#7 The Governors

My freshman chemistry instructor years ago was a graduate student who tried to teach us to go with the results of our experiments, and then find a way to validate those results by “making the math come out right.” I never understood how that could work, when the math part was less susceptible to human error than was my spilling the chemical residue out of the test tube before weighing it.

Based on the last two presidential elections, I am not very confident that a large majority of voters will necessarily vote for the candidate who has strong qualifications and the best proposals for dealing with the problems our country faces. In 2000, dubya was in no objective way more qualified than Al Gore (though I suspect that some voters thought dubya had more personality, and voted for him for that reason. Go figure. yeesh.). And by 2004, it should have been clear--God knows it was clear to me, and I’m not that good at reading subtleties--that dubya and his advisors were clueless and, worse, careless about how to create policies that would be good for America and the rest of the world. In other words, somewhere along the line in these last two presidential elections, a whole bunch of voters spilled their chemical residue on the way to weighing it, and never did get the right answer.

Still, I cling to the hope that Reason will prevail, and that American voters, having seen the disastrous results of dubya’s economic, educational, environmental, and foreign policies, will vote to change the direction in which our country has been heading for eight years.

Theoretically, the way to win a presidential election is to have the right candidates and the right policies. Practically, the way to win the election is to get 270 or more electoral votes. That’s the math.

The Democrats need to select a qualified presidential candidate (we happen to have two qualified candidates right now), AND find a way to make the candidate palatable to enough red state voters so that the candidate can win enough electoral votes to be elected. That means, holding on to the blue states and shifting eighteen 2004 red state electoral votes to blue. That’s also the math.

I believe this year that choosing the right Vice Presidential candidate is particularly important in order to ‘make the math come out right.’

Balance, Geographically and Politically: the Governors
Whether BO or HRC is nominated as the presidential candidate, the VP candidate needs to be viewed as more of a moderate, possibly needs to come from a different region of the country, and almost definitely needs to come from a state that was weakly blue (and perhaps can be firmed up) or that went red in 2004 and might be able to shift on the spectrum to blue. It might be helpful if the VP nominee were not also a senator, though I don’t think this is a major issue. In 1992, Clinton and Gore violated most of the precepts I just listed, and they won; but that was Bill’s doing…and the economy’s.

Obviously, given my own oft-stated preference for him in all matters presidential, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, looks like a good VP choice. He certainly has name recognition from serving in the House of Representatives, serving as UN ambassador, serving as Clinton’s Secretary of the Interior, serving now as Governor of NM.

Two problems surface: New Mexico has only five electoral votes, and Richardson—as qualified as he is on paper and in real life—doesn’t excite a crowd, doesn’t ignite a passion among the masses who voted differently four years ago.

From not so deep down in my own mind, another concern arises. In 2000, with Richardson campaigning vigorously and publicly, Gore carried New Mexico by 366 votes. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: Gore and dubya each received 48% of the votes, with Nader picking up the other 4%. During the 2004 campaign, however, Richardson all but disappeared, and dubya carried the state by a little under six thousand votes. I don’t know why Richardson wasn’t more visible in support of Kerry, but he wasn’t. New Mexico would not have made the difference in the election, but I expressed surprise at the time at the lack of more party visibility by the governor.

Despite this last reservation, I can’t rule Richardson out as a possible VP candidate behind either BO or HRC, though a Clinton/Richardson ticket might provoke an unpleasant sense of déjà vu about the other Clinton’s administration. Bill Richardson would make a fine vice president, I agree with many of his policies, and he has had to deal first hand with immigration, which may or may not appear again as a significant issue in this campaign. If the economy continues to be the number one concern in poll results, can concern with immigration’s effect on our economy be far behind?

Besides, as VP, Richardson would be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Ask yourself whom you would rather have a heartbeat away—Richardson or Cheney.

Other governors are also possible candidates. Wisconsin narrowly went to Kerry in 2004, a difference of eleven thousand votes out of nearly three million cast. That narrow margin was surprising: Governor Jim Doyle and both senators are Democrats. Thus, it’s a blue state that the Democrats have to hold on to this year. Doyle attended Stanford before graduating from Wisconsin (Madison) and receiving his law degree from Harvard. He was elected governor in November 2002 against a seated governor, by running as a centrist who supported stem-cell research and a woman’s right to choose. He’s not well known outside the region, and his fundamental Wisconsin political positions are more left of center than the Democrats can use as balance on the ticket. Besides, if BO becomes the presidential candidate, the Democrats might do well not to have the VP also from the Midwest.

That would also work against Chet Culver, current governor of Iowa. The difference is that Iowa went narrowly for dubya in 2004 (fewer than sixty thousand votes out of one and a half million), and the Democrats could use its seven electoral votes in the blue column this year. Not enough to swing the election, but it’s a start. Culver, however, is also not well known, but he or Doyle could serve as geographical and gender balance if HRC gets the presidential nomination.

I’d love to see Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas, and Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan, be considered seriously, but we may be pushing our luck to have a female VP candidate behind either HRC or BO. Besides, two years after Sebelius was elected, Bush won Kansas by twenty-five percentage points(!). Despite her personal popularity in the state, I don’t see Sebelius moving KS over to the blue states this year. Michigan almost seemed touch-and-go on election night four years ago, but then later in the evening moved solidly into Kerry’s camp. I expect Michigan to remain Democratic this fall, so we probably don’t need a Michigander on the ticket to secure the state. Probably.

On the other hand -- Ted Strickland became governor of Ohio a year ago, after some unsuccessful and then successful campaigns for the House of Representatives. In 1992, in fact, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, the NRA, and anti-Choice forces (I refuse to call them “Pro-Life”) campaigned against him, but failed to defeat him. From my point of view, he’s got strong credentials. And we all know how important Ohio’s twenty electoral votes can be in a presidential election. Again, if BO is the presidential nominee, Strickland as a fellow Midwesterner would not help geographical diversity, but if he can carry Ohio for the Democrats….

One more gubernatorial possibility, especially with the Democratic convention there this summer: Colorado has nine electoral votes, and dubya won it four years ago by fewer than 100,000 votes. Bill Ritter was just elected governor in 2006 (taking office in January 2007), and so may be too new to his position to become involved in a national campaign. But he has very strong human services credentials (Alternatives to Violence through Education; United Way; the first Victims Services Network in the U.S.; food distribution as a Catholic missionary in Zambia). If not a figure of national prominence this year, then maybe in four or eight years?

If HRC gets the nomination, any of these governors save perhaps Bill Richardson could serve as the VP nominee. If BO gets the nomination, the Midwestern governors would not provide geographical distribution, which may not be as important as the electoral votes they might bring to the blue side.

As I gathered my thoughts on these VP prospects from among the nation’s Democratic governors, I was actually quite impressed by how qualified several of them are. It bodes well for the Democratic party for future national elections, even if none of these is chosen to run as VP this year.

Next time: The Senators