My Current Predictions on the 2023 Gubernatorial Contests
My current analysis on the status of these red state contests
As of the writing of this piece, the election analysis community is currently experiencing something of a drought. We haven’t had a big wave of results come in from all 50 states in nine months, and that is something we won’t see for another fourteen months when the presidential election results come in. On top of this, one of the main things that would usually be substituted for this isn’t really that interesting either. The presidential primaries, which could have shaped up to be something interesting on the GOP side this year, have essentially turned into nothing less than an inevitable coronation for Donald Trump. And of course, since Joe Biden has decided to run for re-election, he is the Democratic nominee, making that race a foregone conclusion as well. Simply put, odd-year elections are one of the less exciting times to have an interest in election analysis, especially this time around.
That isn’t to say, however, that there is absolutely nothing to cover. Special elections, which have been occurring all throughout this year, have shown themselves to have an incredibly strong Democratic lean, sparking debates on whether or not this could potentially pertain to 2024 results. Similarly strong results have been shown for Democrats in off-year statewide elections as well, such as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, or the Ohio Issue 1 vote in August, both of which showed potentially promising signs for the Democrats in 2024. And while the 1st place winner of the GOP primary has essentially already been decided, it’s still interesting to watch the battle for 2nd place, as it could have a significant influence on who Trump will choose to be his VP nominee.
However, the most interesting contests to me personally are the ones that not many would expect to be interesting at face value. This is because these states should not be remotely competitive at any level. They are all deeply Republican states in the South that have not voted for any Democrat on the presidential level since the 1990s. However, thanks to unique circumstances, all of these states have at least something interesting to analyze. These contests are the gubernatorial races in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
Whether it be current leadership, past performances, or analysis of crossover appeal, all of these otherwise uninteresting states have something interesting about them this year. I want to make something clear: It’s truly shocking this is happening at all in the year 2023. In theory, polarization should have caught up to all of these states a long time ago, especially since all of them are racially polarized states in the South. But they are, and that fact alone is intriguing enough to me.
So, in this article, I wanna go over why each of these states’ gubernatorial contests is interesting, and at the end, give a rating for how competitive the state is currently looking as of now. To be clear, all of these are subject to change depending on what happens between now and November 7th, 2023. This is simply an analysis of the way things are heading right now.
Louisiana: The Pelican State
Before we move on to the truly interesting contests, let’s get the most boring contest out of the way first. That contest is Louisiana, and out of all the states in the running this cycle, it’s by far the most likely to vote the way it usually does on a national level.
This election is the only gubernatorial race that is going to be an open contest, since the sitting Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, is term-limited. This is something that is making the Democrats deeply bitter, as he is very likely the only man who would even be remotely capable of winning this deep red state.
First elected in 2015 against a scandal-plagued opponent, Edwards has been extraordinarily skilled at keeping his profile alive amid a highly polarized Trump-era political world. Despite leading a state that voted for Trump by almost 20 points, he maintained a consistently positive approval rating and even managed to win re-election in 2019 despite being targeted directly by the president himself, and despite running alongside other Republicans who won big in the other statewide races on the ballot that year. This positive approval rating carries over to today, where he is consistently been able to remain above water despite his party’s president Joe Biden being deeply unpopular in the state. If he were able to run, he would be an incredibly strong contender for re-election, and Republicans could have been shut out of the governor’s office in Baton Rouge for another four years.
But he can’t run, so this is almost certainly a Republican flip in the fall. There is simply no Democrat running in the race right now that can replicate Edwards’ strong appeal. The most likely nominee for the Democrats, former State Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, is a competent enough candidate in his own right, but it just won’t be enough. Polling has already indicated that while he would make it to the second round after the jungle primary in October, he would likely lose badly to Jeff Landry, the sitting Attorney General and likely Republican nominee for Governor. While Landry is not completely free of his own issues, he is running in an open contest as a Republican in Louisiana. Unless something goes horribly wrong, he shouldn’t have any difficulty winning this race.
It’s a shame because while Louisiana has been happy to elect Edwards for the last two cycles, they seem keen to elect by far his biggest foe in Jeff Landry. But that’s just how red Louisiana is, and unless something drastically changes in the next two months, this race should be an easy Republican pickup.
