by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
The most anti-gun wing of the Democratic Party is sounding a wake-up call, perhaps an alarm, for gunowners who relaxed after President Donald Trump’s victory last November and the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), spear-bearers for Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (DI-VT), are proudly proclaiming that “42 of our candidates won” in November 2017 as opposed to their losses a year earlier.
“We helped flip 13 Virginia legislative seats red to blue, and flipped 27 seats across the country,” the PCCC announced to supporters as it pushes for even more change in the 2018 election cycle.
And the PCCC is not the only group that smells blood in the Democrat-leaning election returns from Nov. 7.
“Even with more than two dozen races undecided,” US News and World Report announced immediately after election day, “it is clear that Democrats made substantial gains in state capitols on Election Day.”
US News noted that in the 6,034 state legislative elections, Democrats have thus far picked up over 170 seats, going from 3,294 of seats in state houses and senates before the election to 3,472, according to tabulations from the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL), a bipartisan group that provides research and services to state legislators. However, Republicans still hold a majority of state legislative seats, with 3,795 at latest count. Twenty-seven seats still remain undecided, but Republicans will maintain their majority, regardless of what happens in those races.
“It’s still too early to say how many seats Democrats have netted, but they’re clearly going to wind up netting seats in state legislatures,” said Tim Storey, an elections expert at NCSL, in a call with reporters.
He added that the Democrats’ success at the state level is likely tied to Democrat wins at the top of the ticket. Anti-gun Democrats won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, the only two states with “top-of-the-ticket” state races this year.
And anti-gunners like Michael Bloomberg, who poured tons of money into the Virginia race, and Gabby Giffords and company are all gloating at their results and pointing out that this is an omen for turning out pro-gun Republican incumbents next year.
In three states, state legislatures changed party control completely. Arkansas made a historic switch, when both houses of its state legislature flipped from Democratic to Republican majorities. That will make the legislature in Little Rock Republican-controlled for the first time since the 1870s.
Meanwhile, Maine and Minnesota’s legislatures both went from fully Republican-controlled to Democratic.
The Cook Political Report is expected to shift its 2018 forecast for 20 House districts — all in favor of Democrats.
This year’s election was also notable in reducing the number of state legislatures with split chambers. Now, it appears that only three states will have two chambers dominated by two different parties: Iowa, Kentucky, and New Hampshire (though in Virginia, the Senate is tied, 20-20, while the House maintains a heavy Republican majority).
The New Hampshire house changed hands–an important point because the unusually large, 400-person chamber has enough seats to sway nationwide totals. Democrats made huge gains in New Hampshire—while several races remain undecided, at latest count they had gone from 102 to 217 representatives in this election.
And if switches in political winds are not sufficient warning of what gunowners will face in 2018, Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly are reading future anti-gun election successes in the tea leaves of the latest return, and are busy raising money for the 2018 battleground.
“In Virginia, Ralph Northam and a number of down-ballot candidates proudly and unapologetically supported commonsense solutions to make our communities safer from gun violence,” Giffords says in one of her daily fund-raising appeals.”
“They faced millions of attack ads as a result. But they won. And they did it right in the shadow of the corporate gun lobby’s national headquarters in Fairfax, VA.
“…the press is calling last night’s results a wave. And it wasn’t just in Virginia. Candidates who ran strong on our issue won in races all across the country. But that’s just the start of what’s possible if we take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us.”
