Powering Down

When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, it seemed as if the world had been turned upside down. The man, for one thing, lacked experience. Worse still, he appeared to have no interest whatsoever in public service. But while his victory came as a shock, his decision to seek the highest office in the land without first paying his dues at the local or state levels was less surprising—it was even banal. Why? Because Trump, in his own way, is the embodiment of pure political ambition: power without service. And could there have been a better time to run than when Congress had ceded its power to the presidency and its actual governing responsibilities to the states?

But what Trump, and indeed much of the country, is missing is that with great governing responsibility comes great power.

For nearly a century, the assumption of a direct relationship between “higher office” and “more power” has led many politicians to chart the same basic, vertical career path from local to state to national office. Over the next decade or so, however, we could see a change in the way we view the federal hierarchy, as national politicians, experts, and rising-star candidates begin to regard state government as sought-after—where both ambition and meaningful public service can be fulfilled.

While this shift won’t happen overnight—substantial power has already shifted down to the states, but public attention and political talent have yet to follow—below are a few ways to think about the changing political landscape, both now and in the future.

If Power Has Moved to the State Level, Why Isn’t It Better Known?

As the 2020 election cycle draws closer, we can still expect the usual torrent of speculation about the presidential contest and select battleground congressional races. We can also expect, depending on the affiliation of the prognosticator, debate about how each combination of outcomes could be the U.S. political system’s salvation—or deal it a fatal blow.

Contrarily, coverage of state legislative battles will struggle to compete with higher-stakes national election narratives. This will likely occur despite the fact that a decade of congressional paralysis has resulted in a significant devolution of power and lobbying from Washington to the state level, where policymaking is still possible and arguably much easier. Too easy, perhaps.

General public awareness of state power is low primarily because voters are oblivious about state and local politics. This suits moneyed interests just fine. The 2010 Republican takeover of state governments created an opportunity for widespread conservative investment in state policymaking. Networks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), State Policy Network, and Americans for Prosperity—what State Capture author Alex Hertel-Fernandez calls the “right-wing troika”—recognized decades ago that state power held the keys to creating the United States as they envision it: one built on the values of economic libertarianism and social conservatism. Through a strategy of stealth and policy feedbacks designed specifically to incapacitate the opposition, such as political gerrymandering, this right-wing troika and its corporate allies have tightened their grip on state legislatures.

Moneyed interests shape public policy at the state level with minimal public opposition because voters are too preoccupied with national politics to notice what’s happening in their own backyard. Less than one-quarter of Americans can name their state representative, even though—or perhaps because—state legislator incumbency rates have held steady at about 92 percent for the past 15 years. Both numbers would improve with an increase in talented candidates vying for competitive state legislative seats—who are doing so for reasons besides wanting to leverage the experience to run for “higher” office. And let’s hope that this happens, because, as one New York Times contributor warned, “If Americans don’t start paying closer attention to what’s happening in statehouses across the country, the republic may never recover.”

If States Are So Polarized, Why Are They More Productive?

Though most state legislatures are more polarized than Congress, they’re significantly less gridlocked. In fact, state legislative activity has increased dramatically over the last decade thanks in large part to the Republican-led, cross-state, and gerrymandering-focused campaign to optimize their vote at both the national and intrastate level. Gerrymandering and, to a lesser degree, regional self-sorting trends have contributed to record-high proportions of single-party-controlled state governments, otherwise known as “trifectas.”

Compared to divided governments, trifectas can pass legislation with relative ease. For instance, the notoriously unproductive federal government, which by January 2021 will have been divided for eight of the last 10 years, has become a legislative graveyard, and Congress, accordingly, has been consigned to “failed institution” status. Public opinion backs this up: A 2018 survey from researchers at Georgetown University and NYU asked Americans to rate their confidence in 20 U.S. institutions. They found that both Democrats and Republicans rated Congress the lowest.

If Congress Has Failed, Why Are Leaders Not Drawn to State Legislative Office?

Based on the above, it might be tempting to say that legislative productivity is a sign of a healthy and functioning democracy. But in the case of state legislatures, high-volume output can also be a symptom of “state capture.” Put another way, far from epitomizing robust, deliberative, two-party representative democracy, legislatures in trifecta states are proving to be highly susceptible to outside influences intent on subverting democratic processes.

