For the first time in 55 years, this election season could end with Democrats and Republicans heading an equal number of state governments. Fueled by voter concerns over abortion access and a slate of far-right Republican nominees, the odds are increasing that Democrats can retain or flip enough of the 36 governorships up for grabs on November 8 to prompt a 25-to-25-state tie between the two parties, versus the current 28-22 GOP lead. That even split has only happened one other time since Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959—back in 1967, in the thick of another painfully divisive era in American politics.
Such a shift in power could have a powerful impact, since governors wield immense executive authority in their states, similar to the president on the federal level. Top presidential and vice-presidential prospects frequently come from their ranks, and states are often laboratories for new governing ideas and political arguments—Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, both leading advocates for sharp restrictions on abortion and immigration, are recent examples of the power of the office. If Democrats narrow the current lead or tie the number of Republican governors—the GOP has had the edge for more than a decade—they'd have more bully pulpits to advance their own agenda and provide a last line of defense against state efforts to curb reproductive and voting rights, since governors have veto power over new laws.
That part of the role has taken on greater significance in recent years as Congress has become increasingly gridlocked. "So much of the action happening legislatively is now at the state level," says Jessica Taylor, who analyzes gubernatorial races for the non-partisan Cook Political Report and argues that governors have perhaps become the most powerful politicians in America.
"Voters realize how much more important governors were to their everyday lives during COVID" when state leaders were able to issue lock down and mask mandate orders by fiat, she says. "It showed us that governors have a larger impact on average Americans' everyday lives than federal representatives or even the president."
How likely is a split? To even the score, Democrats must flip three seats, which Taylor says is "very possible." Maryland and Massachusetts, both Democratic bastions where moderate Republican governors are retiring because of term limits, seem certain to go blue. Democrats also hope to pick up Arizona, a purple state that has narrowly elected two Democratic senators since 2018 and where Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is locked in a toss-up with former TV news anchor Kari Lake. Hobbs gained prominence resisting Republican efforts to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 win in the state; Lake is an outspoken supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, his disproved claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) creed.
Democrats also would need to re-elect all their incumbent governors—a seemingly daunting task until you realize that only one Democratic incumbent has lost re-election since 2011. Indeed, the crop defending their seats this year include the chief executives of Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico and Kansas, places where the prognosticators at FiveThirtyEight.com mostly project Democratic wins with one toss-up (Nevada). Other political forecasters, including Sabato's Crystal Ball and Cook, haven't gone quite that far but keep the door open by putting five states—Nevada, Kansas, Wisconsin, Arizona and Oregon—in the toss-up column. POLITICO's Forecast 2022 predicts "most Americans will be led by Democratic governors" next year.
"I am blessed to not be working on any governor campaigns this year because none of them seem to be going great," says Jason Cabel Roe, a GOP strategist who served as executive director of the Michigan Republican Party in 2021 and was the spokesman in 2016 for the failed presidential bid of Florida Senator Marco Rubio. "We're not winning. This isn't where we thought we'd be."
The Road to Here
For Democrats to even have a shot at parity is a remarkable turn of events for a party that entered this midterm election cycle facing stiff headwinds. For one thing, there are no sitting GOP governors seeking re-election who appear to be vulnerable, so the pickings are slim for Democrats looking to flip seats.
What's more, between soaring inflation, high gas prices, Biden's low approval ratings and lingering anger over restrictive COVID-era policies, Republican voters began 2022 as energized as Democrats were dispirited. A massive red wave, conventional wisdom held, would not only wash Democrats out of control of the House and Senate but statehouses from Nevada to Maine, too.
But that was before the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion, the law of the land for the past 50 years. In several states—including Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan—that gave new life to decades-old abortion bans still on the books but moot since the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and turned attention on the issue to state capitals.
By then, Republican primary voters had picked or were on course to nominate a slew of far-right candidates who backed former President Donald Trump's disproved claims about the 2020 presidential election, strongly opposed abortions in all or most circumstances and shrugged off the January 6 riot at the Capitol just as a Congressional committee was set to spend the summer detailing the attack's violent and carefully planned nature.
"This was [initially] going to be a red wave year because the issues made the Democratic Party look extremely out of touch," says GOP campaign consultant Mike Madrid, a one-time political director for the California Republican Party. "Well, enter [the abortion ruling] and the Uvalde school shooting in Texas and the January 6 hearings, and now it's the Republican Party that is viewed most negatively and most extreme in the eyes of a majority of voters."
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, agrees but thinks his party started with a strong hand. "There's been a distinct shift in the national mood in the direction of Democrats," he tells Newsweek. "But when it comes to governor, I'm as confident as I was a year ago that our incumbents and candidates have strong records to run on."
