Last weekend, when the centrist Democratic Leadership Council was holding its annual meeting in Philadelphia, most of the media focus on the event dealt with the growing divisions between the moderate and liberal factions of the Democratic Party.
Most of the articles I saw in the nation’s largest dailies ran long stories about whether moderates could successfully derail Dean’s campaign and whether a Dem candidate who opposed the war in Iraq could beat Bush in the general election next year.
But there’s something else that caught my attention about the DLC “national conversation.” Maybe I’m the last person to notice this, but the Dems have some damn good governors out there.
It was, to be sure, a not-so-subtle point of the DLC’s event. The first panel discussion at the conference featured Bill Richarson, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, Mark Warner, Ed Rendell, Jim McGreevey, and Jennifer Granholm. What do all these people have in common? They’re all Democratic governors, some of them from states Bush won in 2000.
Indeed, in the 2002 elections, Dems lost seats in the House, lost seats (and control of ) the Senate, but enjoyed a net gain of three seats among the nation’s governors, including victories in every part of the country, from the West to the Deep South to New England.
While so much attention is focused on politics between the mile-and-a-half separating Capitol Hill and the White House in Washington, the importance of having so many popular and successful Dem chief executives cannot be overstated.
About a decade ago, in the mid-1990s, there was a not-unreasonable perception that some of the most promising politicians in America were Republican governors. As Jonathan Chait at The New Republic mentioned three years ago, “[J]ust as the Gingrich revolution was going up in flames, the press discovered a dynamic crop of GOP governors.”
The group included a fairly impressive list of people from key states with large populations and a lot of electoral votes: Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania, John Engler in Michigan, George Pataki in New York, Frank Keating in Oklahoma, and even George Bush in Texas.
As Chait mentioned, these governors — with high approval ratings and a strong economy — were “a perfect foil for the extremist GOP Congress.” As Time magazine reported in 1999, “In contrast to the sinking Congress, the governors were emerging as stars, centrist and practical CEOs who were busy fixing welfare and improving schools and cutting taxes while Gingrich fiddled.”
In 1998, when Republicans lost ground in Congress during Clinton’s sixth year in office — the first time in over six decades that a president’s party gained seats in Congress in a second midterm election — Republican governors were the party’s saviors. As Peter Beinart noted after the election, the conservative Weekly Standard labeled the GOP “a party of governors.” U.S. News & World Report called Republican governors “arguably the most respected politicians in America.” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said, “The leadership of this party is now coming from the states and not from Washington. And thank God for that.”
Now look at the landscape in 2003. Republicans still have a bare majority of the nation’s governorships — 26 to 24 — but momentum is clearly on the Dems’ side.
Most of the six Republican governors mentioned above are out of office and have Democrats as successors. In Oklahoma, Keating is out of government and has been replaced by Gov. Brad Henry (D). In Wisconsin, Thompson is Secretary of HHS and has been replaced by Gov. Jim Doyle (D). In Michigan, Engler has been replaced by Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D). In Pennsylvania, Ridge has become Secretary of Homeland Security and has been replaced by Gov. Ed Rendell (D).
What really inspires some hope for the future is the success of Dem governors in states that either rarely vote Democratic, usually have Republican governors, or both. In addition to those mentioned above, voters have elected Dem governors in Illinois (for the first time in 20 years), Kansas (where the GOP usually rules), Arizona (which has voted GOP in 12 of the last 13 presidential elections), New Jersey (which hadn’t elected a Dem Gov. since 1989), Indiana (another consistently GOP state) and several states in the South — where Dems are supposed to be completely dead — such as Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina.
This can — and I believe will — translate into broader success for Democrats for years to come. Governors with executive experience become excellent presidential candidates, cabinet secretaries, and Senate candidates. As Pennsylvania’s Ed Rendell said over the weekend, “I think the talent bank is beginning to be replenished.”
It also suggests a way to beat Bush in 2004. If voters in these states are willing to vote for a Dem as governor to lead their state, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be willing to vote for a Dem as president to lead the country. It makes nominating the right kind of Democrat — one with broad appeal, a sound strategy, and a persuasive message — all the more important.