Page 9 - Red Map News Today

Days of genius. everybody, pick a genius. my colleagues here picked people like the genius behind the broadway show "hamilton," also singer and songwriter carole king, judd apetow. i picked this guy. its okay if you dont recognize him. his name is chris jankowski, a republican political operative. heres what i think is his genius. after president obama won in 2008, republican political operatives started a project they called the redistricting majority project, red map for short. the idea behind...

Last year, you might remember this, msnbc did an interesting thing called seven days of genius. everybody, pick a genius. my colleagues here picked people like the genius behind the broadway show "hamilton," also singer and songwriter carole king, judd apetow. i picked this guy. its okay if you dont recognize him. his name is chris jankowski, a republican political operative. heres what i think is his genius. after president obama won in 2008, republican political operatives started a project th...

2008, republican political operatives started a project they called the redistricting majority project, red map for short. the idea behind red map was to flip as many state legislators from blue to red. and the timing was important because every ten years when they do the census, state legislators get to redraw election districts. in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm election, red map starting raising money to flip districts, to flip legislative seats, to approach that whole problem systematically...

It was the job of red map to specifically try to win in the states. and to get more specific than that, their plan, what they were designed to do, was to flip as many state legislatures as possible from democratic control to republican control. from blue to red. state legislatures, state houses, state senates. after the census is done every ten years, state legislatures get to redraw election districts both for themselves, like for state senate seats, but also for congressional districts. anybod...

Seem like a guy like russ decker could lose. but he had never run in a race where red map would come in and spend $500,000 on that race in the last two weeks before the election. so russ decker lost and that seat became a republican seat. i dont know if you know this, but im a liberal. and i think the republican takeover in the states has been terrible. basically across the board in terms of policy consequences because i dont tend to like republican policies. im also a civics dork that things di...

Opponents ever caught to what you were doing until you had done it and they woke up the next morning that you skrud them for not one day, one year or a decade least. when it comes to political genius, i here by maintain this is nothing comparable in the last five years in american electoral politics at least, probably considerably longer than that is anything like this. if democrats would wave a magic wand and undo the political work of one person in the past five years, it would be the red map ...

Could lose. but then again he had run run in a race where red map for its own reasons was going to spend $500,000 on that race in the last two weeks before the election. so yeah, russ decker lost and that seat became a republican seat. i dont know if you know this but im a liberal. and i think the republican takeover in the states has been terrible. basically across the board in terms of policy consequences because i dobt dont tend to like republican policies. im also a civics dork who thinks th...

Much bigger victory in the states that would basically guarantee they would control congress for a decade. that was a genius moment of recognizing the political leverage there. then there was transforming that idea in to an actual plan to do it. so theres this little group that very few people have heard of, the republican state leadership committee and they go to work with this red map idea and they raise money nationally from deep pocketed but fairly typical republican donors. they raise a lit...

Terms of policy consequences because i dont tend to like republican policies. im also a civics dork that things districts should not be drawn for partisan reasons to make safe seats for democrats or republicans. so on the merits, this whole story -- guhh. but for the strategic thought and execution to have the biggest and longstanding impact without a huge outlay of resources, and without your opponents figuring out what you were doing until you had done it and they wake up and realize that you ...

Failing. then in 2010, they even beat that. the 1994 midterm was a pick up of 54 seats. in 2010, the first term of the obama presidency, the republicans got 63 seats in the house. that is how john boehner became speaker. they had a huge year. that was nowhere near their biggest victory that year. the republican state leadership committee started a project they called the redistricting majority project, or red map for short. and for this red map project they started raising a lot of money. it was...