(iPoster) Challenges at Home: Opportunities and Barriers for Western State Legislators

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Legislative Studies & Authoritarian Demands, Compliance, and the Politics of Protest
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Legislative Studies

Abstract

State legislatures share challenges including access to housing, climate change, polarization, and inflation. The legislators that we entrust to deal with those issues are part-time and carry an array of other responsibilities. In the spring of 2026, I will be shadowing elected state representatives in Washington State, Arizona, and California. I have received approval from legislators in each of these states to engage in this shadowing as well as to interview the representatives. Likewise, financial support for the program is coming from the Center for Effective Lawmaking. Shadowing has a history in political science dating back to Richard Fenno’s landmark work Home Style: House Members in their Districts (1978). Fenno centered the importance of perception—the way that representatives in Congress understood their constituents and how those perceptions shaped position-taking and methods/styles of presentation. Unlike in 1970s, today’s representatives have new ways to communicate with their constituents. Dynamics at the federal level have made state politics the most important venue for some of these contentious policy decisions. As such, it is imperative that we learn how representatives position themselves to be responsive to their constituents.

Author

• Michael Artime, Pacific Lutheran University