ANALYSIS | Imagine a state election the year before a Democratic presidential reelection bid. The state's elections had been dominated by Democrats for years. A wealthy Republican businessman runs against the Democratic political heir apparent to the governor's mansion on the heels of a messy spat between a new GOP Congress and a Democratic president amid a shaky recovery from a recession. Does it sound familiar?
It sounds like Obama in 2011, as he anxiously watches the election returns from West Virginia as Democratic Party acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin seeks a full term against Republican businessman Bill Maloney. Or it could be Bill Clinton in 1995, as he nervously watches the election returns from Kentucky as Democratic Party Lt. Gov. Paul Patton seeks a win against Republican businessman Larry Forgy.
In 1995, Democrats had been winning every gubernatorial contest in the state since Louie Nunn from 1967-1971. But the Republican Revolution of 1994 and government shutdowns threw the Patton-Forgy race into doubt. National money poured into the Forgy campaign as the Republican focused on national issues, but Patton held on to win a narrow election by 2.2 percentage points by keeping it local.
The next day, a fellow graduate student from our program who was a Republican supporter dismissed the results to me. "It doesn't mean anything?Democrats always win these things. It doesn't mean Clinton will win in 1996." Well, not only did Clinton win his reelection, but he also captured Kentucky by a similarly narrow margin, in a state that was no stranger to Newt Gingrich's revolution, and anti-Clinton attack ads in 1994.
If you fast forward to 2011, you can see history repeating itself. According to Reuters, acting Gov. Tomblin pulled off a narrow victory by three points against Maloney. GOP supporters will be quick to dismiss the results (Fox News set up a broadcast from Maloney's HQ, but has now moved on to the 2012 GOP primary and Eric Holder), but they shouldn't. Like Forgy, Maloney unsuccessfully tried to tie the Democratic president to the Democratic candidate with an attack strategy that just turned off voters.
This doesn't mean that Obama is likely to win West Virginia in 2012. Gallup polls show that Obama's third lowest approval ratings can be found in West Virginia (33.4 [ercemt). So Tomblin won reelection in spite of the president's low numbers, as Patton did in 1995 in Kentucky.
Speaking of Kentucky, state Gov. Stephen Beshear is running for reelection. This time Republicans have a more politically experienced candidate in David Williams and a basketball star in Richie Farmer as his running mate. Obama remains unpopular in Kentucky (it is his seventh least popular state, as only 38.6 percent of Kentuckians approve his job). But attempts to "nationalize" the race haven't helped the Republicans any more than they did in the state in 1995 or in nearby West Virginia in 2011. I expect the Bluegrass State's gubernatorial election to tighten, but attempts to take negative shots at President Obama in these states don't seem to be a winning strategy, as it may have worked the previous year.
Just because the president isn't too popular in these states doesn't mean voters want a campaign that puts Obama in the crosshairs. They would prefer more information about what Republicans might actually do if elected. Obama may not win either state in 2012, but the GOP's losses in winnable races don't bode well for next year for them.
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