When you look at the changes needed and your concerns for your city and state, does the President have any influence or do you think your Governors and Senators are more relevant to you?

12 comments

  1. The State government is responsible for most state-level issues, but the president does have influence over federal legislation that is passed which can involve federal aid for state infrastructure.

  3. DC is in a unique boat there as we don’t have any voting representatives or senators. The DC government is largely responsible for everything in the city, but Congress can overturn anything if they want. So I guess no, sigh.

  4. Which Senator? US Senate or state Senate?

    They’re all relevant, but POTUs and Gov are executive level offices and have a high degree of autonomy in how they enforce the laws and spend the budget allocated to them. In the case of Indiana and many other Governors, they are also full time whereas many state houses are part time and only have power when in session. So if an emergency comes down it isn’t going to be the legislature doing stuff, but the Governor or POTUS.

    But when the legislature is in session, the Speaker of the House and Senate Pro-Tem are far more powerful in IN GOP politics and in government.

  5. Yes. Most of the issues that most people deal with on a daily basis are controlled at the state or local level.

  6. My biggest issues with the current goings on are state-level, which for me mostly means the state legislature and the lieutenant governor. The governor is actually pretty weak in this state, despite the abnormal visibility of our current one.

  7. Governors and Senators aren’t really comparable. Senators represent their state, but they still make federal-level laws.

  8. When it comes to certain things–**absolutely!** [Governor Cooper](http://www.alicecooper.com) definitely has more power over influencing laws, over emergency proclamations (which was a thing in 2020), influencing spending decisions which decide things like state employee pay, and because North Carolina is a strong-central-state government (whereby cities and counties are only permitted to pass regulations explicitly granted to them by the State, as opposed to others where cities can override state laws by making them more restrictive), the Governor can also have a lot of influence over local affairs as well.

    I mean, it wasn’t the President of the United States who shut down local businesses during COVID here in North Carolina. It was our Governor who did that; [the emergency declarations](https://governor.nc.gov/news/executive-orders) all came from the Governor’s office using federal guidance–but not following any federal mandates. (By which I mean the Governor of North Carolina was not forced by Federal law to pass those executive orders, or else be arrested or something.)

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    Edit to add: State senators serving in the United States Senate, on the other hand, have no effective power, other than in representing the State in the Senate. Basically consider them blowhards who spout a lot of meaningless drivel that sometimes may result in the US Senate doing a thing. And even when the Senate does a thing, the effect it can have on local politics is limited in the same way Federal power over the States are limited in general.

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    Edit the second: Sorry, wrong link to our governor above. Here’s a [better one.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_(profession))

  9. Every governor is affects the the individual of their state more than any president does. Like the majority of stuff in people’s day to day lives can not get changed by a president.

    The president can set the track that the governors or country follow, but they can’t do a lot with respect to crime, infrastructure, healthcare, education, policing are all set by the governor.

  10. Well yes because that’s who makes policies that affect you on a day to day basis. Really your local council and mayor have more affect than the potus

  11. No doubt the Governor and State Assembly have more impact than the President or our national legislators.

  12. The president has some influence, because he can convince a majority of Congress (with or without my state’s senators and representatives) to pass federal legislation that requires my state to respect or disregard my individual rights, and that is true for every group. But the governor has much more power over my life, within the bounds of what Congress and SCOTUS will let him get away with.

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