Gubernatorial Races in November
July 12th, 2008
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How many State Houses will change hands?
In this, the centennial year of the non-partisan National Governors’ Association, the Democrats currently occupy 28 of the 50 State Houses in the US, and will be hoping to extend this tally in November. These races, which arguably have a greater impact on voters’ lives than Congressional contests, are frequently overshadowed by elections for the US Senate, so I wanted to give an overview of each of November’s Gubernatorial battles. I have excluded American Samoa (the Governorship so coveted by Hunter S. Thompson) and Puerto Rico from this list, partly because they are unlikely to be covered by any betting markets which I hope will become available in due course, and partly because Puerto Rico has had a pretty good airing over the last couple of weeks on pb.com.
WASHINGTON - Democratic incumbant Christine Gregoire won by only 129 votes out of over 2.8m four years ago, with 3rd place Libertarians getting over 60k. She could sow this one up, with a good Democratic tide, but her approval ratings are not nearly safe enough, and this re-match could make former State Senator Dino Rossi the first GOP Governor in Washington State since 1980. Olympia will see, I think, probably the closest Gubernatorial contest in November.
MONTANA - Arguably America’s most-popular Governor, Brian Schweitzer was alone in opposing biometric drivers’ licenses and state ID cards when proposed by the Department of Homeland Security. When the federal government’s REAL ID programme threatened not to accept Montanan ID at a federal level, he won the initial stand-off with Secretary Michael Chertoff. A fluent Arabic-speaker thanks to his time working as an irrigation advisor in Saudi Arabia, he is rare in that he is an NRA-sponsored Democrat. Unless Schweitzer is invited to take the VP slot on Obama’s ticket, there is very little chance of the Democrats losing the State House in Helena to GOP State Senator Roy Brown.
NORTH DAKOTA - Having won over 70% of the vote in 2004, and running for his third term, it is unthinkable that anything other than a major scandal would allow State Senator Tim Mathern to unseat Republican incumbant John Hoeven from his office in Bismarck. He is the longest-serving Governor currently in office, having taken office 5 days before Rick Perry in Texas.
VERMONT - Although Vermont has a history of voting heavily Democratic in Presidential elections, its massive proportion of Independents seem keen to give Jim Douglas his fourth two-year term in Montpelier. However, Obama’s massive popularity in the state must be of some concern to any Republican incumbant with less than 60% of the vote last time around. AS well as Democratic Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, Gaye Symington, many Democrats are supporting the Vermont Progressive Party’s Anthony Pollina, running for the party founded by Democrat-caucusing Independent US Senator Bernie Sanders.
NEW HAMPSHIRE - John Lynch is one of the safest Democratic Governors in the Union, and extremely unlikely to be defeated running for his third term. Removal men in Concord won’t be approaching the State House any time soon, although the GOP have chosen a popular contender in State Senator Joe Kenney to face him.
MISSOURI - Congressional Quarterly has this down as the most difficult Gubernatorial race to call - the incumbant Republican Governor Matt Blunt has only served one term, winning a narrow victory over (now US Senator) Claire McCaskill in 2004, but has announced his intention to retire. Although one of the youngest Governors in the US (replaced by Bobby Jindal in Louisiana) he was trailing the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jay Nixon, heavily in late 2007. State Treasurer Sarah Steelman and Congressman Kenny Hulshof (MO-09) are competing for the GOP nomination. Missouri is likely to be a key Presidential swing-state in 2008, so the statewide polling for the Gubernatorial race to succeed Blunt in Jefferson City will add useful clarity to the political leanings of the ‘Show-Me State’.
INDIANA - With uninspiring aproval ratings, and the nickname ‘My Man Mitch’ from the most unpopular President in US history, Republican incumbant Mitch Daniels is facing a stern challenge from former Congresswoman Jill Long Thompson, after she won a very close Democratic primary contest. She is aiming to become Indiana’s fiftieth Governor, and the first woman to take the State House in Indianapolis. Indiana is a swing state this year, with Obama from neighbouring Illinois, and Senator Evan Bayh reputedly on his shortlist for VP, so expect this to be one of the best Gubernatorial races of the Fall.
