Will Scandal Decide a Governor's Race?

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Will Scandal Decide a Governor’s Race?: Bethany Hall-Long did something unusual a few months ago: She fired her husband. Hall-Long, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Delaware, is running for governor and it turned out more than $200,000 in unreported funds had gone from her campaign account to her husband, Dana Long. Her campaign and finance director quit, but Hall-Long decided to stay in the race, firing her husband as campaign treasurer.

That was not the end of the story, however. Last month, the state Department of Elections released a forensic audit that found more payments had gone to Dana Long. State Attorney General Kathy Jennings said she would not prosecute apparent legal violations because Delaware law in this area is written too narrowly and that a defense attorney “could credibly attribute the committee’s errors to carelessness.”

If Hall-Long faces no legal peril, the situation has clearly harmed her politically. She was the early front-runner to succeed term-limited Gov. John Carney, who endorsed her, as did the state Democratic Party. But Hall-Long's polling lead has been erased and two Democratic legislators have called for her to drop out. “She thought she put the fire out by firing her husband,” says Samuel Hoff, a political scientist at Delaware State University, “but the drip, drip, drip has become a flood for Bethany Hall-Long.”

New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, her chief rival in the Sept. 10 primary, has called for a federal investigation into the matter. "Delawareans, all of us, deserve to be able to trust our elected officials and know that rules and laws apply to everyone, and apply to everyone equally," Meyer said.

Hall-Long dismissed that as a “desperate political attack.” But it’s clear the various probes, resignations and complaints from members of her own party have hurt her.

Whoever wins the primary will be an overwhelming favorite — Delaware hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1988. That's coming up soon. Hall-Long doesn’t have a lot of time to turn around a race that has turned into a compilation of bad news for her.

Meet the Next Governors of Missouri and Washington: Delaware isn’t the only state dominated by a single party that’s holding an election for governor this year. In fact, it’s difficult to find more than one or two of the 11 contests that look at all competitive in the fall, meaning all the action has been in the primaries.

In Washington state, some early polls indicated that Republican Dave Reichert, a former sheriff and member of Congress, might give Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson a run for his money. But as politicians sometimes like to say, the only poll that matters is on Election Day.

In Washington, all candidates appear together on the same primary ballot, regardless of party, offering a real test of relative strength. Tuesday’s primary results are not completely in — Washington conducts elections by mail — but Ferguson won handily, taking 45 percent of the vote to Reichert’s 28 percent. It’s highly unlikely that Reichert can consolidate all the votes Ferguson failed to get, since one of the other candidates was a Democrat. Ferguson will be a heavy favorite in the runoff against Reichert, which would give Democrats their 11th straight victory in Washington gubernatorial contests.

The winner was all but decided on Tuesday in Missouri also. The former bellwether state is now solidly red, with Republicans generally winning statewide races by margins of roughly 20 percent. Their nominee to replace term-limited Gov. Mike Parson will be Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, who took 39 percent. Kehoe, who had the backing of much of the state’s business establishment, was able to fend off a late surge from state Sen. Bill Eigel, who ran as the most hard-right conservative in the race and took 33 percent. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the early favorite, took just 23 percent, but the split of the social conservative vote between Eigel and Ashcroft allowed Kehoe to win by a plurality.

In an era of limited ticket-splitting, voters are still more likely to support candidates from the “wrong” party in their states for governor than for Congress or legislatures. Not this year, however.

More Single-Party Voting: Voters may say they like bipartisanship, but primary voters are apt to punish lawmakers who stray from the party line. This was demonstrated Tuesday in two different races in the Kansas City area, where a pair of legislators was defeated for breaking with orthodoxy on transgender issues.

State Rep. Marvin Robinson, a Democrat from Kansas City, Kan., took just 22 percent of the vote in his primary. Robinson had joined with Republicans in overriding vetoes from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, including on the issue of transgender athletes participating in school sports. “I don’t take pleasure in ending somebody’s political career,” Kelly told reporters Wednesday. “I do take pleasure in the thought of a Legislature that will work together and work with me.”

On the other side of the border, one of the five Missouri House Republicans ousted Tuesday was Chris Sander, who is openly gay and had drawn criticism within party ranks by voting against restrictions on transgender health care and sports participation, as well as introducing legislation to repeal language in the state constitution that defines marriage as being “between a man and a woman.” His opponent, Carolyn Caton, called herself “the one true conservative in this race.”

Also in the Kansas City area, Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden lost the GOP primary. Hayden had devoted much of his time and energy to a controversial investigation into supposed voter fraud.

In Michigan, GOP state Rep. Neil Friske was also ousted on Tuesday. Back in June, police had arrested him for what they called a “felony-level offense” involving sexual assault and the firing of a weapon. Friske has not been charged but lost his race handily.