http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/inroads-some-very-blue-states_818386.htmlInroads in Some Very Blue States
The governors’ surprise.
Michael Warren
November 17, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 10
CNN morning host Alisyn Camerota wanted to know: Where had Chris Christie been the night before, when it became clear Republicans would take control of the Senate? The New Jersey governor’s voice was hoarse, his eyes drooping. “I was in 19 states in the last five days,” Christie replied, cracking a weary smile. “So last night I was at home.” Yes, but the next morning, he was back at it, making it to CNN (and Fox News and NBC’s Today Show) to discuss the underreported story of Election 2014. Keeping the House and winning the Senate was all well and good. However . . .
“My focus last night was on my governors’ races,” he told Camerota. As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Christie spent the last year crisscrossing the country to stump for GOP candidates. He raised $102 million as chairman, an October 31 RGA press release trumpeted. In a postelection memo sent to donors and candidates, the RGA reports it spent a total of $130 million and even “went into debt” investing in their successful Maryland race.
“Governor Christie made the election of Republican governors his number-one political priority,” says Phil Cox, the RGA’s executive director.
Overall, it was a banner night for “Christie’s” races, though surely the candidates themselves deserve some of the credit. The GOP now holds 31 governorships to the Democrats’ 17, a net gain of 3. (Final results are still outstanding in Vermont and Alaska.) Republicans successfully defended eight governors in states Barack Obama won twice, including John Kasich in Ohio, Paul LePage in Maine, and what the RGA called the all-important “trifecta”: Rick Snyder in Michigan, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Rick Scott in Florida.
Republicans held on in problematic races in Georgia and Kansas, the latter of which had incumbent Sam Brownback coming from behind to win after trailing his Democratic challenger since August. The only GOP incumbent to lose was Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, in a seat considered long gone to the Democrats.
The GOP didn’t slouch in its safer seats, either. The party easily picked up Arkansas’s open, Democratic-held governorship, completing the GOP’s takeover of the state. Republican incumbents in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Alabama, Iowa, Idaho, Wyoming, Tennessee, and South Dakota all won with at least 55 percent of the vote, sometimes a lot more. Once hailed by national Democrats as the party’s champion to “turn Texas blue,” state senator Wendy Davis’s campaign became a joke as she lost to attorney general Greg Abbott by more than 20 points. Susana Martinez, the GOP governor of New Mexico, was reelected by 15 points in a state Mitt Romney lost by 10 points. In Nevada, which Obama won in 2012 by 6 points, Republican Brian Sandoval won reelection with more than 70 percent of the vote.
Sweeter still for the GOP were the party’s takeovers of Democratic seats in some of the bluest states in the country, including Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts. “That’s a really good night for Republicans to win in those blue states, and as a blue state governor myself, and as a Republican, I was particularly gratified,” Christie said on CNN. Here, the RGA chair has some bragging rights. During the campaign, Christie visited Maryland four times and Illinois eight times. In Massachusetts, the RGA outspent all the Democratic-affiliated outside groups by $3 million to help Charlie Baker defeat Martha Coakley.
Speaking of Coakley, it didn’t hurt that Republicans in those states faced particularly flawed Democratic candidates. In Illinois, Republican businessman Bruce Rauner defeated incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn by nearly 5 points, winning every county but Cook (which includes Chicago). “Pat Quinn was a pretty open target,” says Tim Schneider, the state Republican chairman. Quinn succeeded impeached Democrat Rod Blagojevich in 2009 and barely won election in his own right the next year. As governor, he temporarily raised income tax rates 67 percent while unemployment in the state climbed—it dropped off in the last year only because the labor force shrank. Polls showed Illinois residents overwhelmingly opposed the tax hike, and Rauner ran hard against it, suggesting Quinn would likely make the increase permanent if reelected. Voters seem to have made the same calculation.
In addition, Rauner made the unprecedented (for a Republican) decision to campaign actively for black votes in the Windy City. Starting in July, Rauner visited between three and seven Chicago churches every Sunday, focusing on his message of improving the city’s failing public schools. The effect wasn’t a huge shift in support away from Quinn, but turnout in Chicago was lower than it was in 2010. Rauner earned 21 percent of the Chicago vote, more than the previous Republican candidate’s 18 percent four years earlier.
Republican Larry Hogan did nearly as well in Maryland as Rauner did in Illinois. A successful commercial real estate broker, Hogan faced off against Democratic lieutenant governor Anthony Brown to succeed the term-limited Martin O’Malley. A Democrat from Baltimore, O’Malley has presided over an eight-year decline in Maryland’s standard of living as well as higher taxes—“a tax on rain” went the refrain from the Hogan campaign.
Brown represented a third O’Malley term, and as Maryland voters began to balk at that prospect, Hogan slowly rose in the polls. Democrats resorted to negative ads attacking Hogan on issues like gun control. One featured a frightening (and ludicrous) scenario of Maryland under the NRA-endorsed Hogan, with machine guns leaning casually against trees in leafy suburban neighborhoods. The attacks didn’t work; nor did eleventh-hour appearances on Brown’s behalf by Barack Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton. Hogan won by nearly 5 points and in all but three counties and the city of Baltimore. It was, says Phil Cox of the RGA, the most surprising race of the year.
Maryland was one of those 19 states Christie visited in the final week, and Republicans won the governors’ races in all but 4 of them. That’s the power of the big man from Jersey. A scan of the headlines showed a narrative setting in. CNN: “Chris Christie’s big moment.” The Wall Street Journal: “Midterm wins boost Chris Christie’s standing.” The New York Times: “Christie gains some clout for 2016.”
Whether primary voters will be swayed by Christie’s ability to raise money and boost fellow Republicans remains an open question. But perhaps an unintended consequence is that Christie didn’t simply help his fellow Rs—Scott Walker, John Kasich, Susana Martinez, Bill Haslam, and others—win their governorships. He also added to the competition for 2016.
