Obama’s Fundraising Allows DNC to Help State Races– Including New York’s
Apparently Obama’s fundraising from all those small-dollar donors is freeing up the DNC to help state races. From Ambinder at the Atlantic:
The Democratic National Committee is waging a last minute injection of as much as $20 million into state legislative races in key states, hoping to take advantage of Democratic momentum this cycle.
A senior Democrat familiar with the conversations said: “We are looking at options, races, where we can be helpful, as we did in 2006. This is the time when some races pop.”
DNC chairman Howard Dean has made it a priority to help Democrats win down the ballot, so that if Obama wins the presidency, Democrats will have a larger majority in Congress. But with states planning to redistrict their congressional boundaries in 2012, control of state legislative chambers is all the more important, people close to Dean said.
In 2006, a last minute injection of $35 million from the DNC into House, Senate and state legislative races helped the party gain eight state legislative chambers.
For those folks, like the D&C Ed Board, who theoretically like the idea of change in Albany, the weird gerrymandered districts we have today in NY are due to a GOP-controlled Senate and Dem-controlled Assembly protecting each other with Mutually Assured Gerrymandering in 2000.
This year, having plucked the low-hanging fruit, Democrats have set their sights on tougher pulls, like New York’s state senate. “It’s the biggest toss-up on the map,” says Matt Compton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Other targets for Democrats include: Ohio, Wisconsin, Delaware and the Texas House, where Democrats are five seats away from the majority; the Obama campaign has added organizers to help them.
So does that mean official Obama campaign organizers may walk among us? And has anyone seen any evidence of DNC money coming into the swing state senate districts?
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