Why Republicans are raising double the money in down-ballot races

Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.

Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.

Related: ‘It’s such a dramatic contrast’: Harris turns North Carolina into a toss-up

But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, like supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.

That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared to $1.4m for Democratic candidates.

“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”

A race to fill the funding gap

Democratic party leaders seem aware of the high-stakes surrounding state legislative races. Earlier this month, the Harris campaign and the Democratic national committee announced a transfer of $25m in funds to help down-ballot candidates, including $2.5m for the DLCC. Williams said the transfer represented the party’s largest investment to date focused solely on winning state legislative chambers.

“The underlying story here is that the Harris campaign, our federal officials [and] the party believe that we need to win up and down the ballot,” Williams said. “We know that our freedoms are on the line, that democracy is on the line in the states, and so investing in state legislatures is really an emerging cornerstone of Democrats’ strategy to protect against Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] extremism.”

But the $2.5m investment, while significant, does not come close to closing with DLCC’s resource deficit against the RSLC. Democratic-aligned outside groups, like the States Project and the Super Pac Forward Majority, are trying to help close that gap: Forward Majority is now on track to spend $45m this election cycle on promoting Democratic state legislative campaigns, the group announced on Wednesday. The States Project has also announced plans to spend $70m this cycle, after investing heavily in state legislative races two years ago.

This level of the ballot is critically important

Leslie Martes, Forward Majority

Forward Majority formed in 2017, after Republicans notched significant victories up and down the ballot in 2016. At the time, Democrats controlled 31 legislative chambers compared to Republicans’ 68. In the years since, Democrats have chipped away at that disadvantage, now controlling 39 chambers.

“It was incredible in that decade or so to see people pay more attention to it, to recognize this level of the ballot is critically important,” said Leslie Martes, chief strategy officer at Forward Majority.

Despite that progress, Martes warned against complacency, as Republican-aligned groups have shown a willingness to invest heavily in state legislative races as well. During the legislative races in Virginia last year, the conservative Pac Americans for Prosperity spent $2.2m, which represented the largest contribution of any outside group.

“We can’t let the Republicans flood the zone with late money,” Martes said. “They have access to it, and we can never underestimate their ability to come in late.”

Post-Roe momentum

Democrats had a good year in 2022 when it came to state legislative elections. They flipped the Minnesota senate and both chambers of the Michigan legislature, giving them governing trifectas in both states thanks to the Democratic governors there. Some of that momentum was attributed to Democratic voters’ increased focus on state legislatures after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Of the 22 states that currently enforce an abortion ban of some kind, 19 of them are fully controlled by Republicans. (A judge struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban on Thursday, but the law had not yet been enjoined as of Friday afternoon.) Meanwhile, several states controlled by Democrats – including California, Minnesota and New Jersey – have expanded abortion rights since Roe was overturned. That contrast has enlightened many voters on the importance of state elections, Martes argued.

“I think most people did not believe that Roe was going to fall,” she said. “And I think it’s been incredibly impactful for people to now know it’s up to the states … I think that’s really helped people focus in on state legislatures.”

Williams hopes that greater awareness will translate into electoral success down ballot, as Democrats look to sustain the trifectas they won in 2022 and flip more legislative chambers.

It’s going to take one vote at a time and one legislative win over and over in all of these states

Heather Williams, Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

The DLCC’s to-do list for November is long. Democrats want to keep their control of the Michigan house and the Pennsylvania house, where they repeatedly defended their slim majority through several special elections since 2022. The party also hopes to break a Republican supermajority in North Carolina, where the state legislature was able to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. And in Arizona, Republicans have only one-seat majorities in both chambers, giving Democrats an opportunity for their first governing trifecta in the state since 1966.

It is no coincidence that much of Democrats’ state legislative map overlaps with their presidential and congressional maps, Martes said.

“The key to winning back Congress also runs through a path of picking up state legislative seats and protecting important incumbents,” Martes said.

While leaders of both political parties are fond of saying that every vote matters, the truism is particularly relevant when it comes to state legislative races. Because the voting pool is smaller compared to a congressional or presidential race, a couple hundred votes often separate the winner from the loser in state legislative elections.

In one stunning case that arose in 2018, a tied Virginia legislative election was decided by pulling a name out of a bowl, and the lucky Republican winner gave his party control of the house of delegates.

While the narrow margins of such races may seem daunting, they can also be motivating, Williams argued.

“It’s going to take one vote at a time and one legislative win over and over in all of these states,” Williams said. “I think we’re at such a moment where those efforts – seemingly small efforts – will make a huge difference. And we’ll be able to protect the rights of millions of people across the country.”