So I just received an e-mail from the Arizona Democratic Party with the subject line, "More Democratic Candidates in a Decade," touting the number of Democratic candidates who filed for legislative or Constitutional offices at the state level.

From the e-mail:

Arizona Democrats are launching their biggest challenge in more than a decade. We are poised to contest Republicans in 59 state races.
...
Democrats have fielded candidates for 26 state Senate seats, 26 state House seats and 7 state constitutional offices.

I want to focus on the legislative seats for a moment. There are 30 legislative districts in Arizona that have been pretty well gerrymandered to guarantee that one party will control all the seats in that district (only a handful have representation split between the two major parties). There are 2 House seats in every district and 1 Senate seat, for a total of 90 seats overall.

I'm thrilled that there are 26 Democrats running for 30 seats in the Senate. Of course, at least two of those will be running against each other in a contested primary (Ted is running for Senate against Paula, right?), which means Democrats are challenging about 83% of state Senate seats. Not perfect, but definitely not bad either.

The House is another story. The same number of candidates for twice the number of seats. That works out to Democrats running for just 43% of the available seats. Even if they won every single one of those races, it still would not be enough to claim the majority in the House.

The only thing I find worse than the disingenuous cheerfulness of this e-mail is the fact that this largely unimpressive number is actually a ten-year record.

Now, I could be proactive and become a precinct-person and try to encourage the state party to adopt a strategy akin to the national party's 50-state strategy. But I have a lot of shit going on in my life right now that needs to take priority. Stupid survival.

I also know that the state party has undergone a lot of transition in the past year or so (Go Jim! Go Harry!). Before I consider giving money to the state party, I'd like to hear more about what the strategy is and how much effort was put into candidate recruitment. Winning elections has to start with fielding compelling candidates. Heck, even warm bodies would do in some districts where Dems have no chance this cycle. It's about building the party in every corner of the desert and under every pine tree.

While I'm on the subject of what I'd like to know, I'd also like to know how much campaigning the Governor will be doing for legislative candidates who are sharing the ticket with her. Kansas Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius has been in the news a bit lately because of her seemingly singlehanded rejuvenation of her state party, particularly by converting a lot of Republicans into Democrats (including her current Lieutenant Governor, who is retiring at the end of this term, and her handpicked replacement for him). Don't get me wrong, I genuinely like the Governor and approve of the job she's doing keeping this regressive legislature in check. I would appreciate her even more if she took a visible and active approach to changing the makeup of the legislature to one that wouldn't be asking for so many vetoes of awful legislation.

We shouldn't be celebrating 43% as some remarkable achievement. If this is better than we've done in a while, great. Reveling in this, however, just makes the party look silly. Voters are not stupid. Independents can do the math. If our standards are so low that 43% is considered an accomplishment, why should they vote for our team?