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WORKING-CLASS PEOPLE RARELY HAVE A SEAT ‘AT THE LEGISLATIVE
TABLE’ IN STATE CAPITOLS  
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Robbie Sequeira and Josh Kurtz
April 1, 2024
Stateline
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_ Just 116 of the nearly 7,400 state legislators -- about 2% of
Democrats and 1% of Republicans -- meet the definition of working
class compared with 50% of U.S. workers. _

Minnesota state Rep. Kaela Berg, a Democrat, listens this week to
testimony. Berg, a single mother and flight attendant without a
college degree, is one of the few state lawmakers across the nation
who qualify as “working class",

 

In her first few months as a Minnesota state legislator in 2021, state
Rep. Kaela Berg often wondered: “What the hell am I doing here?”

A single mother and flight attendant without a college degree or prior
political experience, Berg now had a seat at the legislative table,
shaping policy decisions in her home state.

As she ran against a former two-term Republican representative — a
commercial real estate agent — she also was struggling for housing
and living in a friend’s basement.

“I’m living in [her] basement, running for office, and the
pandemic hits,” said Berg. “I went from three jobs to one. … I
found that while I can pay my bills, I can’t qualify for a new
apartment because you have to show two or three times the rent and I
can’t do that.”

While it was gratifying to receive support from working families in
her district, her transition to state policymaker felt overwhelming.

“I had the worst case of impostor syndrome,” Berg, a member of
Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said in an interview.
“I’m thinking, ‘Who do I think I am? I’m a working flight
attendant. I don’t have a college degree. Why did I let somebody
talk me into this?’”

Berg is a rarity in politics: a working-class state legislator.

Just 116 of the nearly 7,400 state legislators in the United States
come from working-class backgrounds, according to 
[[link removed]]a 
[[link removed]]bi
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study
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by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, political scientists at Duke
University and Loyola University Chicago, respectively.

The researchers define legislators as “working class”
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they currently or last worked in manual labor, service industry,
clerical or labor union jobs. They found that 1.6% of state lawmakers
meet that definition, compared with 50% of U.S. workers. Only about 2%
of Democrats and 1% of Republicans qualified as working class.

Ten states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — have
no working-class state lawmakers.

The dearth of working-class legislators raises concerns that economic
challenges such as wage stagnation and the rising cost of living will
get short shrift in state capitols.

Working-class politicians are more likely to have personally
experienced economic hardship, so they are more interested in policies
to mitigate it, Carnes said. And they often propose solutions that
differ from those put forward by colleagues who aren’t working
class, even if it means diverging from party doctrine.

“State legislatures make consequential decisions, and if you have an
entire economic class of people that are not in the room when policy
decisions are being made, that’s going to tilt the kind of problems
politicians pay attention to,” said Carnes. “It also dictates the
kinds of solutions they consider against the interests of whoever’s
out of the room.”

Working-class representation in state legislatures has always been
low, he noted, but the most recent count is even lower than it was two
years ago, when the percentage was about 1.8%.

The state legislature with the highest percentage of working-class
lawmakers is Alaska, with 5% — that’s three of 60 lawmakers. New
Hampshire has the highest total number of working-class legislators,
eight of 420 legislators, with a transportation worker
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bartender
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the ranks.

Working-class issues

After a 32-year career as an electrician, Democratic state Rep. Nate
Roberts was part of a new wave of first-time Idaho lawmakers
entering 
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2023
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Roberts knew that it wasn’t just his relative political inexperience
that separated him from the rest of his colleagues.

He also was one of the only state lawmakers who had worked a union
job. And during his first few weeks in office, he was shocked by how
rarely issues such as wage theft, low pay and housing affordability
had been talked about in committee meetings.

[A man leans on a railing.] 

Nate Roberts is a longtime electrician who won a seat in the Idaho
legislature. The Democrat is among the small number of working-class
lawmakers around the country. Courtesy of Nate Roberts

“That’s when I realized that the only person that’s going to
advocate for working-class people is a working-class person,” he
told Stateline. “When I moved from state to state working different
jobs, I realized how differently states were influenced when it came
to policies for working people.”

Roberts learned the power of unions as a journeyman — and fighting
to increase worker protections has become his life, he said.

Idaho is one of 26 so-called right-to-work states, where no person can
be forced, as a condition of employment, to join a union. Such laws
limit unions’ bargaining power.

Roberts would like Idaho to follow the lead of Michigan, which in
2023 became the first state
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decades to repeal
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right-to-work law. That is unlikely in Idaho, given the state’s
conservative political orientation. But Roberts also is pushing to
update Idaho’s child labor laws, which were enacted in 1907 and have
been superseded by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Roberts said his experience as a laborer in his younger years has
emboldened him to speak out against legislation such as a Senate bill
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would repeal limits on the number of hours and how late in the day a
child under the age of 16 can work.

