This Is the Left's Confidential $100 Million Plan to Win Back the States

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/committee-on-states-democracy-alliance-redistricting-2020

Read how progressives hope to regain state-level power before the next round of redistricting.

Perhaps the most important story on Election Night 2014 was not the Republican Party winning back the US Senate, but the GOP's utter domination at the state level. Beginning in 2015, Republicans will control 68 out of 98 partisan state legislative chambers, the most in the party's history. It will also hold 31 governorships. Republicans will maintain one-party control—holding the governor's seat and majorities in both legislative chambers—in 23 states. The Democrats control only seven. And as states go, so often goes Congress—given that states draw the lines for congressional districts and how those lines are drawn can determine who makes it to Washington.

Liberals know that they have been steamrolled in the states, and that Democrats will have a tough time growing their ranks in the US House of Representatives if they don't win at the state level. And they have a $100 million plan to do just that, according to internal memos revealed by the conservative Washington Free Beacon. The goal: to notch more state-level victories and reclaim political power before the next round of congressional redistricting after the 2020 census.

The plan comes from a little-known outfit called the Committee on States. Founded in 2006, the Committee on States is a collection of wealthy donors, political operatives, labor unions, environmental groups, and other progressive organizations raising and spending money in the states to advance a liberal agenda.

Despite its relative anonymity, the Committee on States moves big sums of money. Along with the Democracy Alliance, a similar donor club that funds national liberal groups, including the Center for American Progress and Organizing for Action, the Committee on States pumped nearly $50 million into 20 states in 2014 to build left-leaning political machines that would try to elect Democratic politicians and pass progressive policies, according to these confidential memos. By 2020, the memos state, the Committee on States plans to increase its state-level investments to $100 million a year. The documents published by the Free Beacon indicate that some of this money could flow to political committees, which usually disclose their donors, and other funds could go to dark-money nonprofit groups, which don't have to name their donors. (Scott Anderson, the executive director of the Committee on States, declined to comment.)