Comment by bobthepanda

Even state legislators are, by their nature, pretty much locally driven given the relatively small size of their constituencies and thus the margin of victory.

Voters significantly underestimate their power even up to the House level; AOC’s first campaign was very scrappy and resulted in a bartender unseating the chair of the Congressional Democrat Caucus and likely successor to Nancy Pelosi, and that was the first campaign in which anyone bothered to primary him.