Nobody from the Republican Governors Association responded to Newsweek's requests for comment on the record. But on background, an aide to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, the RGA's co-chair, says the group is "confident that the pendulum will swing back as the fall campaign proceeds and voters remember that inflation is out of control. Our nominees out west are incredibly strong. We could have better nominees in the Midwest and Northeast, but we're playing the hand we were dealt."
One possible fly in the ointment for Democrats: Oregon. The Beaver State hasn't elected a GOP governor since 1982 and remains a deep blue state, but this year's contest is a three-way race between Republican Christine Drazan, Democrat Tina Kotek and independent Betsy Johnson. Drazan and Kotek are statistically tied in the most recent poll, but Johnson, a former longtime Democratic legislator, is polling at 18 percent and could pull enough Democratic support away from Kotek for a Drazan win, Taylor says. Political forecasters, including Taylor, currently rate the race as a toss-up.
What's at Stake
Both parties tend to use the number of governorships they hold for bragging rights. The Republican Governors Association routinely cites the fact that they now have 28 governorships in TV ads and tweets, while the Democratic Governors Association is quick to note that millions more Americans live in states with Democrats at the helm.
But there's a lot more at stake. For one thing, governors of states where presidential elections are decided by thin margins could play an important role when it comes time to certify results in 2024, Madrid says. GOP nominees in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they doubt or disbelieve the outcomes in their states in 2020—and those skeptics could throw roadblocks in the way and spark a national crisis if a Democrat narrowly wins two years from now.
Madrid's biggest concern is Arizona because it "will be an absolutely critical state in the 2024 presidential Electoral College canvas, probably more than even 2020. And Kari Lake is the most charismatic MAGA candidate in the country, with the greatest likelihood of winning. So, yeah, it matters a lot who wins these races."
One potential stumbling block for Lake and many GOP nominees for governor is the extent to which they punched their general election tickets by aligning with Trump, who remains wildly popular among the Republican base but whose approval among the general electorate sat at an historically low 34 percent in a recent poll by NBC News. In almost every state where Democrats are defending governorships or are in serious contention to flip them, Republican voters chose the most MAGA-esque contender in an often-crowded primary field. Where Trump made an endorsement, his picks almost always became the standard-bearer.
"That's what's keeping a lot of these governorships on the table for the Democrats to pick up even in a national environment that was pretty poor for them," says Gunner Ramer, political director for the Republican Accountability PAC, an anti-Trump GOP organization. "Independent voters look at a Kari Lake in Arizona or a Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania or a Tim Michels in Wisconsin and they're totally turned off by that kind of candidate, which turns an election that was going to be a referendum on Joe Biden into a choice between an extreme Republican candidate or a Democratic candidate who in a lot of cases is a lot easier to get behind."
Case in point: Within minutes of Republican Tudor Dixon's victory in the Michigan gubernatorial primary in August, Democrats started running an ad on social media and later on TV featuring the GOP candidate repeatedly rejecting any exceptions to a total abortion ban. When an interviewer in July asked her about the case of a 14-year-old impregnated by her uncle, Dixon replied that that was a "perfect example." Six weeks later, lagging by as much as 13 points against incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, she appeared on a Michigan political podcast to complain about the focus on her abortion stances, which she called "an issue that has nothing to do with the governor's race."
Dixon's frustration is emblematic of how big an issue the Supreme Court decision on abortion has become in gubernatorial races this year. While Dixon insists the matter is not up to the governor, a Democrat with a veto could be the last line of defense against abortion restrictions passed by GOP-dominated legislatures in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Kansas.
"There is no way that Republicans win on any framing of the abortion discussion, especially not by saying it's not an issue," says Madrid, the GOP consultant.
The Maryland governor's race is similar to Michigan's. The Old Line State has been led for two terms by Larry Hogan, a moderate anti-Trump Republican who is popular but cannot run for the office again because of term limits. Former State Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, a Republican hand-picked by Hogan with similar views, lost the primary to State Delegate Dan Cox, who insists Trump won the 2020 election, tweeted that former Vice President Mike Pence was "a traitor" for overseeing the certification of the election for Biden and attended the Stop The Steal rally in Washington, D.C., that preceded the Capitol riot on January 6.
As of late September, Cox, one of the legislature's most conservative members, trailed his opponent, Democrat Wes Moore, by more than 30 points in a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll. Cox insists to Newsweek that he can still win, that his message about inflation, education and crime is resonating. He insisted neither abortion nor what he refers to as "election integrity" are the key issues he's running on now. "As for polling," he says, "we are very confident with some of our internals that we are within striking distance with a path to victory."
Yet Moore, the ex-CEO of an anti-poverty nonprofit, won't allow Cox to pivot so easily. The Democrat has made a push for an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the Maryland Constitution a cornerstone of his campaign and reminds voters often of Cox's efforts to undermine confidence in the 2020 election results.
