INDIANA. This is a race worth watching, thanks in part to a quirky cast of characters and the Hoosiers' unpredictable voting patterns. Will they keep a Democratic governor and vote for a Republican president? That's what happened in 2000. That governor, Frank O'Bannon, suffered a massive stroke and died last September while visiting Chicago. His popular lieutenant governor, Joe Kernan, had already decided to leave politics; at the time, there was talk of him buying a minor league baseball team in his hometown of South Bend. But O'Bannon's death changed all that, and Kernan eventually changed his mind and announced his candidacy for the Democratic ticket.
Enter “The Blade.” Mitch Daniels earned his, er, sharp nickname as the Bush administration's director of the Office of Management and Budget. Daniels is the man behind the Bush tax cuts -- as well as the man who watched a $236 billion annual surplus turn into a $400 billion deficit during his 29-month tenure with the administration. After he resigned, Daniels headed home to the Midwest, where many expected he'd run for governor. Pennsylvania-born Daniels had earned his Indy cred as an executive at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co in the nineties.
Both men are running on the economy, as Indiana has seen job losses and weak economic growth in recent years. Daniels is preaching the gospel of job creation and efficient government while hoping that Hoosier voters don't connect the dots between the candidate and the budget mess in Washington. Kernan, on the other hand, won recognition as lieutenant governor for his successful efforts to pass major tax restructuring and economic development packages through a divided legislature.
Indiana's political pundits breathlessly claim that the governor's race is too close to call, but the fact is that nobody has bothered to poll voters in the Hoosier state since May. In state politics, candidates are lucky if voters are paying attention by August. But May? That's light-years too early to expect an accurate read.
MISSOURI. The last month has largely served to reaffirm Dems in their August 3 primary decision to dump poor Bob Holden, Missouri's beleaguered and charmless Democratic governor, in favor of State Auditor Claire McCaskill to face Republican challenger Matt Blunt in November. A personally appealing and energetic campaigner with a reputation as an effective auditor for this cash-strapped state, McCaskill has moved quickly to unite the party behind her -- “One-Term Bob” included. She raised $2.2 million in August alone, compared to Blunt's $650,000 (although the Republican still maintains a cash-on-hand advantage of nearly $200,000). This is sure to be the most expensive gubernatorial race in Missouri history.
It also seems guaranteed to be close. The most recent Survey USA poll, taken in mid- August, gives Blunt a 4-point lead, within the margin of error. Blunt is only 33, but he sports quite a connection to real political power: His dad is the formidable Roy Blunt, majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. The senior Blunt hasn't played much of a visible role in his son's campaign so far -- one of the campaign's ads says only that Matt was “born the son of a schoolteacher and homemaker” -- but dad's influence in the party and access to purse strings will surely become assets in the next two months.
So far, Blunt has highlighted his business-backed plans for tort reform and stricter workman's comp rules, while McCaskill makes much hay of her proposals as auditor to streamline and cut waste from government agencies. She's also making a real bid, unusual for a Democrat, to court rural voters with plans to boost ethanol subsidies and establish an “Office of Rural Missouri” in the statehouse. (McCaskill did well in rural areas against Holden in the primary.) The thinking appears to be to rely on the presidential race to spur major Democratic turnouts in the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas and instead take the fight to the GOP's turf by targeting conservative Dems and independents in the outer counties.
Much hinges on this election. Given the near-certainty that Republicans will maintain control of the state House and Senate this year (and thus maintain their current, ruthlessly hardnosed and right-wing leadership), a Blunt victory would mark the first instance of unified GOP control of Missouri government in 84 years.
MONTANA. States don't get much redder than Montana -- and yet no less a political observer than Charlie Cook has called the state “Democrats' best opportunity to pick up a GOP-held governorship.” How is it that after 16 relatively uncontested years in the statehouse, Republicans are in danger of losing power to a rancher from Whitefish who has never held elected office?
