12 sitting governors at risk of losing in November

Read the Full Transcript

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And now to politics.

  So much of the attention during these midterm elections has been focused on which party will control the U.S. Senate. But there's a story developing around the governors. Of the 36 gubernatorial races across the country, 12 sitting governors are at risk of losing. If that were to happen, it would be the most in half-a-century.

  Here to fill us in is the "NewsHour"'s political editor, Domenico Montanaro.

  So, Domenico, a half-a-century. You're saying it's unusual to have this many seats at risk.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  It's very unusual.

  I mean, just like House members and members of the Senate, governors really usually have very high incumbency reelection rates. When you look over the past 20 years, there's been 88 percent of governors who have run for reelection who are reelected. You can — in fact, you can see three times in the past 20 — 20 years or so, you have had 100 percent reelection rate.

  So it's very unusual what's happening now, that it could be as low as 57 percent if all 12 of those governors lose. I mean, this hasn't happened since 1962, where you had 11 governors lose back then. Now, even if half of those governors were to win, and you lose, wind up with six sitting governors, that's the worst that we have had in a quarter-century. 1990 was the last time as many as six have lost.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  So, of course, this raises the question, why? Why is this happening this year? And you have divided the governors up into different groups, starting with the Tea Party Republicans.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  That's right.

  And really there are three big reasons overarching for this. We're talking ideology, economics and numbers. You mentioned the Tea Party Republican governors who have run. You know, there's the old axiom in political reporting that all politics is local, but it's turning out that a lot of these folks, all politics is turning out to be national, because you have people like Sam Brownback in Kansas, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, Paul LePage in Maine who are swept in, in 2010 during that Tea Party wave, who really rode that wave to victory, and this time around they're experiencing some backlash for seeming to govern more ideologically.

  Usually, a governor's seat is a place where they're seen as doers, people who are managers, can get stuff done. And that's why it's actually been a very good launching pad to the presidency, as opposed to senators.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And some of these races, we have seen, have gotten very nasty. We were talking about Florida earlier.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  Yes, no question about it. The Florida governor's race, you have seen a high level of nastiness.

  But there's other governors, Republicans who are in trouble. And when we talk about economics, three of the governors who are in jeopardy here, you can see Nathan Deal, Rick Snyder, and Sean Parnell in Alaska, they each have some of their own issues, Deal dealings with ethics, Snyder with being in a blue state generally, and Sean Parnell has this weird independent thing that's happening.

  But all three of those states have unemployment rates that are higher than the national average, and six of these 11 governors are actually dealing with economies that are doing worse than the country at large.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And now, of course, there are some Democrats who are in trouble as well.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  Absolutely.

  We have seen four of those Democrats. In fact, one of the Democrats — one of the governors is a Democrat who has already lost, and that's Neil Abercrombie, as you can see on your screen, John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Dan Malloy in Connecticut, and Pat Quinn in Illinois, all also at risk of losing. And this is really an unprecedented thing to see this many governors in one place.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  One oft points we were talking about earlier today, Domenico, is how many governors are running for reelection this year, an unusually large number. Surprising when the voters are so sour about what's going on in government that so many of them want to keep their jobs.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  Well, that's another part of this.

  You saw some of the — there were 24 of these governors who came into office in 2010; 28 overall are running for reelection. That's more than we have seen since at least 1960. So when you have that many people running, of course there are going to be more targets.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  All right, Domenico Montanaro, we thank you. We're watching it.

• DOMENICO MONTANARO:

  Thank you.