CHICAGO, Nov. 8 -- Democratic gains in Congress and among the nation's governors were matched on Tuesday by a huge surge closer to the grass roots -- in the state legislatures, where more than 275 seats and 10 legislative chambers from Iowa to Oregon switched overnight from Republican to Democratic hands.
With those legislative victories combined with the six new Democratic governors elected on Tuesday, Democrats are now the one-party government in 15 states -- including New Hampshire for the first time since 1874, and Colorado for the first time since 1960. No party has controlled as many as 15 states since the Republicans achieved that exact number after the 1994 election.
But what was equally remarkable, said Tim Storey, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group, is that the gains occurred everywhere in the country, even in the South, where Democrats lost ground in every statehouse election since 1982 -- until Tuesday. The gains there were tiny, about 20 legislative seats spread across 14 states, but the direction, Mr. Storey said, was the important thing. |