Louisiana Rating: Solid Republican.
Mississippi: The Magnolia State
Of the three contests discussed in this article, this one is perhaps the most shocking to me. Louisiana being uncompetitive as a result of an open contest makes total sense. Kentucky having a Democratic governor at all is shocking, but Democrats being favored in a state with an incumbent and a ton of ancestral Democrats also makes a good amount of sense.
However, this one is truly something else. In absolutely no world should Mississippi be competitive in any way. On top of being deeply Republican, it is perhaps the most racially polarized state in the country, meaning that despite having the largest percentage of African Americans of any state in the U.S., it still votes strongly Republican due to near-unanimous support from white Mississippians. For every reason imaginable, in a normal year, this should be off the table for any potential Democratic victory. However, thanks to various different circumstances, Mississippi has the chance, while small, to produce something genuinely interesting and notable.
The main reason for this is clear: the sitting Republican Governor Tate Reeves doesn’t want to quit.
Ever since he entered politics, he has been one of the most incompetent and truly repulsive politicians in the entire country. Reading up on his record as a politician will only serve to make you sick to your stomach. Whether it be his complicity in a welfare fraud scheme, his disgusting neglect of the water crisis in Jackson, his refusal to accept free Medicaid expansion money, or using his office to give his cronies power over law enforcement in Jackson (and only Jackson), there is simply so much to attack him on. Mississippians seem to agree, and his approval ratings in the state have been consistently poor, with most people agreeing that a new governor would be ideal.
Democrats, disgusted by Reeves’ actions and undoubtedly aware of his mediocre standing, are not planning on making it easy for him to win a second term. This mindset led them to nominate someone who is perhaps the most interesting candidate running this year, especially on the Democratic side. That man is Northern Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, a conservative Democrat and second cousin of the King of Rock and Roll.
First elected to his position in 2007, Presley serves as one of the last symbols of the traditional, blue-dog Democratic Party that used to defy political gravity in the Deep South after the national party lost its grip over southern whites. As those kinds of Democrats began to be wiped out throughout the 2010s, he stood as one of the last ones who held firm, winning re-election by 21 points in 2015 despite Republicans winning every other statewide office besides Attorney General. He would do this by keeping his races heavily localized, bringing up his effective service to the public, as well as occasionally highlighting some of his more conservative positions on issues like abortion and gun rights. It was a truly impressive record and one that stood to present something promising to Mississippi Democrats.
Fast forward to 2023, and you can see that the way he is campaigning is similar to how he ran as a public service commissioner. Despite Tate Reeves’ attempts to bring national issues into this race, Presley won’t budge, instead focusing on things like Mississippi hospital closures, the need to expand Medicaid, and putting anti-corruption at the forefront of his campaign. In that final effort, he has gone after Tate Reeves with incredible ferocity, something that has seemingly united Democrats strongly behind him, essentially all but declaring him their nominee far ahead of time. If you are a Democrat, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Presley. In terms of candidate quality, there aren’t a lot of better nominees the party could ask for.
So, what are the issues here? Why is such a highly qualified Democratic nominee still not favored to beat a controversial Republican incumbent?
Well, for one thing, polarization. The last time Presley was on the ballot against a Republican was almost eight years ago. Since then, the rise of Trump and his political brand has made appealing to a large chunk of voters on the other side quite a bit more difficult. This is especially true in the South, with locally elected Democratic politicians slowly losing more and more influence to Republicans every single year. They may still put up very solid last election overperformances, but the Republican lean in these areas is often just too strong to overcome.
This is where things get rather difficult for Presley. While his past wins are impressive, there really aren’t a lot of recent elections to judge him on electorally. His last election in 2019, and the only one that occurred post-Trump, was uncontested by Republicans entirely. Perhaps this is a sign that he does have some special appeal if Republicans couldn’t find anyone to run against him, but it does make it a lot harder to judge Presley’s strength in the post-Trump political era.
As for what we do have, it doesn’t paint an especially rosy picture for Democrats. While Reeves’ lead in the polls is unremarkable, it is similar to the leads he put up in his successful run for Governor in 2019. And given how similar Presley is to Jim Hood, the Democratic nominee running against Reeves in 2019, it seems quite likely that this race is currently going down that direction.