This is because state legislators’ low pay and lack of policy expertise makes them easy prey. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, legislators in 30 states earn salaries of $30,000 or less. At the low end, Texas pays $7,200 per year, New Hampshire pays $200 per two-year term (same as they were paid in 1889), and New Mexico doesn’t pay its legislators at all. Many legislative jobs are only part time—which makes sense given the low salary—but this means that the serious work of lawmaking often gets short shrift in favor of the legislators’ other, frequently better-paying gigs.

Meanwhile, rank-and-file members of Congress earn an average of $174,000 a year. Legislating is technically their full time job, but in an era of partisan conflict and quagmire, most of their time is actually spent fundraising and grandstanding. For members of Congress whose political ambitions may have initially stemmed from a genuine desire to serve the public, this can’t possibly be satisfying work. Still, salary is a major incentive for office-holders and -seekers. Salary is another proxy for power and prestige; as long as the federal-state lawmaking pay gap remains this wide, perceptions of the associated power gap will endure. Plus, not every emerging or even experienced leader is independently wealthy. Some politicians might prefer to serve closer to home but either cannot afford it or cannot abide the lifestyle downgrade.

If voters want their representatives to prioritize their needs over those of their benefactors and to attract more talented leaders, they’ll have little choice but to allow their legislators to raise their salaries (as they’re legally permitted to do in most legislatures) without fear of being ousted in retaliation.

What Are the Signs That Ambition Will Follow Power to State Office?

Politicians are creatures of ambition, but they’re not lemmings. While political ambition is considered to be static, career trajectories can and do shift due to partisan realignments or electoral upheavals.

Periods of party realignments come with an influx of ideologically purist, activist-minded amateurs to elected office. We witnessed this in 2010 with the Tea Party insurgency, in 2016 with the election of Trump, and then again during the 2018 midterms that swept Bernie Sanders-inspired progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into Congress.

Such inexperienced newcomers, being more action oriented and less risk averse than their more established colleagues, are more disposed to rejecting the traditional vertical pathway to power. They might trade a seat in Congress for a seat in their state legislature. They might even embrace the associated pay cut (at first, publicly) rather than recoil from it as a way to demonstrate their commitment to either fiscal austerity or populism. Once they are in, they will be better positioned to awaken their constituencies to the outsized effect corporate money has had on state legislatures, and thus will pave the way to salary hikes.

As for electoral upheavals, in addition to 2010, 2016, and 2018, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates are challenging a host of electoral norms in their campaign platforms that most take for granted.

There’s also a historical basis for asserting that political ambition could be reoriented around states. After all, bias toward national office is a relatively modern development. In the 19th century, it was not at all unusual for members of Congress to return home after one or two terms and resume public service at the state or local level. Some 20th-century politicians continued to regard local and state level service as higher political callings than service in Washington. For instance, Chicago-bred Dan Rostenkowski, former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, considered his tenure in national and even state offices as “stepping stones leading back to Chicago.”

Generally speaking, that home-turf attitude fizzled after the turn of the 20th century—at the end of the Progressive Era—after the power to elect U.S. senators was transferred from state legislatures to the people and the principle of “Home Rule” emerged to give municipalities authority to self-govern on matters of local concern. State legislatures came out of this period more accountable but less powerful than before, and concentration of power at the federal level accelerated from there—from the New Deal to the civil rights movement. But conditions have changed. Today, though the American economy is strong, its democracy is weak, and the time is ripe to renovate that old, decentralized model of political ambition and talent.

One study on electoral trajectories observed that political office-seeking decisions are subject to two main considerations: which office is “better” under the relevant circumstances, and how much financial or party support is attached to a given bid. In a near future where experienced or aspiring politicians see private ambition and public service as mutually assured, those criteria will point to state legislatures. States will once again be vibrant laboratories of democracy, rather than wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate lobbyists and the right-wing troika. When that time comes, U.S. democracy will still be imperfect—but at least it’ll be better balanced.