Going into the election, the GOP controlled about two-thirds of state legislatures

VPM | By Rachel Martin and Laura Benshoff

Published November 9, 2022 at 2:15 PM EST

Updated March 16, 2023

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

OK. We’re going to get down to the state level. Going into yesterday’s election, the GOP controlled about two-thirds of state legislatures around the country. NPR’s Laura Benshoff is here to talk about whether that changed, if at all, and what it means.

Hey, Laura.

LAURA BENSHOFF, BYLINE: Hello.

MARTIN: All right. Any big upsets in these races?

BENSHOFF: Yeah. As you said, the GOP had control of about two-thirds of state chambers, and they control a few fewer now. Democrats have picked up houses in a couple states. In Michigan, they flipped both the House and the Senate. This is according to the Democrats in Michigan. And this is a big deal. It’s been decades since the Senate chamber there was out of GOP hands. And you’ll remember that there’s also a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in Michigan who just won reelection herself yesterday. And she’s been this target of protests over the last few years, people coming to the Capitol when she issued stay-at-home orders. It was very antagonistic.

But now with her party in control of the state government, Whitmer is going to have a new environment, where Democrats may actually be able to enact their agenda. That’s also the case in Minnesota now. It’s another place where a chamber flipped. The Senate there switched from red to blue. So now Democrats control – boom, boom, boom – House, Senate, governorship. On the other side of the coin, the GOP made a play to flip some chambers in its favor in Colorado and Maine. But it doesn’t look like that’s happened.

MARTIN: So slim margins are hard to govern through – right? – if you control the legislature by just a narrow percentage. Let’s talk about supermajorities, where a veto-proof majority effectively gets to cancel out the governor. Did we see any of those form or break up this cycle?

BENSHOFF: So the GOP was really looking to make one of those happen in Wisconsin. They have a huge advantage there in the state legislature, but they did fall short in the assembly. That’s what they call the statehouse in Wisconsin. And that’s significant because this is another place where you had a kind of embattled Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who just won again reelection last night. And during his first term, he vetoed more than 140 bills. If a supermajority had been attained there by the GOP, he would have lost the ability to do that.

On the other side, Dems won a supermajority in the Vermont state Legislature in both chambers. There is a GOP governor there that they can now override. And a third place where this was sort of in play was in North Carolina. There was the thought that if there was a big enough red wave, Republicans could come through and just steamroll the Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. It does not look like they have made that happen. So he will live to veto again.

MARTIN: State legislatures have a lot of control over big issues these days. Abortion has been kicked to the states – and how elections happen. How did these results that we’re seeing thus far affect those particular issues?

BENSHOFF: You know, those trifectas that I talked about – states where you have the governor, statehouse and state legislature in one party – they can really push through their agenda, whatever that party’s agenda is. And so it could be abortion. It could be voting. So, for instance, if North Carolina had gotten a GOP supermajority, they could – we could have seen a change in abortion rights there. In Michigan, the flip side could now happen with the Democrats in power. So what your life and your choices look like – it can be really different depending on where you live in this country.

MARTIN: NPR’s Laura Benshoff.

We appreciate your reporting this morning. Thanks, Laura.

BENSHOFF: Thank you, Rachel.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOTHER FALCON’S “WALTZ”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

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