New Governors Face Opportune But Bleak Times

by Craig Ruff
August 16, 2010

The new batch of state governors will be large in size and power. Winners of the nation’s 37 gubernatorial elections in November will hold enormous sway over political parties’ fortunes, redistricting, and budget priorities.

At next year’s National Governors Association meetings, new members may number the largest in modern history. At best, only 26 will be veterans.

The 13 governors not on this year’s ballot include four who were elected in odd years, 2007 and 2009, and nine whose elections to four-year terms coincided with the 2008 presidential election. Only 13 incumbents are seeking re-election this year, and six of them are hardly shoo-ins.

Some of the remaining 24 incumbents are term-limited, as in Michigan, while others haven chosen to retire, and a couple want to go to the U.S. Senate.

Partisan stakes
A state’s interest groups, media, partisans, pundits and lawmakers care far more about who is elected a governor than a member of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. After all, a governor is the political CEO of an entire state.

Political observers rarely factor governorships into which party is the majority or dominant party in the land. That is a mistake. Parties draw organizational and financial strengths from their governors.

National media and pundits are fixated on which party will control which or both chambers of next year’s Congress. Those are big stakes, of course. But insiders and observers are beginning to weigh the consequences of big changes among governorships.

Governors are party and policy leaders in their states. Some, past or present, also command national attention, even staking claims to presidential aspirations (ask Republicans Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, and Mike Huckabee).

As it stands now, 26 states have a Democratic governor and 24 a Republican. (Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida was elected as a Republican, but is running for the U.S. Senate as an Independent.) Despite very challenging Democratic election cycles in 2006 and 2008, the GOP has fared well in gubernatorial elections.

You can track polls of gubernatorial contests online at Real Clear Politics. The six embattled incumbents seeking re-election include five Democrats (Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Ohio) and one Republican (Texas). In the remaining 31 open seats, Republicans may make almost unprecedented gains.

At this writing, only Connecticut and Hawaii are expected to replace Republican governors with Democrats. At the very least, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are likely to go the other way.

If a GOP tide materializes (still a very big if), Republicans could wind up holding as large as a 36-14 edge among governorships at year’s end. The GOP is nearly assured of holding 30.

Redistricting
In 2011, all states will redistrict their state legislatures. Most states will redraw boundaries of U.S. House of Representatives seats. Single-member states, such as Alaska, Delaware, the Dakotas, Vermont, and Wyoming will not have to.

The power of the veto may never be so critical as when it comes to redistricting. In the states without redistricting panels, line drawing is left to lawmakers and governors. In short, you need a statute — and to enact a law, you need a majority of state legislators and the governor’s signature.

Read what RealClearPolitics.com’s senior elections analyst, Sean Trende, wrote on July 19:

If the GOP wins [governorships] where they currently lead and chambers in close state legislatures flip, Republicans would control redistricting for 214 House districts and have a say in another 149. Democrats, on the other hand, would control redistricting for only 33 seats.

Holding the governorship alone is not sufficient to gerrymander congressional districts. On the other hand, it blocks the opposition party in the legislature from doing harm and, at worst, throws redistricting into state and/or federal courts. If the governor enjoys partisan majorities in both state legislative chambers (as Gov. John Engler did in 2001), it’s nearly a carte blanche ability to gerrymander.

National pundits may focus on redistricting as it affects seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but state observers will be more attuned to redistricting’s impact on state legislatures.

To find my hypothetical redrawing of Michigan’s U.S. House districts, please check out my earlier Dome column.

Taxes and spending
States have enormous sway over policy affecting everyday people in their everyday lives. Combined with local government, states still collect and spend more revenue than the federal government. States and their localities control far more power than the federal government (at least for the time being) on education, road maintenance and new construction, public safety, utilities, environment safeguards, and public and mental health.

With all due respect to the eight full-time and 42 part-time legislatures, governors set the policy agendas of states. Scores of people cannot share the bully pulpit, and therefore the chief executive (president, mayor, county executive, or governor) focuses the attention of legislative bodies.

As most states grapple with budget crises arising from revenues falling short of existing levels of spending commitments and days being marked of the federal government’s ability to shore up state education, transportation, and Medicaid programs, incoming governors will have their work cut out for them. The term of 2011-14 may be the worst in modern history in which to preside over a state government. The final fiscal imbalance may be at hand.

In states north, south, east, and west, there is no public appetite for higher taxes. That will be particularly true should the president and Congress permit the so-called Bush tax cuts to evaporate in 2011. A higher federal tax burden comes at the expense of state and local tax collectors. The public will not countenance higher taxes all around.

States cannot coin money. Ergo, they cannot blithely outspend their pocketbooks. Governors will be on the hook for reconciling promises with dollars available. Few Democratic governors support higher taxes, but one logically could expect a larger number of Republicans to prune spending more zealously. Ambitious reforms of government employees’ benefits, corrections budgets, and other budget busters are inevitable.

In sum
A good number of states will fall into GOP hands come November. It could be historic numbers for Republicans. That would strengthen the base of the GOP, even if it does not foredoom President Obama’s re-election.

New governors will come to office at a most opportune time, that of redistricting. That could cost Democrats dozens of congressional seats and scores of state legislative ones. The new crop of governors, however, will occupy statehouses that are financially depleted. With tough, perhaps ever harsh decisions inevitable, many will be one-termers.

Craig Ruff is, among many things, a senior policy fellow and former president of Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants.