Special Feature: Governors Forecast
Sunday, January 14th, 2024
With our first Senate forecast now up, the NBS politics team is proud to kick off the initial forecast for the 21 gubernatorial races this November.
While the races here won't necessarily have the same national implications as this year's races for Congress, they have huge implications locally. Especially this year, with the American Health Care Protection Act now giving states the chance to have the federal government subsidize the entire cost of expanding their Medicaid programs until 2035. While some Republican governors (such as Owen Wells in Maryland and James Adamson in Maine) have signed on, most of the nation's other 23 Republican governors have not.
Alaska
Incumbent: Cathy Gardener (R) - term-limited
Rating: Lean R
Notes: Gardener is the first of many governors on this list forbidden from running for re-election due to state term limits. Alaska shocked the nation two years ago by giving its electors to a Democrat for the first time since 1964, while also ousting Sorah Wheeler (R) from the Senate. It will be a crowded race to replace Gardener, and Democrats feel they have a fighting chance here after 2022's performance.
Arkansas
Incumbent: Thomas Booth (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: Booth won with over 60 percent of the vote in his first go-round four years ago, and will almost certainly increase his margin of victory this time.
Delaware
Incumbent: Annelise Byers (D)
Rating: Safe D
Notes: Delaware hasn't elected a Republican as governor in over four decades, and it's looking like it will be another four decades before the GOP has a shot to have one of their own in the governor's mansion in Dover.
Florida
Incumbent: Jessica Gelsey (D)
Rating: Toss-Up
Notes: Gelsey has had a tough four years fighting with the Republican-held state legislature, but that's prepared her well for the knock-down drag-out fight that's ahead of her in her re-election bid. Multiple high-profile Republicans have floated challenging her, and Gelsey has stockpiled a considerable war chest to take on the winner of the GOP primary.
Idaho
Incumbent: Jack Dittmar (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: Dittmar came into office last year when David Arkin made the jump to the Senate. Like his predecessor, he'll be in the governor's office until he wants to leave.
Illinois
Incumbent: Barry Robinson (D)
Rating: Lean D
Notes: While Illinois is a solidly Democratic state on the presidential level, Republicans have been shown to occasionally win here, as shown by former senator Jasper Irving (R). While Irving has declined to run, Republicans have a series of candidates who they hope can bank on the usual midterm discontent against the party in the White House.
Kansas
Incumbent: Michael Harding (R)
Rating: Lean R
Notes: Kansas surprisingly only leans Republican, in part because Harding has had to deal with a particularly hardline faction of Republicans in the state legislature since last year that has at various times, forced him to rely upon Democrats within the legislature to pass must-pass legislation, including the state budget. The Republican disarray has caused Harding's numbers to go down, giving Democrats their best chance in decades to take the governor's mansion.
Maine
Incumbent: James Adamson (R)
Rating: Toss-Up
Notes: Adamson has earned some bipartisan cred by accepting AHCPA funds and showing willingness to work with the Democratic-controlled legislature (although it helps that Democrats there nearly have enough votes to override his veto). That willingness to buck party hardliners is particularly attractive to Mainers and is what gives him a fighting chance to win a second full term in a blue state.
Maryland
Incumbent: Owen Wells (R) - term-limited
Rating: Safe D
Notes: With Owen Wells being term-limited, the Maryland GOP is ready to return to political irrelevancy, as no one in Wells' orbit has anywhere near the charisma or political skill to make this race competitive.
Minnesota
Incumbent: Jarrod Daniels (D) - retiring
Rating: Toss-Up
Notes: Minnesota doesn't have term limits for its governors, but Jarrod Daniels has announced he won't seek a fourth term in office. He's rumored to be harboring national ambitions, while the GOP has been looking to return to statewide office in Minnesota after being shut out after future vice president Jack Hunter won his second Senate term in 2014.
Missouri
Incumbent: Tim Moss (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: Thanks to the change in each party's demographic makeup and three consecutive nominees being from the Show Me State, Missouri is now safely Republican. Moss won't have to worry about getting a second term.
Nebraska
Incumbent: Ben Lane (R) - term-limited
Rating: Safe R
Notes: The most interesting thing about Nebraska's gubernatorial race is that a former congressman went to jail for his illicit attempts to amass a huge war chest ahead of the election. Otherwise, it will be another snoozer with the Republican nominee (whomever that may be) winning in a cakewalk.
North Dakota
Incumbent: Sandra Middleton (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: North Dakota has moved away from being a state where Democrats (or Democratic-NPL, as the state's Democratic affiliate is called) can conceivably win statewide races. With former senator Harry Conroy (D), who Middleton dispatched in 2018, declining to run again, the only question is if Middleton can double, or even triple, the number of votes the Democratic (D-NPL) candidate receives.
Oklahoma
Incumbent: Katherine Williams (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: The home state of Alan Duke is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most conservative in the nation. Williams won't face any serious challenges with a Democratic bench that has been thoroughly depleted after losing ground every year since her predecessor Rob Kenny (D) was elected in 2016.
Pennsylvania
Incumbent: Malcolm Power (D)
Rating: Toss-Up
Notes: Power and his presumptive challenger, Carlin Cassidy (R) faced off in 2018 when Cassidy cleaned his clock to secure his current Senate term. Circumstances have changed since then, with Power as an incumbent governor (albeit with middling approval ratings) and the Pennsylvania GOP as one of the many state parties still in disarray after the 2022 race. While Cassidy managed to navigate his party's divide effectively two years ago, it remains to be seen whether Pennsylvanians will put someone as doctrinally small-government as Cassidy in charge of a state whose Republican governors have traditionally been averse to trimming too much of the state budget.
Rhode Island
Incumbent: Miles Leonard (D)
Rating: Safe D
Notes: Rhode Island is one of the most Democratic states in the nation, hence Leonard losing 10 percent of the vote to Green Party nominee (and Susan Buckner's eventual running mate in 2022) Anderson Gerald four years ago and still romping to an easy victory.
Texas
Incumbent: Adam De Haan (R)
Rating: Lean R
Notes: Despite speculation that he wouldn't run for a third term, Governor De Haan is trying to be the first governor since Barton Hopkins to win three straight elections. Democrats are feeling their oats with Seaborn winning the state two years ago, and several prominent Dems have already thrown their hats into the ring to de-throne De Haan. The GOP still has the advantage, but it's getting lesser and lesser every cycle as the state.
Utah
Incumbent: John Elderton (R) - retiring
Rating: Safe R
Notes: To say John Elderton has been governor for a long time is a bit like saying the Great Wall of China is a pretty long structure. After 20 (!) years in office, Elderton will let someone else run the Beehive State, and that someone will be whomever wins the first Republican gubernatorial nomination he hasn't contested since 2000 (!!).
Washington
Incumbent: Daniel Edmonds (D)
Rating: Safe D
Notes: Despite a narrower-than-expected victory in 2020, Edmonds will likely have few problems getting a second term of his own with the Washington GOP having a shortage of moderate Republicans to run statewide after the party's drubbing two years ago.
West Virginia
Incumbent: Jim McDowell (R)
Rating: Safe R
Notes: West Virginia has shifted rapidly from being a state that gave its electoral votes to Jimmy Fitzsimmons ten years ago to one of the most solidly Republican states in the nation. McDowell won't have any difficulty with a Democratic challenger with a Democratic White House committed to moving the United States away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.
Wyoming
Incumbent: Simon Watts (R) - term-limited
Rating: Safe R
Notes: The nation's least-populous state will send whichever Republican wins the primary to its governor's mansion, and by a very large margin over whoever wins the Democratic primary.