"The opponent in our race is someone who is literally an insurrectionist," Moore, an Army combat veteran who would be the state's first Black governor, tells Newsweek. "His definition of patriotism is putting on a baseball cap and inviting some of his buddies to join in storming the Capitol because they wanted to hang Mike Pence for verifying a fair election." (Cox did not illegally enter the Capitol on January 6.)
Such issues are sticking points elsewhere, too. In Nevada, GOP nominee Joe Lombardo agreed in a May debate to consider a ban on some forms of contraception. Lake, the Arizona nominee, said in a February candidate forum that she supported reimposing a Civil War-era law still on the books that criminalized abortion. Scott Jensen, the GOP nominee in Minnesota, said in a March interview, "I would try to ban abortion," only to insist in a September advertisement that he wouldn't do so because "It's a protected [state] constitutional right and no governor can change that."
Democratic candidates and the DGA both are running a barrage of ads aimed at not permitting their opponents to underplay the stances they took during the primary.
"People are not going to be fooled when these extreme MAGA candidates try to pretend that they are someone they're not," the DGA's Cooper says. "You're seeing candidates now, as they see the writing on the wall regarding women's reproductive freedom and they see constitutional amendments winning in red Kansas, beginning to scrub their websites and change their language. We're not going to let them get away with it."
An Outdated Playbook
Many GOP gubernatorial hopefuls had hoped to follow the playbook of Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican who pulled off a surprise come-from-behind victory last November. Yet many ingredients in Youngkin's recipe for success—keep Trump at arm's length, avoid discussing alleged 2020 election fraud, attack Democratic COVID policies and take a stand against teaching critical race theory in public schools—aren't working in 2022.
For one thing, the GOP nominees in Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin are latched too tightly to Trump to create any distance now. His endorsement was a critical boost for them in competitive primaries; in return, they all assail the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate for highly sensitive classified documents and echo his gripes about the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as multiple investigations into possible wrongdoing accelerate.
In Nevada, where Youngkin appeared with Lombardo in September, the GOP nominee "has been really pulling on some of the very same talking points that were the centerpiece of the Youngkin campaign, but Youngkin was more successful at keeping Trump's at arm's distance," says University of Nevada Las Vegas political scientist Rebecca Gill, noting Lombardo's appearance at an event with Trump this summer.
The COVID card, which many Republican challengers relied on early in their campaigns with accusations of overreach by Democratic governors during the pandemic, isn't playing well now either. The public is less interested in re-litigating decisions made by governors in a once-a-century health crisis than they are in focusing on the current economy and future of access to abortion, says Marquette University pollster Charles Franklin.
"COVID, of the 10 issues we asked about, ranks dead last as a concern for voters," he says. "There's a real world change there."
Focus groups with swing voters in Michigan and Nevada, the Republican Accountability PAC's Ramer says, found many were unhappy with their incumbent Democratic governor's decisions during COVID but "it wasn't deterministic with how they were going to vote in the upcoming election. People have an opinion, but it's not moving votes."
Instead, the many billions in federal COVID relief are giving Democratic incumbent governors a chance to play Santa Claus. Whitmer's TV advertising ticks off the billions her administration has spent on infrastructure, education and other projects enabled by a flood of money from Congress. Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak broke tradition by giving a State of the State address in an even-numbered year in 2022 so he could outline his plans for $2 billion in COVID funds.
Firing Up Voters
Most midterm elections are rough on the party in the White House because their voters become complacent while the opposition party is whipped up. That's how this cycle began, with an NBC News poll in March finding Republicans with a yawning 17-point advantage over Democrats among likely voters who were enthusiastic about casting their ballots in November.
As of mid-September, though, Democrats were beating Republicans by 4 points on enthusiasm in a POLITICO/Morning Consult survey—not because Republican enthusiasm has waned but because Democrats are fired up about abortion and keeping MAGA extremists out of office, Ramer says.
It also helps Democrats that governors of either party rarely lose re-election bids—just 10 since 2009—in part because they build their own relationships with voters unconnected with voter views of Congress or the president, according to Mike Leavitt, former RNC chief of staff. Given that the incumbent governors in most swing states are Democrats, they've got a built-in advantage, he says. Republican incumbents benefit, too—both Brian Kemp of Georgia and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire seem to be coasting to second terms this fall—but there are far fewer of them. "Governors are literally in your newspaper, on your television, in your communities every day and the governor's bully pulpit is stronger than that of any other elected official besides the president," Leavitt says. "People look at state capitals as places where the governor actually is getting things done for their states; they look at Washington, D.C. , as completely broken."
Yet according to Ramer, with so many of these races so close, the outcome may now come down to independent voters and whethey they are more concerned about the economy or abortion .
"The great fear for the Democrats was turnout, but they got that because of [abortion]," Madrid says. "All that did, though, was bring them into contention."
