In Arizona and across U.S., there is an exodus of legislative leaders. What's behind it?

Arizona’s state Legislature will look different next year no matter who wins the elections this fall as a wave of lawmakers are leaving office. From Lela Alston, who’s served in the Legislature for 34 years, to Senate President Warren Petersen, who is leaving to run for attorney general. Several others are simply stepping down, not seeking reelection, calling it quits.

And, it turns out, they’re not the only ones.

Across the country, there is an exodus of legislative leaders — from Wisconsin’s most powerful lawmaker to more in North Carolina and Utah. Both top lawmakers in Vermont are retiring.

So, what’s behind this trend? And how does the timing of this year’s midterm elections play in? Reid Wilson is founder and editor of Pluribus News and he’s been reporting on this phenomenon across the country.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming back on The Show, Reid.

REID WILSON: Thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: So how widespread is this? You’re calling it an exodus of legislative leaders, as I quoted there. Tell us about how many examples of this you were able to track down.

REID WILSON: Right, so there are 99 legislative chambers in America. Every state has two except for Nebraska, which only has one. Of those 99, obviously there are 99 leaders, 99 minority leaders. And of that population, almost a third are doing something different next year.

They’re either retiring, running for other office, or they’ve lost primaries. As you mentioned, those legislative leaders in North Carolina and Utah, both very powerful Senate president Republicans, lost their primary elections earlier this year.

And this has been a phenomenon that we’re seeing sort of across the nation. One of the great things for me about reporting on state legislatures across the country is that the partisanship of Washington really hasn’t trickled down to state legislative chambers. That’s changing.

In conversations with a lot of the lawmakers who are leaving, they’re just saying that the job has changed. It’s a lot less fun, and the partisanship that so infects Washington, D.C., is now creeping into state capitals.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, there’s this phenomenon we saw here as well, of sort of the president, the sort of MAGA wing of the Republican Party, primarying people who voted for something they didn’t like.

REID WILSON: Right, and that happened — that’s happened in a number of states this year, most prominently in Indiana, one of the states where President Trump wanted the state Legislature to redraw congressional district maps in this unprecedented wave of mid-decade redistricting.

Senate Republicans there defied President Trump, refused to go along with the plan to redraw map lines. And as a consequence, he targeted a number of incumbents who voted against him. Seven of those incumbents have lost, and now the state Senate president, who was one of those against redistricting, he won his primary election, but he has since stepped down as the Senate president under pressure.

LAUREN GILGER: There’s also this kind of anti-incumbent feeling, I think is how someone described it to you, among the electorate. This idea that every election is about change. People are angry with people who have been in office already; they want change. That seems to be kind of a long-term trend at this point.

REID WILSON: It has been basically a trend since I’d say 2006, 2008. We’ve seen successive wave elections in midterms at an unprecedented scale in the last decade and a half, really. And now these state legislative incumbents are the ones who are bearing the brunt of this.

In a lot of states, a lawmaker who’s around for 10, 20, 30 years really learns the levers of government and learns how to manipulate things in a way that can make them more powerful than, say, a governor. Well, when these legislative leaders start to become the insiders that American voters hate so much, they lose their position. And that can have the effect of bleeding power back to the executive.

So I think the longer-term trend here is we’re seeing more powerful governors and less powerful legislatures, which mirrors what we’re seeing at the federal level, where we’ve got a more powerful presidential executive and a Congress that isn’t doing much.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting. You have this quote in there, someone saying the idea of longtime legislators is going away. But what’s lost in that? There is this phrase, "institutional knowledge," that is coming to mind for me as you talk.

REID WILSON: Yeah, and I’ll give you an example from Arizona. When Gov. Hobbs ran the first time four years ago, I talked to a senior Republican strategist, and I said, "What’s really at stake here in this race?" At the time, Katie Hobbs and Kari Lake were talking about the issues that might matter to Arizonans.

But this Republican insider told me, "The thing that they don’t realize is just how much the Colorado River and the negotiations over the river are going to play in their terms because these negotiations are so delicate."

The issues that aren’t necessarily top-of-mind to voters are actually top-of-mind to legislators, governors, the people who have the power. So not a lot of voters four years ago voted for Katie Hobbs or Kari Lake because of their positions or proposals on the Colorado River, but of course that has become such a massive part of Gov. Hobbs’ first term.

That’s the kind of institutional knowledge that you lose when some of these longtime lawmakers get ousted.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it definitely came to fruition there.

Last minute for you, Reid. There is this idea of new blood, right? Like getting new ideas in there, younger people, maybe a new generation to represent us in our state legislatures. Is that happening in lieu of institutional knowledge and these long-term lawmakers?

REID WILSON: Yeah, I think it is. And I think that’s what the sort of longtime lawmakers who have been around forever, who see this brain drain of institutional knowledge, want to see. They want to see a healthy mix of veterans who understand the levers of power and people who are coming in with new ideas to sort of shake up the place and begin new relationships. Because, you serve with somebody for 10 or 20 years, they might get on your nerves a little bit. Maybe it’s time for some new blood sometimes.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, lots to watch for as the midterms come about as well. Reid Wilson, founder-editor of Pluribus News, joining us to talk more about this national phenomenon we’re seeing right here in Arizona. Reid, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

REID WILSON: Thanks again.