UTAH - Utah is currenty showing a 30% lead for John McCain over Barack Obama. This is not Democrat country, and the perfectly-named Jon Huntsman is unlikely to be concerned about losing his first re-election bid to the office in Salt Lake City, against Bob Springmeyer.
WEST VIRGINIA - This Appalachian state is expected to be quite difficult for Obama to win, but other Democrats seem to have little problem. Joe Manchin’s first Gubernatorial election saw him join US Senators Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller in securing over 63% of the vote. Re-election against former GOP State Senator Russ Weeks should not challenge him - his job in Charleston is safe.
DELAWARE - America’s oldest Governor, 73-year-old Democrat incumbant Ruth Ann Miller, is term-limited so (along with North Carolina and Missouri) this is one of only three open Governorships in the US. Senator Joe Biden is running for his seventh term this November, meaning the Democrat vote is expected to turn out in force. The State House, based in Dover, is a short drive from the airfoce base where the bodies of US casualties of war are returned - don’t expect John McCain to perform too well here in November. This race is expected to be fought mainly between Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Carney and former State Superior Court Judge (and GOP candidate in 2004) William Swain Lee.
NORTH CAROLINA - Another term-limited incumbent, Governor Michael Easley, being forced to retire means that the Democrats risk losing the State House in Raleigh - Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue is running against the Republican Mayor of Charlotte, Patrick McCrory, though her bid to be the State’s first female Governor is currently seeing her trail slightly in polls favourable to the man who has made Charlotte the USA’s biggest banking centre other than New York (overtaking Chicago).
If pressed for a prediction, I would expect Indiana and Missouri to move from the GOP to the Democrats, but North Carolina to switch into the Republican column. Washington is likely to be a very close re-run of 2004, and I do not think Democrat Governor Christine Gregoire can afford to be complacent. She should hold on based on the advantage of incumbency, but I think this race is too close to call. Democrats gain one, or no-change are the most likely outcomes, with the slim chance that they see a net result of plus-2. Any other final score would be a real surprise.
Morus
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On Colorado:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/316nfdzw.asp?pg=1
Why is Missouri called ‘the Show-Me State’?
2.
Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor?
Mike, there will Be Glasow East poll in the Telegraph tomorrow. Gordo is also having a row with a cabinet colleague.. (was it ever thus????
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/go/category/view/Three%20Line%20Whip
Tory Troll reporting yougov poll on Boris due.
The results come in advance of the first opinion poll on his performance so far which was carried out this week by Yougov. The results are expected later this weekend or early next week.
2 - http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/
On topic, that’s a terrific article, Morus. How you even keep up with so many different races, never mind express a view on them, is quite beyond me.
2 - A bit fuller an explanation is given here:
http://www.trivia-library.com/b/origins-of-sayings-im-from-missouri-youve-got-to-show-me.htm
Socrates, what were the whiner comments?
Good article Morus, I’ve often thought that if a party was truly localist they might consider instating directly elected British governors, perhaps based on the counties of England and the nations of Wales, NI and Scotland.
O/T. Did anyone else listen to PM tonight? The story that the gov is bringing legislation to store all texts, emails, web browsing, phone calls and a record of individual’s movements by mobile phone locating, on a central database? Not just users/recipients but also content?
How very jolly of them.
They can do most of that already of course, though they have to apply to the service provider (who can query - and appeal against - anything they feel is inappropriate). According to the beeb report, from now on it’ll be the police overseeing the police.
I’m sure you’ll all feel very safe and secure with that.
All together now, join in song:
“Every breath that you take …. I’ll be watching you”
BBC SCotland showing a huge turnout of supporters for the SNP today including such household names as Winnie Ewing and Alex Salmond. Appropriately they held a rally in a second hand car sales location for their rally. Going big on the road tax issue LibDems had Willie Rennie who took the Dunfermline by-election. I notice every time the BBC shows the LibDem campaigners they seem to include on the shots George Lyon the former LibDem MSP who lost Argyll to the SNP last year.
