Rekindling Their Power: The Comeback Governors of California, Iowa and Oregon
By John Gramlich, Stateline Staff Writer, Pew Center for the States
But in three states, 2010 marked a return to the days of old. California, Iowa and Oregon all elected former governors who, between them, had 32 years of gubernatorial experience under their belts even before they settled in for fresh four-year terms in January. With an average age of 67 and most of their political lives behind them, the trio — Jerry Brown in California, Terry Branstad in Iowa and John Kitzhaber in Oregon — represents insider experience and familiarity in a year more commonly associated with barn-storming newcomers like Malloy, Haley and the tea party. Brown, a Democrat who was known as “Governor Moonbeam” because of his lofty and sometimes eccentric policy goals as a two-term California governor in the 1970s and 1980s, is also a former mayor of Oakland, California secretary of state and attorney general, and three-time candidate for president. Branstad, a Republican, served 16 consecutive years in Iowa’s top office, making him one of the longest-serving governors in US history. And Kitzhaber, a former emergency room doctor and two-term Democratic governor, is best-known for promoting a nationally recognized health insurance overhaul in Oregon before reemerging as a gubernatorial candidate in the thick of the national health care debate in 2010. All three upended the conventional wisdom that voters last year were in no mood for insiders. (In two other states, Georgia and Maryland, former governors lost their bids to return to office.) But while Brown, Branstad and Kitzhaber have the advantage of experience and name recognition, their encore appearances on the gubernatorial stage show that government insiders aren’t automatically better at turning campaign promises into policy. All three men, absent from gubernatorial office for at least eight years, are finding that the dynamics around them are substantially different now. Each of them has had to adapt, with varying degrees of success so far. ‘The new reality’ Their new challenges range from the cerebral to the mundane. Kitzhaber has picked up right where he left off, striving to find ways to make health insurance cheaper. In Iowa, Branstad notes that one of the biggest adjustments has been to the everyday practicalities of governing in the 21st century. “Technology is so much different,” he pointed out in a telephone interview with Stateline. “Every cell phone’s a camera.” But it is California that has probably seen the most significant changes in the nearly three decades since Brown last held the job. When he first took office in 1975, Brown was 36 years old, the state enjoyed budget surpluses and the party in power could accomplish its legislative goals without requiring a supermajority. Now 73 and the oldest governor in California history, Brown runs a state where finances are in shambles and where, because of structural changes passed at the ballot box, Democrats cannot pass the budget they want, even though they hold commanding majorities in both legislative chambers. Through Proposition 13, a ballot measure approved during Brown’s first term in 1978, tax increases require a two-thirds majority to be enacted legislatively, and Democrats have been unable to push through their preferred budget because no Republicans have agreed to raise taxes.
The 2010 elections brought a sea of fresh faces to governor’s offices around the country, from Democrat Dan Malloy, who is pushing broad liberal changes in Connecticut, to Republican Nikki Haley, the South Carolina conservative who, at 39, is the youngest state chief executive in the nation.
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