Of the top 10 most written-about statehouse races on DK/DKE this year, this dude is probably the most anonymous: Texas Republican Governor-elect Greg Abbott.
Continuing the year-end review of how our community here at Daily Kos/Daily Kos Elections looked at the 2014 election cycle, today we turn our attention to the three dozen battles for state governor which were waged from coast to coast on November 4th.
In many ways, the gubernatorial battles were largely overshadowed this cycle, despite their immense importance in shaping the policies that impact us on a daily basis. The threat of a GOP takeover of the U.S. Senate (which, of course, was realized roughly two months ago) was the marquee story of the 2014 midterms, casting discussions of U.S. House races and gubernatorial races to the back burner in many cases.
But not in all cases. What follows just past the jump is a listing of the top ten gubernatorial races on Daily Kos, as measured by the number of diaries tagged with the five-letter code for electoral contests (AL-Gov, AK-Gov, and so on). There are some legitimate surprises in both directions: some very competitive races were not in the top ten, and a couple of races whose outcomes were foregone conclusions made their way into the top ten nevertheless.
Head past the jump to see how the top ten stacked up.
Before we actually get to the ten U.S. Senate races that were the most discussed on Daily Kos, let's look, from worst to first...er...eleventh, at where the balance of the slate wound up, in terms of tags:
t34. South Dakota (Daugaard); Tennessee (Haslam); Mead (Wyoming)—0
33. Alabama (Bentley)—3
32. Nevada (Sandoval)—5
31. Idaho (Otter)—15
t29. Oklahoma (Fallin); Vermont (Shumlin)—17
28. Oregon (Kitzhaber)—22
27. California (Brown)—37
t25. Minnesota (Dayton); New Hampshire (Hassan)—42
24. Nebraska (OPEN—Heinemann)—44
23. Iowa (Branstad)—45
22. New Mexico (Martinez)—49
21. Alaska (Parnell)—50
20. Hawaii (Abercrombie)—56
t18. New York (Cuomo); Ohio (Kasich)—64
t16. Rhode Island (OPEN—Chafee); South Carolina (Haley)—65
t14. Arkansas (OPEN—Beebe); Maryland (OPEN—O'Malley)—78
13. Connecticut (Malloy)—84
12. Arizona (OPEN—Brewer)—95
11. Kansas (Brownback)—97
In a splash of irony, the #11 ranked race for both the U.S. Senate and the gubernatorial contests for 2014 emanated from the same state—Kansas. Even though the outcomes wound up being a little bit anticlimactic (Republicans won both races, with Sen. Pat Roberts actually winning rather easily), one of the "stories" of campaign 2014 was the revolt in a historically rock-ribbed Republican state, one which almost led to the defeat of an incumbent Republican governor in an extremely good GOP year.
Interesting to note: one of the closest races in the nation, and the only one that actually has not officially ended yet, ranked all the way down in 29th place. Vermont, little covered during the campaign because of the expectation that it would yield to its strong blue lean, instead became the state where incumbent Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin must wait on the state legislature to confirm his re-election, since he failed to reach the 50 percent threshold (he led 46-45 on Election Night).
Interesting election stories abound from top-to-bottom, for sure, but let's turn our attention to the top ten most covered gubernatorial races on Daily Kos over the past 12 months.
10. COLORADO (incumbent: John Hickenlooper—D): 100 stories
Colorado, as a state, was on the radar throughout the election cycle, given the closeness of contests at all levels, from the state's marquee U.S. Senate contest to the battle for control of the state's legislature. Though not a race of enormous concern early on, the state's battle for governor grew in peril for incumbent Democrat John Hickenlooper when state Republicans somehow managed not to fumble the ball, denying Tom Tancredo a second bite at the apple in favor of former Rep. Bob Beauprez. Republicans had high hopes in the Fall, and polls seemed to hint that Beauprez was no worse than a 50/50 prospect. In the end, however, a small underselling of Democratic support might not have been enough to save Udall on the Senate side, but it propelled Hickenlooper to a three-point win.
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9. MASSACHUSETTS (Open Seat: Deval Patrick—D): 104 stories
Democrats, from the outset, had a persistent sense of dread about this race. With good reason: despite its blue state pedigree, Massachusetts has been more likely to have a GOP governor than a Democratic one over the past quarter century. Martha Coakley's status as the Democratic nominee evoked raw emotions from Democrats still smarting from that special U.S. Senate election in 2010 which elevated Scott Brown into the national political conversation. In the end, Republican Charlie Baker was viewed by many as the betting favorite by late October, so much so that when Coakley led early on Election Night, it gave Massachusetts Democrats a moment of surprise hope. When all was said and done, however, Baker eked out a 48-47 win.
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8. TEXAS (Open Seat: Rick Perry—R): 116 stories
Of the entire list of top ten most-tagged gubernatorial races in 2014, this one was admittedly a surprise to me. After all, the final result was nothing short of a blowout, with Republican state attorney general Greg Abbott crushing Democratic state senator Wendy Davis by a 59-39 margin. However, two things propelled the popularity of the race, regardless of the inevitability of the outcome. The first factor was the way Davis became an instant celebrity in June of 2013, when her filibuster became a national event. Davis' star status as the Democratic nominee, coupled with the long-held belief that Texas, with its increasingly diverse population, will inevitably become more competitive, made this a race many progressives placed their hopes on. However, if Texas is changing, it isn't changing yet (as I wrote about almost exactly one year ago). Hence the GOP landslide in the Lone Star State on Election Day.
