Steve Bullock and the Sitting Governors Who Ran for Senate

Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT)

I am home from work today, and have decided that after a few weeks stuck in my own little world, I'm going to be coming back to writing more regularly on the blog (also, doing things in general more regularly, as the COVID sequester has knocked me out but I can't sustain this level of reality escaping for 4+ more weeks).  We're going to start back by looking at politics, something that seems to be forgotten in the current state (I still can't entirely tell when we'll have most of the primary elections later this year, or quite frankly what the hell Bernie Sanders is thinking by still being in the race).

But instead we're going to focus today on governors, who are becoming the champions of the COVID response crisis (well, some of them are-Brian Kemp & Ron DeSantis will go down as some of their states' worst governors, respectively, once this is over).  One governor, in particular, in fact: Steve Bullock.  Bullock is in a unique position as a current head-of-state in that he's the only governor running for election this year to a different office than the one he currently holds; Bullock announced a few weeks ago that he would run for the US Senate this cycle, and that appears to be a fortuitous decision right now.  Bullock has the advantage of getting some of the best reviews of any governor this cycle for his ability to handle the crisis in Montana; his opponent, Steve Daines, however, will bare some of the blame for DC's inability to react as quickly as governors did to minimize cases of the disease.  It's still too early to know what will happen in seven months (truly-we are in uncharted waters here), but it's easy to see a situation where Bullock, a popular governor, runs not against Daines, but against Washington in general, saying he can bring his "know how" to fix it.

This is a message that works, and where we're going to look a bit today as we understand Bullock's unique position as a sitting head-of-state running for a Senate seat.  Bullock's decision to do this would seem to be common-there are 13 former governors in the Senate as of today, and Bullock isn't even the only governor running for public office this year (John Hickenlooper is also running in Colorado).  What makes Bullock stand out is that he's a sitting governor.  Most governors who have made the run for the Senate in recent years were former governors, a few years out of the office and running for the Senate.  Both the governors who were successful (people like Mitt Romney, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, and Mike Johanns) and those that weren't (Bob Kerrey, Linda Lingle, Jim Gilmore, & Tony Knowles, amongst others) were not currently holding the office.  They didn't have an obvious pulpit to rival the sitting senator, or particularly recent evidence that the state still liked them.  For whatever reason, it's unusual for a sitting governor to be convinced a move to DC (where you're going to be 1 in 100 rather than "the one") is worthwhile; in the past 25 years, only 12 sitting governors, including Bullock, have made such a campaign.  Today, I want to take a look at these eleven and see if we can find some tea leaves to understand if Bullock might add another former governor to the Senate (and perhaps in the process deliver the Democrats the majority).

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)

1. Rick Scott

Election Cycle: 2018 (R+2)
The Governor: Scott was a two-term governor when he ran in 2018, ending his long tenure as a polarizing figure in Florida politics.
The Challenger: Bill Nelson, was, to quote multiple descriptions of him I've read, the textbook "generic Democrat," a long-tenured figure in politics (in addition to three terms in the Senate, he'd held random political offices in Florida since the early 1970's).
The Race: The race was brutal between Nelson and Scott.  Despite what you see above, the Democrats had a generally solid 2018 Midterms (they unfortunately had to have candidates run for reelection in places like Missouri, Indiana, & North Dakota, making their campaigns considerably harder), and probably should have been the favorites in a purple state like Florida.  After all, the Democrats were able to win Arizona, which Hillary had lost by a much larger margin than Florida in 2016.  However, Rick Scott put a mountain of cash into this race (he out-raised Nelson 2-to-1), and the incumbent's campaign was frequently described as lackluster.  Despite numerous polls giving the slightest of advantages to Nelson, Scott won this race by less than a percentage point, continuing his streak of staggeringly close elections (Scott has never won a partisan election by more than 2-points).

