It’s no surprise that a man who spent 14 years representing Charlottesville in Richmond thinks state government is important, but in his new book, Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives, David Toscano makes a compelling case.
He notes, for example, that states draw the lines of congressional districts, and after the election of Barack Obama, Republican strategists decided that was their destiny.
“A lot of Republicans woke up and looked at the federal system and said, ‘Oh my God. I don’t know that we can ever elect another Republican to the presidency," he recalls. "'If we can’t elect a Republican to the presidency, we better make sure we’ve got the Congress covered, and the way we’re going to do that is invest money in state legislative races.'”
By 2011, they had flipped a majority of state legislatures and were able to draw maps that resulted in a Republican Congress.
States also have a lot to do with public schools that shape the voters of the future.
“Less than 10% of all the money that is spent on public education in the country comes from the federal government," Toscano explains. "Think about the money for teachers’ salaries or books or the curriculum that gets offered.”
While Congress dragged its feet on decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana, imposing clean air requirements and passing healthcare reform, he notes some states led the way.
“You sometimes hear about states being the laboratories of democracy. States can experiment in ways that the federal government cannot and in the process change the country. California did it with emissions on cars. Massachusetts did it with healthcare, and Massachusetts actually served as the model for the Affordable Care Act.”
States have also led on climate change – forming a coalition to encourage greater use of renewable energy. Many, including Virginia, have enacted laws to take guns away from people who pose a risk to themselves or others. More recently, several states have imposed restrictions on voting rights and access to abortion.
There are, of course, times when federal leadership is needed. During the pandemic, for example, governors were forced to lead when former President Trump did not, but public health experts say lives might have been saved by a stronger national policy, and Toscano admits state legislators are sometimes ill-prepared to tackle complex issues.
“They don’t have huge staffs like Congress. They don’t have huge access to information by which they can make judgments on really very complicated questions, so you get in this situation where sometimes you have to rely on some people who have information, and those folks are often called lobbyists.”
Then again, while Congress is crawling with lobbyists, Toscano says citizens can have a powerful impact in state capitals.
“One citizen can go to a committee meeting in Richmond and basically derail a bill by making points that legislators had never thought about. I’ve seen this happen where everybody was lined up and ready to support a bill, and some individual comes in and says, ‘What about this, what about this and what about this?’ And everybody sits back and says, ‘Wait a minute. We really hadn’t thought about that. You’d never see that in Washington – never – not in a million years, because everything is bottled up in Washington by and large by the two parties.”
He hopes his book will prompt more people to get involved with state government, to find out who represents them, to vote in state elections, and to consider careers in state government.
