On Tuesday, representatives for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign announced an ambitious plan to transfer almost $25 million in campaign cash to downballot Democrats across the country. The funds will support an array of organizations, including the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and the Democratic Attorney Generals Association.
That massive transfer represents more than just a much-needed lifeline to cash-starved state and local campaigns. It’s also a window into how Harris thinks about politics.
Since President Barack Obama’s time in office, Democratic National Committee officials have operated under the flawed belief that donor cash should mainly support efforts to hold the White House and Congress. That belief led to historic Democratic losses at the state level, where Republicans now control the majority of state legislatures and governorships. Harris’ cash infusion is the first critical step in repairing that damage. To make a large difference, though, this sort of fund transfer needs to become the party’s new normal.
Harris’ big donation comes at a time of acute need for cash-strapped state Democratic parties. This November, in crucial states from Missouri to Florida, voters will head to the polls to find districts with only a Republican candidate on the ballot. Without the funding and infrastructure to build statewide competitive tickets, Democratic parties across the country are simply abandoning winnable races that could tip the balance of power in state capitals.
In some regions, that imbalance has eliminated voter choice entirely. A New York Times investigation published Wednesday found that Republicans were running unchallenged across all 17 races in Perry County, Missouri. Overall, Democrats “failed to field a single candidate for fully half of all partisan offices—well over three times the rate of Republican no-shows,” the Times reports.
Over half of all state and local races now feature only a single candidate, according to data collected by the nonpartisan website Ballotpedia. That lack of choice has a profound and measurable effect on both voters and the officials who walk into office unchallenged. Political scientists have found that unchallenged incumbents are generally less effective lawmakers. They introduce fewer bills and miss more votes than colleagues who face potential accountability at the ballot box.
Uncontested downballot races don’t just produce lazy lawmakers. They also drive voter disengagement in the political process. Progressive group Sister District has been tracking the corrosive effect of “roll-off,” which occurs when voters show up to cast a ballot for federal races, like the presidency, but fail to vote in state and local races. According to Sister District, Democratic voters are more likely than Republicans to fall victim to roll-off, meaning Democrats will often find themselves underrepresented in state legislatures and governors’ offices.
And it’s getting worse. Without the funding to build deep benches of high-quality candidates and the infrastructure to challenge Republican disinformation, state Democratic parties are often outspent and out-organized by GOP field operations. Fortunately, Sister District has just released new data that should help party leaders identify and engage those most at risk of under-voting.
Sister District’s new research discovered that roll-off voters are more likely to be young women, centrist voters, and those without a college degree. The group found that 8 in 10 roll-off voters made the decision not to vote based on a lack of knowledge about the races on which they would be voting, and a majority believed that their vote would not matter. By comparison, only 25% of voters who filled out their entire ballot felt that way.
As we’ve seen in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, votes and voters really do matter. From Texas’ abortion bounty-hunter law to attempts by red states like Idaho and Missouri to ban women from traveling out of state to obtain abortion services, the most extreme anti-abortion legislation has been enabled by Republican-controlled state legislatures. In states where Republicans control the legislature by a handful of seats, roll-off voting has likely played an outsized role in protecting the GOP’s fragile majorities.
As the Harris campaign acknowledges, it takes serious financial resources to combat decades of roll-off voting and reenergize anemic state parties. There’s also plenty of evidence that a little bit of national money can go a long way in fixing a state party’s ability to contest local races.
After years where nearly half of all local races went uncontested by Democrats, an influx of DLCC money helped the Virginia Democratic Party pull off a landslide in 2023, with Democrats retaking control of the state legislature in time to prevent Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed abortion ban from becoming law. That victory also energized Democrats ahead of the crucial 2024 election, when Virginia is a must-win state for Harris.
Harris’ $25 million will go a long way toward helping the DLCC campaign in winnable state legislative districts across the country, but to be truly effective, that donation needs to be more than a onetime contribution. If Harris wins the presidency, she would have the mandate to lead a generational rethinking of how Democrats’ fundraising structure works—and bring national money to the growing challenge of under-voting in downballot races.
Organizations like Sister District have done the critical work of detailing just how damaging the phenomenon of voter roll-off is to our democracy. Now Harris has taken on the task of addressing it. In the process, she could build a powerful bench of future Democratic leaders while beginning the long process of undoing decades of Republican misrule in the states. Reengaging voters with their democracy remains the single best way to defend against the MAGA movement’s dangerous extremism.