It started with current governor Judy Martz, whose single term has been plagued by so many scandals that her approval rating had dropped to 20 percent by August 2003, when she decided not to run for reelection. Then there was the fierce, four-way Republican primary that finished up in June, won by Montana Secretary of State Bob Brown -- but won with only 39 percent of the vote. The moderate Brown, who has refused to rule out future tax increases, still may face a challenge from his fiscal right in Libertarian Party candidate Stan Jones.
But none of that would matter without the determination of the Democratic candidate, Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer nearly unseated Senator Conrad Burns in 2000, and has been preparing for the current race almost since that loss. Schweitzer has been on the campaign trail since January 2003, won over 70 percent of votes in the Democratic primary, and went into the general election with 10 times the cash-on-hand that Brown had. This past Sunday, Brown's campaign manager, Jason Thielman, even intimated to the Great Falls Tribune that Brown may be “trailing” Schweitzer.
Schweitzer can also look to the success of moderate Montana Senator Max Baucus for reassurance. The four-term senator most recently won re-election in 2002, scoring a satisfying 30-point victory. And Democratic governors currently oversee such conservative strongholds as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, so there's no reason to rule out the acquisition of Montana as well.
VERMONT. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Clavelle will face an uphill battle in his efforts to unseat the Republican incumbent, Gov. James Douglas. For starters, Douglas has quite a bit of history on his side. Voters in the Green Mountain State have only thrown out one incumbent governor in the past 130 years. Douglas is also well known throughout the state as a moderate Republican with very few political enemies. He kept a low profile during the Republican primary and political observers don't predict that he will ever seek a higher office.
Peter Clavelle, the long-time mayor of Burlington, is expected to easily win next week's Democratic primary. In true Vermont fashion, his three challengers include two pro-marijuana candidates and a socialist. This election is Clavelle's first stab at state-wide office, though, and he is still relatively unknown in southern parts of the state like Brattleboro.
Despite the obstacles before him, Clavelle does have some advantages. First, Clavelle is well known in Burlington and can expect favorable coverage in the state's largest media market. Clavelle's most important advantage, however, is none other than George W. Bush himself. According to University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson, Vermont is probably the most anti-Bush state in the Union. Governor Douglas' biggest fear, and Mayor Clavelle's biggest hope, is that Vermont's anti-Bush fever flows down the Democratic ticket to the gubernatorial race.
WASHINGTON. Washington state Democrats go to the polls on Tuesday to nominate a candidate for governor in the open seat being vacated by long-serving Democrat Gary Locke. According to late August polling, state Attorney-General Chris Gregoire has a daunting 61-28 lead over her rival, King County (that's Seattle) Executive Ron Sims. In what is perhaps a sign of desperation, some of Sims' leading supporters in the African-American community (Sims himself is black) have been raising allegations of racism against Gregoire on the grounds that as a student at the University of Washington in the late 1960s, Gregoire was a member of a whites-only sorority. Gregoire's defenders note that, in fact, after graduation she traveled twice to the sorority's national headquarters to condemn the exclusion of black students.
The winner will face Republican Dino Rossi, a former state senator with a dog named Dubya (apparently, Rossi told his kids they could have a dog if the president told him to buy one; they wrote to the president, who, apparently, wrote back telling Rossi to get one, so he did) and a Dubya-esque platform of deregulation, tort reform, and opposition to gay marriage. His campaign is hyping a methodologically bizarre poll which shows him "leading" a three-way race for governor with 35 percent support compared to 26 for Gregoire and 15 for Sims. If running behind the combined Democratic vote is the best Rossi can point to, he's going to have to start doing better. Already, the Rossi-backing Building Industry Association of Washington is running ads condemning Gregoire for favoring an unpopular new closed primary system that, in fact, she opposed and was mandated by federal courts anyway.
Compiled by the Prospect staff. Click here to read the previous edition of “Purple People Watch.”