Have a Fix

Democratic Governors Have a Fix for the Party: Themselves

The mood at the Democratic Governors Association meeting was remarkably bullish on 2028.

By Jonathan Martin

Democrats’ approval ratings are at a 35-year low, the tensions between their progressive and moderate wings are on display in the country’s largest city and it takes only a light breeze, or Hunter Biden interview, to restart recriminations about the last four years. Oh, and the party’s deeper structural issue — the flight of working-class voters of all races — remains unaddressed.

Democratic governors, though, have a solution: themselves.

“Governors are extremely popular,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green reminded me, adding that he and his fellow Democratic state executives “have a story to tell, whereas senators and congresspeople tend to have a conflict.”

Now, governors tend to believe that they are the solution, and Washington is the problem, as reliably as they are given to reminding people that they have to balance budgets and state capitals are the laboratories of democracy, time-honored gubernatorial chestnuts all.

But whether the thin mountain air here had gone to their heads or they were genuinely bullish, I found a remarkable confidence among Democratic governors at last weekend’s summer convening of the National Governors Association.

The thinking goes something like this: Past is prologue, and once voters absorb Republican overreach, Democrats will benefit in the short term and then can reclaim the White House by simply finding a strong candidate with a compelling message.

This tends to both underestimate the depth of their party’s brand challenge and, I think, gravely underestimate the lengths Trump will go to retain control of Congress and the White House. (See redistricting, mid-decade).

Yet to hear it from the Democratic governors, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill will age the same way one of the massive carp from the Broadmoor resort’s lake would out on the shadeless pickleball court all day. And the deeper fatigue from The Trump Show will ultimately dog Republicans, just as it did in his first term — and as two terms of George W. Bush did a generation ago.

“History would show, and I don’t want you to think that I’m whistling past the graveyard here, but I think history will show when you lose there’s a lot of infighting, there’s lots of finger points, and a bit of this,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, huffily crossing his arms. “And how do you get out of that? I think you get out of that by winning.”

Murphy, who’s wrapping up his final year of two terms in office and just hosted former President Barack Obama at his home for a fundraiser, said part of the reason why Democrats’ numbers are so dismal is because of their own supporters. “Winning changes the locker room, it changes the fan’s attitude,” he said, adding: “And the Trump administration has handed us, sadly for America, a whole lot of material to work with.”

Claiming the gubernatorial races this year in Murphy’s New Jersey and in Virginia will help brighten moods, as would winning more statehouses and control of the House next year.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter: Democratic governors are also full of swagger because they believe they’ll nominate one of their own for president, and win, in 2028.

Not only are many of them more popular than their congressional counterparts, but they can also more plausibly run against ye ole Washington mess as generational change agents, the time-honored formula for every successful Democratic hopeful for over a half-century not named Biden (who ran as a vehicle to stop Covid and Trump, in no particular order).

“We will have a governor who has solved problems, whether it’s Josh who has solved the problems with when his bridge went down or Wes when they had that disaster in Maryland and we had the Maui wildfire,” said Green.

Now, the Hawaii governor may not run himself — though Green is a doctor, so look for him to be considered for health secretary — but his references to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore were not happenstance.

In private here at the Broadmoor resort and at a media-free gathering of Democratic women governors on Michigan’s Mackinac Island earlier this month, I’m told, the talk has turned to which of them will claim the mantle. And Shapiro and Moore, who are both in their first terms, have emerged as early favorites among their peers.

Each was born in the 1970s, each has a promising biography and, why mince words, they’re seen as most likely to fulfill the party’s overriding criteria: They can win because it’s hard for Republicans to portray them as radicals, soft or both.

This is no popularity contest. The govs are guessing who among them will have the most appeal with the electorate.

They’re fond of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as well as Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, if somewhat more skeptical either can claim a nomination and general election. Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer is well-liked, especially among the other women governors, but there are doubts she’ll run for president. And former Rhode Island Governor-turned-Commerce-Secretary Gina Raimondo has her admirers.

They’re less enamored with California’s Gavin Newsom, to put it mildly, who has never really been part of the governor’s club.

All of these Democrats may well run, though. So it’s unlikely that there will be an early rallying to a single governor as GOP governors coalesced around then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1999.

And, it can’t be emphasized enough, these are early days.

In fact, part of Beshear’s challenge owes to the lessons Democrats learned two decades ago in the wake of Bush’s re-election. The first instinct — let’s find a moderate Southern white guy who won in Red America! — looked absurd when they tapped a Black man from a big city with a Muslim middle name and he carried Indiana, Iowa and North Carolina on his way to an electoral rout.

The certitudes, or even assumptions, of the present can look foolhardy with the advantage of hindsight.

