The Star Wars Prequels spent a lot of time
in the Galactic Senate, something they were heavily criticized for when those movies first
came out. The Galactic Senate features heavily in stories of the Clone Wars, largely due to the
major role it played in the rise of the Empire. As a result, many Senators make appearances
in these stories as well. But despite their prominence, most of them are pretty forgettable.
Padmé Amidala, Mon Mothma, and Bail Organa are all fairly easy to remember, but many fans couldn’t
name any Senators aside from those three. This, of course, begs the question -
were all those other Senators useless? Now, obviously, we can’t just list out every
single Senator; there were well over two thousand of them, after all, and that’s without counting
special representatives and other Senate figures. Instead, we’re going to look at the Senate
as a whole and at groups of Senators, pulling a few out of the crowd to use
as examples to make our judgement. Before we go into that, of course, we need to take
a closer look at how the Senate actually worked. The Galactic Senate was the most well-known
branch of the government of the Galactic Republic. Originally, it was one of two governmental
branches, with the other being the judiciary, composed of sector-based Regional Courts
and, at the highest level, the Supreme Court, a body of twelve justices. The courts generally
stuck to the background of the political scene, but they were considered to be even slower and
more ineffective than the Senate. During the Clone Wars, the Republic developed a third branch
of government, the executive, as the Office of the Supreme Chancellor gradually became its own
entity instead of just an arm of the Senate. The Supreme Chancellor was the appointed leader of
the Senate, chosen from among the Senators by the Senators. Their role was to preside over Senate
sessions, guiding discussions and serving as first among equals. The Supreme Chancellor held the
additional titles of Head of State and President of the Republic, but these were ceremonial and
largely meaningless. By the time of the Battle of Naboo, the Supreme Chancellory was little
more than a figurehead position, until a certain Senator from Naboo came along and manipulated
his colleagues into giving it dictatorial powers. The Vice Chair of the Senate, the position
held by Mas Amedda during the Prequel Era, served both as the Vice Chancellor and the Speaker
of the Senate. The Vice Chair maintained order in the Senate and cast tiebreaking votes when needed.
Before the rise of Palpatine, the position of Vice Chair was actually considered to be more
powerful than that of the Supreme Chancellor, something that factions of Senators often
exploited. Frequently, the Vice Chair would be of a different political faction from the Supreme
Chancellor as a check on the Chancellor’s power, something that, in practice, really just served
to make the Senate even more ineffective. The Supreme Chancellor, the Vice Chair,
and the Chancellor’s Staff Aide worked in tandem to oversee the Senate from
the Senate Building’s central podium. From the Battle of Naboo up until the end
of the Clone Wars, these three positions were filled by Palpatine, Mas Amedda, and Sly
Moore, who, obviously, were far from useless. Palpatine, the Senate himself, needs no
introduction, but Mas Amedda and Sly Moore deserve their fair share of credit too, as they actually
did a lot of work duringPalpatine’s rise to power. As many Vice Chairs before him had, Mas
Amedda frequently cornered Senators and convinced them to vote one way
or another on particular issues, while Sly Moore kept Palpatine’s growing executive
branch in line and in accordance with his agenda, greatly influencing Republic policy in the
process. Both of them knew Palpatine was a Sith Lord, and both of them worked hard to
make his vision of a Galactic Empire a reality. The Senate itself was composed of about
two thousand senatorial delegations, each of which got their own pod in the Senate
Building. Each of the Republic’s 1024 sectors received a Senate delegation, while delegations
were also given to certain powerful systems, political bodies, and even corporations. The
average sector delegation represented dozens of Republic member worlds and hundreds of smaller
colonies; members of these delegations were appointed in different ways, depending on how the
governments of their constituent sectors worked. Each Senate delegation included one Senator,
who was the only member of the delegation with formal voting power. Most of the time, they were
accompanied in the Senate by advisors and aides, as well as by representatives. Most Senate
delegations featured multiple Associate Planetary Representatives, who served as the
voices of specific constituent demographics. Typically, Representatives were appointed to
give minority groups within certain sectors a voice in the Senate, as was the case for Jar Jar
Binks. Diplomats; local religious, corporate, and political leaders; and other prominent figures
could be appointed to Senate delegations as well. Any member of a Senatorial delegation was
allowed to address the Senate during sessions. Now that we’ve got a good understanding of
how the Senate works, it’s time to address the Senators themselves. The Galactic Senate
was famous for its corruption and inefficiency, much so that the phrase “Republic Senate” was
commonly used to describe activities in which, to quote Atton Rand, “nobody wins, everybody
loses, and nobody accomplishes anything.” While part of this can be blamed on