“I’m still shocked when I get pushback for going against these
bills, particularly ones that I feel regress our child labor laws,”
said Roberts. “I’ve experienced it. We need to not only protect
our kids, but we also need to protect our workers.”

The political climate is far different in Minnesota, where the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has controlled the governor’s office,
the state House and the state Senate since January 2023. Last year,
the state enacted a major package of labor-friendly laws
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Minnesota also passed a slew of tenant-landlord laws,
with protections favoring the state’s renters
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Berg said the backgrounds of working-class legislators like herself
can inform statehouse conversations, even if lawmakers with different
backgrounds support pro-labor policies.

“I don’t think there’s enough value in having people with lived
experience in the legislature,” Berg said. “When you take someone
who … still lives paycheck to paycheck, they are bringing that
personal experience to fight for a bill that will impact working
families.”

For Wisconsin state Rep. Jenna Jacobson, joining the legislature in
2023 was a lot like “drinking from a fire hose,” she recalled.

One of her policy priorities — expanding aid for free school meals
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by her experience as a schoolkid.

“I was one of the kids on free and reduced lunches growing up. I had
the special colored cards because of that,” said Jacobson, a
Democrat. “I know so many of our kids who are in a similar spot.”

Barriers abound

For working-class Americans, financial and societal barriers are a
major disincentive to pursuing state offices, said Amanda Litman,
co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, a
progressive organization that recruits candidates for down-ballot
races.

A 2021 national survey
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University found that local candidates who experienced poverty in
their youth felt especially constrained.

“Structurally, it’s really hard for people who aren’t already
rich, or already independently wealthy, have rich partners or rich
families to enter politics,” Litman said. “And the gatekeepers at
the state level have typically recruited candidates who were safe
bets, which is a candidate who can independently raise money.”

The eligibility criteria for statewide office vary greatly by state
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Only five states — Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine and Minnesota
— allow public financing options
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candidates vying for state legislative seats.

Becoming comfortable wielding political power as a working-class
person is a transition that can take a while, Indiana Republican state
Rep. Peggy Mayfield told Stateline.

Mayfield, who worked as a secretary at the insurance company she and
her husband owned together, is now a 12-year veteran in the
legislature who knows how to navigate state politics and get bills
passed.

But running for office, much less holding state office, is
time-consuming and requires sacrifices, she said.

“If I had an employee who came to me and said, ‘I wanna run for
office,’ I’m faced with saying, ‘I’m gonna let you off four
months a year,’ or make a difficult choice,” said Mayfield,
describing how hard it is for many workers who don’t have that
privilege. “Running for office itself becomes a full-time job …
and for some in the working class it may not make sense to go into
politics, if they can pursue more profitable opportunities in the
private sector.”

Some states have worked to raise legislative pay, which could entice
more working-class people to take a shot at elective office.

Earlier this year, Kansas raised salaries
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rank-and-file lawmakers from about $29,000 to $57,000 after some said
the lower pay wasn’t enough to live on. Arizona
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[[link removed].], New
Jersey
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the states with measures this session that could increase lawmakers’
pay.

New York passed legislation in 2022 that made its
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the highest
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in the country
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cost-of-living adjustments.

Roberts, the electrician-turned-lawmaker in Idaho, said: “We don’t
do this for the pay, and some of us certainly aren’t getting rich
off this job. Some of us are making ends meet.

“But we have residents who are also making ends meet, and they rely
on us to speak on the issues affecting them, and that’s what keeps
you going,” Roberts added.

Lawmakers in Idaho make $19,927, after a pay raise passed in 2022
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Another barrier for would-be working-class lawmakers, Carnes said, is
running a viable campaign against more established political
candidates. The working class needs infrastructure and
coalition-building to compete politically, he said, similar to women
candidates who get support from EMILY’s List (a pro-abortion rights
group).

“The solution is pretty straightforward,” said Carnes. “If you
commit to working-class people and partner with labor unions and
political parties on recruiting and training working-class people to
run for office — it’s possible you will see more working-class
state legislators.”

In Minnesota, Rep. Berg soon realized that her best legislative asset
was her ability to vouch for the working experiences of everyday
Minnesotans.

A flight attendant for Endeavor Air, Berg has signed on to a bill
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among other provisions, would delete the exemption for air flight
crews in the state’s law on employee sick time. Her experience
allowed her to confidently explain to legislative peers how the
exemption had hurt flight crews.

“Government works best when all types of personal experience are at
the legislative table,” Berg said. “I knew that I was uniquely
able to speak on issues that my other colleagues never experienced.”

_Robbie Sequeira is a staff writer covering housing and social
services for Stateline._

_Stateline provides nonpartisan reporting and analysis on trends in
state policy, covering critical issues that span multiple
states.Stateline is part of States Newsroom
[[link removed]], the nation’s largest state-focused
nonprofit news organization._

* Working Class
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* state governments
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