Downballot Democrats Are Smashing Recruitment Records

When the Kansas legislature took up a bill in early 2026 that would strip transgender residents’ driver’s licenses and bar them from government bathrooms, Bobby Joe Robertson Jr., a financial analyst at a petroleum refinery in the small town of McPherson, about an hour north of Wichita, decided to write her state representative a letter.

“Technically, I wrote three,” Robertson says. There was the original letter, asking her legislator if he’d be up to meet with her, a trans woman, to discuss the painful effects the law would have on her family. And then a follow-up asking the legislator if he could please respond. “The third one,” she recalls, “was me telling him that I’m going to take his job.”

It will be an uphill battle. President Donald Trump carried McPherson by a more than two-to-one margin in 2024, as Robertson’s current Republican state representative was running unopposed in HD-73. A different Republican legislator had run unopposed in 2022. And 2020. And 2018. But this year, the incumbent has chosen not to seek re-election, and Robertson has been knocking doors after work for months, organizing her neighbors, and raising money for the race ahead. “I don’t think it’ll be a landslide or anything,” she said. “But I think I have the potential.”

“The power that is built in November in our state capitals…is going to have a national impact.”

Robertson is one of 18 Kansas Democrats contesting a state house seat this fall that went unopposed in the last election. Some of these districts have gone years without even token Democratic opposition, two will feature their first contested election since 2006. You have to go all the way back to 1990 to find this many Democrats running for Kansas’ legislature, incidentally, the last year they won a majority. Most of these races, in deep-red areas, will likely stay out of reach for the party. But Brandon Woodard, the Democratic minority leader in the lower chamber, believes another goal is achievable: that at least five out of the party’s more than 100 local recruits can flip districts, enough to break the Republicans’ supermajority, while turning out extra voters to keep the governor’s mansion in Democratic hands.

It’s not just Kansas. Across the country, Democrats are smashing downballot recruitment records, fielding more candidates in more races than they have in decades, or ever. For the first time, the party has a candidate for every Minnesota state legislative race, as it hopes to build on a one-vote majority in the state senate and break a 67, 67 logjam in the house. In Texas, where Democrats are looking to make inroads in a Republican-dominated legislature and get out the vote for Senate candidate James Talarico and other statewide candidates, the party is also fielding candidates for every legislative seat for the first time in its modern history. They’ve got candidates in every race in South Carolina (where the party hopes to break a Republican supermajority), and in Arizona (where it’s seeking to flip both chambers), and are contesting all but two seats in North Carolina.

And in New Hampshire, in a bid for a governing trifecta, Democrats are contesting every state senate race, and at least 361 of 400 state house seats, 57 more than Republicans. According to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which invests in state-level downballot races, the party is also contesting a 21st-century record number of races in Indiana and Georgia.

As I reported previously, the DLCC has ambitious targets this fall, with hundreds of seats in play across the country. Democrats have been buoyed by dominant showings in 2025’s off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and a string of victories and overperformances in special elections, including, this spring, a win in the Florida state house district that includes Mar-a-Lago. DLCC president Heather Williams has argued this November has the potential to be “2010 in reverse”, a reference to Barack Obama’s first midterm shellacking, when Republicans picked up 700 legislative seats that allowed them to gerrymander their way to enduring majorities in states like North Carolina. Now, with both parties in the midst of a redistricting arms race, these elections could help determine which politicians control the next stages of the battle, a significance that will be felt far beyond any state’s borders.

“On the other side of this election, we’re going to sharply go into a continued conversation about redistricting, the need to shore up the path to the presidency, and ensure that our voting laws and our certification processes are strong as we go into a big 2028 presidential cycle,” Williams says. “On top of all of that, this Republican administration continues to move policy work of dealing with the issues of today into the states.

“The power that is built in November in our state capitals is not only going to affect those that live in those communities,” Williams adds. “It is going to have a national impact.”

Downballot recruitment is no guarantee of success, particularly in the sorts of ruby-red areas Democrats like Robertson will be contesting. Republicans’ power in Kansas’ legislature will likely hinge on a small number of competitive districts. But the presence of candidates in almost every race is a useful barometer for an energized base and party organization. In Kansas, Woodard said, the numbers reflect, in part, a strategic shift. Last year, his caucus hired a political director earlier than it ever had, and launched a tour of Republican-dominated areas to drum up interest from local parties and activists.

“If we’re having a wave year, some of those districts that are having the candidate on the ground doing the work might end up in picking up a seat that maybe wasn’t on our radar,” Woodard says. “More than anything, if we can move the needle on a district that we lose by 20 percent, and someone does the work and we only lose by 15 percent, that’s a win in my book as well.”

Other Kansas Democrats, like Pete Ferrell, a rancher and self-described “former Eisenhower Republican” who threw his hat in the ring for a seat east of Wichita, are running for less tangible reasons. No one has contested the district in ten years, and while Ferrell told me he hadn’t raised any money and wasn’t yet sure what his campaign would look like, to him it’s about the principle of the thing.

“I’m 73. I’ve probably got no business doing this,” he said. “But my God, I wasn’t gonna open that ballot up and not see a Democrat.”

Correction, June 23: An earlier version of this story misstated the sponsor of Kansas Democrats’ tour, the Texas party’s electoral history, and the number of North Carolina candidates.