In Brief:
- There are only three incumbents running in this year’s 11 races for governor.
- Nonetheless, the outcome in most races is entirely predictable.
- Here are short profiles of five individuals essentially certain to get elected on Tuesday.
Only three incumbent governors are running for re-election this year. Even so, barely any of the 11 races are competitive.
Each of the incumbents — Phil Scott of Vermont, Greg Gianforte of Montana and Spencer Cox of Utah, all Republicans — is a lock for re-election. Democrats are likely to win in Washington while Republicans will probably hold on in Indiana, but both those races remain competitive. New Hampshire is the only true tossup race, with Republican Kelly Ayotte holding a small polling lead in a state Vice President Kamala Harris looks likely to carry against Republican Donald Trump.
That leaves five other open races where there’s essentially no doubt. In each case, the new governor is from the same party as the departing governor, signaling little change in policy direction. “The first thing you can expect is that there won’t be a whole lot of change from what we’ve seen over the past eight years,” says Mitch Kokai, a senior policy analyst at the conservative John Locke Foundation, referring to the governor’s race in North Carolina.
Still, every governor is different and will face unexpected challenges. Their tenures in office are likely to be more exciting than their slam-dunk campaigns, so here are short profiles of five of next year’s new governors, in alphabetical order by state.
Matt Meyer, Delaware Democrat
In September’s Democratic primary, Meyer defeated Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who had the support of outgoing Gov. John Carney and the state party but was embroiled in campaign finance scandals.
Meyer is a Wilmington native but he’s had a career that’s carried him far from home. After teaching in Washington, D.C., with the Teach for America program, Meyer moved to Kenya, where he started a business turning used tires into sandals. He served as a diplomat in Iraq during the war and worked for a New York law firm before coming home.
In 2016, he unseated a three-term incumbent as New Castle County executive. He's helped attract some major businesses to the area and ran this year on his record of cutting county property taxes for the first time in decades. He opened the largest full-service homeless shelter in the state and also created Delaware’s first police accountability board. Meyer put much of the county’s budget online in an effort to increase transparency.
As governor, Meyer pledges to create incentives for local governments to change regulations that make it difficult to build housing, including rental units. He also intends to copy a Pennsylvania program that provides technical assistance and grants to startup businesses.
Meyer will likely take on a role that Carney had played, acting as a moderate brake on some of the more progressive proposals of his party’s legislative majorities. He’s already shown he’s comfortable with that dynamic at the county level, Hoff says. “As county executive, he showed he’s willing to fight groups within ostensibly his own party, or traditional support areas,” Hoff says, “and by that I mean unions.”
Mike Kehoe, Missouri Republican
Republicans control essentially everything in Missouri, holding supermajorities in both legislative chambers and every statewide office except auditor. Nonetheless, as the incoming governor, Kehoe will face some challenges knitting together a party that has split into factions, blocking passage of some bills and even confirmation of some appointments made by current Gov. Mike Parson.
“A Kehoe administration will likely be focused more on governance than on pursuing some of the more extreme positions pushed by the General Assembly's far-right members,” says Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri. “Having served in the legislature, he should be able work with legislators to get thing done, but that may depend on who ends up leading the state Senate and whether that person can keep their caucus from splintering.”
Kehoe himself served as Senate majority leader before being tapped by Parson as lieutenant governor. Kehoe is a down-the-line conservative on issues including gun owners’ rights, abortion, private school choice and border security. He beat two opponents in the August GOP primary who ran as populists. “I don’t scream and holler about politics,” Kehoe said before that vote. “I’m running against people who are of the ‘burn it down’ variety. I’m just not a burn it down guy.”
Kehoe talks about growing up dirt-poor, joking his family was so poor they couldn’t even afford the dirt. Before entering politics, he became a highly successful car dealer. He likes to talk about his “American Dream life.”
He’s described elimination of the state income tax as a priority. Other Republican governors have floated that idea in recent years but have found it difficult to make the math work. Even without drastic cuts, Missouri’s budget is getting tighter with the draining away of federal pandemic aid. Putting together a passable package will be a test of Kehoe’s leadership skills.
Kehoe will be more of a hands-on dealmaker with legislators than Parson has been, predicts Jean Evans, a former executive director of the state Republican Party. “He will work with legislators and sell people on his ideas,” she says. “He’s a very good negotiator, just works with people until he can get them to agree with him.”
Josh Stein, North Carolina Democrat
Stein got incredibly lucky in terms of his opponent. Frequent offensive comments from Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson turned what looked like it would be the year’s most competitive race into a cakewalk.
Now Stein is hoping for another gift. Republicans hold big enough legislative majorities to override outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes routinely. “Stein’s success will depend a lot on the size of the Republican majority,” says Ferrell Guillory, a retired journalism professor at the University of North Carolina. “There’s an outside chance that Democrats can break the veto-proof majority that Republicans have in both the House and Senate.”
