State races offer hints of 2016
Governors meet, chart way forward
WASHINGTON — In Washington, the focus right now is on the Senate: Who will control it after the November midterm elections? But the National Governors Association winter meeting this weekend is a reminder that the outcome of this year’s gubernatorial elections will be equally important in shaping the political future.
Washington remains gridlocked by divided government. President Barack Obama, Democrats and Republicans have all but given up on anything more than modest cooperation on legislative issues and are now shaping their strategies to the midterm elections. That means the states continue to loom larger on the policy front— and rarely have the states charted such ideologically divergent paths on policies.
The stakes for both parties in this year’s elections are particularly high. Republicans now control 29 governor’s offices around the country and say they have a story to tell— a narrative that highlights the effects of small- government governance. Republicans argue that their conservative policies have helped their state economies rebound more rapidly than states under Democratic control. They believe that can serve as a national model and hope to make it a foundation of a 2016 presidential campaign.
“If anything, what I would suspect is that many on the other side of the aisle are starting to recognize that while the confi dence the American people have in our national government is, if not an all- time low, it’s lower than I can ever remember, that the confidence in state governments is in many states, especially those led by Republican governors, just the opposite,” said Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mike Pence.
“The other side’s going to have a hard time arguing with success.”
Democrats want to undercut the GOP by arguing that the economic records of Republican governors are less rosy than advertised. Some of the governors have produced significantly more jobs; others, however, are lagging behind their pledges. Democrats will hammer those who have not kept pace.
Beyond that, Democrats argue, many Republican governors who promised a laser focus on jobs and the economy got sidetracked by a conservative social issue agenda that has been both divisive and harmful to many citizens.
They will try, at least obliquely, to tarnish some of the GOP incumbents by suggesting that in policy, if not exactly in style, they are following the priorities of the party’s most conservative wing, on issues such as the right to work, abortion and women’s rights.