It’s time to update my running tally of how long each state has been under a single party’s control of the governorship.
It’s time to update my running tally of how long each state has been under a single party’s control of the governorship. As much as California may look like an ironclad Democratic lock, there are actually a number of states — most prominently its two neighbors to the north — that have gone much longer without a Republican governor, while the list of states where Democrats have been shut out for this entire century is longer than that and includes Florida, Texas, and Georgia:
Republicans blew their chances in Pennsylvania in 2022 and North Carolina in 2024 with self-destructing MAGA candidates. Colorado stands out on the blue list as a state that was long Republican-governed, but flipped in 2006 and never looked back.
Of course, some of these states have had one party controlling the governorship for years on end while the other controls the legislature — think of North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin as examples of states that often have a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, and Vermont and Massachusetts as states that often have the opposite.
There are arguments for why one-party rule can be unhealthy in general (although unethical governors have been forced out by their own parties in the past decade in Missouri, Alabama, and New York), but it’s much more urgent to give the other party a shot when the state is being visibly misgoverned. The voters of Oregon and New York flirted with changing horses in 2022, and it’s something the voters of California as well really ought to start considering.