It has been 20 years since the United States elected a former governor as president, a streak that’s likely to stretch at least until 2028.
But the presidency is surely on the minds of at least a few state-level executives who will descend on Washington later this week for the National Governors Association winter meetings.
Between President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in January 1977 and President George W. Bush’s White House exit in early 2009, four out of five presidents had previously served as a governor. Since then, former Sen. Barack Obama, business mogul and political newcomer Donald Trump, and former Sen. and Vice President Joe Biden have occupied the Oval Office.
“Qualifications for president have evolved considerably over time and we certainly seem to be in a cycle which doesn’t value governors nearly as much as in the recent past,” acknowledged Tom Cochran, a Democratic strategist and partner at 720 Strategies.
With Trump and Biden likely to secure the major party nominations again this year, any governor looking to win the presidency will need to wait another four years to make it happen.
That’s not to say no governors are trying. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has cultivated a national reputation and plenty of presidential rumors with his appearances in other states, including a debate with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) while the Florida governor was still running for president.
But aside from Newsom, governors have been particularly weak as presidential candidates on the Democratic side of the aisle.
The only governor in the 2016 Democratic nomination was former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who dropped out after receiving 0.6% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.
Four years later, former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick failed to make a splash, drawing far less attention than Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and even former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
A new crop of state-level Democratic stars may one day swing the tide. Newsom, Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Andy Beshear (D-KY), Wes Moore (D-MD), and Josh Shapiro (D-PA) are all seen as potential presidential nominees.
Cochran said he could see any or all of them running in 2028, though he warns the media landscape has changed.
“Given the ever-increasing pace of media cycles and abundance of national- or global-level issues receiving the lion’s share of attention, it seems more likely that you have to be a candidate with national-level bona fides to be favorably positioned,” he said.
Republicans are more governor-friendly.
Trump’s top challengers this cycle are DeSantis, who has dropped out, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and he tapped former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to join his ticket as vice president in 2016 and 2020.
“Governors do make better presidents because they have executive experience,” presidential historian and Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said. “Better executives make better presidents.”
Even Trump qualifies in a way, since he was a leader and executive in the business world before announcing a run for president in 2015. Shirley said the conservative philosophy favors executives over legislators, hence the pro-governor bias in the GOP.
“Liberal ideology tends more toward committees, and the conservative ideology tends more toward decision-making ability,” he said.
DeSantis and Haley will hope that the pendulum in the Republican Party swings back to governors at some point, even as Trump’s grip on the GOP appears intact this cycle.
Then again, going back a little further reveals that governors weren’t always so dominant as they were between the late 1970s and late 2000s. From the end of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency in 1945 to Carter’s inauguration, not a single president had been a governor.
The NGA’s winter meetings begin Friday with Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) hosting a session with Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett, who will share their perspectives on “how to disagree agreeably.”
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Meetings will continue on Saturday with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, and pollster Frank Luntz making appearances.
The governors’ visit to Washington will cumulate with a black-tie dinner with their spouses and Biden on Saturday at the White House, a place where one of them may reside if the electoral tide shifts.
