national museum of the united states army, see all the goodness, the greatness that's being built and established here to recognize what is in arguably the most powerful land force in the planet, the united states army. i thank each and everyone of you for joining us this morning. let's have an army strong day. thank you. [ applause ] today ruth baiter ginsburg marks the 100 anniversary granted women the right to work. she will discuss the impact the amendment has had on u.s.

history here in washington, d.c. live coverage starts at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c span 3 online cspan.org or you can listen online. up next, a legislative campaign committee about a group's plan select democrats around the country. this is just under an hour. hey everybody, good morning. thank you for coming out. i am the national secretary. i am excited to welcome you to our first major event at our dlcc headquarters. having a room full with reporters is a milestone for us. the major driver of our growth

has been our president jessica post who i have the fantastic job introducing today. steering democrats strategy to win back power. jessica post. she spent the last five years turning the deal of clcc to a journey. i am going to turn it over to jessica who'll share our plan to win more legislatures in 2020. >> thank you, matt, really appreciate it. >> thank you, everybody. we are powered by a lot of coffee and hard work. i really appreciate everybody coming here today. as matt said, i am jessica post,

we are announcing our effort to flip everything. we flipped ten chambers to blue. we'll talk about that today. we have done that since donald trump's election. why state legislatures matter especially comiing into the key 2020 election cycle. now we'll talk about the dlcc where the official democratic party organization charged with winning america's state legislatures. these are not just on a page for me. for me it is personal. in the 2010 election cycle, i was the national director at the dlcc, i was as junior staffer. i saw what happened in 2010 firsthand. the last 28 days of the election, i was in pennsylvania to help preserve the democratic majority in the pennsylvania state house which was a critical state for redistricting. it was a tough road. at dlcc, i saw a lot of late

spending and states we thought we could not lose wisconsin going into the election cycle. it was really hard. i was on the ground in harrisburg, the news came out that we lost so many elections across the country. we lost one state after another. republicans were really prepared. they sent $3 million at the dlcc cycle. the worst news of all came when we lost pennsylvania. i got a call from one of our colleagues back in headquarters and she said we lost 21 state legislative chambers. that news through me to the sidewa sidewalk. it was a rainy and horrible night, i cried a few tears but i picked myself backup. i walked back in the bar and popped up a budweiser, i made a

promise to myself at that moment that if i had anything to do what that, i would fight like hell in 2020. fortunately, i had the opportunity to do that. we are better prepared going into 2020. we are ready to take this fight and flip more chambers going into the next election cycle. i want to recognize our chairwoman. new york majority leader. this is one of the chambers that we flip from red the blue in the 2018 election cycle. he shares my vision at the dlcc. she would be with us today. you can pass great public policies and so she's passing automatic voter registration in new york and other great policies. we are excited to see all of that progress. voting rights do get expanded. new york is not alone.

since donald trump's election, we flipped 10 chambers from red to blue. we also flipped 436 seats including victories in 425 districts that trump won. across the board, we need to gain 25 out of the 50 u.s. state. here is what this looks like now. right now 42% of americans live in a state where democrats control at the very least, the state legislature. in addition to that, state democrats, govern nearly 50% of the nation's total gdp product. and there are 243 -- democrats control the legislature. it is a significant footprint on the american economy where democrats control these states. with the addition virginia and

the winds, we now have 15 democratic trifectas. the democratic control legislatures is nearly 140 million. that's almost half of the u.s. population. this is significant. let's talk about our favorite democratic trifectas in virginia. we show no sign of slowing down. we flipped seats in the house and two seats in the senate. this ises the first trifecta since 1993. we have seen incredible progress. this is something that brought me to tears to be very honest when i was driving home, i listened to the wa news story where i heard someone who we work so closely with counting the vote to pass people's rights amendment. something that in my mother's generation we thought instill

forever but now passed the virginia state legislature. now they did it. we were excited and people see further progress in virginia. lbgtq protection and a wide array of democratic party. this is a state we are going to see dramatic change. the numbers arempressive. we would like to show you what it looks like. these are the members serving in 2017. now, let's show you the members in the exact district after 2018. this is a remarkable change. let's see that one more time. before 2017 and now after 2019. so this is a seat change in terms of reputational democracy in virginia. this is the most diverse in virginia history. nationally we are leading across the country and diversity. there is no comparison between

