This past weekend, the Nation's Paper of Record noted that more than half (12 out of 22) of the nation's Democratic governors serve in states carried by President Bush in the last election. In four of those states (Kansas, Wyoming, Virginia and Oklahoma), no Democratic Presidential nominee has won since 1964, yet within the statehouse mansion resides now a Democrat. Interesting? A ray of hope for the future for progressives?

Nope. It has never been unusual for states of the crimson hue to elect Democrats to governerships, just as residents of California, New York and Massachusetts know that the opposite is also true. One glaring example of this phenomenum would be Wyoming, one of the most overwhelmingly Republican states in the country, both in terms of voter registration and their turnout for GOP Presidential candidates every four years. Yet the same state that quadrennially gives Republicans forty-point margins in Presidential races has also had Democratic governors for 22 of the past 30 years. Colorado has an even better track record of coming down on our side in state elections; even though only one Democratic Presidential nominee has won the state since '64, the state has had a Democrat serve as governor in 24 of the last 30 years (although the incumbent governor is a Republican).

Other western states also have a pretty consistent track record of defying the GOP's partisan edge to elect Democrats to the state's highest office. Idaho, one of the few states in which George Bush still has a positive approval rating, had Democratic governors non-stop from 1970 to 1994. Arizona has seen the parties split control since the 1950's, with Democrats seeing Bruce Babbitt elected to two terms in the 1980's and Janet Napolitano winning the last time out. And that doesn't even include Montana, who's governor may be the most hyped native son of that state since Ryan Leaf (ed.-two items of interest about Montana: it's voters have elected only two Republicans to the U.S. Senate in the state's history, and Michael Dukakis almost won the state in 1988). And each of those states has consistently voted Republican in national elections since the end of World War II.

So how to explain the success of the Brian Schweitzers and Mitt Romneys of America? I suppose it helps if you have a lot of money to throw down when you're campaigning, but I also think that the voters prefer to have a division of the spoils when it comes to government. A Democrat running in Kansas, or a Republican running in Rhode Island, can claim a certain amount of independence from politics-as-usual, and make a plausible case that they can clean up the mess in Capitol City. Lessons can be learned about the universality of good government and what the people really want, but it would be foolish to believe that it portends any Grand Political Strategy for reforming the party.