One Party Rule: A National Strategy Funds State Political Monopolies

[No Elephants]

One Party Rule: A National Strategy Funds State Political Monopolies

By NICHOLAS CONFESSOREJAN. 11, 2014


<big chunk of story deleted here>

Their combined work has helped remake the nation’s political landscape. Republicans or Democrats control both the legislature and the governor’s office in 36 states, the most in 60 years. Twenty-three states are now solely controlled by Republicans, and 13 solely by Democrats. In two others — New York and Washington — one chamber is jointly controlled.

In some states, the shifts are largely organic, the product of Latino immigration, economic transformation and other demographic forces. But elsewhere, the strategic deployment of campaign cash has helped consultants and donors accelerate or arrest states’ natural drift toward one party or the other, defying national election trends or voter registration advantages.

“People who want to see policies enacted, and see things tried, are moving their activity to the states, and away from Washington,” said Ed Gillespie, a longtime Republican strategist who has played a central role in efforts to swing state legislatures to Republican control. “There is a sense that you can get things done.”

Their party’s success has empowered Republican lawmakers in dozens of states to redraw legislative districts on both the state and federal levels, potentially ensuring their party’s control of the United States House of Representatives for the rest of the decade.

But those successes are also paving the way for what amounts to a vast, real-world experiment in lawmaking: At a time when Washington appears hopelessly divided and gridlocked, elected officials in one-party states have aggressively reshaped government policy, whether legalizing same-sex marriage and marijuana, abolishing taxes and regulations, or restricting guns or labor unions.

Their labors have propelled Democratic- and Republican-controlled states in starkly divergent directions. California, where the state capital is controlled entirely by Democrats, has expanded the range of nonphysicians who can perform surgical abortions, while states held by Republicans, like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, passed new limits.

In Connecticut, dominated by Democrats, lawmakers approved legislation that for the first time allowed citizens to register on Election Day to vote. But in North Carolina, Republicans, who control state government for the first time in more than a century, have outlawed same-day registration and passed some of the most stringent voter identification rules in the country.

Colorado, held by Democrats, has limited magazines in weapons to 15 rounds and required background checks for private gun sales, while Kansas, where Republicans enjoy legislative supermajorities, passed a rule opening most city and county buildings to people carrying weapons.

Interviews with more than 50 donors, strategists and elected officials involved with those efforts, along with a review of thousands of pages of public records, revealed how the Democratic and Republican state machines share an array of strategies and goals.

Much more at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/us/politics/a-national-strategy-funds-state-political-monopolies.html?hpw&rref=us&_r=0


It's probably impossible for us to imagine how much we are manipulated. At that's only at the state level, and only domestically.

Seems overwhelming at times

[Enthusiast]

1. Wow!

That was interesting. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a nation where this sort of money laundering was illegal and where the true will of the people was measured at the polls.

[No Elephants]

2. I wonder if such a nation exists anymore?