As we have mentioned in our various reports leading up to and during the legislative session, the 2014 State Legislative elections look to be an important dynamic impacting all issues for this session. Yesterday the candidate filing deadline past, and so now the field of candidates for May and November elections is set.
The spreadsheet below provides a quick look at the candidates that have filed. There are tabs for State House, State Senate, and Supreme Court. On the charts the colors signify: Yellow are primaries, green are unopposed incumbents, and red are incumbents with races.
This is all very preliminary in terms of analysis, but here are a few facts:
State Senate
- Of the 19 Senate seats up in 2014, 13 are contested and 4 of those are open seats (Leeper, Rhoads, Denton, Stine).
- 9 of the 13 contested seats are currently held by Republicans, 3 by Democrats, and 1 by Independent.
- 3 Incumbents have primaries (Gregory, Hornback, and Wilson)
- The Republicans currently control the Senate 23-14-1.
State House
- Of the 100 seats up in 2014, 62 are contested in either the primary or general election, of which Democrats hold 34 and Republicans hold 28.
- There are 7 open seats all contested (J. Adams, B. Damron, D. Butler, J.W. Stacy, CB Embry, and J. Crenshaw).
- 12 incumbents have May primaries (6 Democrats: Hall, D.Watkins, Glenn, J.Lee, Steele, Collins) & (6 Republicans: Moore, Webber, Bunch, Rader, Upchurch and Wuchner)
- The Democrats currently hold the House 54-46.