Little Potentates Ascendant

A decade ago, federalism was on the rise, but no longer.

Exactly a decade ago, Republican governors swaggered around Washington as if they were back home in their state capitals. House Speaker Newt Gingrich may have been the public face of the so-called Republican Revolution, but its intellectual energy radiated out of places such as Madison, Wis., and Lansing, Mich.-and the governors wanted everyone to know it.

Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Michigan Gov. John Engler, celebrated for their innovative welfare reform initiatives, were treated like royalty on Capitol Hill. One of the nation's 30 Republican governors, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, offered the televised response to President Clinton's 1995 State of the Union address. The first bill passed by the newly minted GOP majority was designed to reflect a new era of federalism: It prohibited Congress from passing "unfunded mandates" that required states to carry out programs without providing money to do so.

"Let the little potentates of the Potomac be warned," declared Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, in a blustery speech typical of the giddy early months of 1995. "We are growing weary of your ways-so kindly get out of ours."

Symington's bravado fit with the tenor of the times, a period when the promise of a shift of authority back to the "laboratories of democracy" made state government seem like the nerve center of American politics.

Today, however, no governor would make such a provocative statement, not because the business of running a state is any less challenging than a decade ago, but because few in Congress care what the governors think anymore. Federalism and the notion of states' rights, it turns out, looked better to Republicans in theory than in practice. As a result, the federal government is once again the place where all the action is.

The ongoing debate over proposed cuts to Medicaid funding underscores this trend. As the Bush administration and Congress look to overhaul Medicaid with an eye toward deficit reduction, the conquering governors who were once the vanguard of the GOP majority have been reduced to a nail-biting crew mounting a rear-guard action against a massive shifting of costs to the states.

One way to measure the new intergovernmental reality is to track the career paths of the Republican governors of 1995. Only one, New York's George Pataki, still holds the same office. Nearly a dozen of his former colleagues, on the other hand, migrated to Washington.

Three ex-governors, including Engler, today head powerful D.C. trade associations. Another three won election to Congress. Montana's Marc Racicot came east to chair the Republican National Committee. Whitman, Thompson and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania were appointed as Cabinet secretaries by another former governor-President George W. Bush. The Bush administration's point man on Medicaid? Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, now secretary of the Health and Human Services Department.

While it might be argued that talented players tend to seek out the biggest and most competitive playing field, that alone doesn't explain why so many former governors are finding their way to Washington. They also are following their highly attuned political instincts, which now tell them that state capitals are no longer viewed with the same degree of respect and deference as in the mid-1990s.

In other words, it's better to be a little potentate of the Potomac than to be downstream from one.