Republican state Rep. Margaret Drye was mad.
Just days before this month’s election, the left-of-center New Hampshire Bulletin listed her Sullivan County House seat as “one of the easiest for Democrats to flip.”
Worse, it was clear that her opponent, Democrat Jenny Ramsey, was spending a whole lot of money in the fight for a job that pays just $100 a year.
When the votes were counted, Drye was pleased to have won reelection with 54 percent of the vote. But she was also stunned when financial disclosures revealed how much Ramsey and state Democrats spent trying to flip her seat. While Drye spent less than $9,000 — a significant amount for a House seat by historic standards — Democrats spent more than $54,000 in a losing bid to beat her.
Rep. Margaret Drye (R- Cornish)
And the money didn’t come from local communities in the district like Newport, Unity, or Charlestown, either.
“Ramsey got $33,500 from the PAC for America’s Future out of Washington, D.C., and $4,000 from the Progressive Turnout Project based in Chicago,” Drye said. “She ended up spending about $12.76 per vote. I spent less than $2.00 per vote.”
Drye’s story may sound extreme, but it was actually typical of the 2024 cycle both in New Hampshire and across the nation. Democrats made a major commitment of money and recruiting in hopes of increasing the number of legislatures they control.
According to NPR, “Democrats and aligned groups poured more than four times the amount supporting legislative candidates than Republicans did.” The Democrats’ top targets were chambers in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.
As was the case of Sullivan 7, a huge Democratic spending advantage failed to flip a single legislature in their targeted states. Instead, Republicans either maintained control, expanded their majorities, or flipped blue legislative bodies red in nearly every state where chambers were in play.
In Michigan, Republicans flipped the House. In nearby Minnesota, they won enough House seats to create a tie. In Iowa and South Carolina, Republicans now have a supermajority to support their GOP governors.
The only pick-up for Democrats was the Alaska House, which will now be controlled by a coalition of Democrats and other parties.
In New Hampshire, Republicans picked up two state Senate seats and a supermajority in the upper chamber. In the House, they expanded their nearly non-existent 201-199 majority to a 222-178 GOP advantage.
Days before the election, Granite State House Democrats were bragging about their fundraising advantage, touting the $2.9 million they had raised to flip the chamber. When House Democratic Victory Campaign chair Rep. Laura Telerski (D-Nashua) took to Twitter after the election and attempted to defend the committee’s performance, her GOP counterpart didn’t hold back.
“Hahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha. MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BURNED,” tweeted Rep. Joe Sweeney (R-Salem. “21 seat loss cycle to cycle. Dems are seriously broken. Bad strategy, terrible messaging, and worse candidates.”
The mismatch between spending and results wasn’t just a New Hampshire phenomenon.
“Democratic outside groups including the States Project, Forward Majority, and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee spent at least $175 million on state legislative races across a total of nine states this cycle,” NBC News reports. “By comparison, the RSLC spent about $50 million this cycle, with no major expenditures from outside GOP-affiliated groups.”
The RSLC, or Republican State Leadership Committee, launched a “Left’s Most Wanted” campaign earlier this year targeting 10 Democratic state lawmakers across four states. Two were New Hampshire state Sens. Shannon Chandley (Amherst) and Donna Soucy (Manchester). On Monday, the RSLC announced eight of the 10 Democrats it targeted were “defeated by strong state Republican candidates who campaigned on the important issues of border security, crime, and the economy.”
That included both Chandley and Soucy.
RSLC President Dee Duncan said, “We knew that state Republicans had the upper hand on winning issues like border security, crime, and the economy, which is why we dedicated significant resources into these crucial battleground districts to drive home our message. The RSLC’s ‘Left’s Most Wanted’ ad campaign made an example of state Democrats across Arizona, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Wisconsin by going on offense and holding them accountable.”
In New Hampshire, the RSLC’s ads targeted Democrats over their support for sanctuary city policies for illegal immigrants, and their opposition to Education Freedom Accounts.
Soucy’s race was another example of massive spending resulting in minimal results. Sen.-elect Sullivan posted Soucy’s financials on Twitter, along with the message: “This is what we were up against. $261K for a state Senate race. We didn’t raise close to that so we had to make up in labor what we didn’t have in cash. Grassroots for the win.”
How did Democrats spend so much yet perform so poorly? Even as the two Democrats running for Congress vastly outspent their underfunded GOP opponents?
One reason is the poor performance of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Joyce Craig, who managed to lose both her hometown of Manchester and the Democratic stronghold of Nashua.
And Democrats also had to defend an unpopular legislative record: Opposing tax cuts, supporting sanctuary city policies, and unanimously voting in favor of allowing boys to compete in girls sports and males to use women’s private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.
But the national results also point to the popularity of President-elect Donald Trump among voters who once overwhelmingly supported Democrats, in particularly working-class Americans in the Hispanic and Black communities. The national vote shifted toward Republicans, and that shift was even seen in deep blue states like California (GOP pickup 8.4 percent), Massachusetts (8.7 percent) and New York (11.5 percent).
Rep-elect Ross Berry (R-Weare), part of the GOP House campaign team, summed up the election this way.
“They had $3 million. We had 4 dudes in a Signal chat.”
