RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events What's a governor like you doing in a state like this?

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What's a governor like you doing in a state like this?

By Susan Page, USA TODAY
Mon May 23, 6:30 AM ET

Mitt Romney is lucky he has a big family at home - five sons and a growing cadre of grandchildren - because he's a lonely figure at work.

Romney is a Republican and the governor of Massachusetts, where both senators, all 10 members of Congress and 87% of state legislators are Democrats. Just 13% of voters are registered Republicans.

Kathleen Sebelius knows the feeling. She is a Democrat and the governor of Kansas, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 2-to-1. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state in four decades.

What's a governor like her doing in a state like that?

The polarization of politics has made Washington, D.C., a place where most Democratic and Republican officials don't seem to trust or even talk to one another. The top domestic issue on this year's agenda, Social Security, splits along party lines. In the Senate this week, a confrontation over filibusters of judicial nominees threatens to grind even routine business to a halt.

But the situation in many state capitals belies the conclusion that the nation has split into warring red and blue camps. The seven states where John Kerry got his widest margins of victory in 2004 all have Republican governors. Nine of the states that George W. Bush swept by double digits have Democratic governors.

In all, 21 of the 50 states have governors from the party that lost the state in the last presidential election - that is, red governors of blue states and blue governors of red states. In most of them, voter expectations and state constitutional requirements mean that the two sides are forced to work together and reach compromises on such bread-and-butter issues as highways, schools and spending.

"Our Legislature is here for 90 days, and we have to pass a budget that balances - that's the constitutional mandate," Sebelius says. "There is a real expectation of people that we'll deal with the issues that are pressing."

Besides, she says, Kansans generally are driven by pragmatism, not partisanship: "I almost never hear them saying 'I'm blue, I'm red' unless they're talking about the Jayhawks," the mythical bird and University of Kansas mascot.

Some of the governors view Washington's red/blue gridlock with consternation or even contempt. "Maybe it's something in the water in Washington, or maybe it's all the expensive whiskey the lobbyists are paying for," says Brian Schweitzer, the Democratic governor of Republican-leaning Montana. "I have a 72-hour rule. If I stay in Washington for more than 72 hours, I have to bathe myself in the same stuff I use when one of my dogs gets into a fight with a skunk - stuff to get the smell out."

Keeping out of the crossfire

Consider Schweitzer's Montana.

In November, Bush carried the state by 20 percentage points. But Schweitzer also won and Democrats gained control of the state Senate. By 2-to-1, voters approved a prohibition on same-sex marriage. But they also passed an initiative permitting the medical use of marijuana by a decisive margin.

The lesson, according to political scientist Morris Fiorina, is that while the nation's politics may be polarized, the voters aren't. Descriptions of a chasm between red and blue America have become routine since the disputed 2000 presidential election, but the Stanford professor says they are at best an exaggeration.

"Underneath the highly polarized elite competition there is a moderate, ambivalent electorate," Fiorina says. In his book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America he describes most voters as "somewhat in the position of the unfortunate citizens of some third-world countries who try to stay out of the crossfire while Maoist guerrillas and right-wing death squads shoot at each other."

In a poll released this month by the non-partisan Pew Research Center, Americans by nearly 3-to-1 said the country was more divided politically than in the past. (Interestingly, a much smaller majority, 53%, agreed that the people they knew were more divided.) By far the top reason cited for the divide was the war in
Iraq.

But a majority of the Democrats and more than two-thirds of the Republicans said they sometimes voted for candidates of the other party. And most governors aren't focused on such hot-button items as the war in Iraq, the abortion views of prospective Supreme Court nominees or the debate over whether Social Security should offer a guaranteed safety net or an opportunity to generate wealth.

In interviews, Sebelius and Schweitzer, Romney and Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont - another Republican in a Democratic state - list strikingly similar agendas: spurring job creation, improving public schools, providing health care for those who need it without blowing the budget. All brag that their states this year balanced the books - mandated in 49 states, all except Vermont - without raising taxes.

For governors, ideology often gives way to necessity. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who served as Bush's budget director, this year proposed a step aimed at balancing the state budget that his old boss surely would have blocked: imposing a 1% surcharge on incomes above $100,000 a year. In Tennessee, Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen this summer is taking an action at odds with the promise of the Democratic platform: cutting as many as 323,000 people from the state's expanded Medicaid program, called TennCare, to curb its spiraling cost.

