Governors: The Fourth Branch of Government You Keep Forgetting About
Photo by Michael Thomas/Getty Images News / Getty Images
I spent a total of 25 years in California. I went to college in Los Angeles, spent four years in San Francisco and would eventually move back to L.A. in 2000 where I lived (happily, mostly, and yes I’m talking about traffic) until 2016 when I moved back to my official hometown of St. Louis. Honestly: I haven’t looked back once. I love it here. I think of it as an even trade. I traded in a high cost of living and insane, sucking-the-life-out-of-you-soul-crushing traffic for affordability and awful, terrible (this may as well be Cambodia) humidity.
Still, of course, after 25 total years there are things I miss, and there are exactly three I can’t easily or readily shake. In this order, I miss: my friends, the fresh produce, and the state government.
In May, the California Senate passed a bill that would allow college athletes to sign endorsement deals so they could make money off of their likeness in video games or any other thing that makes them money. That same month, Missouri’s unelected governor Mike Parsons signed Missouri’s so-called “heartbeat bill” into law, sealing the fate of the state’s single abortion provider.
A tale of two states indeed.
California politics is far from perfect. One glance at the debate about Kamala Harris’s record as the state’s attorney general clarifies how complicated it is. However, it remains a state with a lawmaking body that is so substantially functional, it’s seeking to establish equal protections for student athletes, climate change provisions, and other meaningful legislation that protects and represents the interest of its citizens.
Missouri, until 2016, had a democratic governor, Jay Nixon, who vetoed an awful piece of dangerous pro-gun legislation that made it to his desk. It isn’t easy to be the governor in a state where rural and exurb voters essentially set the agenda. (Example? That gun veto was overridden by the Republicans in the Missouri Assembly). The last Democrat to sit in the Governor’s chair also tried, and failed, to expand Medicaid access to Missourians (his signature was vetoed by the republicans in the legislature). However, today, with the man who replaced his Trump-esque “resigned amid scandal” predecessor (another way of saying that: the governor who signed the anti-abortion bill into law is not Missouri’s elected governor), there is absolutely no check on the pro-life/pro-gun GOP majority.
State Governors: The Real Check and Balance
Very little is going to change in terms of the dynamic of the rural and rural-adjacent voting demographic. There’s no earthly way that in these states, a state like mine, where we struggle to keep sensible Democrats in state-elected seats, that we have enough resources to finance the races of progressive, pro-choice, reasonable Democrats.
We need help.
Follow Gubernatorial Election Cycles
If you live in a state with a reasonable state legislature, no one is asking you to follow every other state’s governor race. I am asking that you follow the election cycle for governors as closely as you do the presidential election cycle.
You can all stop pretending like that Missouri’s governor or Alabama’s governor doesn’t directly impact you. He or she does. Most of those shit laws that will make their way to the Supreme Court are signed into law by red state governors.
In 2020: there are all of eleven governors up for reelection. They are:
Delaware: John Carney Jr. (D)
Indiana: Eric Holcomb (R)
Missouri: Mike Parson (R) No
Montana: Steve Bullock (D) (he’s terming out)
New Hampshire: Chris Sununu (R)
North Carolina : Roy Cooper (D)
North Dakota: Doug Burgum (R)
Utah: Republican Party Gary Herbert (R)
Vermont: Party Phil Scott (R)
Washington: Jay Inslee (D)
West Virginia: Jim Justice (R)
The Quick and Dirty on Scoping Red Governors in Other States
In the U.S. (and you know this already, but it bears repeating), most progressives live in concentrated populations in coastal areas. Democratic candidates in states like Missouri, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, etc. do not have the financial resources or human resources of a state like Washington or California. Candidates running against crimes-against-nature like Parsons, Kay Ivey and Jim Justice need the financial resources and passion of coastal progressives if you want to keep fucked pro-life legislation from making its way to the Supreme Court.
Was that direct enough of an ask?
Follow Planned Parenthood Ratings
Every single cycle, Planned Parenthood endorses pro-choice candidates in several races. Bookmark, follow, donate. Easy, right?
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/
Adopt a State
Chances are: wherever you live if you live in one of those coastal areas: that’s not where you were born. (If you were, a nation apologizes for how unaffordable those places are and know that this person is doing everything she can to make the rest of the country livable so people stop crushing your affordable rent.) If you’re from a Fox News-loving, gun-law enabling, Mike Pence-ian region? Give money back to the state from whence you came and stop pretending to your friends and coworkers that you aren’t that girl or boy from Indiana anymore.
Live your best life. Do you. I did, for a long ass time. I wish I’d paid more attention after I left. It’s painful to see somewhere (especially if people you love and don’t agree with still live there) going the way of the Taliban when you feel powerless to stop it.
So pay attention. Making even a $5, $10, $15 or $20 contribution once during a campaign cycle will help more than you know. (I do know how much it helps, though, because I see the struggle that democratic candidates have here to raise money.)
Set up a Google News Email Blast
Once you know the issues in your home state, or any states where a governor is likely up for renewal or firing, headlines happen. They happen almost every day. You don’t need to be tech savvy to enter that person’s name into a search bar and use Google News to set up an email blast to scan and partly digest while you’re reading about all the other horrible shit happening that day.
Also, if there’s anything that a red state progressive doesn’t need to hear right now is that it’s “too hard” for you to pay attention. I live in a state that narrowly avoided passing a law where students could open carry on campuses. I get it. We’re all living in a firehose spray of a torrent of bad news every day. Go soothe yourself with the legal weed that you enjoy in your state while mine, once again, tried to pass fucking Medicaid fucking expansion.
Conclusion
Flipping state houses in starkly red states remains unlikely (and mostly impossible) in midwestern, southern, and upper midwestern states. Blue and even progressive governors, however, can and have won. The nation’s progressive diaspora needs to impart upon itself the mission to support those blue democratic governor candidates. Also, do this even if those candidates don’t pass your sniff test all the time (has this post taught you nothing, as if, etc.) or we’re all universally fucked.
Lastly: we will be following these governor’s races, so you can check back here. When candidates are all announced: I will be very preachy about it.