Top five gubernatorial races to watch heading into midterm elections

Sarah Westwood

July 06, 07:00 AM July 06, 07:00 AM

As the issue of abortion reinvigorates conversations about Democrats’ chances of keeping their congressional majorities, it is also throwing a spotlight on the state-level elections that will determine the future of abortion law.

Gubernatorial races have been given new life by the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the abortion protections outlined in Roe v. Wade and returned the question of how to regulate abortions to the states for the first time in decades.

Incumbent governors in a number of sharply divided swing states are fighting for their political lives against the backdrop of intensified activism around abortion and more general voter concerns about the economy, creating split sets of incentives around what candidates should discuss.

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While there are tight gubernatorial races in a number of states this fall, here are five of the most competitive.

GEORGIA

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is set for a rematch against Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, whom he narrowly defeated in 2018 with the help of former President Donald Trump.

This time around, the political landscape has shifted significantly. Kemp is no longer allied with Trump, and Abrams has spent the intervening years continuing to build a national profile that put her name recognition at least as high as Kemp’s.

Abrams had made voting rights the center of her campaign four years ago and until recently spent most of her time focusing on voting activism. At the national level, Democrats tried unsuccessfully to make voting rights a key issue over the past year. President Joe Biden placed Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of promoting voting rights legislation last year to great fanfare, only to have the effort sputter out when it became clear Democrats did not have the votes to pass anything.

Like in virtually every other race, inflation has supplanted most other concerns among voters and become a central feature of the race.

Unlike in 2018, however, Georgia is not considered a solidly red state.

Trump narrowly lost to Biden in Georgia in 2020, and Georgians soon after sent two Democratic senators to Washington in a pair of runoffs.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, one of those Democrats, is still polling ahead of his Republican opponent — even though just 33% of Georgia voters approve of his performance, according to a recent survey.

Polling has suggested the contest between Kemp and Abrams is much closer.

Abortion could factor heavily into how some Georgia voters cast their ballots in November thanks to a highly restrictive law Kemp signed in 2019.

That law, which banned abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy, has never been enforced but could soon take effect thanks to the decision in Dobbs. Abrams has spoken out recently about how her views on the procedure evolved from the anti-abortion stance she learned from a religious upbringing.

She has outlined a position on abortion less left-wing than some other Democrats running this year, endorsing legislation that would permit abortions only until the point a baby could survive outside the mother. That would essentially codify the fetal viability framework in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the 1992 Supreme Court decision that revised and upheld Roe. Some Democrats have advocated more permissive abortion laws.

NEVADA

A Trump-endorsed sheriff, Joe Lombardo, won the right to take on Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak in Nevada in a mid-June primary.

Like in Georgia, the Nevada gubernatorial contest could be boosted by the attention paid to the state given the difficult reelection battle a Democratic incumbent senator is facing. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is facing headwinds from Biden’s unpopularity in her bid to defeat Republican Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general and possibly formidable opponent, as the GOP looks to pick up a Senate seat in the state.

Lombardo has pushed a tougher-on-crime agenda and called for tighter security at the border given Nevada’s proximity to places in California and Arizona where illegal migration has exploded.

He’s also criticized Sisolak’s strict pandemic policies, which included lockdowns and lengthy mask mandates.

Nevada presently has a Democratic governor, a Democratic-controlled state legislature, and two Democratic senators in Washington.

But Democrats have slowly lost ground in a state that, despite its growing Hispanic population, has been swinging less and less decisively toward Democrats. While Democratic presidential candidates carried Nevada in all four elections since 2008, the party’s margin of victory has shrunk from 12.5 points to 2.4 points in 2020, according to Ruy Teixeira, a Democratic political analyst.

Lombardo could benefit from the pessimism voters are increasingly associating with Democratic leadership, thanks in large part to Biden’s sinking approval ratings.

However, Sisolak did not have to spend time and energy fighting in a competitive primary like Lombardo did. The incumbent Democrat has already reserved $6 million worth of airtime for ads into the fall, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

PENNSYLVANIA

Trump is likely to loom large over the gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania — in part because the Republican candidate is such a fierce supporter of him.

Doug Mastriano prevailed over a crowded Republican primary field in May with Trump’s backing. A state senator with a history of controversial statements, Mastriano has promoted Trump’s unfounded claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him and even marched outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which he has said he did lawfully.

Mastriano has shown few signs of backing away from his firebrand roots now that he is locked into a general election contest against Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

He’s backed some policies that make most centrist Republicans squirm, including a proposal to boot all Pennsylvanians from the voter rolls and force them to reregister if they want to vote again.

Shapiro, like several other Democratic candidates in other races, had sought to bolster Mastriano in the Republican primary under the impression that Mastriano would prove an easier opponent to defeat.

Polling suggests that isn’t necessarily the case, however. Shapiro held a narrow lead over Mastriano in a poll published last month. By contrast, the Democratic Senate candidate, John Fetterman, held a more substantial advantage over Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate.

Abortion had become a focus of the gubernatorial candidates in Pennsylvania even before the Dobbs draft opinion leaked to the press in May.

Shapiro has touted the power of the “veto pen” in protecting the state against abortion restrictions that could emerge from a GOP-controlled state legislature, highlighting the importance of keeping a Democrat in the role of governor this November.

WISCONSIN

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has the advantage of a later primary date in Wisconsin than in a number of other states, meaning his prospective Republican opponent is stuck fighting for the nomination until August while he is already free to focus on the general election.

Polling of possible matchups suggests Evers maintains a lead over the top Republican primary candidates, including Tim Michels and Rebecca Kleefisch.

But his reelection bid could still prove an uphill battle.

The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, two well-regarded election forecasting groups, both rate the race as a “toss-up.”

In a race that close at the start, Biden’s dismal numbers and the worsening economic outlook could tip the contest away from Evers even if he runs a well-executed campaign.

Abortion could also scramble the dynamics of the race.

Evers has joined his state’s Democratic attorney general in backing a lawsuit to stop the implementation of Wisconsin's 19th-century abortion ban, marking one of the most high-profile fights against states’ new authority to push their own abortion laws since the Dobbs decision.

MICHIGAN

Like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Michigan is a battleground state that backed Trump in 2016 but shifted to Biden in 2020. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will feel the weight of Biden’s unpopularity in November — as well as the weight of some of her own choices.

Whitmer imposed lockdowns and mandates at the start of the pandemic that lingered longer than pandemic policies in many red states. She became one of the faces of the Democratic approach to coronavirus containment — which, in general, was more restrictive than the approach Republican governors took — and faced down impassioned protests in her state’s capital at the height of the pandemic.

The political calculation of continuing pandemic policies shifted dramatically earlier this year when a critical mass of people began telling pollsters they were tired of complying with COVID-19 rules and a number of Democratic leaders, Whitmer included, rolled back remaining restrictions.

But resentment over the length of school closures and the Democratic defense of virtual learning, among other things, continues to erode the Left’s support among centrist voters.

Whitmer has also leaned into abortion politics. She pledged to use her executive authority to mitigate the impacts of the Dobbs decision, including through an order directing all agencies not to cooperate with law enforcement officers from other states looking to prosecute women who cross state lines to get abortions.

Still, Democrats know the gubernatorial race in Michigan could easily tip toward Republicans.

The Democratic Governors Association pledged in May to make one of its biggest investments in the Michigan race, announcing it would spend $23 million to assist Whitmer.