Why Blue States Elect Red Governors

Deutsch_Web
Striped states were gained by the respective color’s party.

BY KEVIN DEUTSCH

Last Tuesday night, some people were scratching their heads. Three decidedly Democratic states—namely Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland—had elected Republican governors. Republicans gubernatorial candidates won in other fairly blue states, like Michigan and Wisconsin. And Republicans came close to winning in Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island. In January, seven states that haven’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate in at least twenty-six years (Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin) will have Republican governors.

Come January, these seven states will have had elected Republican US senators serve a combined 64 years in office since 1995, or just 22 percent of the time for all 14 US Senate seats. Thirty-eight of those years can be attributed to William Cohen, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Republican US senators have only been in office less than 17 percent of the time in Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin. New Jersey and Maryland haven’t had an elected Republican senator since 1979 and 1987, respectively. These states certainly are a dark shade of blue.

Yet they’ve had Republican governors for 44 percent of the time. If you don’t include Maryland, it’s half the time. How do these Republican governors get elected?

For one, state and national politics are two different animals, with different issues at play. Taxation is much more salient to Democratic voters on a state level than it is on a national level. This could be because states pass tax hikes and tax cuts more often than the federal government does, or because state tax hikes have a greater financial impact on voters than federal taxes. Budgetary issues also seem to be more salient to Democrats on a state level. Taxes and spending are usually winning issues for Republicans, which has frequently given them opportunities in states like New Jersey and Massachusetts. Bruce Rauner won Illinois last Tuesday after campaigning on lower taxes and spending cuts. Additionally, poor governance by a Democrat can provide an opening for Republicans. In Maryland, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown presided over his state’s disastrous rollout of Obamacare, and he lost Tuesday’s gubernatorial election to Republican Larry Hogan by nine points.

Republican gubernatorial candidates are also able to be more moderate than Republican presidential candidates, and therefore tend to be more ideologically compatible with the Democrat-dominated electorates of blue states. This is because the ultra-conservative wing of the GOP has less influence in the primary elections of blue states. In Massachusetts, Charlie Baker ran as a social liberal and fiscal conservative. When Mitt Romney ran for that job in 2002, he campaigned as pro-choice and promised to protect a woman’s right to an abortion. In Illinois, Bruce Rauner ran on fiscal issues and declared that he had “no social agenda.” In Maryland, Larry Hogan stated that his state’s gun control and abortion laws were “settled” matters. Clearly, there’s a pattern here of Republican gubernatorial candidates either taking liberal positions on social issues, or avoiding them. Again, this is something Republican presidential candidates really can’t do.

In many blue states, gubernatorial elections aren’t held the same years as presidential elections, which means there’s lower turnout, and also an older, whiter, and subsequently more Republican electorate. As it happens, all seven states that I listed above elect their governors in midterm years or off years. There are also only three blue states that hold gubernatorial elections concurrently with presidential elections: Washington, Delaware, and Vermont (VT elects their governors every two years). Washington hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1980, and Delaware hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1988.

And sometimes, third party candidates can throw a gubernatorial race in a blue state to a Republican. This seemed to be the case in Maine both times Paul LePage was elected, with Independent candidate Eliot Cutler (a former Carter administration official) attracting many Democratic voters in 2010 and (to a far lesser extent) this past Tuesday.

One interesting thing to consider is how six of the seven states I listed (Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin) are heavily suburban. Before 1990s, suburbs were much more Republican. California, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey—states with large suburban populations—voted for Republican presidential candidates in every presidential election from 1968 through 1988. What changed? Social conservatives gained more and more influence in the GOP during the late 1970s through the 1980s, and their emphasis on religious values did not resonate with the more secular suburban electorates. Additionally, some suburban areas saw an influx of Asian immigrants and their descendants around the same time. Asian voters tend to be reliable Democrats. And let’s not forget that a new generation of voters was moving into the suburbs—one that came of age during the disastrous end of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis. One that witnessed failed leadership by both Republicans and Democrats, and was more politically independent than Republican (or Democrat) as a result.

Today, many blue state suburban towns tend to break for Democrats in presidential elections, but will break for Republicans in gubernatorial elections. In New Jersey, for example, this happens often. Barack Obama won my hometown of Millburn, NJ by 18.8 points in 2008. A year later, Chris Christie won Millburn by 3.3 points. Having suburban towns doesn’t make a blue state more likely to vote for Republican governors, but it is the nature of blue state suburbanites to be open to fiscal-issue-focused Republicans.

Is it possible that the paths to victory for these Republican governors and governors-elect reveal a path to victory for presidential candidates in their states? Maybe. The Republican Party already heavily emphasizes budget matters and economic issues in presidential elections. To win these blue states, it must better engage minority voters, who turn out in lower numbers for midterm and off-year gubernatorial elections, but will turn out to vote for president. In addition, the GOP will likely need to nominate presidential candidates clearly supportive of immigration reform and some degree of amnesty, something very important to the Asian and Hispanic populations of many blue states with Republican governors. The electoral votes of states like New Jersey and Illinois have been lost to the Democrats since 1992, which was in the middle of a growing wave of Hispanic and Asian immigration.

Currently, the Democratic Party is vying to become competitive in red states like Georgia and Texas. As those states become more open to Democrats, the path to the White House will become much more difficult for Republicans. To stay alive, the Republican Party will need to play offense in blue states with red governors.

18 Comments

Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.

John Kreply
28 March 2017 at 8:55 AM

Interesting to read this after Trump upset Clinton in the 2016 Presidential race.

Trumploverreply
4 August 2017 at 4:20 PM

Yeah thank God Trump ran and won, if the Republicans started supporting amnesty of any kind, that would be the end of this country. Fuck Democrats and their RINO friends!

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