democrats and republicans. since 2017, we elected 3,262 dems to state legislatures of those more than 1300 are women, that's 40% of folks that were recently elected, more than 1,000 people of color. this is dramatic. we made significant changes in the terms of the face of power in the united states in state legislatures. remember this is such an important pipeline as we develop folks who can run off tickets. republicans know that we are on the offense, in an interested party memo that they sent to d.c. lobbyist, they were gramma. they know significant spending is coming their way and they are doing everything they can to warn their donor and corporas a

allies. the work has not been easy. it has been tough, right? so here are some of the things that we have done, taken an unprecedented level of focus, strengthening our campaign services. building out robust data and analytics, we increased our political staff and increase our capacity, we built up communications, finance. we have done a lot of work strengthening our partnership and working with other state legislatures to make sure our priority is align. one thing that i need to do when i came back to the lcc was making sure there were strong campaigns being run in states across the country that our counter parts being in arizona or texas and pennsylvania are staffed with high quality that

had the cpapacity to run strong campaigns. i knew we had to rebuild it. we are doing a lot of that. let's talk about the changes that we made in data analytics. when i was here in 2010, it was like comparing apples and oranges. we looked at one poll and comparing it to another. we tried to personally wait for pollster bias and figure out where to make investments. that was the wrong way to do things. as a result, when i came back, we need to standardize all of our data analytics. we need to put them in one platform so we can compare state by state to figure out what's the best chamber and opportunity for us to flip and what's the best races for opportunities and what races we may be missing out on.

we build out a data analytics platform, district demographics and also passed election results at all levels of the ballot. our analytic platform has been predictive in polling. ical it is apart of your competitive advantage. our analytic teams generate votes for propensicety model. that also allows us to target males, digital and other things effectively in state. this helps us determine which seats to target and partnership in the state. one great example is ross tyler's seat in and out virginia. we expected that to be safe but we were not pulling it. as we look at our analytics, we

have done some surfing, we nearly target it and extra resources, we won 51 h-49. this is a way we select our investment and be strategic. in addition to that, earlier i mention our five regional political directors who are in our targeted states. in virginia, we have staffers dedicated, she was embedded and working in richmond, absolutely integrated into all the campaign decisions making processes. beto o'rourke has been heavily involved and great to hear from him and his effort. secretary castro will also be down motivating folks to come out for that race and also michael bloomberg and mayor bloomberg has been down door knocking. that indicates the importance of

state legislative races that we elevated across the country. we engaged high profile allies that have their own following to come down. >> the other thing that we have done is unify communications, we created messaging plans for states, we had record spending on states on tv, males, digital and we made a lot of investment in fields. we were able to spend closely with the caucus and our allies in the state. every time we spend in a state, we want to see what is the existing plan to spend money to win elections. how can we be supplemental and complementary. we also share the best messaging. for so long encouraged candidates to focus on the kitchen table, the issue of their district. what are the things that folks say to you when you knock on doors. those are the issues that you should be reflecting and

thinking about. you know this and education may be challenging in your democratic. you know people may be searching for jobs. we don't sat down -- we want to make sure folks focus on local messaging and talk to the community. that's playing out in the texas 28 special. this is delicate virginia. the first thing she will talk to you about is her focus on relieving the traffic on november 28th. on the red carpet, demi lovato, danica, what are you most focused on, she says route 28. the reporter never been to virginia had no idea. that's how laser focus she is been on fixing issues. that's been very important and

even in the national profile to look that up. in addition to that, we made a record amount of financial investment and states. we announced early investment of virginia of a million dollars in december of 2018. that was the earliest investment that we have done. we spent nearly $2 million in virginia in campaign services. virginia has open finance laws so unlimited campaign contributions, that made us able to coordinate closely with the campaig campaigns. so often we have to examine the laws to make sure we are in compliance but in addition to that make sure that our strategies are following the campaign laws and engaging in the right way. we were able to do all of this because of our fund raising. from 2010 to 2017, we only had a $7 million increase. we double down on fund raising.

