Republicans Picked Up 680 Seats in State Legislatures in 2010 Elections … Redistricting Could Echo a Decade

Talk about the wrong kind of political coattails … Obama, Reid and Pelosi cost even Democrat state legislature individual their races. The real story of the 2010 elections the 680 seats picked up in state legislatures by the Republicans in 2010.

Barack Obama and the Democrats picked a bad time to go against the will of the people and get crushed in the 2010 midterm elections. If the 61+ US House Reps and 6 US Senate pick ups by the GOP was not bad enough, the most damaging tsunami for Democrats just might have been the Governor races and state legislatures. So far the GOP picked up 7 governorships with Connecticut and Minnesota still yet to be called.

The least covered and what might be the most important story of the 2010 midterm elections was the 680 State Legislature seats picked up by the Republicans. Does every one just remember the US Census that was just conducted? What follows the Census is redistricting. With all the state governors that are now Republican and both chambers of the state legislatures, the GOP holds the political trifecta or the“Perfect political storm” in 15 states. Just how bad was this Democrat slaughter in the state legislatures, as Weasil Zippers states, “to put it in perspective, 1994’s GOP wave picked up 472 seats…”.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control — meaning both chambers — of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

The Perfect political storm of redistricting may come back to haunt Democrats for the next 10 years. Talk about bad timing on Obama, Reid and Pelosi’s part to completely ignore the will of the people and suffer a backlash that will echo at least a decade.

Republicans now hold the redistricting “trifecta” — both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship — in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina — probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats — Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

It has to make one wonder what was the political long term wisdom of Democrats and their total and complete misreading of the American people that will be felt for quite sometime.  As stated in the LA Times, State legislative gains give Republicans unprecedented clout to remake districts.

2010 will go down as a defining political election that will shape the national political landscape for at least the next 10 years,” Tim Storey, elections specialist with the NCSL, said in a news release. “The GOP … finds itself now in the best position for both congressional and state legislative line-drawing than it has enjoyed in the modern era of redistricting.”

I wonder if Pelosi, Obama and Reid still have no regrets?