COVID-19 will end which governor's career?

[pppolitics]

COVID-19 will end which governor's career?

As far as terrible "leadership" during the pandemic is concerned, a few names come to mind:

Ron DeSantis, Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, and Greg Abbott

[NewYorkExpress]

Kemp probably skates by since it'll be a Biden midterm, and Georgia is doing slightly better than Florida at the moment.

DeSantis is screwed though. If say, Marco Rubio decided to abandon his Senate seat and challenge him in the primary, he'd get flattened, let alone what his chances would be in a general election (they aren't good.)

[Roll Roons]

DeSantis is screwed though. If say, Marco Rubio decided to abandon his Senate seat and challenge him in the primary, he'd get flattened, let alone what his chances would be in a general election (they aren't good.)

Forget Rubio. There's a certain someone else who should make a comeback...

[NewYorkExpress]

DeSantis is screwed though. If say, Marco Rubio decided to abandon his Senate seat and challenge him in the primary, he'd get flattened, let alone what his chances would be in a general election (they aren't good.)

Forget Rubio. There's a certain someone else who should make a comeback...

Obviously Rubio is going to Primary DeSantis, and Jeb is going to run for Rubio's Senate seat.

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

DeSantis's career wouldn't be over even if he personally killed all of the Floridians who died from COVID. Florida Democrats will find a way to lose to him again. Just watch them renominate Gillum.

[😥]

Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Things can certainly change in 2 years or even 2 months, but I feel confident that Doug Ducey has squandered any positivity he gained which propelled him to a double-digit reelection win. Should he run for Senate in 2022, I don't see him winning (I'll be checking back in 2 years).

[Hammy]

Kemp probably skates by since it'll be a Biden midterm, and Georgia is doing slightly better than Florida at the moment.

DeSantis is screwed though. If say, Marco Rubio decided to abandon his Senate seat and challenge him in the primary, he'd get flattened, let alone what his chances would be in a general election (they aren't good.)

I can see Kemp facing a strong primary challenge as well given he's going out of his way to find the worst possible response to practically everything. Even Trump went on record saying he reopened the state too early.

[tjstarling]

Maybeeee Ducey. It really depends how long COVID persists for going forward because voters have really short attention spans. What matters more is how much a perception or trait (e.g. incompetence) becomes associated with a politician. Outside of maybe Ducey, I don’t know if any of the others have been permanently tarred. Being from Florida, I can say the DeSantis will take a short term hit for sure, but he’s by no means doomed long term (though I think his re-election bid has moved from likely R to tossup which is by no means an insignificant change). There was always the perception he was a bit of an idiot. His 2024 odds have been dramatically diminished though in my view.

[Adam Griffin]

DeSantis's career wouldn't be over even if he personally killed all of the Floridians who died from COVID. Florida Democrats will find a way to lose to him again. Just watch them renominate Gillum.

FDP 2022: "Even If There Was Meth, It Was on the Floor"

[pppolitics]

Kemp probably skates by since it'll be a Biden midterm, and Georgia is doing slightly better than Florida at the moment.

Georgia is inelastic.

I thought that Kemp would lose before, thanks to the growth in the Atlanta metro, but his COVID-19 handling could seal his fate.

DeSantis is screwed though. If say, Marco Rubio decided to abandon his Senate seat and challenge him in the primary, he'd get flattened, let alone what his chances would be in a general election (they aren't good.)

Still, never underestimate the FDP keen ability to shoot itself in the foot.

[Sir Mohamed]

As things look now, it might damage Ron DeSantis' WH ambitions for 2024 or beyond. FL is doing poorly with the pandemic and his conduct makes anyone question whether he is actually up to the job. Maybe he can recover from presiding over an upticking economy in the aftermath. What he needs to do is win a 2nd term by fair margin, which might be the biggest obstacle, particularly if the pandemic and its consequences last well into the next year. It seemed a given he gets reelected, the pandemic has changed this narrative (silver lining for DeSantis: never underestimate FL Dems' ability to blow another winnable race).

Not sure whether Mr. Kemp had any ambitions beyond the GA governorship, but if he had any such plans, they're down the drain. Mr. Ducey is another contender. I think he eyes the senate seat in 2022, which is why he appointed a weak candidate like McSally to lose in 2020 and then face Kelly 2 years later in a Biden midterm. His handling of Covid19, changing demographics and Kelly being a strong campaigner might be too much to overcome in the end, even if the prez in 2022 is named Joe Biden.

The govs who I see most "benefiting" from their handling are Dems, and Cuomo and Pritzker stand out the most. I'm not sure one of them will ever be prez, especially if Biden wins and his VP is well positioned for '24 and/or '28. But their handling has definitely advanced their careers. Even I have to admit it rose my medicore opinion of them to clear net positive. Short term, Steve Bullock could be the biggest beneficiary in his quest for the senate seat. If he defeats Daines, his Covid19 management will undoubtedly be on part of it. Ned Lamont is another one could benefit from the pandemic since his approvals sharply went up as a result. He isn't WH material, but his conduct gives him more room for winning a 2nd term, even in a Biden midterm.