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH)

2. Maggie Hassan

Election Cycle: 2016 (D+2)
The Governor: Hassan was a two-term governor of New Hampshire, relatively well-liked, and was at one point considered a potential running-mate for Joe Biden if he were to pull off a late entry into the 2016 presidential primaries.
The Challenger: Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a former NH Attorney General who had ridden the 2010 Republican midterms to a huge victory over a sitting congressman in that Senate race (Ayotte beat Rep. Paul Hodes by a ridiculous 24-point margin...also weird fact-Hodes would go on to be an important surrogate for the Marianne Williamson presidential campaign in 2020).  She was also popular, and not someone that would be easily dispatched.
The Race: Hassan's race in some ways mirrors Bullock's.  There was at the time a question mark whether or not Hassan would run for a third term, basically handing Ayotte her reelection, or whether the Democrats could persuade her to come to DC.  When she decided to run, the race became one of the premiere contests of the cycle (the rare campaign where both candidates ended the race with positive approval ratings), though toward the end of the race it appeared that Hassan had won it; Ayotte had led in very few polls the last few weeks of the election, and some polls predicted a pretty handed Hassan victory.  However, in 2016 Democrats under-performed polls, and Hassan took the contest by just over 1000 votes, an even slimmer margin than Hillary Clinton enjoyed in the state.  Still, like Scott, she ended up winning the contest, even though unlike Scott, her party couldn't hold the governor's mansion without her running.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

3. Joe Manchin

Election Cycle: 2010 (R+6)
The Governor: Joe Manchin is so well-known today for being a swing vote (for progressives, an oftentimes frustrating one), that you'd be forgiven for not knowing that he was once a very popular governor of West Virginia, a job that he has publicly stated he preferred to being a senator.
The Challenger: Unlike Hassan, Bullock, & Scott, Manchin is our first candidate who ran in an open seat election.  His Republican challenger was John Raese, who made a fortune in broadcasting, and is what is sometimes referred to in political circles as a "frequent candidate," a pejorative term for a politician who runs a lot of races and keeps losing them.
The Race: When Sen. Robert Byrd died, most people assumed that Manchin, who had been governor for two terms, would take a crack at the Senate seat, since he was barred from running for a third term as governor.  However, governors appointing themselves has historically been a terrible idea (Wendell Anderson being the most-cited example), and so he put a caretaker into the office, Carte Goodwin (a longtime high-ranking staff member of the governor) to the position, knowing Goodwin wouldn't run for the office.  Manchin, however, nearly got stuck in it when the Republicans dominated the midterms.  Polling in mid-October showed Raese surging along with other Republicans across the country, before Manchin brought it home in the days before the actual election.  He'd win the contest by ten-points, and easily dispatch Raese again two years later by 24-points.