we grew from $17 million to $36 million last cycle. now we are on track of $50 million. this will make us the largest spender. we are proud announce we already raised $17 million last cycle. $17 million this cycle which was more than we raised in all of the 2016 cycle. for the first time, this july, we continue to be on a path for financial parody with the republicans, which is something we could not stay in the 2010 election cycle. >> as i mentioned earlier, there has been unprecedented attention on state legislature races from our democratic group because of our work. many of other organizations are growing their work in state legislatures. many of these groups committed to 2020 spending. many of these groups have not

spent at the legislative levels before. they are following our lead. so now that's an over view of the programs that is we developed and i want to share now how we'll implement them in 2020. the first time the ldcc is sharing our target. we are excited to do this right now. let's talk about, let's move and talk about the targets. well, we'll work in all 50 states to support caucuses and elect more democrats. these dark red states are the targets that we believe we could flip this year. we are working to make progress or break a super majority. let's talk about kansas, many of you may have heard the shout out of democratic governor laura kelly, incredible win. our interest is to break a super majority in the kansas state house.

we only need to flip one seat in order to do that. that would allow governor kelly to -- she was able to get a republican in the state senate to cross over for the abortion ban. she needs a stable of support in the state legislature and we are interested in providing that. that's why candidates are in that list. we'll whaatch some of these stas on the list. states like georgia and florida, we want to move them on our target list. this is 19 chambers across 13 states. as you can see here, we are on complete offense. these are all republican chambers. we feel confident about holding the chambers that democrats won in 2018. this election is a one in a generation opportunity to flip legislatures. we have a presidential election on the predistricting election.

this is significant. as we know there will be record voter turn out this year, so this is a 20 year opportunity. the next time we'll have this opportunity i will be 60. i will be retired and running in a yoga studio and ice cream. our focus in life will be different at that point, 20 years from now. this is a 20-year opportunity. our targets largely align with the presidential battleground which is another key point here. we are building early infrastructure by building out strong state legislative campaigns. these campaigns will benefit the nominee and it makes sense. folks running micro campaigns and smaller campaigns across the state. that'll surely benefit democrats at the top of the ticket. in addition to that, we know that we have the momentum to surpass our progress and 122

people voted in 2018. that's a 28% increase in turn out. we have this generational opportunity to change the competition of state legislatures while also building out great infrastructure across the country in order to help the presidential nominee from the bottom up instead of the top down. these are on the list east to us. first, north carolina, there is a democratic governor in north carolina, roy cooper. we broke republicans super majority in both chambers. we are now competing legislative map after redistricting. the governor in north carolina does not have a veto over

restricting. this makes it critical that we flip one chamber red to blue. we need six seat in the house. there are so much else on the ballot in north carolina. the presidential campaign is listed as a target, governor cooper is backup for election. huge senate races and several congressional pick up on these potentially redrawn map. we have a sense of what's happening. we made early investment in the state to make sure strong candidates are recruited. house democrats filling 117, 120 seats in the ballot. one wolf this things we did in virginia is we learned after republicans failed in recruitment that we were on a stronger path from red to blue and we knew that as soon as it will happen. we know that we have strong opportunities as republicans are challenging as many seats as democrats are.

let's go to our next target. pennsylvania, a huge state for redistricting and opportunity to have the next democratic trifecta. there is tom wolff, we won a huge special election here in april of 2019. a preview of what to come out in pennsylvania. a woman of 20 years navy veteran, flipped the district that trump won by five points. that's significant. that's a significant change and we'll hold that state senate seat when we go into the election. there is a strong democratic control supreme court, pennsylvania that's also very helpful. we only need nine seats to flip the house. and many of the state senates are favorable to us. pennsylvania's seats are stagger, we did not have the opportunity to take them out in 2018, as a result, this will be