Gavin Newsom is too early to predict. I think he did a good job overall. Not prefect, but far from poor. In his case, he might come out with neutral effect.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Nobody except maybe Ducey, but even then he faced an uphill climb.

Ducey is term-limited and can't coast on incumbency. Basically he's stuck running fresh in a senate race against an ascendant opposition party that's in the process of building a massive infrastructure this year. That's not an easy win in normal circumstances and the COVID crisis won't help.

Texas is a much more dynamic state than Arizona. Abbott has a portfolio to fall back on that Ducey doesn't.

Kemp and DeSantis will have incumbency advantage. Kemp will have it worse because of the anger around the 2018 race and because he's building an image around antagonizing Atlanta. He won't be singularly defined by COVID unless things get dramatically worse. DeSantis will be fine.

Also I think most of these states are better equipped for a robust recovery than others. By 2022 the state of the economy will be the bigger story than who did what in 2020.

I think history will remember this as Trump's epic bungling, which will take heat off governors (even if they deserve much worse). It's hard to pin part of a national crisis on a state governor. If Biden wins then, unless this becomes a weird retrospective referendum on Trump, COVID won't be too damaging to these guys.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

The fact that Cuomo, who literally has the single worst death rate in the US, is held up as an example of success while DeSantis, who has a death rate around 1/20th that of New York's, is held up as a failure is an indication that the American media has totally abandoned any connection to reality. Apparently electoral benefit from a disaster isn't derived from actually producing good outcomes but by passing Strict Laws, even if those Strict Laws do nothing but make regular people's lives harder.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I think you are all wrong just for the fact that a zillion things could happen between November 2020 and November 2022. I would say that right now the governor who is more likely to have his career ended because of COVID-19 is Mike Parson.

[Lief 🗽]

I don't think any governor's career will be ended in so far as they'll be run out of office or anything. But to the extent Abbott or Desantis wanted to run for president in 2024 or Ducey wanted to run for senate in 2022, their chances have been hurt.

[Hope For A New Era]

Well, Kemp and DeSantis seem obvious. Ducey is term-limited anyway. I think Abbott might survive.

If Parson doesn't win this November, he's finished too. He never planned to run for anything again anyway.

[Samof94]

I think Lt. Gov Dan Patrick might be in serious trouble in 2022, given his positions are even worse than Abbott’s.

[Anna Komnene]

I wouldn't go so far as to pin it entirely on her covid response, but I think Kristi Noem will be vulnerable and that her covid response won't have helped with SD swing voters.

[Xing]

I don’t trust FL not to turn on a dime, especially if something happens to distract voters, like DeSantis responds quickly to a hurricane in the summer of 2022. He’s definitely not winning in a landslide, though, and some takes about him cracking 60% of the vote that we saw in early 2019 are pretty hilarious with hindsight. I wouldn’t say Kemp’s career is over, but GA-GOV will likely be a very close race, even in a Biden midterm.

Ducey, though... his ship has probably sailed. Hard to see how he knocks out Kelly, barring a scandal of some kind.

[Real Texan Politics]

If Stacey Abrams runs for governor again, Kemp's done.

DeSantis I definitely see losing re-election, with maybe the only thing stopping it from happening is a socialist running on the dem ticket.

Abbott may have the best survival chance, but not by much. He's already got a primary challenger in Chad Prather due to his mask mandate, and could be on track to lose if the dem candidate is one of the Castro brothers or even Beto O'Rourke.

And as for Ducey, sayonara. The governor of Arizona after his term is over will be a democrat whether he likes it or not.

[Skill and Chance]

I think Lt. Gov Dan Patrick might be in serious trouble in 2022, given his positions are even worse than Abbott’s.

This.  I think he's a sure loser in a Trump midterm and more likely to lose than win in a Biden midterm.  Assuming the worst has truly passed in Texas, Abbott comes out of this looking pretty decent as the 1st governor of a solid R state to put out a statewide mask mandate.  Also, the death rate in Texas is lower than Florida and way lower than the NE states that got hit in March.  He's already getting a primary challenges from an anti-mask nut.  As long as he doesn't lose the primary, he could go into the general looking like a moderate on the issue (mask mandate but no lockdown).
     

[Agonized-Statism]

Probably Ron DeSantis. Going forward, I expect him to be a could-have-been-president favorite in alternate history circles.

Abbott is probably going to retire soon anyway. Rick Perry was a special case when it comes to extra long gubernatorial tenure in Texas history. That, and it's very hard to lose as a Republican in what is essentially a one-party state. Texas probably only becomes a swing state internally in the 2030s or later, once the GOP machine is unable to handle the crisis of a huge, angry urban majority facing climate change and catastrophic failures in infrastructure. Texas Democrats will have to have more Mexican-American voices and advocates moving toward that time, which will take a few elections.

[QAnonKelly]

I think Kemp was always probably going to lose but now he’s officially tied the noose around his neck imo.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

"Kemp will hold on because his voter suppression magic spell will undo any damage he could stand to receive from his subpar pandemic response. He can be Governor for life if he wanted to"