"Governors have to deal in a real world," says Charlie Cook of the non-partisan Cook Political Report. "Posturing for ideological reasons, that's not a real option."

Potholes know no party.

Luck and circumstance

That's not to say that partisanship isn't part of state politics. Legislative leaders from a state's dominant party, grumbling that luck and circumstance propelled the opposition candidate into the governorship, often clash with him or her on policy and priorities. They almost always vow to oust the incumbent in the next election.

In the 2002 governor's race in Kansas, "Republicans gathered up a circular firing squad and started shooting at each other," says Derek Schmidt, the majority leader of the state Senate and a possible challenger to Sebelius next year. Moderate and conservative wings of the GOP fractured. "Gov. Sebelius is a talented politician, but she holds this office because Republicans handed it to her," he says.

In Massachusetts, the failure by Democrats to unite behind a candidate until the final weeks of the 2002 campaign boosted Romney.

Sometimes, candidates from minority parties win because of allegations of corruption or incompetence. Sometimes, voters just don't seem to pay much attention to party labels. "Vermonters make up their own mind about each individual race," Douglas says.

Still, the state had Democratic governors for 17 of 18 years before he won in 2002. He says he can't remember if his campaign signs mentioned he was a Republican.

Governors elected in states that are carried by the other political party in presidential elections have a harder time getting re-elected, though. Just 19% of them are serving a second or third term, compared with 31% of governors who represent states carried by their own party, according to a USA TODAY analysis. They also tend to win election by narrower margins - by an average of 51% of the vote, compared with 55%.

On the other hand, they are more likely to be considered a contender for president. Governors often can cite a more concrete list of achievements than members of Congress can, and those from states dominated by the other party already have demonstrated an ability to appeal across partisan lines.

The long list of potential Republican presidential candidates for 2008 includes New York Gov. George Pataki, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Romney. The list of prospective Democratic contenders includes New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley.

Two of the four Republicans are from blue states. All four of the Democrats are from red states.

Red and blue spread?

But the polarization that has made Washington a more divided capital is spreading to statehouses. "They're still behind Washington in terms of everything being red and blue, but unfortunately, they're going in the same direction," says Stuart Rothenberg of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report.

Governors increasingly are forced to deal with such "values" issues as abortion and same-sex marriage - charged questions that leave little room for compromise. Last month, Sebelius, who supports abortion rights, vetoed legislation for the second time that would have imposed regulations on abortion clinics. She argues that any rules should apply to other outpatient surgical clinics as well.

In Massachusetts, Romney is poised to veto a bill that would promote embryonic stem cell research, including the creation of human embryos for research. His veto may not matter much: It passed both houses of the Legislature by veto-proof margins.

But he has scored some victories. One recent morning, he arrived at Neighborhood House, a charter school in the Dorchester area of Boston, to present state certificates to principals and teachers for two new charter schools. Sixteen current charter schools received renewed certificates.

Romney reminded them that the state Legislature last year had passed a one-year moratorium on new charter schools. He vetoed the bill, then worked with legislators to revise the funding formula that had prompted opposition from some public school officials.

Efforts to override his veto failed.

"A number of Democratic legislators, a number of Republican legislators, came together with me, and we upheld the ability of charter schools to continue," he said to applause from about 100 people sitting on plastic chairs in the school's all-purpose room. He singled out the local state representative, Marie St. Fleur, a Democrat, for praise.

Governors in states that are dominated by the other party have to find common ground if they hope to get anything done, Romney said later in an interview in his statehouse office, a spectacular view of sun-splashed Boston Common out the window.

"There aren't a lot of long passes with fireworks in the end zone," he said. "I can't get things done here unless the success is shared."

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thedoctor said:
A friend of mine and I got into this discussion during the 2000 election fiasco. Many states might want a Republican or Democrat representing them in Washington, but not in their own state capitols. MS pretty much always votes for Republican presidents, but we constantly switch between Republican and Democrat governors. I believe Kirk Fordice (who was pretty much a shit governor) was the first Rep. this state elected as governor in almost 80 years.

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King Snarf said:
My parents are Republican, and I believed they both voted for Ed Rendell when he ran for Governor.

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Sounds like they took quite a gamble

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allan1 said:

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King Snarf said:
My parents are Republican, and I believed they both voted for Ed Rendell when he ran for Governor.

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Sounds like they took quite a gamble

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