That being said, thanks to this race being between Reeves and Presley, this race could still be something of an upset. The chance is quite small, and given how polarized the state is, you should still expect Reeves to be re-elected in the fall. But this election will certainly be closer than it should be, and that is entirely because of the two men running.
Mississippi Rating: Likely Republican.
Kentucky: The Bluegrass State
Finally, we land in Kentucky, the only race out of these three where I would consider the Democrats the favorites to win. While this one is a bit less shocking than the potentially competitive result we may see out of Mississippi, this one is a bit less so, although it is certainly still surprising in its own right.
Even more so than Mississippi and Louisiana, Kentucky is a deeply Republican state. All of the statewide elected offices are held by Republicans. Both chambers of the legislature are controlled by Republican supermajorities. Donald Trump won this state twice, both times by over 25 points. And just last year, for the first time in history, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in voter registration, a milestone that more than anything, is deeply symbolic of the fall of the Democratic Party in the state they once dominated. No matter where you look, Republicans are the dominant party in the state by a mile.
Except for one place in Frankfort.
Despite being a deeply red state, the commonwealth of Kentucky still houses a Democratic governor at the mansion in Frankfort. That governor in question is Andy Beshear, the son of former governor Steve Beshear, and the only reason Democrats are competitive in the state this year.
Ever since he entered statewide politics, it’s truly shocking not just how Andy Beshear has been able to stay alive in Kentucky politics throughout his party’s collapse, but also just how close he’s been avoiding his own political collapse. In his first run for Attorney General in 2015, he defeated his Republican opponent by an incredibly small margin of 0.22%, winning by just 2,190 votes over him. In his first-ever contest, despite his famous last name, he would barely scrape by, yet another symbol of how much the Democrats had been falling off in the state.
Just a year later, this would only seem to get worse. In the presidential race, Donald Trump, who seemingly became the face of the entire GOP effort overnight, would win the state of Kentucky by nearly 30 points, the largest margin for any Republican in the state in American history. This was propelled by absolutely insane margins he put up in traditionally Democratic areas, especially in the Appalachian East. It even looked like it had the potential to help out other Kentucky Republicans too, like in the 2016 Kentucky Senate race, which saw incumbent Senator Rand Paul defeat his Democratic opponent solidly and put up his own improvements in traditionally Democratic areas just like Trump did, albeit not to the same extent. The fact that someone like Trump, who seemingly dominated politics wherever he went, was able to get himself a stranglehold over the state in one night was a deeply terrifying prospect for the Kentucky Democratic Party.
However, going into the next gubernatorial contest in 2019, there was a major saving grace for the Democrats. The one thing that made this race even remotely competitive at all. That was the incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin.
A hopelessly incompetent governor, he is the only reason Andy Beshear still holds any influence in the state at all today. His terrible performance as governor wasn’t just something observed by Democrats. It wasn’t even just observed by independents. It was observed by the state’s quickly growing Republican electorate, leading to him having jaw-droppingly bad approval ratings in this deep red state, often having the lowest approval rating of any governor in the entire nation. It is for that reason, on top of the genuine strength of Beshear’s own image, that the Democrats managed to flip the state governorship in 2019, albeit by an extremely narrow 0.4% margin, once again symbolic of just how Republican the state is.
But now that we’ve had four years of Beshear, how exactly is he doing? Fortunately for Democrats, he has done quite well. While he isn’t able to do a lot due to Republican resistance in the legislature, he has managed to successfully present himself as a competent executive who knows how to manage the business of government. This was most notably shown off during his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, a deeply divisive issue that could have completely destroyed his political career. Instead, he came out of it very strong, and ever since then, he has been consistently ranked as one of the most popular governors in the entire country. Democrats should be incredibly grateful that he decided to run for re-election.
Even despite this, it was still going to be a race that was hotly contested. While Beshear is certainly very popular, it’s still a deeply Republican state. Republicans are definitely still going to target it, after all, the more governors they have the better. Several candidates were always going to jump in, eager for their chance to take down the last remaining figurehead of the Kentucky Democratic Party. So, who did the Republicans go with?
