010 election, reapportionment, and the importance of redistricting for the Democratic movement.

In the second, we will discuss how local campaigns are using technology to change the way that races are run in this country.

We hope you can join us in Pittsburgh, and as a supporter of the DLCC, we can offer you a special registration discount.

When you sign up to attend at http://regonline.com/nn09, use the promo code SPONSOR, and you will get $50 off your registration.

Below, I've pasted my copy of the remarks I gave at last week's Personal Democracy Forum. Our goal was to strike a discussion on the future of online campaigns at the local level, how using data effectively is key to winning, and how organizing tools are changing to reflect the new realities.

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I work for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, I'm guessing a lot of people here have an idea what that means. For the most part, you're right -- our mission is just like that of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. We work to elect state legislators, just like they work to elect folks to Congress or the Senate.

But our job is fundamentally different.

In a good year, the DSCC might target a dozen senators. The DCCC might work on 100 congressional seats. Staff at each of the committees knows and works closely with every candidate on each of the target lists.

There are 7,382 partisan legislative seats in this country. There are 400 seats in the New Hampshire House, alone. We obviously put more resources into some states than others. But even when accounting for our priorities, our job is more complicated by an order of magnitude.

The sheer scale of the challenge requires us to approach our jobs from a different angle.

We’ll probably always offer targeted support, of course. And most of that will be the kind of stuff you expect from a campaign committee.

But more and more, we're trying to change the way we think.

Cory Doctorow is a writer I admire a lot. I recently read a column where he argued that artists online ought to think like dandelions. He argued that, as mammals, we get stuck on the notion that every iteration of our brand ought to be nurtured and perfect. Dandelions don't work that way. Dandelions spread a thousand little seeds into the wind, and many of them never take root. But we see dandelions all the time -- they're everywhere, even rooted concrete sidewalks.

At the DLCC, we're trying to think more like dandelions.

A year ago, we partnered with Wired for Change to develop an Internet tool set 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.

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.

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.

And 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.

But given that we're at a conference like Personal Democracy Forum, I think it's important to talk about what the significance of this movement is. Aside from just winning races, we are seeing more and more candidates who aren't staffing these responsibilities out. They're writing the blog posts, they're publishing the videos, they're sending out the emails. That means we have actual elected officials and office seekers using technology to engage their constituents on a one to one basis. That's something new in our democracy. It's a degree of participation that's unlike what we're used to.

As we move into the question and answer portion of this discussion, that's something in particular I'd really like to discuss.

If you turn your head just a bit, you'll notice a shiny new box on the right column of our website, featuring badges from three social networks.

If you want to stay connected to the DLCC, we hope you'll subscribe to our YouTube channel, become a fan of the DLCC on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

There's no better way to keep up with our work and show your support for Democratic lawmakers online.

It'll be worth of your time.

I promise.

One of the New Hampshire Republican Party’s most respected elder statesmen has announced he is becoming a Democrat. Jim MacKay, who spent nearly a decade as a Republican city councilor, mayor, and state representative for the city of Concord, explained his decision in a statement announcing his candidacy for an upcoming State House special election:

"Over the past several years, the New Hampshire Republican Party has continually moved farther to the right, and no longer represents my core beliefs. As someone who served as a Republican legislator, I am disappointed by the marginalization of moderate voices in the party. That is why today I am formally leaving the New Hampshire Republican Party to seek the Democratic nomination for state representative in the upcoming special election in Concord," said Jim MacKay. "I spent my career fighting for working families and to protect the state's most vulnerable citizens and I will continue to do so if I'm elected in the special election." (H/T Blue Hampshire)

New Hampshire Democrats, who have long held MacKay in high regard for his pragmatism and bipartisanship as a State Legislator, were excited by the news, with state party Chair Ray Buckley praising MacKay for his principled decision:

"We welcome Jim Mackay to the New Hampshire Democratic Party with open arms. He has a record of fighting for the best interests of working families and will be a strong voice in the legislature. Jim's willingness to set politics aside for the betterment of our state is honorable.

"His departure is just another example of how out of touch John Sununu and the Republican Party are with the people of New Hampshire. The GOP's desire to put the politics of divisiveness before the people of our state is why they continue to lose the support of voters and leaders in their own party."

MacKay makes his Democratic political debut in the special election to replace State Rep. Tara Reardon, who resigned to become New Hampshire’s Commissioner of Employment Security. An election schedule has not yet been set.