4. Charlie Crist

Election Cycle: 2010 (R+6)
The Governor: Crist was the sitting governor of Florida, and was an odd choice for the Senate, as he was still in his first term while running for governor.
The Challenger: We'll get into the why here in a second, but there are two challengers: House Speaker Marco Rubio (R) and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D).
The Race: One of the weirdest Senate races this century was the 2010 Florida Senate campaign.  Mel Martinez, the incumbent senator, had left the Bush cabinet to run for the Senate and barely won in 2004, and he had not been a popular incumbent.  Most people assumed that sitting Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink (then the highest-ranking Democrat in Florida), would challenge him, but in rapid succession Sink announced she would seek reelection and Martinez said he'd retire.  At that point, most eyes turned to popular former Gov. Jeb Bush (Sink surely assumed Bush would run, which is why she got out of the race), but he declined to run.  A slew of Republicans began to to look at the race, including Rubio, Rep. Rep. Connie Mack IV, and former AG Bill McCollum.  However, when Martinez announced he'd resign, rather than just retire, that opened up a few options for the Republicans.  According to reports I remember hearing at the time, Crist saw the Senate as a better launching pad for his ultimate ambition (the presidency) than the last national governor's mansion, and appointed George LeMieux to the seat as a caretaker.  Though Crist was wildly popular, he was pretty moderate in a period when the Tea Party was fast-emerging.  Both Crist & Rubio got into the primary, but Rubio ran to Crist's right, and despite Crist having the NRSC's endorsement, Rubio did so successfully.  Crist had essentially given up a sure thing reelection for a quixotic bid for the governor's mansion, and was seeing a once promising career destroyed by his own miscalculation.  Instead of bowing out with dignity (and maybe challenging Bill Nelson in 2012), Crist dropped out of the Republican Primary and decided to run as an independent, thus angering both sides, as the Democrats already had a candidate in sitting-Rep. Kendrick Meek.  With both Meek & Crist splitting the left (Crist had stated shortly before the election that he'd caucus with the Democrats were he the victor), Rubio was able to sale through to an easy 20-point win against his competitors, though it's worth noting he didn't hit 50%, so conceivably Crist might have beaten him in a one-on-one (that almost happened-high-ranking Democrats, including Bill Clinton, pushed Meek to get out because they thought they might have a shot with Crist still in).  Crist's career took a further bruising when he lost a nail-biter bid for governor as a Democrat in 2014, and finally rebounded in 2016 when he won a House seat as a Democrat, making him the only former governor currently in the US House.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND)

5. John Hoeven

Election Cycle: 2010 (R+6)
The Governor: Hoeven, who was a prominent banker in North Dakota before he became governor (North Dakota is the only state in the country with a state-owned bank, and Hoeven was its president during the 1990's), had served for a decade as Governor of North Dakota before running for the Senate.
The Challenger: Like Manchin, this was an open seat, though unlike Manchin, it was just the choice of retiring Sen. Byron Dorgan, rather than an untimely demise, that caused the open seat.  Hoeven's challenger was Democratic State Sen. Tracy Potter.
The Race: It's had to understand now, with the Dakotas being so ruby red, but for decades they were very friendly to the left when it came to congressional races.  This started to crack in 2004 with the surprise loss of Tom Daschle, but truly fell apart in 2010, when Reps. Earl Pomeroy & Stephanie Herseth Sandlin both lost their reelections, and the Democrats got romped in the Senate race.  Hoeven, a wildly popular governor, won the race by 50-points, one of the biggest swings from a previous election cycle in history.  History may question whether A) Hoeven would have run if Dorgan had sought reelection or B) if Dorgan could have beaten him (I can't tell on the first half, the second Hoeven would have surely won, albeit by a much narrower margin), but Hoeven went from being a laid back governor to a pretty laid back (and very popular) senator.  Fun fact-Hoeven briefly served with his 2000 gubernatorial challenger Heidi Heitkamp when she was junior senator from the state from 2013-19.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

6. Jeanne Shaheen

Election Cycle: 2002 (R+2)
The Governor: Shaheen was a well-liked three-term Democratic governor who'd previously served in the State Senate.
The Challenger: Two-term Rep. John E. Sununu, the son of former New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu.
The Race: Like Charlie Crist's, this one has a few chapters and recurring players, so pay attention.  Essentially, in 2002, Shaheen decided not to run for a fourth term as governor but instead pursue a Senate run for the seat then held by Bob Smith, who had briefly switched parties to run as an independent for president before cancelling that bid for POTUS all-together and rejoined the GOP (Bob Smith is weird and deserves his own article-suffice it to say, he wasn't well-liked by anyone at the time).  Smith ran for reelection, but got bested by Sununu in the primary.  Shaheen certainly would have beaten Smith, but post-9/11 Republicans were doing surprisingly well in a midterm, and she was vulnerable for letting a sales tax go on the ballot in tax-averse New Hampshire (everyone hates their taxes, New Hampshire loathes them).  But it's impossible to know exactly what would've happened here were it not for the phone-jamming scandal that took place there (long story short-Shaheen's campaign's GOTV effort was jammed for a little under an hour on election day because Republican operatives jammed the phones, and were later convicted of this crime).  Considering her age and her resume at the time, had that not happened (and assuming that was enough to turn Shaheen's 20k-vote loss margin into a victory), Shaheen easily could have been a presidential prospect in 2004 or 2008, perhaps graduating to become the first woman president.  She'd at least get the last laugh over Sununu-six years later she'd beat him in a rematch, and is still in office.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)

