When my home city of Atlanta was founded in 1837, it served as a railroad terminus for the Western & Atlantic railroad, linking the infant city to Chattanooga, Tennessee. What started as a small train hub quickly grew into one of the most influential cities in the South. A mere 17 years after it was founded, however, Atlanta was burned to the ground by Union forces under the command of General William T. Sherman. Famously, Sherman’s victory in Atlanta helped secure the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and in December of that year, Sherman captured the city of Savannah as a “Christmas gift” for the president. In the final stages of the worst conflict in American history, Georgia was a crucial battleground, one where the back of the Confederacy was finally broken and the process of national reunification could slowly begin.
Over 150 years later, Georgia is once again a battleground. It is not one riddled with trenches and shrouded in gunpowder smoke, but one covered by political yard signs and barraged by campaign ads. In two consecutive election cycles, Georgia has been the political terminus in determining the balance of power in the Senate and, with it, the future of hot-ticket legislative items. At each step of the way, these key races were held under a national microscope. They were viewed by many as keys to “decid[ing] America’s future” and final stands in a battle for the “heart and soul of American politics” (whatever that means). If every race is the political equivalent of the Alamo, then no race is the Alamo, and treating them as such takes the teeth out of these claims. With this attitude, politics ceases to be about what a state wants and becomes about the preferences of coastal elites, corporations, and national party bigwigs.
Among some at Princeton, a similar attitude exists. During the Georgia runoff, the College Democrats sponsored a trip funded by the Warnock campaign for students to canvass on behalf of the Senator. Recently, the group held yet another electioneering event, this time a phonebank aimed at influencing the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. In the email advertisement sent to all students, the College Dems cited “protecting our freedoms and democracy,” as well as protecting abortion rights, as goals of the event.
These events, and the rhetoric surrounding them, convey extreme political condescension. The student group is using its resources to try and influence elections that don’t affect it. The Princeton College Democrats don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Wisconsin courts, nor are they represented by Raphael Warnock in the Senate. Nonetheless, they felt personally attached to these races, many to the point of wanting to personally influence them. Although Senate elections do indeed play a role in determining the balance of power in Congress, they nonetheless serve as exercises in democratic choice on behalf of the citizens of the states. When a senator is elected, he or she represents the citizens of a particular state, not the nation at large.
Although I have just spent time discussing outsiders’ preoccupation with the Georgia race specifically, it points to a broader problem in American politics: a general lack of regard for the proper division between state governments and the federal government. In my opinion, the best way of remedying this problem is to re-centralize state and local governments in American politics, the groundwork of which has already begun.
This process must begin, in my opinion, with understanding the proper relationship between state and national citizenship. As Alexis de Tocqueville writes in his seminal work Democracy in America, “to examine the Union before we have studied the States would be to adopt a method filled with obstacles.” To understand the United States, one must first understand its constitutive units, the 50 “small sovereign nations” whose “agglomeration constitutes the body of the Union.” From its inception, the American republic was considered a nation of states united under the federal Constitution, not a homogenous political entity.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, our greatest thinkers and leaders referred to the United States as plural entities, not a monolith. In his First Inaugural Address, Princeton alumnus and fourth President of the United States James Madison said that the Constitution is the “cement of the Union.” He then went on to affirm his commitment “to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of [emphasis added] the general system.” In Madison’s conception, the states were important both in their own sovereignty and their combined sovereignty under the Constitution. This was not, however, the absolutist states’ rights position later advocated by the likes of Stephen Douglas. Rather, it was a balanced understanding of the constitutional limitations and obligations placed upon the federal and state governments.
State citizenship is also in many ways more acutely perceptible than national citizenship. Whereas the American nation is defined by a creed—a series of principles set forth in our founding documents—the individual states are very much defined by their land, culture, and linguistic peculiarities. Similarities in lived experience often trump ideology in their ability to foster communal bonds. Because political ties are originally born out of communities with shared traditions and experiences—and location is an important factor in creating these ties—states and localities play a crucial role in fostering cooperation amongst American citizens on the local level.
Some of my closest friends at Princeton, in fact, are from Georgia. There is something special about traveling hundreds of miles away from home and meeting people who have driven the same roads and passed through the same towns as I have. We share a love for barbeque, soul food, and sweet tea. We’ve suffered through traffic on I-85, sweated through the humid summer months, and greeted our friends with an enthusiastic “how are y’all doing?”. We are proud Americans, but we are also proud Georgians.
What Madison and other Framers understood about the relationship between the state and federal governments remains true today: most political issues are best left to the states, and their citizens, to decide. A look at pure numbers will illustrate one of the many ways in which this is the case. In Congress, Georgia has 16 congressional seats (14 representatives and 2 senators), but in the General Assembly, it has 236 (180 representatives and 56 senators). On the state level, the breadth of representation is multiplied fifteenfold. With this expansion comes greater attention to the particular needs of a greater number of Georgia communities. When government is closer to the people, it is more likely to be representative of their interests.
Thus, as American politics has become increasingly nationalized, effective state governance has become more important and recognized. In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin captured the governorship by promising to reform education within the state’s public schools, and he has spent his time in office delivering on his promises, including the passing of an enhanced state education budget and an executive order banning critical race theory. Governor Ron DeSantis took similar steps in Florida, including passing a large education budget, increasing assessment standards, and cracking down on divisive ideologies being taught in the classroom. In my home state of Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp successfully lifted pandemic restrictions in spite of national outrage, achieved prosperity through a number of key investments in Georgia’s economy, and cracked down on gang violence in the state’s metro areas. He also successfully defended key pieces of Georgia voting legislation against the liberal executives of Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines who wished to use their economic influence to pressure him into compromising his values.
In these cases, state leaders crafted solutions specific to their states. Even if they were using national attention to signal their stance on broader cultural issues, they nonetheless operated in terms of localized need, not national clout. Most importantly, all three distanced themselves from the distinctly national phenomenon of Trumpism. For many who hitched their wagon to Trump in 2022—like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia—their elections were disastrous. For those like DeSantis and Kemp, competent governance was the key to large margins of victory.
Both as a fundamental principle and an election strategy, we must stop viewing state races merely as proxy wars in greater national struggles over moral, cultural, and political issues. Sure, these issues may transcend state borders, but they are best resolved when decided within those borders. We must return to the original conception of dual sovereignty within our constitutional system, consisting of the states both as independent actors and as sovereigns united in the federal government.
In the Peach State, my home, we would be much better off if we were entrusted to make our own decisions about our political future, not have others make it for us. We are not simply a ground upon which national party interests can trample, we are a state with our own particular interests and needs. So, to those who wish to conduct business in Georgia, experience its culture, or otherwise respect the decision-making power of its citizens: welcome, we hope y’all have a good time and keep Georgia on your mind! However, to those who have no political stake in Georgia and wish to impose their own political agendas on those who live there: please, keep Georgia off your mind.
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