I think most of the "Official State _________" are just publicity things Maryland's Official Dance is the square dance and sport is Jousting. My life didn't change knowing that.
As for partisan politics, G. Washington probably had it right in his farewell address. "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism." Although with limited communication choices in the late 1700s, a party was probably the only way to organize a coherent national platform for national elections.