our first crack at some of these seats in pennsylvania since trump is elected. there is also special elections coming up in pennsylvania. at the ldcc, we have a record of winning specials so we'll have the opportunity this march to flip some of these pennsylvania house seat. there is also a number of congressional progress across the state. there is a lot of over laying nesting and our targets at the legislative level and congressional map. let's talk about michigan. many michigan, incredible democratic governor, the state uf unfortunately is not up. we have the opportunity to flip the michigan house. now we only need to flip four seats to blue in order to flip

michigan. give governor whit more power in the legislature. we know republicans gerrymandering these maps, voters, politicians passed a non partisan redistricting commission. scott walker's organization, the national republican redistricting trust has fought hard to say that initiative may not be el vibigibl we want to do everything we can to flip the chambers red the blue. michigan is a huge presidential battleground. in addition to that, senator gary peters is backup and there is a lot of congressional gains that were made in michigan of the last election cycle. we'll be working to look at the over lay between the gains. there are still seats we can play in oakland and macomb county, we have a great ability

to do this and flip it blue. let's talk about minnesota. we flip the house red to blue in 2018. melissa portman is leading it there. i consider myself an honor as being in minnesota. i worked in the senate caucus in 2006. this one is really close to my heart. the legislature only needs two seats to flip red to blue. the minnesota state senate was not up. the chamber is up in the 2020 cycle. it is not up in 2018. this gives us a great opportunity. there is still a great battleground that we can flip. if you think about what happened, congress dean phillip

district. we can work easily with the caucus. campaign contribution here with the party. this is becoming more of a presidential battleground. senator tina smith is backup. we have to defend this congressional gain that i articulated. let's talk about iowa. this is another favorite of mine. i worked years ago for 2004. i have been thinking about that as a lot of the caucuses have come back. this is the first republican trifecta. >> kim reynolds. i think people make gains. we only need four seats to flip the iowa house from red to blue.

he was so disgusted with trumpism that he decided to change parties. that's encouraging for us as we go into the next cycle. the redistricting was drawn independently but it is subject to a legislative vote. iowa has a non-partisan system. so as a result, the legislatures can vote down these maps. they had sort of agreement in the government of iowa, there are certainly a possibility that republican legislatures vote down congressional and legislative map in this increasing partisan time. one thing we saw early this cycle, republicans tried to change the nominating process supreme court. that's something that signals to us that we are in a more partisan time now in a state that's bipartisan, iowa.

let's go to our next target this is texas. this is a very excite forget us to talk about. we are nine seats away from flipping the state house red to blue. this is exciting. of course, texas right now is a republican trifecta with governor gregg abbott. flipping nine seats could give us a seat at the table for redistricting. texas obviously is the crown jewel of redistricting. so many more congressional seats coming into texas. this is something we have to think about. we are also competing as i mention earlier, this special election with a woman na. beto o'rourke did not win that seat but he came close. we are going to heading down on doors on saturday which is

exciting. and so those republican open seats make it quite a bit easier for us to win and flip seats from red to blue. we only need nine seats as i said earlier to flip the house, beto o'rourke won every seat in the path. we have nine great targets that we can do after. democrats made significant targets on this path. the coordination laws are open, the model that's used in virginia while every seat is different, a lot of what we learn in finance and coordination in virginia that we can apply in texas. it is set up in terms of finance and model so we'll be able to go in and engage there. of course now texas is a battleground, the senate race. the cycle and so there is a lot of talk of trying to win texas 22 and other congressional

seats. many of our legislative seats are underneath those congressional targets. our next target is arizona. in arizona there is a republican trifecta this time, we made significant gains in the last election cycle. the last time we control the seat here was 1992. it is a long, long time ago. redistricting is a non partisan process by commission, republicans tried to dismantle that in the state. this is why we were so competitive in the state. we know that we can win. as i said, we are two seats away in the state house and this is a presidential ground and the hottest u.s. senate race. markle mark kelly is on the ballot there as well. it will 'lou us to run great

campaigns. >> i also want to announce that we made our earlierest ost off investment. we invested $1 million. supporting the great recruitment of candidates in texas. the final headline of texas is closed. this is a record really investment for us at the lcc. we spent significantly in virginia and making sure democrats stayed out of the super minority to support the governor. and so in so many of these states, we are the only national group, to build out this campaign infrastructure to make sure. candidate recruitment still happening in many states, so many of our races still break

