Friend-of-TAP Eli Sanders has an article in The Stranger noting that, from where he sits in Seattle, Obama doesn't seem to have coattails. "On election night, Washington [may] be "blue" in only a very superficial sense. If the current political conditions hold, this state could give its 11 Electoral College votes to Obama while at the same time giving the governor's mansion to [Dino] Rossi and retaining three top Republicans in statewide offices."
It shouldn't be surprising that Obama's strength doesn't carry over far enough to boost Governor Christine Gregoire in her rematch with Rossi. Gubernatorial races are rarely won on coattails from national trends, or even partisan trends in the state -- that's why we've had Republican governors in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Dems in Oklahoma and Wyoming.
Governorships are decided entirely on the scope of issues within the state, and in Gregoire's case, it's a huge budget mess. But she's not the only one, and it's a good thing for Democrats that there aren't very many other governors in Gregoire's position who happen to be up for reelection this year, as the inevitable budget crises begin to hit. However, in a couple years, one could see a good number of Democratic governors swept out, just because these will be very ugly times to be a governor.
And this, I suspect, will be the foundation on which the Republican party will rebuild -- a cohort of Republican governors, who may be perceived as successful if they ride the up side of the wave. The big-state Republican governors in the 1990s -- Pataki, Engler, Thompson, Whitman, Voinovich -- were more critical to Republican success than anyone in Congress. Although their perceived "success" was often based on accounting scams, they made people comfortable with the idea that Republicans and conservatives could actually govern, against all evidence from DC. The most likely scenario for Republican renewal would be to win back a number of big-state statehouses in the fiscal wreckage of 2010. Those governors then become strong candidates to win Senate seats and create the presidential candidates of the future.
That's why beginning to move money to state and local governments is not only good policy; for Democrats, it will be good politics as well.
-- Mark Schmitt.