As today started the Glasgow Fair I suspect most voters have now gone on holiday for 2 weeks. Will be interesting to hear what the canvassers report on numbers of unanswered doors
6-8 Thanks! And to Morus for the article!
ICM Poll tonight on Glasgow East
As MMF reported at post 4 there is to be an ICM poll of Glasgow East in the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow. With a bit of luck we should know the numbers by 10pm.
I’ve been staying out of the by election betting pending hard information. My view is that if ICM has the SNP within 5% then Labour will probably lose. Such a projected outcome would put the squeeze on the Tories and LDs and that margin would be made up quickly. There are also technical polling aspects from ICM’s approach which in C&N inflated the Labour position.
Thanks for all your kind words
10 - This article by Dizzy (under his real name in the Times) is the best demolition of this proposal I have read to date
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3979928.ece
14. Well, yes. Nobody expects this lot to make it actually work - or not yet awhile, anyway.
Same goes for the ID database - it’ll be an almighty cock-up costing billions.
But eventually it will be possible and if this lot have their way it’ll already be on the statute books.
And it sets a precedent - anything you communicate to anyone at anytime, any web-page you access, the government has a right to know - and without informing you or getting approval from the courts.
I don’t like it.
13. Can’t duisagree with that. Labour’s current favourites position is well justified but anything suggesting a severe poll wobble could well snowball.
14 On this total surveillance system, I want to hear that when elected, Cameron will turn it off. Day One. And that there won’t be a penny of compensation for further work, for any company mug enough to have entered contracts to provide it.
This is not a Britain we want to live in.
On a cricket tangent - in a classic moment, the last South African wicket has fallen - from Pietersen’s bowling …
14. I wonder how many pages of swearing the sub editor had to take out of Dizzy’s initial submission. Dizzy does enjoy his profanities on his blog!!!
5 - Far too early to poll someone who’s just taken over, you won’t get a considered response until at least six months, probably a year.
17 - I was told by a source that a message along those lines has already been communicated (officially or not, I do not know) with respect to the ID cards database to all the companies who were invited to tender.
Personally, I would not tender for this sort of work from a likely-outgoing government without including the mother of all penalty clauses.
21 And I hope the new Government would strike down such a “mother of all penalty clauses”. Claim sovereign immunity if they have to. Just tell them to bugger off!
22. Yes and damage future work for government contracts.
Makes sense….
22 Why so? The process of tendering for major government projects is so long, with so many stages of (ineffectual) audit, that companies spend hundreds of thousands just applying for these projects at the Government’s request, and then millions in the mobilisation, and that’s before any asset delivery, and the penalty clauses for cancellation that their sub-contractors and suppliers impose, which can’t just be magicked away.
Those penalty clauses are all that stops governments causing havoc by launching every initiative under the sun, and then abandoning most of them at will, causing massive unrecoverable costs for companies.
I don’t want the scheme to happen, but if it did, then companies have a fiduciary duty to bid because to not bid for that potential revenue would be against shareholders’ best-interests. Given that no governmental IT can happen without the bigger players, then government needs them to bid too. The only constraint on the system is a penalty clause.
23,24 Arguably one of the biggest failures of Govt in recent years has been in the negotaition of massive public contracts. We basically have been locked into billions and billions of expenditure for systems which have failed to deliver - but have been unable to walk away because the penalties would be billions more. The wholesystem of contracting needs to be far more severe. The public purse is not to be deemed something which is always open, however poor the delivery.
Who is bidding for the contract? Is it the usual mix of Ernst and Young, Deloittes, Crapita, SH IT Net, EDS and Liberata.
