We are finishing off our trio of "State Of..." articles with our first look this electoral season at the governor's races (click here for the Senate and here for the House). When I decided to tackle these articles over June, I had an inkling that I might, at some point, realize that Roe would be overturned, but I had no idea the kind of judicial coup the Supreme Court was laying in the sand, six politicians using their lifetime seats to issue an undemocratic hold on the American populace. As a result, there is far more unrest particularly in the contests for governor than anywhere else. It is currently not clear to me the impact that overturning Roe, specifically, will have on races for this fall, but given the makeup of some of these contests, it seems inevitable that it will help Democrats if it does impact contests. My gut says at this point that the biggest change will be Biden states being far less willing (though not unwilling completely, so Democrats can't be complacent) to take a risk on a Republican. A good reason why is looking at Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who ran as a moderate populist, has now taken an extremely hard-right stance against abortion access in a state that has gone blue every presidential election since 2008. It would behoove Democrats to find a way to nationalize people like Youngkin saying "you can't trust the Republicans," but so far Democratic messaging on abortion rights has been mixed, so we will see if they can pull off running a campaign on a social issue. I suspect when/if I revisit this list (I assume we'll do at least one more ranking before my final predictions, likely in September), there may be more change than you'd normally expect from July to the fall. As a reminder, this is ranked most likely to switch partisan control, not necessarily by which incumbents might lose their primaries.
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| State House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-OR) |
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| Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) |
I nearly put Oregon on this list instead, but recent polling has me thinking that New Mexico is the riskier of the two options. In the Land of Enchantment, TV weatherman Mark Ronchetti is polling well against Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. There has been a big question mark over the past three years of where Democrats stand with Latino voters. This becomes particularly crucial in New Mexico, where not only are Latino voters a dominant, deciding factor in statewide elections, but in particular it's impossible for Democrats to win without winning a vast majority of Latino voters. Lujan Grisham has to be favored, and will likely run on abortion rights (which are popular in the state) with Roe overturned, but for now I think she's only a slight favorite, and this is a race (in a wave) that Democrats should plan with caution.
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| Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) |
The other race that feels in the same vein as New Mexico (trust, but verify) is in Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz seems like he'll face State Sen. Scott Jensen, who would normally be too conservative for Gopher State voters, particularly in a state where the Democratic base is less focused on the Iron Range and more on the more progressive Twin Cities suburbs. Walz has had a rocky tenure as governor, having to deal with both the George Floyd protests, which both sides of the political spectrum saw very differently (some viewed it as large-scale property damage to Minneapolis, others saw it as an inflection point in dealing with the racist history of the Minneapolis Police Department), and the Democrats have held the governor's mansion for 12 years (unusual for the usually swingy seat), but Jensen as the nominee will probably help Walz skate by if the wave isn't too high.
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| State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-PA) |
While much of the worst recruitment issues for the Republicans so far this cycle have occurred in the Senate races, that spills over into the Pennsylvania governor's race, both because the GOP has to deal with Mehmet Oz's unusually low approval ratings (and John Fetterman's unusually high ones) and because the Republicans nominated State Sen. Doug Mastriano. Mastriano was in attendance at the January 6th attacks on the Capitol (though, at least to date, it's not clear that he actually was in the Capitol), and was in constant communication with Donald Trump leading up to the certification of the electoral college. As a result, Mastriano has basically said that if he were elected, he would not certify the electors for the Democratic nominee in 2024, even if they were to win the White House. I am not as pessimistic as some Democrats when it comes to elector schemes in 2024 with the Supreme Court (though I am surely not worried about what this reactionary Court would do), but I do think that Attorney General Josh Shapiro's bid is amongst the most important in the country, and it's probable that his bid as painting this as a "must-win" will give him a key advantage over Mastriano, which is why this is lower-ranked than you'd expect for such a consequential swing state (one that generally changes governors' political parties every eight years).
