There's a great piece in this morning's New York Times pointing out that the money and unsavoriness circulating in state legislative races is starting to resemble that of congressional campaigns. For instance, the Times interviews one Kevin R. Wiskus, an Iowa farmer and staunch Republican candidate for the state House who resigned from the party to protest its election advertising on his behalf. In particular, Mr. Wiskus was offended by a mailer telling voters that his Democratic opponent had defended a child molester (his opponent happens to be a public defender).

State races never get much sustained attention in the national media, but they're increasingly becoming a playground for both party organizations and interest groups wielding large sums of cash. That's partly because many interest groups -- like, say, the NRA on the right and Emily's List on the left -- have realized that you can often get more bang for your buck by pushing your legislative goals at the state level, rather than attempting to compete with the numerous moneyed interests jostling for congressional attention. And often, policy ideas or political trends that start in the states drift up to the national level anyway.

But this year, the bigger motivator is redistricting. All but a handful of state legislative bodies are responsible for drawing congressional districts (Iowa is the only one with an independent commission, which may explain why the issue wasn't a major focus of the Times piece). And as I detailed in a piece in our current issue, this year Democrats especially are thinking very strategically about winning the right seats to control enough state chambers to reverse their considerable losses from the last round of redistricting. (They calculate that they need to win just 50 out of more than 7000 seats to do this.) So far, the political winds seem to be blowing in their favor. It's not always remembered that in the Republican wave of 1994, the GOP swept not just Congress, but state chambers all over the country -- and until recently, it's been rarely noted that Democrats look likely to win control of the majority of state houses for the first time since 1994.