May28

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GOP 53

Candidate News: Governors, Part I

There was some big, if expected, news in the Alabama governor's race yesterday. So, we're going to put this item first, and also use that news as an excuse to do a rundown of all the gubernatorial news from the last week or so. Well, some of it, at least. There's enough that we'll have to split it over two days:

• Alabama: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) made it official, and announced that after having prayed on it, he's going to run for governor of his "home" state. We put that in quotations because there's considerable evidence his actual residence is in Florida. We wonder, in these circumstances, if God says "run" and Jesus says "don't run," does the Holy Ghost get the tiebreaker vote? Is the Holy Ghost, in effect, the J.D. Vance of the Great Beyond? Someone should ask the theologians about that.
  
  Tuberville's reported interest had already kept any Republicans from getting in, and now that it's official, it's hard to believe he'll draw a serious challenger. Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) is term-limited, of course, and Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth (R-AL) and AG Steve Marshall (R-AL) have said they are not interested. The closest Tuberville might get to a real challenger is if someone who is not currently in office, and who has nothing to lose, decides to jump in—say, former Alabama SoS John Merrill. Even if that happens, Tuberville will eat any primary challengers for lunch.
  
  The Democrats, meanwhile, don't have anyone other than former senator Doug Jones, and he's not likely to get in. The Alabama Democratic Party does intend to challenge Tuberville's eligibility, pointing out that state law requires the governor to have lived in the state for 7 years prior to their election, and that it seems unlikely that the Senator has been letting his $4 million mansion in Florida rot since 2019, so that he could live in his $270,000 homestead in Alabama. It's possible the Democrats will prevail here, but not too likely, because Tuberville switched his voter registration to Alabama in 2019 (i.e., 7 years before 2026), and because since then he largely has not been living in Florida OR Alabama, but instead in Washington, DC. Surely he would not abandon his Senate seat if he was not certain he'll meet the gubernatorial eligibility requirement. And even if the Democrats do disqualify him, they'll just end up handing the race to some other Republican candidate.
  
  Tuberville's retirement from the Senate immediately raises two questions. The first is who will replace him in the Senate. Obviously, while he was expected to run for reelection, nobody else declared. But now, any up-and-coming Alabama Republican is far more likely to enter this race than to try to take on Tuberville for the governor's mansion. Marshall is likely to enter the race, and there are a bunch of current and former representatives who might do the same. That includes former representative Mo Brooks, who has already twice tried for the Senate, and twice been told by Alabama GOP primary voters that he's too nutty even for them. There are rumors that Bruce Pearl might jump in, but these appear to be based entirely on the fact that he's a sports coach (men's basketball at Auburn) and that Alabamians love sports coaches, particularly sports coaches from Auburn. We can find no evidence Pearl has expressed any interest in the job.
  
  The second question is: Once Tuberville departs his current job, who will inherit his crown as the dumbest person in the Senate? This is a very difficult question to answer, since Tuberville has so thoroughly left the competition in the dust, like Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths in 1973. No other horses were, and no other senators are, even within the field of vision. That said, we're a full-service site, so we'll tentatively guess that the betting favorites are Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Tim Scott (R-SC) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT). A year ago, this would have been a fairly easy question to answer, because Bob Menendez is a special kind of stupid. But the New Jersey Democrat is not in the Senate anymore, and will be reporting to the hoosegow in a couple of weeks, because of the aforementioned special kind of stupidity.
  
  
• Alaska: One upside of ranked-choice voting is that ranked-choice systems tend to attract a broader array of candidates, and so to give voters a broader variety of options. That is certainly proving to be true in Alaska, where in the last week, three different people have declared their intent to run for governor.
  
  The first person to make it official is former state senator Click Bishop (R). He was known as a moderate during his 12 years in the state Senate, and was a member of the bipartisan caucus that largely controls the flow of business in that body. He welcomes comparisons to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
  
  The second person to get in is Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (R), who has an unusual electoral history. She ran for a seat in the Alaska state House and lost, but then was appointed to the seat anyhow when Lisa Murkowski vacated it after being appointed to the U.S. Senate. Having served in the lower chamber for 7 years, Dahlstrom left politics for nearly a decade, then ran for reelection to her old seat and won. She declined to take office, however, instead accepting appointment as Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections. After 4 years there, she was elected to her current post, having served as Alaska's #2 (and de facto state secretary of state) since 2022. In 2024, she tried to get away from the cold with a seat in the U.S. House, but finished a distant third in the primary and dropped out. The upshot is that Dahlstrom's record is mixed, particularly when she's not running for a job she already holds by virtue of having been appointed to it. She's a little to the right of Bishop, but only a little. Think Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK).
  
