New Manual: How to Impact Your State Legislature!

Download your copy of our new manual today!

Young Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1830, when the republic was a little over 50 years old. As he traveled the country and studied American government at both the federal and state level, he was struck by what he observed.“The form of the federal government of the United States appeared last,” he later recorded in Democracy in America. “The great political principles that govern American society today were born and developed in the state…. It is therefore the state that one must know to have the key to all the rest.”

Essentially, Tocqueville explained, America grew from the bottom up. Before the U.S. Constitution ever articulated our principles of freedom, the concepts of self-government and representative assembly were being tested, tried, and practiced in America’s pre- Revolution colonial assemblies. When the colonies declared independence from Great Britain, these colonial assemblies became sovereign governments, responsible for raising troops, printing currency, and determining rules of commerce for their states. So by the time the Constitution was finally passed several years later, these colonial assemblies turned sovereign governments turned state legislatures had generations of experience.

In our era of instant media, it is actually easier to find what’s happening in Washington, D.C., at a given moment than in our state capital, even if the latter is only a few miles down the road. But this constant focus on the national scene skews our perspective of how our country grew from the beginning—from the bottom up. In short, if we want to understand how the federal government is meant to run, we need a proper understanding of how our state governments run. And a good place to start is the “first” branch of state government: the legislature.

American Majority-trained Terri Proud won a seat in the Arizona State Legislature in the 2011-2013 term. She believed that the current trend of legislation was creating a state which infringed upon constitutional and personal rights, making it difficult for struggling families to survive. As Proud says, “The direction of the state was not one that I wanted my children to live in.”

Learn: What your state legislature does, how you can affect it, and where to go for the best resources. In case you missed it, we released our brand new State Legislative Manual last week. Download it today! Also, contact us to bring a New Leaders Campaign Training or Activist Training to your area to better train and equip you to impact your state.