7. Thomas Carper

Election Cycle: 2000 (D+4)
The Governor: Thomas Carper, a low-key Delaware politician who served for a decade as congressman for Delaware before becoming governor.
The Challenger: Bill Roth, a five-term Republican senator most famous for being the namesake for the Roth IRA, which was a result of legislation he crafted.
The Race: From 1985 to 2001, Delaware was essentially run by four men.  Roth & Joe Biden were in the Senate, with Mike Castle (R) and Carper swapping jobs in 1992, Carper heading to governor and Castle to the House.  Most assumed that Roth, in ill health, would retire, but he refused (had he not, Castle would have run and set up a much harder opportunity for Carper, as both were popular), but his age showed on the campaign.  Roth was never a natural politician, and pitted agains the formidable (and much younger) Carper, he was no match.  Combined with an impressive showing by Al Gore in Delaware, Carper easily dispatched Roth, and has held the seat ever since, and weirdly will be 79 at the end of his current term, the same age Roth was when he left the Senate.  Roth died two years later, and Castle would never realize his dream of serving in the Senate, running in 2010 but losing in a staggering primary defeat to Christine O'Donnell (a story for a different day).

Gov. Mel Carnahan (D-MO)

8. Mel Carnahan

Election Cycle: 2000 (D+4)
The Governor: Gov. Mel Carnahan had served in that role for eight years when he decided to run for the US Senate in Missouri.  In a similar case to Bullock & Hassan, it was widely-assumed he was the only person who could possibly take the seat for the Democrats.
The Challenger: Sen. John Ashcroft, a first-term senator who had won victory for his seat in the 1994 Republican Revolution.  Ashcroft was also a former governor, and was Carnahan's predecessor.
The Race: It's striking to me that some of these contests are among the more noted Senate contests of the past 25 years.  None of them, though, approach the 2000 race in Missouri.  The race was hard-fought, and pretty bitter.  Carnahan, a vigorous campaigner, ran all over the state in hopes of taking out Ashcroft, and this was still an era where Missouri was considered a swing state on a federal level, not the red state it is today, so it was anyone's game.  However, on October 16, 2000, Carnahan died in a plane crash the night before the presidential debates would take place in St. Louis.  It was illegal for the campaign to replace Carnahan on the ballot (it was too close to the election), and from a legal perspective it was questionable whether a dead man could be elected to the Senate , the Democratic Party and Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson (now the governor) stated that their candidate was Carnahan's wife Jean.  Ashcroft returned to the campaign, but was in the position of having to run against the widow of a well-liked governor, and Mel Carnahan became the first person to ever be elected posthumously to the US Senate.  Sen. Jean Carnahan would run in 2002 for the Senate, and nearly won a full-term (she lost by just 22,000 votes, a pittance in Missouri at the time); one of the things that might have hurt her was that she voted against Ashcroft when George W. Bush nominated him to be the Attorney General.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH)

9. George Voinovich

Election Cycle: 1998 (No Change)
The Governor: Voinovich was an extremely tenured Ohio politician even before he became governor (Mayor of Cleveland, Lieutenant Governor, State Representative), and was well into his second term when he ran for the Senate in 1998.
The Challenger: State Rep. Mary Boyle (D), who had run for another Senate contest four years earlier but lost the Democratic Primary.
The Race: From what I can find at the time, George Voinovich had already gotten his campaign well under-way for the US Senate seat held by astronaut John Glenn before Glenn announced his retirement.  At the time, Glenn was really the only person who could conceivably beat the popular Voinovich (governors from the mid-90's, because of the robust economy, tended to be extremely popular).  Boyle was the first (and to date, only) woman nominated by a major party in Ohio, but she was no match for Voinovich, losing to him by 12-points.  Voinovich would go on to win more votes than any other Republican in Ohio history in 2004 before eventually retiring in 2010, and passing away in 2016.