  And the third person to throw their (fur-lined) hat into the ring is Bernadette Wilson. She is a fire-breathing Trumper who owns a trash-collection business, and who has no experience in elective office. She is also a great-niece of a former Alaska governor, namely Republican Wally Hickel. That said, the population of Alaska is about 750,000 people, so being related to someone who once held political office is about as rare as having some Cherokee heritage in Oklahoma.
  
  No other Republican, and no Democrat, has declared yet. It's still pretty early in the cycle, by Alaska standards, and undoubtedly aspiring politicians from both parties are also keeping a close eye for any developments in next year's U.S. Senate race.
  
  
• Florida: The Florida GOP gubernatorial primary has been quite a soap opera so far. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) is in, and has Donald Trump's endorsement. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis (R) was clearly signalling a run but, as we have noted a couple of times, she's now got a couple of problems. The first is that she's enmeshed in a scandal involving charity grift, and the second is that her husband has become quite unpopular (see tomorrow for more).
  
  Sensing an opening, and apparently finding that life out of politics isn't turning out quite the way he planned, former representative and failed U.S. Attorney General candidate Matt Gaetz is now making noise about joining the contest. Gaetz had hinted at this before, then backed off, but now he's hinting at it again. If he does take the plunge, Trump will have an interesting choice to make, as Gaetz is a shameless Trumper and a loyal lapdog, but he's also likely to lose the GOP primary. A poll of the race puts his support at... 10%. The residents of Gaetz's former district (FL-01, which is basically the panhandle) very much liked his brand of crazy, but Republicans statewide... not so much.
  
  
• Maine: The Democratic primary already had the potential to be a barnburner, with three serious candidates in the race: Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former President of the Maine Senate Troy Jackson, and son of Sen. Angus King (I-ME) Angus King III.
  
  Now, the Republican primary also has barnburner potential. There were three candidates in the race before this week, but only one of them, former Asst. U.S. Secretary of State Robert B. Charles, was serious. This week saw two more folks jump in from the right side of the aisle. State Sen. James Libby is a college professor and has served six terms in the state legislature, two of those in the state House and four in the state Senate. Like Charles, Libby is a Rockefeller Republican, which is how they like 'em in the Pine Tree State.
  
  Also joining the race this week was David Jones, who is in search of Fame... Fame, which makes a man take things over; Fame... Fame, which lets him loose, hard to swallow. No, wait, that is a different David Jones. This one is a political newbie who makes his living as a realtor, and is—wait for it—a fire-breathing Trumper. He even co-founded the Make Maine Great Again Super PAC. That's not a great match for the state's GOP electorate, but if the two normal Republicans split the sane Republican vote, then... maybe? Maine does use ranked choice voting for primaries, but if Jones is the first choice of 30%, then strange things can sometimes happen. Democrats would be very happy to have Jones claim the nomination, because he would be the most beatable candidate.
  
  
• Ohio: Ohio AG David Yost (R) has concluded that, in the race to replace term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine (R), Vivek Ramaswamy has the MAGA lane all locked up. That is probably a sound conclusion, as polls give Ramaswamy a lead of 50-60 points (that is not a typo). So, this week, Yost dropped out. It's possible he could challenge Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) next year, since Husted is appointed, and appointed senators only keep their jobs about half the time. Although if only 10% of Ohioans like what a person is selling as a would-be governor, it's hard to believe that what a person is selling as a would-be senator is all that much more appealing.
  
  DeWine, who is close to Elon Musk, and is VERY close to Elon Musk's money, does not like Ramaswamy. This may be related to the fact that Musk does not like Ramaswamy. So, DeWine is trying very, very hard to get Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel (R-OH), former Ohio State football coach, into the race, declaring that "He (Tressel) IS Ohio." Thus far, Tressel is playing his cards close to the vest. If he gets in, he'll probably make a contest of it, though we don't know for sure because pollsters haven't been asking about him. If he doesn't get in, the nomination, and probably the job, are Ramaswamy's.

Tomorrow, we'll have big news from Georgia, and updates from Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia. As always, we welcome comments about local races, and suggestions about news we should note, at comments@electoral-vote.com.

We also had items planned about pardons, Harvard and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), but it's getting late and this is getting long, so those will have to wait, too. Nuts. (Z)