State Legislator

The fifty state legislatures make up a fundamental building block of American democracy, representing their constituencies on issues and concerns that range from local to national. State legislatures deal with pocketbook questions such as taxation, the allocation of state aid to schools, the building of public works, master plans and regional zoning questions, and the regulation of businesses. But they also influence the overall future political design of the U.S. Congress.

Although the legislatures, with their long histories and established traditions, all face common problems of governance, they exhibit a wide range of differing characteristics. Among these differences is what the state legislative bodies call themselves. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire, for example, they call themselves the General Court. In other states they are the general assembly or the legislative assembly or, simply, the legislature.

In all but Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature, there are so-called upper houses (always called senates) and lower houses, which go under varying titles including house of representatives, house of delegates, and assembly.

Almost all the state legislatures are required to meet annually, but some, generally in the smaller states, have [Page p465]established limits on the length of any legislative session. For example, Alabama restricts its annual session to thirty legislative days (days in which legislative business is transacted); in Virginia, the sessions last thirty legislative days in odd years, sixty in even years. Other states stipulate that their legislatures conclude their business by a specific date. Still others, mostly the larger states, have much longer sessions, presumably because of the complexity and continuing nature of their tasks.

As of early 2003, slightly more of the nation's 7,424 state legislators were Republicans than Democrats. Party control of state legislatures is important to the federal government, because after each national census the state legislatures use the new numbers for reapportionment and redistricting, an inherently political process that helps to determine the broad political makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives for a ten-year period.

After the census is concluded, the national party organizations devote immense resources to persuading the state legislatures to approve congressional districting plans favorable to their interests. In the past, Democratic-dominated state legislatures have devised district plans that gave advantages to Democratic House candidates, making it difficult for Republicans to win.

Republican advances in the 1990s, however, particularly in the legislatures of the South and the Sun Belt states, could reverse the situation. Both parties skirmished over the issue in advance of the 2000 census, with Democrats favoring the use of statistical sampling to reduce undercounts in urban areas. Republicans won the upper hand, however, when the Supreme Court in January 1999 barred the use of sampling estimates for reapportionment of House seats.

From 1984 to 2002 the turnover rate for all state legislators averaged 18 percent across the country. The rate tends to be higher in the first election after redistricting; for example, turnover rose to about 25 percent in 1992. Turnover also varies greatly from state to state. In 1996 turnover was only 3 percent in the New Jersey house and 2 percent in the Mississippi senate. The same year, it was 55 percent in the Kansas senate and nearly 45 percent in the Maine house. In many of the larger states, the legislatures are populated by professional politicians whose primary business is government; in many of the smaller states with shorter legislative sessions, so-called “citizen legislators” serve and then return to their homes and businesses once the legislature's work is done.

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