Their answer to take down Beshear is the state’s Attorney General, Daniel Cameron.
Ever since the 37-year-old became Kentucky’s Attorney General in 2019, he has always been floated as a potential rising star within the party and has consistently been a thorn in the side of Beshear for his entire governorship. And since he had already proven himself as a successful statewide candidate, he was always being floated as a potential challenger to the governor. This was a challenge he decided to take on, announcing his candidacy with the backing of Donald Trump, essentially guaranteeing his ascension to the GOP nomination.
However, ever since he won the GOP nomination, problems surrounding the candidate’s quality have begun to emerge. Mainly, his attacks against Beshear really don’t seem to be sticking. One prominent attack has been against Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 150, which would have put restrictions on transgender healthcare for the youth, and another one of his prominent attacks is going after his COVID policies, accusing him of locking down the state in a way other blue state governors did.
Neither of these are good attacks. As many others have pointed out, trans issues have not shown themselves to be relevant in the eyes of voters, including in Kentucky in 2019, which saw the Bevin campaign employ trans panic as a last-ditch effort to save their flailing governor. No matter how much they try, Republicans haven’t been able to get any juice out of fearmongering about trans people, and it’s highly unlikely that it would somehow work this time after already failing several times previously. As for the COVID message, this one is just flat-out baffling. The COVID-19 pandemic, and Beshear’s handling of it, was the very beginning of his high marks in the state and is the main reason why he is even favored to win today. The fact that Cameron would think this is a good line of attack against him is unbelievably stupid, especially since COVID has practically receded from the national spotlight since 2022.
Simply put, Cameron just hasn’t run a good campaign thus far. That’s not just my opinion though, that’s the opinion of voters in Kentucky. Ever since polling started on the race, Beshear has consistently held solid leads over Cameron, with some polls even showing the governor ahead by as much as double digits. While I don’t think he’ll ultimately win by that much, I think it’s a testament to both the strength of Beshear, as well as the failure of Cameron, that this race is pretty solidly in the Democrats’ favor.
However, it is important to remember that while Beshear is the favorite, it could still change. After all, it’s two months out, and it is still a heavily Republican state that not many national GOP candidates have really shown up yet. While I don’t think they can save Cameron thanks to traditional Democrats likely showing up for Beshear, there is something of a possibility that polarization could put him over the edge. It’s always going to be a challenge to win in a Trump+25 state, even if you are a popular Democratic incumbent. But if anyone can do it, it is definitely Andy Beshear.
Kentucky Rating: Lean Democratic
Final Thoughts
Ever since Donald Trump was sworn in as president on January 20th, 2017, Democrats have made absolutely staggering gains all across the country. Whether it be national bodies, statewide bodies, or local bodies, they have crawled back a significant amount of influence they had previously lost during the Obama years, and are now set in a position in which they can truly exercise their political influence in a way they haven’t been able to in well over a decade.
However, despite these undeniably sweeping gains, the GOP has still always been able to maintain a majority of statewide governorships. While Democrats have certainly made huge gains in this respect as well, they have still come just short of winning more offices than their Republican counterparts, with them currently holding 24 out of 50 statewide governorships. Unfortunately for them, there aren’t going to be many opportunities for a while to get this majority back, and one of the reasons was supposed to be 2023. Going into it, it was supposed to be a foregone conclusion that Democrats would lose one seat at best, and potentially lose two at worst. This would help expand the GOP governorship majority, and make it that much harder for the Democrats to win over more of them for years to come.
However, the calculation has changed quite a bit in that regard. Thanks to strong Democratic candidates and weak Republican opposition, losing two Democratic seats looks less and less likely every day Cameron fumbles his campaign. While losing one seat is still the most likely outcome, we now have to contend with the fact that thanks to Reeves’ criminal incompetence and Presley’s strong campaign, Democrats have a chance, however small, to walk out of 2023 with a net loss of zero.
If you ask me, I still don’t think the Democrats can pull it off. They’ll almost certainly lose Louisiana and Mississippi is just far too polarized. But unlike last year, the chance is there and is now part of the conversation.
That is a complete and utter disaster for the Republican Party.