This tilting of the electoral playing field was the result of a sophisticated campaign coordinated at the highest levels of Republican politics through a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – a Super-PAC-like entity chaired by Bush-era RNC chairman Ed Gillespie and backed by Karl Rove. Shortly after President Obamas first election, the RSLC launched the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) with an explicit strategy to keep or win Republican control of state legislatures with the largest impact on congressional redistricting. The logic was simple. Every decade following the census, the task of redrawing federal congressional-district boundaries falls (with some exceptions) to the state legislatures. If Republicans could seize control of statehouses – and, where necessary, have GOP governors in place to rubber-stamp their redistricting maps – the party could lock in new districts that would favor Republican candidates for a decade. As Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal column in early 2010: He who controls redistricting can control Congress. In short order, the RSLC raised more than $30 million to fund Roves vision while its hapless counterpart, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, raised barely one-third of that amount. The Obama people simply didnt understand what was happening to them in 2010, says a prominent Democrat. They just sat it out, and Republicans ran up the score. Read more: rollingstone/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111#ixzz2liLjLFm7 Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 02:21:13 +0000
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