Nevertheless, Republican officials are confident that they will hold on to the seats they already have, maintaining their longstanding majority in governorships nationwide. (There are currently 27 Republican governors, compared with 23 Democrats.)
“Our policies are proven and people are supportive of lower taxes and less government intervention in their lives,” says Sara Craig, executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “I think we just have very successful policies that make sense to the everyday Americans."
Governing spoke with Craig about the state of the races heading into the final days. (On Wednesday, we will run an interview with one of her peers at the Democratic Governors Association.) The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The closest race this year is in New Hampshire. Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte has had a consistent polling lead, but it’s a small lead and she’s below 50 percent in support. How are you feeling about that race heading into the last few days?
We are very cautiously optimistic. She's just running a fantastic campaign. If there's a parade, she's been at it. If there's an event, she is there. No one is out-working her. She's been doing a great job.
I don't think Joyce Craig, her opponent, was very strong coming out of the primary. They had a much more competitive primary on their side, which put them in a tough position when it's such a late primary.
And so [Ayotte] just, she's just run a fantastic campaign, and I think you put her record of success as New Hampshire attorney general, as the United States senator, up against Joyce Craig, who was an utter failure as mayor, and the contrast couldn't be more clear.
You said you're cautiously optimistic. Given everything you just said, why are you still on the cautious side?
It’s going to be a close race. We know that most likely Kamala Harris is going to win New Hampshire, although I think [former] President [Donald] Trump is making headway there. With the top of the ticket likely being led by the Democrat, you have to have a lot of split-ticket voters, and we're just in a political environment where it's harder to find split-ticket voters around the country. I think we're fortunate in that New Hampshire is one of those states where they're used to split-ticket voting, and so I think we're a little more optimistic about our chances, but it's still a tough proposition.
Let's shift over to Indiana, where Republican and current U.S. Sen. Mike Braun is running against the former Indiana superintendent of public instruction, Democrat Jennifer McCormick. Your group has put in a considerable amount of money recently. Sen. Braun is still ahead in the polls, but why does it appear to be closer than probably most people would have predicted at the start of the year?
It’s a little bit of an opposite issue of New Hampshire. It's just such an early primary, so there was a lot of spending early in that race. And then over the summer it was, it was a very, very quiet race.
But the margin is going to be pretty big for Donald Trump, and so the Democrats have a little bit of a similar problem that we could face in New Hampshire, in that they have to find a lot of split-ticket voters. While New Hampshire has proven to have a lot of split-ticket voting, Indiana typically has not. And so I think the math just works a little bit better for us.
At the start of the year, it looked like North Carolina would be the marquee race for this year. Now, Democrat Josh Stein has a comfortable polling lead. How do you think the race got to this point?
You know, it's just our candidate was probably not going to be as competitive as we had hoped, and so we've shifted our resources elsewhere, but I still think that Josh Stein is not the right answer for North Carolina. He's not going to be the right governor for North Carolina, but it's becoming a more difficult race for us.
He’s on a glide path to spend almost $45 to $50 million just on TV [campaign ads] alone, which is an unprecedented amount of money. So I think that they are still a little bit worried about the race, or you probably wouldn't see that level of spending continuing to happen today.
Are there any of the other races that you think are on the edge?
Washington is also one to keep an eye on. The top of the ticket is obviously going to make a difference in the Washington governor's race, but the Democrats have spent a lot of money there because Dave Reichert is a fantastic candidate, someone who's won in the Seattle area before and can speak to some of the issues that you're seeing in Washington, like crime and public safety. You talk about us having to put money into Indiana, but it is nothing compared to what the Democrats have spent up in Washington.
Washington is kind of a funny case where you can see a head-to-head result in the primary. Bob Ferguson, the Democrat, finished almost 20 points ahead of Reichert. How does Reichert make up that deficit?
If you look at his background, it’s perfectly suited to speak to crime and the issues that have come up in Washington state. There are a lot of people who are concerned about the crime issues. He has a unique voice in that state, and I think that the Democrats are legitimately worried about him over-performing other Republicans in the past.
It’s a relatively quiet year. Given that there were only three incumbents running out of the 11 states, are you surprised more states aren’t competitive, or that most of them seem to have been settled in the primary?
We knew that in Missouri, West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, and Indiana, the Democrats didn't really stand a chance. So we've kind of known it would be a little bit quiet and that North Carolina and New Hampshire were really going to be the two races that were top of mind for us.
That is kind of nice, because in two years we have 36 races. There are going to be a lot of competitive races, so it's kind of nice for us to learn lessons this year on what we would do differently and better two years from now.