Gov. Bill Weld (R-MA)

10. Bill Weld

Election Cycle: 1996 (R+2)
The Governor: Bill Weld, one of the weirdly large number of Republican governors of Massachusetts in the past thirty years despite it being one of the bluest states in the Union.
The Challenger: John Kerry, a Democratic Senator who was first elected in 1984.
The Race: You might have noticed a pattern here.  With only two exceptions, pretty much every sitting governor who has run has won their election (and the two that didn't were the bizarre Crist third party run and Shaheen's loss in New Hampshire, tinged by the phone-jamming scandal).  If Steve Daines is looking for a silver lining, though, it happened in 1996, when two very popular governors couldn't overcome their state's partisan leans to make it to the Senate.  One of those was Bill Weld, who had won his election in 1994 with 70% of the vote (unheard for a Massachusetts Republican), and watched as Sen. Ted Kennedy had his worst showing ever in the 1994 Senate election (weirdly, against future Massachusetts Governor and future Utah Senator Mitt Romney).  Weld & Kerry ran one of the most gentlemanly, competitive campaigns in modern history; both clearly respected each other despite their differences, and even got a beer together after the campaign was over.  However, Kerry was able to underline on the campaign trail that a vote for Weld wasn't a vote for Weld, but one for Newt Gingrich & Bob Dole, both unpopular in a state that Bill Clinton won by 62% in 1996.  Kerry won by 7-points, and Weld would soon earn a huge defeat at the hands of the men who were nearly his colleagues.  In 1997, Weld was nominated by Clinton to become Ambassador to Mexico, but Sen. Jesse Helms, head of the Foreign Relations committee, refused to hold a hearing.  Weld resigned his governorship to focus on the nomination, but to no avail-Trent Lott wouldn't hold a vote, Helms wouldn't have a hearing, and Weld had to rescind his nomination.  Weld would go on to have a bizarre future career, and I hope at some point we explore that in a different article, but we'll keep it there for now.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)

11. Ben Nelson

Election Cycle: 1996 (R+2)
The Governor: Ben Nelson was a Democratic Party operative prior to winning a tight race for governor in 1990 over incumbent Kay Orr.  He was so popular that despite the Republican Revolution in 1994, he won the election with 74% of the vote in a state that George HW Bush had won two years earlier.
The Challenger: Businessman and Vietnam War Veteran Chuck Hagel, a Republican with an independent streak.
The Race: For a long time it was considered something of a curse to run for the US Senate when you were a sitting governor (I remember when I first started following politics, this was a superstition).  That almost assuredly stems from this election.  Almost everyone assumed at the time that Nelson would win the seat of retiring Sen. J. James Exon (like so many Nebraska senators, a former governor himself).  Hagel was considered something of a novice against the popular Nelson-he'd scored an upset against Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg in the primary, but wasn't a particularly important politician, certainly not compared to Nelson.  But Hagel was able to run on fiscal responsibility, and effectively used Nelson's promise to fulfill his full term (which he'd vowed in 1994) against him, and crushed Nelson by a 15-point margin (it helped that Bob Dole was also winning the state).  Nelson would, however, get his wish of serving in the Senate-in 2000 he was able to win a Senate seat in 2000 against Stenberg (another election where he underperformed expectations considering his still-high popularity & massive campaign coffers, but at least he won), and would become one of the most conservative members of his caucus during his twelve years in the Senate.  Hagel would weirdly serve in the Obama administration, despite once depriving the Democrats of one of their seats, as Secretary of Defense.