Blue wave against red wall

David Daley wrote the book Ratf**ked about the REDMAP project. The project is how the GOP planned to take over several state legislatures in 2010 so that they controlled the redistricting process in 2011 to keep the US House in GOP hands through the decade, and perhaps beyond. They were quite successful as the politics of this decade has shown. Back in June of 2016 Daley was on the NPR program Fresh Air and I wrote about it.

Daley has an article in Salon (actually a month ago – yeah, it’s been sitting in my browser tabs for a while) with another look at the story. He wrote this update because new material has become available from the courts, released emails, and previously secret internal documents. These documents

uncover how early the Republican planning began, how comprehensive the redistricting strategy was and how determined conservative operatives were to dye America red from the ground up. It’s the story of how strategists wooed deep-pocketed donors to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars (often in untraceable dark money) and convinced them that winning state legislative seats offered the best opportunity for enduring GOP control at a bargain-basement price.

Some of the things in this new data dump:

* The idea came and the money to fund it began to flow in early 2008. This is at least a half-year before Obama was elected. That gave planners two and a half years to raise money from corporate leaders, do the research, and design and implement their plan.

* The team created a Powerpoint presentation to market this plan to those corporate leaders. The first version wasn’t very slick, but by early 2010 it had become sophisticated and precise. The membership fee also rose, starting at $40,000. For these corporations and the men behind them this is peanuts.

* By September 2010 the team had expanded their targeted legislative races from 107 in 16 states to 119 races in 17 states.

After Labor Day that year they spent their $30 million on those 119 races (about $250K per race – again, considering the source, this isn’t much). The ads were negative and dumped late enough in the campaign that the Democratic candidate didn’t have time to effectively respond. Between this effort and a dislike for Obama a total of 680 legislative seats across the country went red.

Then came the second half of the plan. First, reminding each of those legislators who owned them and what was expected of them during the redistricting process. Second, supplying the mapmaking programs, tools, and legal support to make the most gerrymandered maps they could.

That control of state legislatures in 2010 was achieved with 51.7% of the vote. By 2012 these legislatures created maps that protected both Congressional and legislature seats. The maps are so rigged now that for the Dems to take back the House in this much discussed Blue Wave will take a much higher percentage than the GOP needed to enact this plan.