The Populists were one of two powerful, yet unofficial, political factions that had formed in the Galactic Senate of the New Republic over the two decades following the founding of the regime. They believed that individual member planets should retain their full sovereignty, while the opposing political faction, the Centrists, favored a stronger galactic government and a larger military. Senator Leia Organa, former hero of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and veteran of the Galactic Civil War, was a well known Populist.