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7. MAINE (Paul LePage—R): 122 stories
Few nominally "blue states", by the end of Election Night, behaved more like a red state than Maine. Democrats lost one chamber of the state legislature (state Senate), one of their two seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (as ME-02 went to Republican Bruce Poliquin in a mild upset), and lost what was viewed as a winnable gubernatorial race. Republican Gov. Paul LePage was (rightly) viewed as a bit of an aberration, given that he won election in 2010 with less than 40 percent of the vote, and only because the Democratic vote was split two ways (between Democrat Libby Mitchell and Dem-turned-Independent Eliot Cutler). But in 2014, it wouldn't be fair to call Cutler (who came back for a second shot) as a spoiler—LePage won re-election by a modest margin, but a real one (48-43-9).
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6. MICHIGAN (Rick Snyder—R): 134 stories
If there is a race where the results are a struggle to explain, even when polling in the race was pretty close to spot on, it would be this one. Indeed, polling hinted at this outcome for most of October, but based on ideology alone, it just seemed inconceivable that there would be a ton of Rick Snyder/Gary Peters voters. With that in mind, it seemed plausible that if Peters romped to a U.S Senate win by a large margin, former Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer would get pulled across the line, as well. In the final analysis, it didn't happen: there was a rather shocking 17-point marginal gap between the two races. Peters won by 13 points, and Schauer lost by a 51-47 margin. How did it happen? One of our community members (Arbo) pointed to huge disparities in two counties in particular: Macomb and Oakland, where the Peters/Schauer vote gap was north of 23%.
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5. GEORGIA (Nathan Deal—R): 137 stories
Republican Gov. Nathan Deal began the year in fairly ugly shape. A freak winter storm in January of 2014 led to a flurry of condemnations over the government's handling of the crisis. Persistent ethics woes were perpetually hanging over his head, and Democratic state senator Jason Carter had already raised seven figures for a gubernatorial bid by the start of 2014. In the end, however, Deal was saved by a combination of two factors: those two negative headlines being absorbed early in the campaign, coupled with the natural reddish terrain of his home state. In a sign of how hard-wired state voters truly are, Republicans Deal and Purdue (the state's GOP nominee for U.S. Senate) won their races with almost identical margins, down to the tenth of a percent.
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4. ILLINOIS (Pat Quinn—D): 150 stories
Perhaps no race in 2014 took voters of both parties on a bigger roller coaster ride than the gubernatorial race in the Land of Lincoln. Even when polls in the early part of the year gave Republican Bruce Rauner a solid edge over incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, Republicans seemed cautiously optimistic, at best. After all, they had been here once before. In 2010, Quinn seemed like a goner in a good GOP year when paired with Republican Bill Brady. When all was said and done, however, Quinn held onto the narrow win. When late summer polls began to show renewed life for Quinn, Democrats smiled and Republicans nodded knowingly. However, Rauner was not done. He weathered some ugly headlines (see below), and voter discontent with the state of the state proved to be a stronger impulse. On Election Day, a state that hasn't gone for the GOP in a generation of presidential elections went for Rauner by a 50-46 margin.
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3. PENNSYLVANIA (Tom Corbett—R): 190 stories
On an Election Night where causes for celebration among the Democratic faithful were few and far between, one unambiguous source of joy was the repudiation of one-term Republican Gov. Tom Corbett at the hands of Democratic businessman Tom Wolf. If anything took the shine off of the Democratic victory, it was the utter inevitability of it. Corbett was the "former Governor" of Pennsylvania from about the middle of 2013 onward. His controversial reign as the state's chief executive, married with lingering controversies about his tenure as the state's attorney general, doomed him before the campaign even began in earnest. In retrospect, the only surprise was that Wolf's 55-45 victory over Corbett was actually comparably modest, given what polling had shown throughout the campaign. It was also, lamentably for Pennsylvania Democrats, a lonely victory, as the GOP actually notched solid pickups in both houses of the state legislature.
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2. WISCONSIN (Scott Walker—R): 219 stories
That the gubernatorial battle pairing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with Democratic challenger Mary Burke was among the most talked-about electoral battles on Daily Kos/Daily Kos Elections over the past year should surprise no one. Walker has been a deeply polarizing politician since he arrived on the national political scene, and his fealty to the political right, in swing territory, helped propel his (ultimately unsuccessful) recall in the spring of 2012. Much to the frustration of Democrats, however, Walker has proven to be impervious to political defeat thus far, notching his third narrow (52-47) victory in his statewide political career. Now, the only question that remains is whether or not Democrats will get another shot at Walker, this time on the national stage.
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1. FLORIDA (Rick Scott—R): 222 stories
The top spot (but very narrowly) goes to the race that most political watchers would agree was in the top two or three most-watched races at any level in 2014: Scott v. Crist in Florida. As one year-end retrospective in Florida noted, Charlie Crist has now lost statewide elections as a Republican, as an Independent, and as a Democrat. That is a unique distinction, and a fairly depressing one, if you were a critic of Rick Scott. In a race that seemed like a coin flip throughout, Scott was able to hang on by the narrowest of margins, scoring the 48-47 victory over Crist.
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