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Michael Barone: Stumbling Governors Signal Trouble for Dems
With polls showing a drop in President Barack Obama’s job rating and sinking support for the Democrats’ health care plans, there is evidence of collateral damage where you might not expect to find it: in the standing of Democratic governors.
Pennsylvania’s Ed Rendell suddenly is getting negative job ratings in both the Quinnipiac University and Franklin & Marshall College polls — his lowest marks in seven years as governor. Ohio’s Ted Strickland, who has spent most of his first term working amicably with Republican legislators, scores less than 50 percent in the latest Quinnipiac poll and has only tenuous leads over two Republicans, John Kasich and Mike DeWine, who may run against him next year.
In the two gubernatorial races being contested this year, Republicans seem to have advantages. In Virginia, Republican Bob McDonnell has led Democrat Creigh Deeds in all but one poll and picked up the support of Black Entertainment Television billionaire Sheila Johnson, one of the biggest contributors to the incumbent, Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine.
New Jersey incumbent Jon Corzine, who spent more than $100 million on narrow wins for senator in 2000 and governor in 2005, is 15 points behind Republican Chris Christie. Corzine will not be helped by the indictment of multiple Jersey pols, most of them Democrats, in a case initiated by Christie when he was a U.S. attorney.
There’s an argument that these results hold little relevance to the standing of the national parties. Almost every state faces severe fiscal problems, and standoffs between a governor and a legislature can drag the governor’s ratings way down, as in the case of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Moreover, a governor’s personal strengths and weaknesses can override party identification; one of the nation’s highest-rated governors is Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat in very Republican Wyoming.
Even so, these numbers should be troubling for Democrats. Rendell and Strickland are attractive personalities with some penchant for centrist policies. Both were suggested as possible running mates for Obama. (Both sensibly swatted away those suggestions.) Corzine is running in a state that, with a rising immigrant population and an outflow of affluent residents, has been solidly Democratic for a dozen years. Altogether, these states have 69 electoral votes, and Obama won all four by comfortable margins last November.
Democratic governors in other important states also have been getting low marks from voters. North Carolina’s freshly elected Bev Perdue has only 26 percent of voters willing to re-elect her. Colorado’s Bill Ritter, Washington’s Christine Gregoire, Oregon’s Ted Kulongoski, Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle, Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm have been getting sub-majority voter approval most of the year.
These governors are mostly able and attractive people, and every one of their states voted for Obama. None of them is tarred by scandal or not up to the job, as seems to be the case with the nation’s lowest-rated governors, Nevada Republican Jim Gibbons and New York Democrat David Paterson.
I take all of this as evidence — not conclusive evidence, but significant evidence — for the proposition that economic distress does not predispose voters to favor bigger government. Not all the reasons for these governors’ negative job ratings arise from debates over the size of government, but many do — and voters clearly are not hankering for more government.
When you put these results together with Obama’s slide in the polls, they suggest trouble for big-government Democrats. Pollster Scott Rasmussen now shows Obama with only 49 percent job approval; when he asked voters which party they would like to represent them in the House, Republicans came out ahead of Democrats.
Some analysts will point out that Rasmussen’s results tend to be more negative for Democrats than those of other pollsters. That’s because, as Rasmussen explains, he uses a likely-voter formula that tends to assume that first-time voters in November 2008 will not turn out in force in 2009 or 2010.
That seems to have been the case so far in most 2009 special elections and primaries. In off-year elections without Obama on the ballot, it seems unlikely that young blacks will turn out in larger proportions than young whites, as the Census Bureau reported happening in 2008. Democratic candidates will have to make their own cases, and the governors’ job ratings suggest their prospects may be dicey.
— Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. Click here to contact him.
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» on 07.29.09 @ 06:16 AM
What a shock, Michael Barone saying something negative about Dems. How about the ratings of all the Republican Senators that have been got committing adultry such as David Vitter or Ensign? There are problems with both parties. However, hoping for a lower voter turnout and somehow the U.S. will become less diverse does not seem like a winning ticket for the GOP or a truly democratic or patriotic strategy.
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» on 07.29.09 @ 12:00 PM
This Liberal pollitically correct anti business group needs to go, and their union shills who fund them—
Take your country back—vote the liberals out..
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» on 07.29.09 @ 12:02 PM
To be fair, Barone is right. Lots of governors are in a world of hurt right now. Party
affiliation doesn’t seem to matter.
But Barone fails to take his analysis the next logical step.
The governors are “stumbling” because state and local government must do real-world service and employment cuts, and fee hikes, to make up for the disaster eight Bush years speculations and deficit spending visited on the national (and world) economy.
Unlike presidents and congresses, state governments can NOT pretend budgets balance when they don’t. Not even Arnold could get away with that indefinitely.
Presidents and congresses can “deficit finance”, or pass big “unfunded mandates” to states, that governors must carry out. That causes lots of “stumbles” in bad times.
Barone shamelessly ignores that the economy tanked because the Bush-Cheney team practiced the deregulated, free market capitalism Barone lobbied for all his life.
That tanked economy (Barone economics in practice) is what’s got all kinds of governors, mayors, and counties everywhere stumbling.
If Barone wants governors of both parties to be more successful, and to walk tall,
he should reconsider whom his deregulated systems really benefit. Certainly, it’s not most of the states or most of their residents.
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» on 07.29.09 @ 03:34 PM
San Roque resident, do you always have to be the MoveOn talking point parrot? GW did not tank the economy nor did the “capitalist” system you ignorant twit. Someday, probably soon, like when you are out of a job, you will realize the difference between an economic system and human behavior. Every economic system is susceptible to greed and yes capitalism is the most. But it is also the system that offers the most freedom and the greatest opportunity. Its rewards come with risks and those risks increase dramatically in a society that exchanges personal responsibility for “if it feels good do it” the liberal mantra. You can compensate for the lack of morality in a society by using more policed economies where the nanny state assumes the role of responsibility. Yes, small minded dim wits are protected more but freedom is flushed down the toilet right along with opportunity. You have the potential to make great wealth with our system, but with that comes great personal responsibility, the kind you and your liberal friends avoid at any cost. You don’t trash the best system in the world because you chose to be an adolescent into your adult age. Get a clue, for God’s sake before you wake up one at the age of sixty and realize the nanny state you figured was in charge stole everything you have and decided you aren’t worth keeping around anymore.
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