MEMO: How the RSLC Flipped the Virginia House
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Dee Duncan
President, RSLC
DATE: November, 3 2021
RE: How the RSLC Flipped the Virginia House
INTRODUCTION
Virginia House Republicans sent shockwaves through the political universe last night, flipping seven House of Delegates seats to regain control of the chamber, snapping a three-cycle streak of net losses in the process. The stunning upset came despite Republicans being outspent in these races by more than 2:1 -- a disparity driven by national liberals like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi, and Stacey Abrams, who all viewed these races as bellwethers and went all-in to protect the Democrat majority in Richmond.
We now know the far-left’s playbook to win state races this cycle: raise massive amounts of resources to overwhelm Republicans in order to compensate for being on the wrong side of the issues. It almost worked last night, and these national liberals will surely be back in 2022 with the same strategy. We must, therefore, learn from our success in Virginia in order to be ready.
So how did Republicans overcome such a significant spending disadvantage and do what many thought impossible? The Republican State Leadership Committee PAC, the largest Republican spender in these races, led the effort to run races with the right candidates, the right messages, and the right tactics to flip the Virginia House.
As this memo will detail, our work in the Old Dominion offers a roadmap for Republican candidates and committees up and down the ballot ahead of the midterms. We also know full well that last night’s devastating result for national liberals will galvanize the entire Democratic Party and make it even harder to defend our razor-thin majorities across the country in 2022.
THE STAKES: WHAT DEMOCRATS WERE SAYING
There is no other way for them to explain it: last night’s results delivered a crushing blow to national liberals. In a blue state where Democrats had netted a total of 22 seats since the 2015 election, cutting into their majority by just one seat would have been a win for House Republicans. Flipping the House, however, is a monumental upset and complete repudiation of the far-left’s agenda headed into the 2022 midterms.
Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) themselves all were clear about the significance of the fight to control the House in Virginia.
Joe Biden: “To continue the progress, as we work to elect Terry McAuliffe as Governor, we need to elect Democrats up and down the ballot to keep the Virginia House blue this November.” (DLCC Press Release 10/19/2021)
Barack Obama: “Everything we care about is on the ballot in Virginia” (DLCC Press Release, 10/25/21)
Eric Holder: “Critical elections are coming up in Virginia on 11/2, and creating real change requires voting for candidates up and down the ballot. I’m proud to endorse these incredible candidates for the Virginia House of Delegates.” (Twitter, 10/26/21)
DLCC President Jessica Post: “Defending this majority is our number one priority this year, and we’re not taking anything for granted.” (DLCC Press Release, 6/9/21)
DLCC President Jessica Post: “We must hold the Virginia House in 2021. We are in @DLCC to do whatever it takes to keep it blue.” (Twitter, 5/4/21)
DLCC President Jessica Post: “The fight for state legislatures in this new decade starts by defending our majority in the Virginia House.” (DLCC Memo, 3/16/21)
DLCC National Press Secretary Christina Polizzi: “I feel even more confident about holding the VA House than I already did.” (Twitter, 1/6/21)
What’s worse? Democrats, even at the end, were still confident they would prevail. Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn even told the Associated Press less than a week before the election, “the majority is safe” and WRIC-Richmond “it won’t be as close as people think on Election Day.”
THE SPENDING DISPARITY
Democrats certainly put their money where their mouth is to protect their majority. Democrat candidates pulled in 32% more than they did in 2019 and 121% more than in 2017, outraising Republicans by more than 2:1.
Donations from a constellation of national liberal groups including Eric Holder and Barack Obama’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, Planned Parenthood, the pro-defunding the police group - Future Now, Emily’s List, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers fueled the fundraising on the Democratic side. The donations from the outside groups below total over $12 million.
Those who believe our victory last night will have these national liberals hesitating to dump more money into state races in 2022 should think again. What last night’s result makes clear is that the national liberal money machine was almost able to buy an election where state Democrats were on the wrong side of every issue. It was the RSLC’s innovative, targeted spending and strategy outlined below, made possible by our growing support from across the country, that allowed Virginia Republicans to overcome the vast spending disparity that they faced. Replicating this feat in multiple battleground states in 2022, however, will require us to accelerate our fundraising in the coming months.
A DIVERSE SLATE OF CANDIDATES
The RSLC began working very early in 2021 with the House Republican Campaign Committee to recruit a diverse slate of candidates -- focused on women and minorities -- who would be able to better compete in the suburban battlegrounds that moved away from Republicans in the Democrat wave elections of 2017 and 2019.
This strategy meshed with the RSLC’s overall commitment to growing the future of the Republican Party by recruiting, training, and supporting candidates who better reflect their communities, a mission the committee doubled down on last month with the launch of its Right Leaders Network.
In our first round of candidate spotlights released in May we emphasized the diversity of Republicans running across the state, noting that we had 23 women and 8 minority candidates on the ballot. When it was all said and done, 57% of our seats flipped were won by women or minorities.
Tara Durant (HD-28)
Kim Taylor (HD-63)
Karen Greenhalgh (HD-85)
A.C. Cordoza (HD-91)
While there were many advantages to having a robust group of fresh faces running in competitive races across Virginia, that also meant these first-time candidates had to work hard to raise their name ID. In these tight contests, the work they did knocking every last door, attending every last event, and making every last phone call cannot be discounted and very well may have made the difference in the fight the majority.
THE RIGHT MESSAGE
The Republican message in Virginia’s House of Delegates races developed by the RSLC was driven by two key factors.
A bold early gamble that Joe Biden’s standing with Virginians would fall and create an environment in which flipping the House would be possible.
Early data outlining the attacks most likely to damage House Democratic incumbents.
While Republicans normally look to keep national issues out of their state races in Virginia, the RSLC concluded in early 2021 that a path back to a majority in the House of Delegates would require focusing on local concerns through the prism of the national issue set. That meant a seismic shift in the political environment such as a significant decline in Joe Biden’s support amongst Virginians needed to occur. Therefore, the RSLC PAC set out to run campaigns that would be maximized if Virginians soured on Democrat-controlled Washington come the fall.
Our main message was that Virginia Democrats were no different than national Democrats and that the far-left agenda they pursued with control of Richmond exacerbated the failures of Democrat-controlled Washington. We laid this groundwork as early as June when RSLC PAC launched a six-figure digital ad campaign in our initial 13 targeted districts.
Making this opening argument in the early summer allowed us to define our targets as far-left liberals before they could even defend themselves, making it much easier to take advantage of the political environment when it began to turn our way in the fall.
The second messaging decision the RSLC PAC made was picking three issues to focus on when attacking House Democrats. Benchmark polls conducted in each target district in late June showed that the best attacks against House Democratic incumbents centered around the following three issues:
Education – Democrats siding with the teachers’ unions and voting to keep schools closed, protecting critical race theory, and refusing to speak out against attacks on advanced diplomas and higher educational standards.
Public Safety – Democrats calling to defund the police themselves, being endorsed by radical groups that want to defund the police, and letting the parole board off the hook for breaking the law despite Virginian’s murder rate being at a 20-year high.
The Cost of Living – Democrats voting to increase the gas tax and electric costs during a pandemic.
Fortunately, these three issues were all connected to those that were driving the debate at the national level as well. When we began the campaign in earnest just before Labor Day, we chose then to drive messages that tapped into the national issue set, while localizing those same issues with the direct attacks tested against House Democrats. RSLC PAC’s opening round of TV ads in August were prime examples of how this was done.
In “Lawless” we referenced the rioting and rising crime seen at the national level and argued that Richmond Democrats were bringing those same results to Virginia because of their endorsements from far-left groups that want to defund the police and their votes to quash an investigation into the parole board.
In “Even Worse” we noted that the rising inflation being experienced by Americans as a result of Democrat-controlled Washington’s reckless spending programs was made worse by votes Virginia House Democrats took to increase the gas tax and hike energy costs.
In “As We Know It” we localized national concerns about parental control over their kids’ educations by holding House Democrats accountable for their votes to keep schools closed and protect critical race theory.
