[I]n the 2014 election cycle, the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee helped to wrest 10 legislative seats from Democrats in the Vermont Legislature.
In the coming election cycle, the Republican group will spend a record $40 million to target legislative chambers in 10 states, including Vermont.
The Republican Legislative Campaign Committee is a national organization dedicated exclusively to electing more Republicans to state legislatures, according to the group’s website. The legislative committee is a subset of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national caucus of Republican state leaders whose mission is to elect down-ballot, state-level Republican officeholders.
Leaders of both groups met Thursday in Boston, where they unveiled campaign metrics and targets for the 2015-16 election cycle.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the RSLC wants to increase the Republican presence in the legislative chambers of 10 split or Democrat-controlled states.
In 2014, the RSLC spent nearly $370,000 on seven Republican candidates for the Vermont Senate; 90 percent of the money was spent on mass media purchases including a radio, television and mailings.
Of the seven candidates supported by the RSLC, Sens. Peg Flory, Kevin Mullin, Brian Collamore, Dustin Degree and Norm McAllister were elected. Republican candidates Robert Frenier and Patricia McDonald were defeated.
Though Vermont is a historically blue state, the RSLC said that the upcoming gubernatorial election, which it characterized as “open and competitive,” might give it the window it needs to put more Republicans in both legislative chambers.
The RSLC also said in its article that it will make a push in Oregon, Illinois and Massachusetts – three other states in which the Democratic Party has a tight grip on the legislature, but not on the governorship.
In Oregon, Republicans believe they can make gains in the wake of an ethics scandal that forced the resignation of John Kitzhaber, the Democratic governor, in February.
In Massachusetts and Illinois, the GOP says it has a built-in advantage because Republican governors were elected in 2014.
The RSLC will also go after Democratic chambers in six states in which the legislature is split – meaning one party controls the house and the other, the senate. The Colorado House, Kentucky House, Washington House, Iowa Senate, Minnesota Senate and New Mexico Senate are the most likely to hold new Republican majorities in 2016.
The RSLC and RLCC is defending six Republican majority state legislatures up for election in 2015, including both chambers in Mississippi, Louisiana and especially Virginia, where the GOP holds a majority in the Senate by only one seat.
“Virginia has become an increasingly important battleground state in presidential years,” said RSLC President Matt Walter on the organization’s website. “There is no better message we can send that Republican states are ready to defeat Hillary Clinton than keeping both Virginia chambers red this November.”
A spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said that the political action committee is not yet releasing its 2016 cycle budget. In 2014 they spent $17 million on legislative races nationally – not quite half of the RSLC’s record-breaking budget for the upcoming election cycle – and none of that money went to Vermont. If the DLCC plans to do so this year, incoming executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party Conor Casey said that he doesn’t know about it.
Outgoing Vermont Democratic Party Executive Director Julia Barnes was unfazed by the RSLC’s record breaking election spending target.
“I’m not surprised,” she said.
