Mediaboss Marketing

The implosion of Ed FitzGerald's gubernatorial campaignis painful forOhio Democratsbecause he was supposed to be their Next Big Thing.

It's particularly devastating, though, because he's basically all they had. Behind him, the cupboard is pretty bare when it comes to recruiting capable Democrats into big-time statewide campaigns.

But how is that possible? How could Ohio, one of the nation's premier swing states and a political mecca if there ever was one, have such a thin Democratic bench?

It's actually pretty simple: They have very little farm system (to borrow a baseball term). And that's because Republicans, as they have done in several key states, have taken it away from them.

As I noted Tuesday, Ohio Democrats control just one-quarter of the state's 16 congressional seats, less than one-third of the state Senate, less than 40 percent of the state House and none of the state's five statewide constitutional offices. None of these numbers are coincidences. Republicans snapped upa lot of territory in the 2010 wave election and gave themselves the right to redraw Ohio's congressional, state House and state Senate maps. The gerrymandering that ensued madeit very hard for Democrats to compete on any of these mapsfor the next decade.

It's not hard to follow the logic from there. A GOP-friendly map = fewerDemocrats = a much smaller Democratic farm system. The fact that Democrats have just four members of the U.S. House-- to the GOP's 12 -- and none of the five statewide constitutional officers means they don't have manyobvious recruits-in-waiting for Senate or governor. (These are the positions, after all, that tend to take that next step. About75 percent ofthe non-incumbents running in key Senate races come from these two recruiting bays.)

And when it comes to recruiting for Congress and these statewide offices, Democratshave problems there, too. The fact that there are five GOP state legislators for every three Democrats means Republicans have a massively bigger pool of potential recruits to pull from for those more intermediate statewide offices and congressional seats. It's a problem that really runs from the statehouse up.

Unfortunately for Democrats, it's not a problem just in Ohio. This is an emerging issuefor themin as many as eight key swing and blue-leaning states which comprise basically one-fourth ofthe American political map.

In theseeight states --Florida, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- the average percentage of Democrats is:

That's right, acrossthese eight states -- seven of which President Obama won in 2008 and six of which he carried in 2012 -- Democrats can't crack 40 percent in any of the key farm systems. They don't even control a state House or state Senate in oneof them.

See original here:
The Fix: Democrats have a depth problem