Happy New Year, and welcome to Flip4.org!
Flip4.org started as an idea inspired by a post at The Next Right from Sean Oxendine. He challenged conservative bloggers to “really make a difference” by turning their attention to state legislative races. These are especially crucial, Sean noted, because of the redistricting that will be done by the legislatures after the 2010 census. “But we can’t help,” he wrote, “unless we know what is going on at the local level.”
And so today marks not only the beginning of a new year, but also of a new effort to change our nation’s politics from the ground up–to elect skilled, principled Republicans to key positions in state legislatures around the country. Specifically, the goal of this website is to elect four such Republicans to seats held by Democrats in each state legislature where doing so will give control of that chamber to Republicans.
Today, the first stage begins— a blog where contributors from the targeted states will keep readers informed about the key races, candidates and issues of the 2010 state legislative elections.
For the 2010 elections, we’re targeting the following legislatures, where Democrats hold a majority of seven or fewer seats, and a flip of four seats will transfer control:
- The Alaska Senate, split 10-10
- The Colorado Senate, held by the Democrats 21-14
- The Delaware House, held by the Democrats 24-17
- The Indiana House, held by the Democrats 52-47
- The Maine Senate, held by the Democrats 20-15
- The Mississippi Senate, held by the Democrats 27-25
- The Montana House, split 50-50
- The Nevada Senate, held by the Democrats 12-9
- The New Hampshire Senate, held by the Democrats 14-10
- The New York Senate, held by the Democrats 32-30(sort of)
- The Ohio House, held by the Democrats 53-46
- The Oregon Senate, held by the Democrats 18-12
- The Pennsylvania House, held by the Democrats 104-99
- The Wisconsin Senate, held by the Democrats 18-15
- The Wisconsin House, held by the Democrats 52-46
These 14 chambers provide us with the challenge of finding and electing 60 talented, principled, forward-thinking Republican candidates on November 2, 2010. The challenge begins today–join us!
FYI- the Delaware House is the chamber that’s 24D-17R, the senate is much more lopsided D, like 17D-4R or 16D-5R. You’d have a tough time flipping more of them because only half the senate seats are up each year as opposed to the entire house.
Oops—good catch. I miscopied the chamber. We still need someone to cover Delaware–are you interested?
Tim – New York is 32-30.
[...] retirement. I do not trust who might move up to that top spot if the Democrats remain in control. (Here is an effort to draw attention to states with closely split legislative houses that can be flipped by pushing [...]