WASHINGTON — The political map will be set for the next decade in the 2020 elections, but the outcome of the biggest race on the ballot — the one grabbing most of the Democratic Party's attention and donor dollars — will have no effect on where the lines are drawn.
That mismatch has some party leaders worried Democrats will once again miss the boat.
"I'm definitely sounding the alarm," former Attorney General Eric Holder, who now leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in an interview with NBC News.
State legislative races rarely ignite activists' passions or open donors' wallets. But with redistricting done every 10 years after the census, whoever wins states in 2020 will get to draw the maps in 2021 that will determine the playing field for congressional and state legislative elections through 2032 — not to mention make the laws that will affect millions.
"The Republicans get it," he added. "Democrats need to focus on the states in that same way."
The GOP wave in 2010 allowed Republicans to gerrymander maps so well that they can now win even when they lose. In the crucial state of Wisconsin, for instance, Republicans won almost two-thirds of State Assembly seats last year even though they got 190,000 fewer votes.
The Supreme Court will not come to the rescue, after deciding to allow partisan gerrymandering, so Democrats have to help themselves by winning.
Democrats have been hobbled by a tendency to focus on the federal government while Republicans made major investments in the states.
The party has not held a single legislative chamber in Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio or North Carolina this decade — all swing states that should, given the registration breakdowns, be competitive.
That seemed to change after President Donald Trump's election as new liberal groups sprung up and established ones expanded as the party woke up to the fact that it lost nearly 1,000 state legislative seats under Barack Obama.
But the focus on state capitals is difficult to maintain in an era when Washington is demanding so much attention.
"Most Americans don't get push news alerts on their phone when something outrageous happens in their state legislature," said Ben Wikler, a former top MoveOn.org official who was recently elected chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
Now, Democrats say their infrastructure for state races is better than it has been in years. But they worry the party's energy and money is already getting sucked into the 2020 presidential race.
"The presidential is the brightest, shiniest prize out there. It's hard to compete with that," said Lala Wu, who in the wake of Trump's election left her job at a major law firm to co-found Sister District, which focuses on state races.
"We're definitely seeing the fruits of many peoples' efforts to raise the profile of states and how important they are. But now that the presidential is coming, there are some donors who tell us that their No. 1 priority is 2020 and that's the only thing that matters to them," Wu said. "We think that's a bit shortsighted. A president is elected for four years; redistricting is in place for 10."
Jessica Post, who was recently promoted to president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party's official campaign arm, said her group has expanded dramatically since 2010 and had its best second-quarter fundraising ever.
But it's still smaller than other party committees or even some presidential campaigns and still has ground to make up with Republicans. "We're still behind in a lot of states," Post said.
No one is saying the presidential race is not important. But money goes a lot further in a state race than it does in national ones, since winning takes only thousands of votes instead of millions.
