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To protect our democracy, Democrats must win state legislative elections

<span>Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters</span>
Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

This November’s state legislative races were always important. Now they are an existential imperative. With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, we mourn not just the passing of a brilliant scholar, feminist and progressive trailblazer. In the absence of a court willing to strike down unconstitutional and harmful laws and enforce federal protections, states may be our last line of defense. Eighty per cent of this country’s state legislative seats are up this year. We must act now, quickly, to shore up these critical chambers.

Related: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy will survive the bitter battle over her successor | Kenan Malik

For decades, Democrats prioritized federal elections over state-level races, and left-leaning interest groups often fought through the courts, not local elections. Ginsburg, after all, won her icon status after becoming an attorney and crusading to establish human rights in court. That tactic worked well for many progressive causes. In the 1970s, litigation against corporations worked so well, in fact, that libertarian billionaires responded by building an entire political apparatus designed to stack the courts with ideological judges opposed to environmental and labor protections. Meanwhile, conservative interest groups began cultivating anti-abortion and anti-gay rights judges and political connections. The Republican party’s transformation of the judiciary under Trump is the culmination of those decades-long efforts.

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At the same time, Republicans and their donors have kept a laser focus on winning state legislative races – especially in redistricting years like this one. By gerrymandering districts, Republican strategists have almost guaranteed that their candidates can pass unpopular legislation without risking their seats or control of their states. This trend is especially alarming given that a central goal of conservative jurisprudence is to eliminate federal protections and give states more leeway to write their own laws.

Consider this stark example of how the conservative judiciary and Republican legislatures can dovetail to oppress: In November 2018, through a ballot amendment, Floridians overwhelmingly voted to expand voting rights to include formerly incarcerated people, ending a vestige of Jim Crow. But the next year, the Republican-controlled legislature enacted a law designed to void those voting rights – and the will of the people. A federal court recently upheld the state legislature’s actions, thereby effectively denying the right to vote to tens of thousands of formerly incarcerated people – in a swing state, in a major election year. One of the federal judges who made that decision to restrict Floridians’ voting rights, Barbara Lagoa, is on Trump’s shortlist to replace Ginsburg.

The nation’s most extreme Republican-controlled state legislatures have already posed a threat to all of us, no matter where we live

The nation’s most extreme Republican-controlled state legislatures have already posed a threat to all of us, no matter where we live. When challenged, once-fringe state laws often climb the courts and potentially precipitate new national precedents. The odds that federal courts will give states the power to gut protections and civil liberties, from voting rights to abortion rights, are increasing with every new judicial nomination.

In this new reality, to protect our democracy, Democrats must win state legislative elections in November. To prevent a sharp rightward tack in American law, we must elect more Democratic state lawmakers, flip chambers, and break Republican supermajorities, so that extreme and dangerous laws are not passed in the first place.

There are concrete actions that we can all take–immediately– to flip state legislative seats. Sister District started after the 2016 election, with the mission of building progressive power in state legislatures, and has grown to more than 45,000 volunteers in over 125 teams across the country. Our candidates flipped state senates and delivered Democratic trifectas in Washington and Colorado, flipped both chambers and delivered a trifecta in Virginia, and broke Republican supermajorities in the Pennsylvania and Michigan senate. Across the country, these and other progressive lawmakers are fighting to expand and protect civil liberties, tackle the climate crisis, expand Medicaid and healthcare access, boost wages, address coronavirus, end racial and economic disparities and more. We can expand, and build a progressive federalism, by working to elect progressives everywhere.

This year, Sister District has identified 39 state legislative seats in the most competitive districts across the country, where candidates are running in elections that will flip chambers, deliver Democratic or break Republican trifectas, and stave off Republican supermajorities. In states including Minnesota, Arizona, North Carolina and Texas, our candidates are within striking distance of changing the power dynamic in their states. By mobilizing voters in those battleground states, their campaigns are also multiplying forces for critical must-win Senate and presidential races.

Ginsburg’s legacy lives on in those progressive candidates for state office and their volunteers, who are working relentlessly in pursuit of justice, on behalf of their communities and their country. Very few people will ever sit on the supreme court. But we can all embody the values and character of Ginsburg and throw ourselves, even against the odds, into the struggle to make our country fairer and more just. There are phone calls to make and texts to send. With 44 days left to go before the election, we must continue Ginsburg’s fight.

  • Meaghan Winter is a freelance magazine writer and author of the book All Politics is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States, forthcoming this October. Gaby Goldstein is the co-founder of Sister District