The great divided: lawmakers who once prided themselves on working across the aisle find the statehouse turning deeply partisan.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Former Nevada Senator Bill Raggio isn't sure exactly when things changed.

But sometime in the last decade, he began to think almost everything in the Nevada Legislature was being decided on a partisan basis--and not just as it pertained to headline-making issues such as gay rights, immigration and abortion, but with the very process of the Senate itself.

Even decisions on organization and procedure and the makeup of committees have taken on a partisan tone, says Raggio, who was first elected to the Nevada Senate in 1972.

"There is no doubt about it: Things are much more partisan here today than they used to be," he says. "And the divisiveness is not only between parties, but even within parties."

Across the country, Tennessee Representative Jimmy Naifeh has been frustrated by the same trend.

"When I was speaker and we were dealing with a major issue, I would bring in both Democratic and Republican leaders, and we would sit at my conference table and work our way through things," Naifeh says.

"We did that over and over again on any number of issues. And by and large that worked out well."

Now, "talking things out is regarded by some as a bad thing," he says. "You have to be a Democrat or Republican, no matter what. "I don't like it one bit."

Are state legislatures--long regarded as more civil assemblies than the national Congress because of close working relationships between members of both parties--going the way of Washington? Is that D.C. phenomenon known as gridlock now a regular feature of life in many statehouses?

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A number of legislators say yes. They point to the growing role of big money in state campaigns, greater integration of state and national party leaders, term limits, and an electoral system tilted toward ideological extremes.

"I've been in the Kansas Legislature for 12 years, and the partisanship has gotten steadily worse the whole time," says Kansas Senator John Vratil. "More and more legislators think that this is all some kind of game and that the objective is to acquire power and dominate the other party."

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In fact, the shift to a more partisan tone under the statehouse dome has been underway since the turn of the century, says Michael Dubin, author of "Party Affiliations in the State Legislatures."

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"It's really a matter of the statehouses finally catching up to Washington," he says. "For more than a decade now, the legislator who revels in bipartisanship and moderation has been on...