Election Night Thoughts on the Governors

All right, with the announcement last night in Arizona, we are going to get to Part 2 of our Election Night recap (we will likely do a third later this week when the House majority is official, though I will caveat in that article that we won't know the final counts based on the California races for at least another week-side note, Gavin Newsom could do worse than to invest in some elections infrastructure in his state).  If you missed it, we did a recap of the Senate this past weekend, and we are splitting our election night articles into three recaps.  Let's dive in, shall we?

Gov-Elect Katie Hobbs (D-AZ)

1. Democrats Net Two Governor's Mansions

Democrats had an extraordinary 2022 when it came to governor's races, and I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong (and darn happy to be).  I had anticipated they would have a net loss of one seat, but instead they ended up with a net gain of two seats.  It should not be lost on us that, even though they were expected, Wes Moore (MD) and Maura Healey (MA) are big gains for the Democrats this year.  Their wins ensure trifectas for both of those states, and are historic in other ways.  Moore is the first African-American governor of Maryland (and only the sixth African-American governor in American history), and Healey is the first woman to serve as Governor of Massachusetts, a state that has been notorious for not electing Democratic women to the governorship (in 2002 & 2014, Democratic women took what looked like surefire victories and ended up losing).

But the biggest win was undoubtedly in Arizona, where Secretary of State Katie Hobbs defied pundits & the polls and won.  In retrospect, it feels like Hobbs was written off more due to her unorthodox campaign style than polls, which honestly showed the race to be pretty close (the nonpartisan ones, at least).  Hobbs was low-key, refusing to debate or engage with Kari Lake, an extremely conservative woman whose decades as a news reporter gave her a type of charisma that Hobbs simply didn't show on the campaign trail.  But Lake spent much of the campaign alienating her potential supporters, particularly Republicans who were Trump-wary but supported John McCain for decades in the state that loved him.  Lake literally told McCain Republicans to "get the hell out" while Hobbs aggressively courted them.  Lake, an election denier, is (as of this writing) the only major Republican for high office not to yet concede her race.  This has been a concerted effort this year after election denialism failed at ballot box, so I'm curious if she does.

Only one state ended up being a loss for Democrats, and that was in Nevada.  In a struggling economy and in an increasingly competitive state, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) became the only sitting governor to lose (from either party) in 2022.  He was defeated by Sheriff Joe Lombardo (R), who, though he did have Donald Trump's endorsement, also courted the establishment, and became the sole statewide bright spot for the GOP in a rough midterm.

Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI)

2. Democrats Sweep Competitive Great Lakes States

The biggest win for the Democrats feels like Arizona since it was a pickup, but honestly the real success story was the way that they dominated the Great Lakes states this year.  Democratic incumbents Gretchen Whitmer (MI) and Tim Walz (MN) won easy second terms, and certainly more consequential terms, given that their coattails won both governors their first trifectas since taking office in 2019 (despite blue leans, both states rarely see blue trifectas, so Whitmer & Walz are afforded a lot of legacy-building the next two years).  In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) coasted to the governorship against Doug Mastriano, arguably the worst candidate either party ran for major office in 2022.  And in the biggest upset of the bunch, Gov. Tony Evers (WI) got Democrats a huge win by holding the Wisconsin governorship, even as the Republicans made gains in the state legislatures and Sen. Ron Johnson (R) won reelection.  Evers win sets up a potentially seismic situation in Wisconsin in April.  The 4-3 Wisconsin Supreme Court has an open seat race where one of the Republicans is leaving office.  If the Democrats can win the seat, combined with Evers & Attorney General Josh Kaul's reelections, it is probable that they could redraw the Wisconsin state legislative districts...which would end one of the most undemocratic gerrymanders in the history of the United States (not hyperbole-Wisconsin's state legislative districts are as close to a dictatorship as one can get in America in 2022).

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)

3. Ron DeSantis Scores Big Ahead of Presidential Race

Hobbs got the most exciting win, Evers got the most consequential, but Gov. Ron DeSantis likely got the win most people are going to focus upon.  DeSantis clobbered in Florida, which officially completed its transformation from the nation's most finicky barometer into fully-fledged red state.  DeSantis was one of several governors (others include Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma) who are looking at a potential run for president in 2024, but no one has been louder about his willingness to take on Donald Trump than DeSantis.  With Donald Trump likely to announce his third bid for the White House in 2024 any day now (possibly even today), DeSantis sits as the most likely candidate to topple him according to early polling.  His victory in Florida can hardly dissuade him from pursuing that next echelon.  It's also worth noting that Rep. Charlie Crist is finally done with politics now.  The bane of Democrats' existence regardless of what side of the aisle he was on, Crist has now cost Democrats the governorship three times, in addition to a failed Senate campaign in 2010.  Good riddance, and may he never run under any banner again.

Secretary of State-Elect Cisco Aguilar (D-NV)

4. MAGA Suffers Huge Defeats

We won't be doing a separate article about down-ballot races, but it has to be said that MAGA had a horrible night, particularly when it came to election deniers.  In addition to Kari Lake in Arizona & Tim Michels in Wisconsin, Democrats won a lot of major down-ballot races against election deniers.  Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, & Michigan will all have Democratic Secretaries of State headed into 2024, and with the potential exception of Arizona (as of today, the votes are still counting with the Democrat leading slightly) they'll all have Democratic Attorneys General.  Throw in that North Carolina has Democrats in both of those positions as well (from 2020), and that Josh Shapiro is the Governor of Pennsylvania, and you see that one of the biggest issues of 2022 was, in fact, respect for democratic norms.  This was something that pundits frequently criticized Democrats for highlighting too much in the wake of a struggling economy, but it ended up resonating with voters.  Nevada & Arizona, for example, saw a clear amount of ticket-splitting where voters acknowledged their Secretaries of State compared to, say, other offices like Treasurer or Controller.  This should allow a lot more Democrats to breathe easier headed in 2024 that the winner of that election will get to the White House.

Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)

5. Democratic Stars Falter

On the reverse side for Democrats, two major stars within the party saw the end of their electoral careers last week.  Rep. Beto O'Rourke became a superstar in 2018, nearly beating Ted Cruz with the kind of grassroots campaigning that felt like a once-in-a-generation talent, but an ill-advised presidential campaign made O'Rourke stake a position too far to the left, and he ended up getting crushed by incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott.  Like O'Rourke, House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams nearly won in an upset in 2018 in Georgia, but since then her career has been a series of missteps, turning down potential runs for higher office she'd have a better shot at (US Senate, US House, DNC Chair) and instead keeping her eye straight on the governor's race in 2022 (with a mild detour into thinking she should be Vice President, even though that rubbed many the wrong way in the bizarre "pretend you don't want it" veepstakes).  Abrams lost by a large margin to Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last week.  Both of these two have two high-profile losses in their states, and while occasionally candidates come back from such things, their star power was so high during those losses that I would imagine last week was the final time they appear on a ballot.