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| Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME) |
Mastriano's candidacy means that a couple of contests that would normally be lower on this list are now a smidge higher, including Maine. Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) is running for reelection, and while she's not super popular, she isn't notably unpopular. The Republicans are definitely bringing a proven winner against her, though: controversial Gov. Paul LePage. LePage is noted for his hard-line conservative politics, issuing over 600 vetoes (more than all of the governors of Maine in the last century combined), at one point threatening to veto every bill that had a Democratic sponsor in retaliation for the state not eliminating the income tax. The two big questions here are whether or not LePage can ride the red wave in a state that, while historically Democratic, has the recipe to be more conservative (it's a very white, aging, & rural state to so consistently go for the Democrats, and gives off shades of Iowa & Ohio that should make the left very nervous as we go through the next decade), but also what impact Ranked-Choice Voting will have here. LePage, who won in 2010 and 2014 with a plurality of the vote since the Democrats likely hemorrhaged votes to strong third party bids from progressive challengers, has never faced an election where he has to get 50%, and probably the biggest ace in Mills' deck is the question of whether he can actually get 50% of Maine voters. His mirror image Donald Trump sure couldn't two years ago, and it's possible that unenthusiastic progressives end up giving it to Mills, even if it takes a second ballot to get there.
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| Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) |
Arizona is on this list while Georgia is on the honorable mentions for two reasons. First, it's an open seat, and after over a decade of Republican rule, it's possible that this newly-purple state might be willing to go blue for a few years even with Joe Biden in the White House. Accordingly Democrats nominated their best candidate in Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, seeing the opportunity. The other reason, though, is that the Republicans appear like they will nominate local TV news anchor Kari Lake as their nominee. While I think people underestimate how much voters are going to be willing to overlook election denial in Republicans (largely because it's become the de facto political position & Americans are weirdly good at adjusting to new normals), even in states that Joe Biden won, Lake is playing a dangerous game making election denial a central component of her election, going to the point of attacking any Republican who refuses to say that the 2020 election was stolen as being "disqualifying" for being on the GOP ticket. Despite Lake's protestations, the 2020 election was not stolen, and it's worth noting that Arizona went for Joe Biden in 2020, which means that in order to be successful, Lake will either need low turnout or at least some of those Biden voters to back her. That's going to be a hard sell, particularly given Hobbs is a relatively innocuous challenger (very much in the Biden mold). I'm keeping this lower than some states primarily because I'm still trying to gage just how purple Arizona is (it has gone Democratic in a few elections, but it's hard to tell if that's real or just a Trump reaction), but keep an eye out here.
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| Sheriff Joe Lombardo (R-NV) |
Republicans in Nevada recently nominated Joe Lombardo as their nominee to take on Gov. Steve Sisolak, which arguably was their best play though it's possible former Senator Dean Heller might have been a better general election candidate. Lombardo's ability to win in Clark County, the Democrats' home base surely won't be enough to carry the election there again in 2022 (a Sheriff's contest is not as high-profile as a gubernatorial one), but any dents he can make by encroaching on Democratic territory could be fatal for Sisolak's campaign. The biggest question for me is whether or not Lombardo can make it to the general without destroying most of his moderate credentials. His primary win was overwhelming but not without cracks; Washoe County (Reno) gave a surprisingly robust showing to Joey Gilbert, a conspiracy theorist, and Nevada has a weird electoral quirk where you can vote for "None of the Above"...but a lack of runoff laws means that any disaffected conservatives who don't go with Lombardo are basically gifting their vote to Sisolak (you scoff, but "None of the Above" cost Democrats a Senate seat here in 2012). Nevada is also extremely pro-choice, and while Lombardo has so far been trying to be a bit cage-y, focusing more on his own personal pro-life choice while not necessarily being as full-throated about banning abortion if elected, I doubt that's a sustainable position considering Sisolak will hammer him on it into the fall and this is not a bright blue state where Lombardo can abandon his right flank in search of moderates.