the structure of the Senate itself, it’s no secret that a lot of the blame
for this lies at the feet of the Senators. Typically, Senators were out to line their
own pockets, and their work revolved around an endless cycle of elections. Senators were always
working towards getting themselves reelected, usually by courting wealthy donors, paying lip
service to causes that were popular back home, or both. Most Senators additionally
cared about advancing the goals of their respective political factions, though
by the time of the Battle of Naboo, this manifested less in passionate policy
debates and more in mudslinging and stonewalling. There weren’t any real political parties in
the Senate; instead, Senators formed unofficial factions around similar political causes and
values. At the time of the Battle of Naboo, the most powerful groups in the Senate were the Core
Faction and the Rim Faction. The Core Faction, which mostly represented wealthy, human-dominated
worlds at the heart of the Republic, largely advocated for centralized government power;
they were led by Bail Antilles of Alderaan, and Supreme Chancellor Valorum was one of
their members. The Rim Faction represented the mostly alien Rimworlds of the Republic, as
well as corporations like the Trade Federation; they were more conservative, and championed the
causes of deregulation and planetary sovereignty. The Rim Faction was led by Orn Free Taa
of Ryloth, and it included Ainlee Teem of Malastare, Onaconda Farr of Rodia, and
Lott Dod, Senator for the Trade Federation. During his time as the Senator of the Chommell
Sector, Palpatine was more of centrist, using his perceived neutrality to maximize his influence
with both the Core Faction and the Rim Faction. At the urging of Orn Free Taa, who believed
Palpatine to be naïve and easy to control, it was the Rim Faction that nominated him to
replace Finis Valorum as Supreme Chancellor. Palpatine, of course, won the position handily,
beating out Bail Antilles and Ainlee Teem. By and large, the Senators who made up these
two factions were utterly useless. Neither faction ever really accomplished anything,
and by the time of the Battle of Naboo, they had started to devote all their political
energy towards sabotaging each other, policy be damned. This was a large part of why Palpatine
won the Supreme Chancellory in the first place, and why he was able to immediately become popular
and remain that way for the rest of his life. With the onset of the Separatist Crisis, the
Core Faction and the Rim Faction broke apart, and the Senate instead became divided between
the Militarists and the Pacifists. While the Core and Rim Factions had largely been pretty
even in terms of numbers, the Militarists came to vastly outnumber the Pacifists over the course
of the Clone Wars, representing a supermajority of the Senate by the wars’ end. The Militarists were
those Senators who took strong stances against the nascent Confederacy of Independent Systems and
advocated for creating a military in response to growing Separatist threats; among the most
prominent Militarists were Orn Free Taa of Ryloth, Ask Aak of Malastare, and Mee Deechi of Umbara.
The Pacifists instead sought to negotiate with the Separatists, something that made them
increasingly unpopular during the Clone Wars; the most prominent Pacifists were Mon
Mothma, Bail Organa, and Padmé Amidala. As the Clone Wars went on, the Militarists became
Palpatine’s loyalists, voting for anything that would give the Republic executive more power out
of fear of the Confederacy. The Pacifists opposed many such measures, almost always in vain. Their
numbers depleted during the Clone Wars, and not only for mundane political reasons. Some, like
Senator Seti Ashgad, were outright disappeared for vocal opposition to Palpatine and his growing
power. The last gasp of the Pacifist faction was the Petition of the Two Thousand, a memo presented
to Palpatine on the last day of the Clone Wars urging him to step down. This ended up being an
extremely bad move, as Palpatine wasted no time in making the petition’s list of signatures
into a purge list once he became Emperor. Even though they represented concrete policy
goals instead of vague political concepts, the Militarist and Pacifist factions were
ultimately just as ineffective as their predecessors. The Militarists were worse than
useless, and quickly turned into nothing more than a band of sycophants, only serving to
increase Palpatine’s power. The Pacifists, to a greater degree than any other Senate faction,
had their hearts in the right place and a noble goal at the top of their agenda, but they were
ultimately too powerless to be of much use. Those pacifists who survived only started to
become effective after the rise of the Empire, when they formed the Alliance
to Restore the Republic. So, to answer our original question, virtually
every single Senator was indeed useless. Unlike with the Jedi Council, there were no underrated
background heroes in the Senate Building. The only useful thing any Senators ever did was
kickstart a violent insurrection against the Empire a full seventeen years after the Republic’s
fall, something that, obviously, wasn’t even part of their job descriptions. Padmé Amidala, Bail
Organa, and Mon Mothma, as well as Garm Bel Iblis of Corellia, all get a pass, but the other
two thousand Senators were straight-up trash. But what do you think? Are there any
Senators that you think deserve more credit than we’ve given them? Feel free to
post your thoughts in the comments below.