very late. a lot of the spending still happens post labor day in our races. we are trying to move that timeline up to make sure there are excellent staff, we are doing things that will have a multiplying effect like investing digital fund raising and making sure candidates are trained on how to secure resources they need to win their campaigns and going out and talking to voters early. so why does all this matter? we are not just here to put numbers on a page. we are here because of the impact state legislatures have in folk lives. if you care about voting rights, voter suppression or redistricting, you care about winning state legislatures and having democrats on state legislatures. in fact in 35 states, state legislatures still draw the line for redistricting. legislatures hold the pen in

redistricting, both the legislative maps and congressional map. that's why there are so much power on the line. with the gridlock that's in washington with washington just absolutely grounding us out, the state serves is a firewall against the administration policies. we'll beat donald trump in 2020. we have to do that. but, there has been huge progress and states as we look at the u.s. supreme court where we could lose protection for reproduction choice, making sure that choices are protected. states started to protect the aca and some of mental health and other provisions within the affordable care act. the states have started to make sure that the controversial practice of lbgtq version therapy is ended in the state. the state are acting to protect lbgtq americans. states like california and

washingt washington, oregon and states across the cry joins the climate accord. in california, they said the trump administration -- we know in states democrats control will absolutely build up the firewall. we are confident and strong going into 2020. we are better position to win than we have ever been at the state legislative level. we have been competitive with republicans and we flipped so many seats red to blue and now run maps that we know we can win. i feel great of where we are and i am happy to take any questions, thank you again for attending today. >> i am from nbc news. we are seeing huge diversity of ideology of the democratic party on the national level. are seeing that of the local leaders running for office and

what are voters telling them, how are they feeling about that? >> yes, i think there is quite a bit of ideology diversity. we talk to candidates focusing on the kitchen table issues, day-to-day things folks are concerned about. as a result in many of our elections, key issues like supporting public education and making sure there are access to healthcare and many things sort of bare out district by district. traffic is a big issue and quality of life and economic indicator. there certainly a lot of idea logical able. they have to agree on things. i think there is a lot more collaborative work on things like mental health. we have seen extremist to be partisanship over republicans that's developing in state

legislatures. >> well, anyone that's doing a lot of political -- what i will say is i think we have focused on our campaigns on local issues forever. we'll continue to say that our candidates should focus on the day-to-day work that they're fwoing going to do for constituents. it is hard to say if one candidate will be stronger than another in terms of securing. the thing that we need is a strong compelling economic message, that's the thing we

know to move the needles, they sort of talk to that concern of many of our battlegrounds where people are really suffering. i think in addition to that, having voter turn out as i said is a key piece for the presidential election. >> we do everything we can to make sure our candidates are differentiated from democrats. some of these geography are small. for us, who the candidate is matters. often if a football coach or a popular high school principal is running in some of these smaller geographies and they're well known and have an identity. they can do the negative shadif at the top of the ticket. >> why do you choose to release

these state targets? >> with 2020 there is so much on the line. it is 20 years of power. i think i realize that within increase of interests in spending, we want it to be transparent and make sure allies and our democratic side know where we are headed. >> the special election in the texas house, can we talk about both the money you are putting in there and messaging? >> absolutely. we spent more than $100,000 in texas so far. we sent additional $3,500 down there. we'll also supports the campaign with text message support as well as staffing. so we are really interested in doing everything we can to support. she has a background and public education. she's been working very hard going on door knocking.

it is a suburban district. it is trending for democrats for some time. we are interested in doing everything we can. euless is focusing things on like there are some testing in texas that's controversial. and so she's interested in eliminating some of the testing to make sure that students are receiving a better education that's not as test focused. that's one big piece that she's focused on in our campaign. >> the rest of 2020? >> there is a republican history in the district. it would be earth shattering if we were able to win it. there is actually the other nine seats in texas that are quite easier. if we are able to win it, our odds to flip texas are better than we thought they were.

