Haley Barbour & Jack Markell on 2010 Governors Races: Steele, CEOs and Tea Party

BOSTON -- Haley Barbour says Tea Party groups have been "great allies" for Republicans. Jack Markell says the business community should be happier than it is with President Barack Obama. These two governors are in charge of winning 2010 governors' races for their parties, and these are some of the crosswinds that will determine how well they do.

It is a record year for such races – there are 37 as opposed to the usual 36, because of a special election in Utah for the job vacated by Jon Huntsman, a Republican named by Obama to be U.S. ambassador to China. The individual contests to lead states aren't as sexy as the parties' struggle to control Congress, but they carry equal if not greater significance. For a start, governors will play crucial roles in the redrawing of congressional districts based on this year's Census. Governors have political organizations that can be a tremendous help to their party's White House nominees. And, Obama notwithstanding, being a governor is the best resume entry for a presidential hopeful.

Barbour, 62, is governor of Mississippi, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, a former White House political director and Republican National Committee chairman, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, and a self-described "fat redneck." He is also a veteran hand at political math and atmospherics, and he likes what he sees.

In 1994, the last Republican wave election, the GOP went from 19 governors to 30. This year, the party starts with 24 governors and, in Barbour's view, "there's a better Republican climate" in July 2010 than there was in July 1994, when he was RNC chairman. Things can change, he cautions, but if the election were held today, "we'd have a large pickup of Republican governors."

The trim and well-tailored Markell, 49, a former banker and tech company executive, is so obscure that his name usually draws a blank. When Florida Democrats announced that Markell would be the keynote speaker at their big Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner, the Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard wrote, "For those of you saying Jack who?..." To answer the question, Markell is the governor and former treasurer of Delaware and chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. Reinhard went on to say that his presence on the July 17 dinner program underscored the national party's strong interest in Alex Sink's run for governor of the Sunshine State.

The most obvious disparity between the Republican and Democratic associations right now is their fundraising. From April through June, the DGA broke its record by raising $9 million -- but the RGA collected $19 million. To some extent that is due to the troubles of RNC chairman Michael Steele, whose many gaffes and missteps are prompting some donors to give directly to Republican campaign committees for House, Senate and governor. "The RNC is a disaster and I think they are effectively tapping into a bunch of the money that otherwise would have gone there," Markell told me in an interview at the National Governors Association meeting in Boston.

Barbour, in a separate interview, said he has never critiqued the job performance of any of his successors as RNC chairman. "I don't think it's appropriate and I'm not going to start now," he told me. But he made clear that RNC troubles are a factor in his game plan. "We're raising all that we can. We're trying to prepare for the possibility that the RNC won't be able to do as much in 2010 as they might typically have done in this year's cycle," he said.

Markell rebuffed the idea that Democrats are handicapped by CEO and business hostility toward the administration. "We realize that that perception exists," he said, but he countered that governors are pro-business and that Obama has helped the private sector in crucial ways: They were worried about the "huge hole in the economy" and wanted a stimulus package, and he got one passed. They were "scared to death about the collapse of the automobile industry" and he stepped in with a rescue plan. They were concerned about access to credit and he's focused on loosening it up. They were concerned about the education system and he won passage of Race to the Top, a competitive grants program to spur reform. "Those are four very specific things the business community was interested in, and he has performed," Markell said.

At the state level, Markell said money will be less important than contrasts between the parties and candidates. "In many of these states, on the one side there has been this bitter internecine party warfare battle in search of ideological purity going after the Tea Party voter," he said. "On our side, we have folks who are very much focused on job creation, improving the economic climate."

Republican gubernatorial candidates who have moved to the right, he said, include Meg Whitman in California, Rick Perry in Texas and Bill McCollum in Florida. He also cited Paul LePage, a Tea Party pick, in Maine. Democrats have solid candidates in the first three states -- California attorney general and former governor Jerry Brown, former Houston mayor Bill White and Sink, who is Florida's chief financial officer. But there could be trouble brewing for Democrat Libby Mitchell in Maine in the form of Eliot Cutler, a Democrat who is running as an independent and picking up support from some prominent Democrats.

Barbour, of course, rejects Markell's contention that voters who care about the economy will turn to Democrats. He said last year's gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey show that voters, especially independents who are pivotal to victory, are more in tune with the GOP. "Independents agree with the Republicans on the issues that are top of mind, and those issues are spending, the economy, jobs, debt, deficit, taxes," he said. Polls show independents are indeed favoring the GOP, a top challenge for Democrats this fall.

As for Republican challenges, the Tea Party seems to have been more visible and divisive in Senate primaries than in those for governor. Asked about that, Barbour said governor's races generally start 18 months before an election, as opposed to congressional races that can start much later.

So was he saying the field solidified before voter anger on the right came into play? Barbour's answer: "The Tea Party people have been great allies in our governor's races," he said. "They are the personifications of the political environment. These are people who are mad, who think the country is going radically in the wrong direction, and they want to do something about it." Barbour added he is happy that Tea Party candidates are participating in primaries -- "the worst for us" would have been for them to run as independents.

That has not happened, nor is Barbour dealing with Tea Party-backed nominees like Kentucky's Rand Paul or Nevada's Sharron Angle, two Senate candidates who are so conservative that they have revived Democratic chances to win. The GOP is not without problem gubernatorial candidates -- right now, for instance, Scott McInnis is imploding in Colorado over plagiarism charges. But with the recession weighing heavily on voters and many independents poised to reject the status quo, it's easy to see a path to substantial Republican gains.

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