Election 2000--the States Are Crucial.

• Author: Hansen, Karen
• Position: Brief Article

State legislative races might not get the attention they deserve this presidential election year, but for more than one reason, they are critical.

The stakes are huge in November: some 6,000 state legislative seats up for election, control of the nation's state legislatures and with it, politics' high stakes prize--writing the legislative and congressional maps for the first decade in the new century.

2000 is the jackpot election: the presidency, the balance in both houses of Congress and redistricting in 2002. It's an election political pundits say we haven't seen the likes of since 1952, the last year all this plus the balance of the U.S. Supreme Court would be determined at the polls.

This first election of the new decade has enormous consequences for the new century. Every important domestic policy innovation in the decade of the '90s has come from the states, and there is little indication that will change, particularly with the likelihood that Congress will find itself with even tighter partisan splits. The real action on welfare, health care reform, education and taxes is happening in Sacramento, Phoenix, Jefferson City, Lansing, Albany, Tallahassee and all the other state capitals--not in Washington, D.C. The element of redistricting--and its ultimate effect on the make-up of Congress--gives this election even greater importance. State legislatures, by rewriting the congressional maps in 2002, may determine which party controls Congress for the next 10 years.

"State legislatures are the arena for public policy in this country right now," says Kevin Mack, head of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. "You add that to redistricting, and it makes for a very interesting year. I don't think there's any question that whatever goes on in congressional elections this year, the numbers will be very close. So redistricting will make or break either party in terms of long-term control of the House of Representatives."

Right now, the public isn't particularly focused on the fall election. The economy is still sailing along at an amazing clip, there are no burning national concerns propelling people to the polls and summer has not turned up the heat, politically, that is. The two presumptive party candidates are on the stump, but they have yet to revive the extraordinary voter interest the primaries sparked up to Super Tuesday in early March when Senator John McCain's campaign stalled. But this doesn't mean people are turned off or apathetic. In fact, polls indicate that Americans are generally happy, they generally are satisfied with the way things are going, and they think the economy is terrific.

Nagging at the edges of this "feel good" mood, however, is what political analyst William Schneider calls a sense of "moral drift amidst prosperity."

"The country's doing well--peace, prosperity, low crime rate, a few specific problems, but nothing that's nearing the dimensions of a crisis. But there's some feeling that the country has lost direction," Schneider says. "I call it moral drift, and there's a slight edge for George...