While we launched additional rounds of advertising following our initial television campaign, RSLC PAC, the House Republican Campaign Committee, and our Republican candidates remained laser-focused on tying Democrats to the failures of national liberals on education, public safety, and the cost of living until Election Day. As Democrats bounced around from attacking Republicans on abortion, to Trump, to COVID-19, our disciplined messaging from June on paved the way for our success.
A DATA-DRIVEN STRATEGY
Not only did we have great candidates who had the right message, the RSLC’s innovative strategy and tactics were also a big part of why we took back the House. Another key observation made in June when we conducted our initial polling was that a lot of our Democratic targets had soft images that could easily be weakened with unanswered attacks. Anticipating we would be drastically outspent in the fall, we chose to begin our television advertising against 10 candidates on August 17 with hard-hitting negative ads, making it far more expensive for our targets to recover than if we had waited until later in the fall to run the same ads. The Washington Post at the time even noted how these ads came “unusually early in the district election cycle.”
While some in Virginia were skeptical about our strategy to spend so much money so early in the election cycle, our data told us that the only way these races would become winnable in the fall would be through targeted, early investments.
The Democrat incumbents we attacked were clearly taken by surprise. None of them responded with their own television ads until at least a week after our spots hit the airwaves and it took until September 16 (almost exactly a month later) for them to answer with the first negative ad of their own. The result was an erosion in the images of our target Democrat incumbents early on in the race from which they could never recover.
The chart below shows the effectiveness of this strategy for three of the House Democrats we ousted last night.
Our early television spending was bolstered by a historic investment from the Republican National Committee (RNC), who for the first time ever partnered with us on a targeted campaign that included digital ads, texting, and direct mail in eight key districts. This allowed us to keep the pedal to the floor in a number of races and continue to drive up the negatives of our top targets. Our historic partnership with the RNC was critical in our effort to defeat both Alex Askew and Joshua Cole, who were underwater by seven points and four points respectively in our last round of polling headed into Election Day.
Another new development for the RSLC this cycle was contracting with America Rising to track our top targets at their public campaign events. This is the first time a national Republican group had ever deployed trackers in legislative races to this extent, and the results were remarkable. America Rising tracked 160 events involving Democratic House candidates and their footage produced multiple negative stories about Democrats, including:
Progress Index: Colonial Heights House candidates clash over audio of Democrat calling cops 'murderers'
Progress Index: 'Enjoy your soulless life:' House candidate reacts to question about 'murderers' comment
Potomac Local: Virginia Democrats deny bonuses for local police in latest round of stimulus spending
Virginia Scope: Guzman and Cole stand behind support of Green New Deal policies
Fox News: Conservatives slam McAuliffe ally who declared, ‘Only cure for stupid is education’
Fox News: The Biden effect: GOP starts linking down-ballot Democrats to an increasingly unpopular president
The tracking footage was also used in RSLC PAC ads, particularly against Alex Askew.
Finally, the RSLC for the first time ever also ran a state-focused communications operation to amplify its paid media efforts in Virginia and national media. The result was over 45 stories since February related to Virginia’s House of Delegates races that mentioned the RSLC. This effort allowed House Republican candidates to control the narrative in these races despite being outspent.
CONCLUSION
Last night’s historic upset was a culmination of months of hard work by the RSLC. We supported the right candidates, developed the right messages, and executed the right strategies to maximize the advantages of the political environment and overcome a significant spending advantage that was driven by national liberals.
While we are proud of our efforts in Virginia, our success will inherently motivate national Democrats to attack our razor-thin majorities in 2022. We know we will have to work harder than ever to protect them. It took an absolutely perfect campaign, which was made possible only through the fantastic support from our investors across the country, to squeak out a narrow victory last night. Winning in 2022 will be anything but a given.
We have shown we have the right formula for victory in the midterms. But our success will depend on the continued support of our growing group of partners across the country so we have the resources necessary to take the winning lessons we learned in Virginia and apply them to other battleground states in 2022.
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