The Democratic Party is planning an unusually aggressive push to win seats in state legislatures next year, targeting more than 650 seats and aiming to make gains in 42 chambers, according to a strategy memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The effort represents new ambition for the arm of the party that focuses on state legislatures, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is often overshadowed by its congressional counterparts.
The group has set a hopeful fund-raising goal for 2026: $50 million, a total it has never hit before in one year. In 2024, the D.L.C.C. announced a two-year target of $60 million and raised about $50 million over that period, according to federal tax records.
The effort is the latest sign that Democrats are growing more optimistic about the political environment ahead of the midterm elections. President Trump’s lagging approval ratings and Democratic electoral victories this year, most recently on Tuesday in the Miami mayor’s race, point to those shifting winds.
Party leaders are now hopeful of not just recapturing the U.S. House but also seizing back some of the ground that the party lost at the state level in 2024.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fundamentally transform legislative power,” said Heather Williams, the president of the D.L.C.C. She pointed to Democrats’ stronger-than-expected performance in state legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia last month.
State legislatures have taken on new political importance in recent years, especially after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and left abortion access up to the states. With Washington in gridlock, state lawmakers have become increasingly influential in steering policies that affect millions of Americans.
And with the outbreak of this year’s extraordinary redistricting war, control of state legislatures has become even more consequential. Republicans control both chambers in 28 states, compared with 18 for Democrats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In the memo, Ms. Williams likens Democrats’ outlook to that of Republicans in 2010, when the party’s sustained focus on state legislatures as part of “Project Redmap” led to significant gains that tilted the congressional map against Democrats for a decade. She added that while the D.L.C.C.’s map is clearly rooted in 2026, the group also wants to win as many seats as possible by 2030, when the next round of reapportionment will begin and is expected to favor Republicans.
“There has not been a climate, I would argue, since 2010 where opportunities like this existed in the states,” Ms. Williams said in an interview.
The group’s plan has four broad goals: flipping chambers held by Republicans, breaking up Republican supermajorities that can override a governor’s veto, building Democratic supermajorities and weakening Republican majorities.
Flipping Republican-held chambers is the most critical — and arduous — task for Democrats. The D.L.C.C. is hoping to flip eight chambers in politically divided states: both the House and Senate in Arizona, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, as well as the Michigan House and the Minnesota House. Democrats have targeted such places in the past and fallen short, but they argue that the environment is newly ripe.
“Tariff policies are really hurting a lot of the farming communities, the agricultural communities in Arizona,” said Priya Sundareshan, the Democratic minority leader in the Arizona State Senate. “And it’s also immigration policy, where a lot of these farms rely on day laborers, who cross over the border with Mexico, to do work on the farms.” Scarce labor can raise grocery prices, she added.
Mason DiPalma, a spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee, pointed to Democrats’ previous failed attempts to flip chambers in red areas, such as the party’s $1.3 million effort in 2020 to turn the Texas House blue.
“If Democrats want to waste their significant fund-raising advantage chasing fantasy wins in red states, we say go for it,” Mr. DiPalma said in a statement. “They clearly haven’t learned a thing, but we welcome their repeat mistakes. The biggest winners from this announcement are R.S.L.C. donors, whose dollars will continue to go further as we prioritize efficient investments, while Democrats stretch themselves thin.”
The D.L.C.C. memo also sets a goal of gaining 10 new Democratic supermajorities, including in New York, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, while breaking up 10 Republican supermajorities, including in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.
Some of the chambers Democrats are targeting have long proved elusive, including the Pennsylvania Senate, where Republicans enjoy a 27-to-23 majority.
But the new approach seeks to address a longtime frustration of down-ballot Democrats who believe that too often, the party has failed to compete in races that were seen as unwinnable. In turn, they say, Democratic voters in many places have seen little reason to vote.
“The first political backlash to the president occurred in Pennsylvania, occurred in the Lancaster Senate seat,” said Vincent Hughes, a Democratic state senator in Pennsylvania, referring to a special election in March in which the Democratic candidate won in a district that Mr. Trump had carried by 15 percentage points in 2024. “We contested in that seat when the conventional wisdom was: ‘Nah, Democrats haven’t won that seat in 100 years, why bother? Trump won it by 15 percent, why bother?’ But we contested.”
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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