As Cooper did, Stein will be moving into the governor’s office after serving as state attorney general. Stein worked under Cooper as a young attorney before winning election to the state Senate. But they have some notable stylistic and background differences. Cooper will probably be the last of a line of good ol’ boy Democrats from the rural eastern part of the state to serve as governor. Stein, whose father was a civil rights lawyer, grew up in the college town of Chapel Hill and represents his party’s contemporary non-rural base.
Like other Democratic AGs, Stein sued the Trump administration over issues such as environmental protections, voting rights and the ban on immigration from some Muslim-majority countries. In terms of state issues, Stein concentrated on protecting consumers from scams while trying to dig through the nation’s biggest backlog of untested rape kits.
Stein has made it clear that as governor his top priority will be support for public schools — he’s an opponent of vouchers — while also seeking to attract more businesses, managing the state’s growth and maintaining a focus on public safety and drug addiction. Stein is a supporter of abortion rights. “It would be very shocking if Josh Stein deviates much from the policy prescriptions that Roy Cooper followed,” says Kokai, of the John Locke Foundation.
Despite his big polling lead, Stein knows he is running in a state that Trump is likely to carry at the presidential level, or at worst lose by a thin margin. He has spent heavily on advertising, presenting himself as a relatively moderate Democrat.
“I don’t think he’s going to be able to sway Republicans on taxes or on school choice, and he’s not going to make them change their minds on abortion policy,” Kokai says. “But I do think he thinks there are things that he can get done.”
Kelly Armstrong, North Dakota Republican
What some might view as a conflict, Armstrong describes as a strength. North Dakota’s governor serves on boards that regulate the energy industry and Armstrong owns oil and gas wells, while his father runs an oil and gas company. “I’m never going to do anything that’s unethical,” Armstrong said earlier this year. “But I’m not going to apologize for my knowledge of North Dakota oil and gas. I think that’s actually a pretty significant benefit for the Industrial Commission.”
Aside from electing Armstrong — who served six years both in Congress and the state Legislature — North Dakota voters on Tuesday will decide whether to approve a ballot measure that would eliminate property taxes. Armstrong opposes the measure, but has made it clear that he wants an overhaul of property taxes to be the Legislature’s first order of business next year.
Another initiative would lock up more of the state’s Legacy Fund, fueled by oil and natural gas revenues. Depending on how these initiatives play out, there could be massive fights in the Legislature over funding priorities next year, says Mark Jendrysik, a political scientist at the University of North Dakota. “What he might want to do is going to be constrained,” Jendrysik says.
Armstrong supports an elimination of state income taxes, if feasible, and takes a conservative stance on issues such as abortion, border security and transgender rights. He presented himself as “100 percent MAGA” during the campaign and opposed both impeachment votes against Trump. But Armstrong did vote against overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election and has described North Dakota elections as secure.
Armstrong praises outgoing GOP Gov. Doug Burgum for managing the economy and says that now’s the time for North Dakota to invest in its workforce, increasing the numbers of teachers, nurses and skilled workers. Depending on how the ballot initiatives play out — and whether oil prices stay mostly high during his tenure — Armstrong could have a fairly smooth ride as governor.
“He’ll govern as a standard conservative governor,” Jendrysik says, “which is what we’ve had for the last three decades.”
Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia Republican
Taxes are coming down in West Virginia. The personal income tax rate will drop by 4 percent in January, due to economic triggers, but GOP Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill cutting income taxes an additional 2 percent last week.
As governor, Morrisey intends to cut taxes further — perhaps eliminating income taxes altogether or at least cutting rates down lower than in neighboring states, which he promises to engage in a “backyard brawl” over economic growth. “The first order is to actually try to take steps to start to defeat the other states economically, to have superior tax policy,” he said during a debate last week.
Since he won the GOP primary in May, there’s never been any doubt that Morrisey would be elected governor. Morrisey’s own career demonstrates how rapidly Republicans have taken over the formerly Democratic state. In 2012, Morrisey became the state’s first Republican attorney general since the 1930s. Six years ago, he was, narrowly, the losing candidate against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. (Justice, himself a former Democrat, will be replacing Manchin in the Senate next year.)
At this point, though, Democratic politicians are an endangered species in the state. “The first thing to understand about Morrisey is that he’s probably a lot more consistently conservative than the previous governor,” says Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University.
Morrisey was born in Brooklyn but raised in New Jersey, studying and starting his career there and even running for a New Jersey congressional seat in 2000. Morrisey moved to West Virginia and for a time commuted to D.C. to work as a lobbyist.
As attorney general, Morrisey has repeatedly sued the Environmental Protection Agency, most notably leading the case against the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2021. He also garnered among the largest per capita opioid settlements in the country.
He’s pledged to revisit every regulation on the books for possible uprooting, while also campaigning staunchly against transgender rights. “He’s very skillful in weaving together old-school priorities of Republicans — low taxes and less regulation — alongside some of the culture war issues,” Workman says. “He’s probably more successful at that than any other Republican in the state.”
