ABSTRACT
The various levels of government – federal, state, and local – are tied together by a variety of factors – money, programs, political parties, and the play of interest groups among them. State and local officials regularly visit Washington, D.C. on governmental business. They testify and touch bases with members of Congress, administrators, and, on some occasions the president. In Congress, governors have focused their lobbying efforts on members of the US Senate with whom they share a statewide constituency, while mayors tend to contact House members who represent people in the same cities they represent. Direct federal–local cooperative relations have a long history in the United States but took on an added dimension during the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time local officials from all over the country, but especially from large cities, clamored for federal assistance to meet the problems of unemployment, relief, housing, public works, and slum clearance.
