Commentary RICHMOND, Virginia—Some of the many overlooked but critically important offices in the American political landscape are the ones held by state legislators and members of general assemblies. These are the people who are most like us, the ones who live in neighborhoods close to ours, sit in the pews on Sundays and attend the local high school football games with everyone else. They are the elected officials who rarely have an entourage but have as much of a vested interest as you in ensuring that roads and bridges in your town are safe, because they have to drive those same roads. When they are on the ballot, their elections often give us hints on the most granular level, either of how the electorate feels about each political party long before a big national election or of whether something is brewing that the press and politicians are missing. Last November, …