In the wake of electoral losses suffered during the November 2014 elections, state-level Democrats have failed to coalesce around a plan to take back state governments across the country.
Last week, Democratic legislators met for three days at the first SiX Legislator Conference, hosted by the newly founded State Innovation Exchange (SiX), an organization that could be viewed as a liberal answer to the American Legislative Exchange Council. The conference took place in Washington, D.C. with over 200 legislators from roughly 41 states in attendance.
Attendees were largely in agreement that the 2014 election had been a tough year for the Democratic Party, with only a few bright spots. Beginning in January 2015, Republicans will have combined executive and legislative control of 24 states, compared to seven for Democrats. While there was agreement that the election had gone poorly, there was no clear solution for reversing the losses in the future.
During a post-election briefing, multiple attendees admitted that pushing minimum wage hikes had not helped Democrats win elections. State Sen. Jeremy Nordquist, D-Neb., noted that a statewide ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage passed with 59 percent support, but the Republican nominee for governor, Pete Ricketts, had also won with 57 percent. “As important as [the minimum wage] is, it’s not a full economic picture,” said Michael Bocian of GBA Strategies. “It’s a relatively small, although important, section of the electorate that it affects.”
Even so, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez came in person to reiterate the Obama administration’s dedication to minimum wage increases later that day. “We’re continuing to fight like heck on the minimum wage,” said Perez. “We see that the minimum wage had remarkable support in red states and blue states and in between.”
Activist and former CNN commentator Van Jones said Democrats did not have a coherent message in 2014. “A lot of dark money from shadowy super-wealthy sources, and a lot of efforts to limit the number of people who could easily vote,” were additional reasons Republicans did so well, Jones told the Washington Examiner.
State Sen. Michael Gronstal, D-Iowa, credited same day voter registration for Democrats’ ability to maintain a majority in the Iowa Senate, whereas the proliferation of voter ID laws in other states had helped Republicans. Gronstal is also the national chairman of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Another legislator wondered why Democratic candidates ran away from President Obama when he has “a record that is phenomenal,” and suggested his race was one factor.
Kurt Fritts, the national political director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said Democrats need to refocus their economic message on empowering the middle class.
Regardless of the disagreement, the tone of conference attendees was generally upbeat for what attendees hoped to accomplish.
SiX is a new organization formed as a merger between the Progressive States Network, the American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange, and the Center for State Innovation. SiX bears many similarities to the conservative ALEC, which organizes a database of model legislation and invites lawmakers to multiple conferences a year.
Despite a landslide of Republican victories at the state level in 2010 and 2014, SiX’s focus is on legislating more effectively, not winning elections. “Conservatives are really good at investing at the state level,” Nick Rathod, the executive director of SiX, told the Examiner. “We don’t have really great training programs for legislators, we don’t have great supporting materials and ideas for state legislators. There was this huge hole. There was an opportunity, and that’s why we decided to put an organization together.”
The creation of SiX is a step forward for Democrats tired of conservative reforms at the state level that have occurred while Congress remains gridlocked over substantive policy reforms. SiX conferences may give Democrats a meeting space to resolve their differences and coalesce on a legislative plan for the future. Still, SiX’s narrow focus on legislating will do little to fix the fact that Democrats are at their lowest point in U.S. history in terms of the power they wield in the 50 in state capitols.