>> that's hailarious. there is been a number of republicans. that's ridiculous that i think they can take back. hilarious, thank you for putting that on the target list. i think we realized a few things. one they did not release a real target list. there is absolutely nothing in new york. in addition to that, i would say the rlcc, the committee are counter part. they're responsible for everything. when i say that, i mean they're

responsible for state supreme court court and winning back state legislatures. they're reported $19 million and we reported $7 million. they have huge broad sweeping election responsibilities. i would say our performance with the narrow scope that we have and the rlcc is a much stronger number. in the case of florida, the florida house, we want to do the things that we can build out that chamber to get a place where we think we can put in our list. we want it to be transparent. >> i am with cbs, can you break down the funding? >> well, we are making many of these decisions andty think in the 2018 cycle, we are one of the biggest funders, we spent more than $250,000 in arizona alone.

we moved early resources into arizona. i am happy to get a specific number in terms of what we move so far to you. i don't know it off the top of my head. arizona has been on our early investment list. we'll continue to work with the leadership of the adlcc and all the in state allies to do everything we can to win it. one of our staffers, shawn was just down for the caucus retreat and i spoke to leader fernandez and made a commitment, i will be in arizona right around february 15th and 16th, i plan to sit down with the caucus and talk about our share plan for victory that are original director playing out. we are in it to win arizona. >> hi, i am with abc. we are talking about bold and enacting and redistricting reform and stuff like that. competitors have been trying to lead the roll backs on that and spending bills and things like

that. do you have a game plan attacking that? what does it look like for you? >> you bring out an important point. the legislatures still has the ability to ability to dismantle it. so in missouri, the clean missouri reform passed decisively with which included the congressional district, and the missouri crazy campaign finance laws, i can say that as a missouri native, the campaign finance laws are very, and in combination with the missouri legislative laws. and i think the writing was in the way of passing the initiative but no way to get it through the legislature. and part of our strategy in missouri is to figure out the super majorities in the legislatures. and if clean missouri can hold, it will be a much more viable target. the maps are gerrymandered. the republicans really did this to us starting with the term

limit process in 2002 in moss when republicans put that into place. so i think going into 2022 we'll look at a lot of these maps and find a place, like missouri, potentially to find a path to victory. thank you. yes? >> you mentioned nonpartisan redistricting, in michigan, and you have talked about their districts, are these fair districts going to be ones that are done by other nonpartisan redistricts committees or ones drawn by democrats? >> in the case of -- yes. >> a simple question. is this a commitment from the democrats to support that nonpartisan redistricting commission, if they win, in michigan? >> the recommendation? i think in michigan, yes, the democrats have said this is the path. they've been very supportive of voters, not politicians, and the nonpartisan commission. and in fact, the democratic

secretary of state has tried to do everything she can, along with the democratic ag to make sure that the commission held. it was really the legislative republicans that tried to dismantle the nonpartisan redistricting in michigan. and they continue to do that. and it was a republican organization on it as well. as i said earlier. with scott walker coming in and taking it strategically into federal court because the michigan state supreme court is a lot fairer than federal courts, who have said they won't rule in redistricting cases. >> national journal. >> thank you. >> so as political candidates are dropping out, getting involved, castro and then we've seen active ones like biden and bloomberg be involved as well. as you're working for people who have been involved in presidential -- running for presidential nomination, can you kind of go through what sticks out, like especially interested or involved in these down ballot races? >> absolutely. senator warren last year called me both last year and this year to thank us for our work at the state legislative level.

senator warren made a contribution directly to dlcc last cycle just like she did to many state parties. senator booker did a video for us, the flip everything 2018 video. he was been very involved and senator booker has done everything that we have asked, he stumped for dlcc events, and he stumped in virginia. he stumped in virginia for our delegate. he went all around virginia and did campaigning. mayor pete has reached out as well to do campaign work. i think his infrastructure was still sort of developing in the 2018 cycle. as you saw, as you said, biden, bloomberg, senator klobuchar was very helpful in the effort to flip the minnesota state house red to blue. and she's been sort of working with the legislative candidates there as well. historically has funded a program in the states to support legislative candidates. there is history there, we've worked closely with next gen climate, the organization that he founded, his organization and obviously we work closely with