Many party insiders, governors among them, recoil from what they see as taking a risk. But the voters often see the landscape quite differently and may be more open to unconventional candidates. After all, Obama, Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were dismissed by many a wise guy at the start of their campaigns. How did that go?

So former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and, sorry governors, yes Gavin Newsom could make today’s conventional wisdom look as silly as we now view that of 2005.

And consider this for a moment: If AOC is the only galvanizing progressive to make it deep into a post-Bernie primary, how far do you think her third (or more) of the vote could go against a fractured establishment field? Republicans in 2016 saw this movie and will be happy to tell you how it ends.

Recent political history also makes it harder to tell voters they can’t want what they want. Party leaders and rival candidates warned primary voters in 2008 and again in 2016 that nominating Obama and then Trump would lead to a general election wipeout and, well, here we are.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the person who most convincingly recounted this precedent was none other than Moore himself, when we chatted at the National Governor’s Association.

“It’s not like the DNC kicked into gear,” Moore told me, recounting Obama’s rise. “There was a unique candidate who brought a unique message who built a unique coalition. And then the Democrats ended up winning the presidency, the House and the Senate on ‘Hope and Change.’”

It was, the Marylander added, “same as ’16.”

After all the Republican self-flagellation — the autopsy! — in the aftermath of 2012, they wound up nominating and winning with somebody who didn’t move to the center on immigration but embraced “the guy who says ‘we’re going to ‘Make America Great Again,’” as Moore recalled.

He doesn’t have a pithy slogan just yet, though he did trot out a handy way of criticizing both parties by asking: “Why are we choosing between inhumane and ineffective?”

It’s easy to hear the echoes of Obama’s appeal in Moore, 46. He talks about restoring people’s faith in politics and explains that he’s more concerned about “the steel wall than the blue wall” — meaning voters “who are just like, ‘I’m done.’”

But it’s also easy to hear the voices of those Democrats who’ve warned Moore that these are more jaundiced times and that their voters are lining up to buy relief, not transformation.

“For Democrats, I think it’s going to be a lot of analyzing who can win,” he said. “Who can navigate a gauntlet, how are you bringing out a lot of different options and factions, who can resonate in both South Carolina and Georgia and resonate in both Minnesota and Michigan.”

I didn’t have to ask whom he had in mind.

Few, if any, potential 2028 Democratic hopefuls are working it harder than Moore. He’s been all over the summer circuit, working party fish fries in South Carolina, plutocrat retreats in Sun Valley and his fellow governors, who just elected him as NGA vice-chair, which means he’ll host the summer gathering as chair — and as a potential presidential candidate — in 2027 in Maryland.

My favorite, though, was the June weekend he split between the swells at the Aspen Ideas Festival and and the Detroit NAACP’s annual banquet, a marquee event on the Michigan political calendar presided over by the influential Rev. Wendell Anthony.

This schedule along with his charisma and credentials (Army officer, Rhodes Scholar, Ravens tailgate beer shotgunner) has fueled chatter about his prospects. He’s one of those rare political figures — see Obama and Bill Clinton — who’s at home in any room.

When I point this out, Moore cites the Jay Z lyric: “I’m comfortable, dog, Brooklyn to Rome.”

But the more he schmoozes, the more the whispers grow that he’s a pleaser and can’t help but gild the lily at times, reviving long-standing worries about resume buffing. Just what does Moore ultimately stand for, besides his own ambition?

Naturally, he rejects the idea when I suggest any slipperiness.

“I want people to be able to hear me out,” Moore said. “I like the ability to make my case to people. But where I am on things is not slippery.” As proof he points to his current tax hike on Maryland’s wealthiest citizens.

Ultimately, it may just be a matter of how much voters care, particularly post-Trump, about such questions.

If Moore is the dreamboat — but maybe too good to be true — then Shapiro is the more sensible boy next door of the two.

As one Democratic strategist put it to me earlier this year: “It’s easy to fall in like with Josh.”

It’s a good line, but I also think winning four times in Pennsylvania, the most important state on the modern presidential map, can weigh strongly on affairs of the heart.

Shapiro, 52, didn’t show at the NGA and hasn’t worked the national scene as much as Moore, or other 2028 contenders, but he may luck into a springboard of a re-election if Republicans nominate the abysmal Doug Mastriano again next year. Moore, meanwhile, may face stiffer competition should former Gov. Larry Hogan attempt a 2026 comeback, as I’m told he’s considering, perhaps as an independent.

In the end, I think, the eventual Democratic nominee will emerge because they can do (at least) two things: plausibly run against the political status quo as a changemaker and can claim the attention-economy crown that has reshaped politics. Which is to say: Who can hold your attention online for seven seconds or more?

Democrats will know it when they see it.

As Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the outgoing NGA chair, put it, “we have all very much become content generators.”

As the athletes who train in this alpine capital of the U.S. Olympics long to one day hear: Let the games begin.