25 I wouldn’t disagree, but the fault has been largely on the side of the government.
The Civil Service lacks the competancies and the culture to deliver large IT projects, and political interference damages the roll-out of many schemes. Combine that with poor choice of partners, and secrecy around the post mortui of failed projects, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Connecting for Health is a case in point. The government paid for the design and build of a system involving completely wrong-headed specifications - the centralised Spine being the worst. They insisted that it should cover the whole NHS, but then gave autonomy so that PCTs would have to take the burden, which meant they all opted to delay for unforeseen budgeting costs. This prevented roll-out, which meant many suppliers were not paid, which caused one to go into administration (with all the problems of valuing protype software, and getting it licensed from the state of administration) and others just to walk away and take the hit rather than keep their resources locked into a government programme.
I like Obama’s plan to have a chief Technology Officer in his administration. We need a Dept for Governmental IT, with a full Secretary of State, and a department of experts, not transfers from the Civil Service. No new money, just recharges to other departments, but it would take responsibility for all IT and IT projects, irrespective of Department.
Thats poor negotiation on the part of civil servants and having been involved in bidding for government contracts I can see exactly why they blow money beyond the cost that was tendered for.
To boot. I can point you to a major UK company in the technology industry that everytime it could lose a bid in Northern Ireland raises the spectre of job losses.
Latest Gallup Tracker :
McCain 43% .. Obama 47%
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108763/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Maintains-Advantage.aspx
26 - I don’t know, but the usual suspects would be IBM, Accenture, Fujitsu, BT, CapGemini, Capita, Atos and maybe the consultancy arms of the Big Four Accountacy Firms - KPMG, PwC, E&Y, Deloitte.
I’d be interested to know if the Indian Powerplay Consultancies were applying as well - Tata Consulting for instance. I don’t know if they’ve ever done UK Public Sector projects - that would be a major breakthrough for those companies.
27. Not sure if it’s a good idea for governments to be IT competent. Sounds bloody dangerous to me.
Mind you, they regularly ignore the scientific experts they already have and the paperworkers side of the Civil Service hate anybody who can actually do anything technical, so that dept of yours would be two men and a dog based in Grimsby if they had their way.
Swift had the right idea - any government leech who starts spouting so-called bright ideas get a drubbing from a little man with an inflated bladder on a stick.
Sad news: Tony Snow, former White House Press Secretary has succumbed to colon cancer. He passed away today, aged just 53. He leaves a wife and three children.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25649744
Ref. IT and competence. No, an IT dept. would be a bad thing. Competent customers would be an extremely good thing. The NAO (I think) did an investigation into how many projects actually had Senior Responsible Owners (i.e. someone actually in charge of the thing); very few, and most of them did not have any obvious competence (from memory). Sir Humphrey did Greats at Oxford, and is at a grade where knowing what you are talking about is actively discouraged, so he gets in a man from McKinsey (as one would a plumber or gardener). There seemed to be a spell under Blair where IT competence allowed a dept to grow i.e. create some competition between depts. Take the overspend out of the civil service pension fund.
On a day when 6 are stabbed to death and one is killed by shooting, what is Labour’s priority for the police?
Police forced to “Celebrate” Gypsies
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034445/Police-fury-bosses-tell-celebrate-gipsies.html
While Labour disappear down the polls, it seems they are pulling out the stops. Ok, so Labour brought immigrants in to vote but the process takes time before they can be brought ‘online’. So, fast track vote systems are required.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034503/Foreign-volunteers-fast-tracked-British-passport.html
33 - Sorry, just to clarify, I mean an IT dept who were qualified in IT project management, and would then procure/outsource/oversee/sponsor/lead on Governmental IT.
There’s no way government could ever run any of its programmes in-house - I just meant that responsibility for project management, budget should be taken away from DoH, MoD, DBERR etc, because those departments do not have the right people to run major IT infrastructure.
Would you still disagree with that? If so, why?
34 - I would take that piece more seriously if
(a) it wasn’t in the Daily Mail (’Asteroid headed towards earth “probably the fault of asylum seeking paedophiles”!!!!’, and
(b) if the author hadn’t used Roma and Romanian interchangeably throughout.