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| Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) |
From what I can tell, I'm far more bearish on Wisconsin than most people are, but I have a couple of reasons for that. For starters, Wisconsin is a state where Republicans keep gaining in the red areas (the floor has not dropped out in the vast rural areas of the state), but the Democrats have struggled to break into the Milwaukee suburbs the way that they have in neighboring Minneapolis & Chicago. Secondly, while Gov. Tony Evers won in 2018, he won by a minuscule margin against a deeply-controversial Republican in a wave Democratic election. The Republicans have a very competitive primary, with Trump-backed Tim Michels (who has stated that he may not certify a Democratic victory in 2024) facing off against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (who is also a fervent supporter of the Big Lie). In many ways, Democrats seem to not have put the same sort of fire under Michels or Kleefisch winning as they have the worry about Mastriano winning in Pennsylvania, even though all three seem to be cut from the same cloth (as is Kari Lake...there's a lot of pressure overall to deliver swing states for Democrats is what I'm saying here). The two biggest arrows in Evers' quiver appear to be incumbency (Wisconsinites famously are kind to incumbent governors) and abortion rights. Given the impenetrable nature of the Wisconsin state legislature (which is gerrymandered to the point of apartheid), and the conservative majority on the state Supreme Court, Evers & Attorney General Josh Kaul are the only line-of-defense women in the state have to maintain reproductive rights, something Evers & Kaul have made central to their reelection campaigns.
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| Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS) |
The most vulnerable Democrat on the map is the one Democrat running in a state that Biden lost in 2020. Laura Kelly is the only Democratic incumbent running in a Trump state, and as a result Kansas is the only Trump state on this list. Kansas is an increasingly attractive offer for Democrats, and while Kelly is at this point an underdog, she's not one without hope. The quickly-growing Kansas City suburbs are just getting bluer, and Kansas has a large number of college-educated voters, probably more than you'd expect from a ruby red state; if these two demographic changes continue, I suspect we'll run into a case where a federal statewide election in the next decade gets surprisingly close, and Kansas becomes more pink than red. But given the current economy & the fact that Kansas isn't notably pro-choice in the way that Nevada or New Mexico is, it will take some missteps from Attorney General Derek Schmidt to lose to Kelly in her bid for a second term...something that I so far don't see happening.
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| State Rep. Geoff Diehl (R-MA) |
You might be surprised to know that while most of this list is Democrats trying to claw back against the natural headwinds of a midterm, our top two most likely flips are actually Republican-held seats that seem likely to transfer to the Democrats. Thanks to the retirement of Gov. Charlie Baker, Democrats have their best shot at winning here since 2010. So far, the Republicans seem to be about to make a clear mistake in nominating State Rep. Geoff Diehl, a Trump-backed conservative who has come out strong against abortion rights, rather than moderate self-funder Chris Doughty, who like Baker has stated he will maintain status quo on abortion rights. Diehl would be DOA in a general election against Attorney General Maura Healey, who has the Democratic primary to herself, given that Joe Biden won the commonwealth in 2020 by over 30-points. Doughty would be more formidable (the Bay State is weirdly receptive to electing moderate Republican governors), but while his fundraising is solid, he is way behind Diehl in most primary polling. If Diehl wins this primary, this becomes the #1 state on this list as there's no way a Trump-backed, anti-choice Republican wins in Massachusetts after Roe was overturned.
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| State Comptroller Peter Franchot (D-MD) |
I put Maryland ahead of Massachusetts for a couple of reasons. First, while Maryland is roughly as blue on a federal level as Massachusetts, it's less willing to back Republicans even in governor's races, frequently only picking them during red waves (and almost never consecutively). Secondly, Maryland Democrats, unlike Massachusetts Dems, have a current governor who has shown that a Republican in charge is going to be tougher with abortion access. While abortion remains legal in Maryland, Larry Hogan's recent veto of a bill that would increase abortion training for non-physicians (such as nurse practitioners and midwives) shows the perils of having a Republican in charge with abortion such an important part of the national conversation. Additionally, State Rep. Dan Cox has led in most polls in the state, and is armed with Donald Trump's endorsement (and is anti-choice); the other leading Republican, former Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, is playing a general election game by saying she'll keep abortion laws as is. If Cox gets through, similar to Diehl, it's game over regardless of whom the Democrats nominate (right now it appears to be a race between former DNC Chair Tom Perez & State Comptroller Peter Franchot), if Schulz gets in the Democrats have a much more complicated race on their hands, though the Democratic nominee would still be favored.
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