This WaPo article explores how the Nebraska legislature is slowly sliding into the pit of polarization, in the context of an “I’m going to filibuster everything!” state Senator, as they start to see the introduction of culture war laws, and why:
The legislature, called the Unicam in Nebraska, used to be one of the least polarized in the country, said Geoff Lorenz, a political scientist from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but that changed with the introduction of term limits for senators, as the old guard retired.
“Over the last two decades, the Unicam has been among the most rapidly polarizing state legislative chambers in the country,” he said.
As a reminder, Nebraska has the only unicameral state legislature in the Union.
It had not occurred to me that term limits are a mechanism for introducing extremists into a legislature, but, in concert with the toxic team politics of the GOP, that appears to be happening.
There is value in having stability in the legislature, so long as the incumbents can be voted out if they turn out to be incompetent or malignant. Nebraska is demonstrating the inverse.