That said, I’m not entirely sure that Traveller history month should be a priority when four people were stabbed to death yesterday, and I am slightly concerned that there is an entire Directorate of Diversity and Citizen Focus, whose boss is paid more than an MP. I can’t help but thinking of HR-offshoot departments in terms of how many stab-proof vests they would buy at the moment…
I’m not sure the news was delivered for you.
Therer are plenty of other newspapers where censorship would meet your approval.
9. Phil Gramm, a very close aide to McCain, said a few days ago:
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline… You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession…
“…I said we are in a mental recession. We keep getting the steady drumbeat of bad news … it’s become a mental recession,”
Obama tore into it quite effectively:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU0LMQZbLIA
Although McCain has said similar stuff before, about the recession being “largely psychological”, but the campaign has managed to disown Gramm and say he wasn’t speaking for McCain. Seems to have worked so it shouldn’t be a long lasting hit, but I imagine we’ll see some small poll movement.
Great article again Morus. One thing you didn’t point out is that if Bayh is picked as VP (I suspect its less likely since the FISA vote), the Indiana Governor race could be a proxy for Bayh’s replacement, as he’ll be picked by the Governor elect.
37 - WTF? Censorship? I am glad they reported it, I just like journalists to not make stupid category-errors.
Intellectual snob I am. Authoritarian I am not.
39 Cheers Socrates - I knew I’d missed something, although I expect Mitch to lose to Jill Long Thompson, so reckon Indiana’s junior Senator will be a Democrat whatever happens! Good spot!!
Labour well ahead in Glasgow - ICM
Telegraph reporting - “The ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph puts the party on 47 per cent of the vote with its nearest challenger, the Scottish National Party (SNP), on 33 per cent.
Liberal Democrats are on nine per cent and the Conservatives on seven per cent.”
With the abysmal record of tax, spend and control that John Lynch and his moonbat minions have, don’t be so sure he’s ’safe’.
We have a stellar candidate opposing him who gets high marks, A+ in some cases, from every group that rates, including non partisan.
This current governor cannot give a straight answer to a question and prefers to run and hide when challenged.
Even Democrats have stopped their honeymoon with him.
Lynch is one of the least safe governors in the country.
10. Have I missed something, or isn’t this the new policy directive from the EU (which no-one cares about)?
New thread on ICM Glasgow poll
10. That’s outrageous. They can actually track everything we’re interested in. I’ve looked at the BNP website a few times - will I have a mark against my name as a possible fascist?
If Nick Palmer’s about, would he think this is reasonable?
I get the impression (and it may not be accurate) that gov depts rarely buy off-the-shelf systems, something in which the bugs have already been sorted. They go for custom-made jobs instead (which to my cynical mind allows the vendor to use public money for development costs that would otherwise come out of the company R&D fund). Worse, because they have little or no technical expertise, the gov. bods have unrealistic expectations of what the current state of the art can do, resulting in weird and wonderful contract specs that tend to get changed mid-program as somebody thinks of something else they’d like this all-singing all-dancing wonder to do. At extra cost.
It’ll never work as envisaged, it’ll never be delivered on time. They’ve been sold vapour-ware and the only response they get when they start to fret is “RSN,” which isn’t helpful when on the carpet in front of the Finance Committee.
IT knowledgeable types in procurement etc is a good idea, but they’ll never have autonomy, they’ll be advisors, somebody political will sign the contracts - no doubt after being wined, dined and brain-washed by senior management from the vendors. Tight contracts with severe penalty clauses would be a big help, but that’s something government purchasers aren’t renowned for. Could be they’re afraid that if enforced they may have to admit that this wonderful flagship project has gone tits-up, with major embarrassments all round. There are political repercussions - and nobody wants to carry the can. So they’re allowed to drag on - hopefully until everybody has forgotten about them.
I can’t see a satisfactory way round it.
Mike, are those figures in Glasgow East “certainty to vote” ???