In 2010, I was in the Democratic majority in the New York State Senate working on issues that could change millions of lives, from maternal home visiting to minimum wage. Then came Project REDMAP, Karl Rove’s ruthlessly targeted million dollar effort aimed at state legislatures across 16 states. They flipped 21 state legislative chambers, including mine.
I never served another day in the majority. I never again had the governing power to set a committee agenda or create a life-changing program for New Yorkers.
The thing is, no one in my party nationally seemed to care. Sure, they would say sometimes, we also care about state legislatures. After all, they draw congressional lines. But state legislatures do much more than that. The cost of ignoring statehouses wasn’t abstract: it created the conditions that overturned Roe v. Wade, denied millions of people healthcare, and paved the way for rightwing policies that made people’s lives worse.
When Donald Trump was elected, I got fed up with how little attention was focused on state legislatures, which could shift the direction of the country. I resigned my seat and partnered with Adam Pritzker to co-found The States Project. The plan was simple: build a community to target the country’s actual levers of power.
As the top funder in all but one competitive state legislative chamber this year, The States Project built on four cycles of work to capitalize on a rare opportunity to dismantle decades of rightwing overperformance.
And on Tuesday, with our partners, The States Project erased Project REDMAP.
We flipped the Minnesota House and Senate, the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate, the Michigan House, the Texas House, the Georgia House, the North Carolina House, the New Hampshire House and Senate, and the Arizona House and Senate — creating a Democratic trifecta for the first time since 1966.
We also shattered every supermajority that impacts governing power across seven states.
This January there will be 23 trifectas controlled by lawmakers who are committed to making government deliver on the American promise of universal rights, democratic equality, personal freedom, and economic opportunity for all.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s not the first time I’ve celebrated an Election Day victory. In 2006, I sat next to Chuck Schumer as the U.S. Senate flipped. In 2008, I joined the first majority in my chamber in decades.
To keep governing power, we must respond to this victory differently than we have responded in the past.
We need to live our values by respecting what voters chose. They did not choose to put special interests in power, not even those with whom they generally agree. They did not choose to replace responsiveness to their needs with unyielding moral righteousness. This was not as simple as choosing Democrats.
Voters offered a primal scream to be listened to. If the lawmakers who have power today do not deliver by the time the next election rolls around, there is no amount of campaign spending, no inspiring ad, that will keep them in office.
The work doesn’t end after winning an election, it begins. People weren’t elected to impose their will; that was the mistake the other side made. They were elected to deliver on their promises. If we are successful, this victory won’t be followed by defeat. It will be followed by millions of lives improved and then, in two years, the chance to build on that momentum.
Squadron is the author of “The Fourth Branch: How State Government Can Save Our Union” and co-founder of The States Project.