every town in virginia as well. so we've, i think we've had a great history with these presidential candidates and i have to say this is a sea change of 2010, i went over to, when i was the director at dlcc, i went over to the dnc and 2010 and people were like what you are talking about? so it is a real difference to have presidential candidates across the country. and i think part of the reason they're doing this, obviously they are, they really get, it they get the ballot redistricting, they get the impact of the down ballot races, but in addition to this this is where democratic activists reflex the democratic activists across the country have formed organizations like flip it iowa to flip the iowa state house and engaged at the state legislature level. and when they went into states like iowa, a huge target, new hampshire, where we flipped both state houses in 2018, nevada, where we flipped both chambers of the legislature in '16 and defended three democratic members of the caucus from the

state senate caucus from recall in 2017. those were states that people have a sense that the legislature is really important, so i think they talk to democratic activists, that was something they heard echoed back with how you can help win our state legislature race back. that's a big priority for us. that is incredible for us going into 2020. yes. >> there were interesting results in new jersey so i was curious where that falls on your priority list. >> obviously new jersey is not up until 2021, right? so i think they have strong majorities in both legislative chambers. there was a loss of a single seat. i think the democrats had maxed their map out in the state of new jersey. so that is something we will look at. and we will see can we get some of these seats back in new jersey. lou greenwald, the majority leader is on our board and we have worked closely with him to figure out a strategy there.

>> looking at the regional elections, when will they? >> they're already here. all of them are already started. we have one based in denver. and then we have many of our regional, we have one based in minnesota and the rest of our regionals are based here in dc. and as the year goes on, we may expand our team as the map expands so a lot of what we do with the build out campaigns infrastructure, one specific strategy that we're doing is creating a campaign services department where we can do things for example like share a vid videographer, we have great creative talent at dlcc, not every caucus is a presidential campaign where they can hire a videographer or a web designer or photographer that is more common on campaigns, so we can share some of those resources with caucus as well.

[ inaudible question ] >> we're working with an organization to look at election security. we had a lot of great conversations with california secretary of state padilla, and we're interested in getting him to talk more to some of our state legislatures, to try to figure out what are the things we can do legislative, in states where you have democratic majorities to move forward election security provision. it's much more difficult when we're lock the out of power to make those changes but election front, training attorneys, makes sure they're good incident laws passed on election day, to make sure that we are in a good position on election day. the other thing, too, just to develop on election protection, in many of our states, when people create a statewide election framework, they certainly haven't thought of places like the small college towns and working closely with state parties and verifying to talk about what are the other places that are priorities for election protection. and what are our targeted races and states and we may need additional staffing, places like lacrosse in wisconsin, where maybe the statewide election protection isn't as interested, maybe they're more in milwaukee

and racine, but we know, with what we can see in wisconsin, it is likely that we may have to do some work in some other places with targeted legislative districts. yes? >> obviously it's helpful to have national figures, presidential candidates out there campaigning, with these local candidates, but in places that are battleground districts, like texas, even virginia, are you, are some of the candidates at all wary about the races getting so nationalized and maybe wary of having like, you know, a president, or a presidential candidate, elizabeth warren or bernie sanders on the trail with them? >> we've certainly seen the wall put up. in virginia, basically the only border wall trump built was between d.c. and virginia,

because the republicans didn't want him in the state during the election. so certainly, we've seen this happen the other way where the virginia republicans basically banned trump from the state and only wanted pence to come in and help. i think that in a special election like the one that is passing in texas with markowitz, these special elections are turnout elections so having folks like secretary castro, beto, michael bloomberg, come out in the democratic states, i think it is a huge benefit. >> with the vulnerable chambers, you still have to put resources out. >> we feel like we're completely on the offense. certainly like every cycle, we will watch our incumbent democratic chambers, and make sure in states like minnesota, in maine, and the new hampshire house, where there are 400 seats, so obviously, that is a very vol table chamber, so we will monitor that one closely. it is a tough one to monitor. we will make sure we keep an eye on those places. we are always concerned about our democratic majority. in fact, we defended the colorado senate earlier this year when we beat down some republican recalls that were put out by an extreme gun group so we were able to beat a number of recall elections and i think that was the solution for us, to hold on to the colorado state

