San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Governors fight to take spotlight in crowded race
Being a governor isn’t what it used to be, at least not in presidential politics.
Three Western executives are learning that the hard way in a crowded Democratic scramble dominated by former Vice President Joe Biden and a gaggle of nationally known senators.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a late entry into the field of two dozen, failed to qualify for Democrats’ first debates later this month. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper will be among the 20 candidates spread across two debate nights in Miami, but both men linger at 1 percent in most national and early state polls, looking up at a leaderboard showing Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts trying to catch Biden.
“When you think of a governor, you think of a competent manager, and voters don’t want a competent manager,” said Bill Richardson, a former Democratic governor of New Mexico who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008. “They want excitement and inspiration and electability.”
Indeed, Biden’s pitch leans on the notion that he’s the best shot to defeat President Trump. Sanders, a democratic socialist, represents a sweeping ideological shift, as does the unabashedly liberal Warren. She and Harris also would be historic, with either being the first woman to win the presidency.
Biden’s next closest competitors are a pair of young politicians arguing for generational change: former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, 47, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 37, of South Bend, Ind. Neither has held statewide office, but each outpaces Bullock, Hickenlooper and Inslee in fundraising and polling.
That group’s jockeying so far has swallowed the governors’ efforts: Inslee’s emphasis on climate change and his liberal record in Washington; Bullock’s case as a Democrat who can win over more conservative areas; and Hickenlooper’s successful terms in a battleground state.
From Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in 1977 until George W. Bush left office in 2009, four out of five presidents were former governors: Carter in Georgia, Ronald Reagan in California, Bill Clinton in Arkansas and Bush in Texas. The lone exception was Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who ascended from the vice president’s office under Reagan.
But the last two winners have rewritten the rules of presidential resumes. Former President Barack Obama was the junior senator from Illinois when he was elected in 2008. Trump hadn’t held public office at all.
Nicholas Riccardi and Bill Barrow are Associated Press writers.