Reid Wilson of The Hill reports that a “Mass leadership exit hits nation’s state legislatures”:
Nearly a third of the top leaders in the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers will quit their posts this year, signaling a wave of turnover that will hand power to a new generation. At least 30 state House Speakers, Senate presidents and majority leaders have either resigned or said they will retire at the end of their current terms, according to a tracker maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
This is good news, and it undoubtedly is accelerated by the decennial redistricting of state legislatures. We can debate the pros and cons of term limits and turnover in Congress; the complexity of the federal government and the need for experience dealing with foreign policy and national security are, at least, countervailing arguments against them. But our nation was designed to be governed by its citizens, not by a permanent ruling class, much less by the sort of four-decade one-man fiefdom that only recently ended in Illinois. States should be run by citizen-legislators. And the more one argues for the necessity of professionals running the federal government, the more one makes the case for most power over the daily lives of Americans remaining with citizen-run state governments.