senate, which we feel really great about. we have never lost colorado in a presidential year. >> you spoke earlier about new data analytics that you guys have. do you have reason to believe that republicans have the same technology or is it something that you developed here? >> so it is a partisan company, right? we do a lot of work here at the dlcc to make sure things are accurate. we survey on candidate names. so the work of 7,000 state legislative candidates or 12,000 or however many are on the ballot today, head-to-head, and trying to figure out which one of those candidates won primaries is significant. that is a big list that our team does in order to make all of our data accurate. so we think that we sort of started this earlier than the republicans, we feel like our data and analytics are stronger because our voter files, and so the backing state legislative data, potentially are stronger. but look, i think like we're always vigilant, we know that

the republicans have outside resources, we also know that they have a great return on their investment, look what they got in the united states, most unfortunately, after winning in 2010, and so we know that we have to stay vigilant and make sure that everything that we do is cutting edge and ahead of us. >> one or two more questions. >> yes. >> having the overlap with presidential races in the states you're targeting, beyond the obvious things like increased voter turnout, are there things that you can talk about, things that are coordinating, can't coordinate and putting together as well? >> yes. can we go back, can we go back to the presidential battleground slide. so in -- thank you. perfect. so in many of these states, the only state where there is a ban on federal and state coordination is colorado, right, because of amendment 27, so in

many of these states we will be able to look at robust, like robustly coordinated ways, stronger coordinated campaign, the presidential campaign, to think about where we should have door knocking happen. and there are economies of scale if you think about it with turning out democratic voters from state to state, that is something that is really important. so if you think about doing social pressure ads, like to talk to voters about making a plan to vote, if that is already being funded, across the state, it is very easy for us to say hey, can we add that on in our target. so it decreases the cost of get out the vote. in many state, in states like minnesota and iowa and michigan, historically the coordinated campaign, and what has happened last cycle in north carolina, the coordinated campaign fully integrates with the state legislative caucus work and they think about, as they work statewide, how to we win the presidency and also trying to figure out how do we win the state legislatures. so that means we'll sit down at a table and say here are the key

things for door knocking and here is our key targeted chambers and it allows us to run a much more robust get out the vote strategy in some of these states where there is a historic coordination and the field team, we have a full field team at dlcc, will go and help build that out and in pennsylvania, we have a robust coordinator and work closely with them to build out a legislative program. in states like texas, the texas democratic party is very focused on winning back the legislature. so it provides a great opportunity, lots of additional resources in the state, lots of additional bodies, people knocking on doors, having face-to-face conversations with voters. all of those things are great for us, because we view turnout as mechanical, having a lot of voter turnout is just having those conversations with marginal democratic voters, mobilizing people during the early voting period. and in the presidential battleground, there is a very large operatn to do that and we had the opportunity to start early and get volunteers early and that puts us in a great position to

engage in these coordinated efforts. yes? >> i'm alex with pbs news hour. i noticed that west virginia is there, i'm curious to know what you guys see in a state like that. and how much you're investing in it going into 2020, and what you think you expect out of it in the long term. >> yes, i think we're only three seats away from flipping the state senate. somebody correct me if i'm wrong. three seats away from flipping the state senate. as a result, we're looking at these, thank you, we're looking at these three seats to see are these seats specifically the one, and we will work to make investments and we have been talking to the state legislative leadership in west virginia, i had a west virginia county democratic chair reach out to me excitedly and say hey, how will you engage in our state. so it is definitely on our list. to think about. can we try to figure out, can we go in, some of these seats in the state senate. any other questions? all right. thank you so much, everybody. appreciate it. thanks so much for coming. and matt is available for any follow-up questions.

thank you. [ applause ] today, president trump holds a rally in new hampshire at 7:00 p.m. eastern. watch our live coverage live on c-span3, c-span.org or listen with the c-span free radio app. the new hampshire primary is tuesday. watch results and candidate speeches, starting at 7:30 p.m. eastern live on c-span, c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. up next, a look at public health concerns