Democrats poised to win governors races as 'eight-year itch' hits voters
by Salena Zito
| November 05, 2018 10:03 AM
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio – Eight years after Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, was first elected in a squeaker over incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland at the height of the Tea Party movement, and four years after he rallied from a devastating first-term misfire (when voters rejected a GOP-backed state Senate bill that would have taken away collective bargaining power for public employees) Kasich earned a broad landslide in 2014. Voters hadn’t given an Ohio incumbent so large a victory in decades , as Kasich cruised to victory over Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald by more than 30 percentage points.
Since then, the economy which was collapsing in 2010 has rebounded, so has job creation, and Donald Trump won this state big, really big in 2016 – so why isn’t Republican candidate Mike DeWine, the current state attorney general and former U.S. senator, lieutenant governor, congressman, and state senator cake-walking to the governor’s mansion over Democrat Richard Cordray?
It may be as simply explained as the "eight-year-itch,†that voters desire a switch from party to party every eight years for their state’s chief executive; a big problem for Republicans eight years after their healthy gains in the 2010 midterm election victories in governors offices, followed by more gains in 2014.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-poised-to-win-governors-races-as-eight-year-itch-hits-voters
