In one of the nation’s closest gubernatorial races, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue prevailed over Charlotte’s Republican mayor late Tuesday, handing Democrats a key victory and becoming the state’s first female governor.
The race between Perdue and GOP challenger Pat McCrory tightened in recent weeks as Democrats successfully attracted new voters to the polls and emphasized the nation’s economic woes.
The same strategy worked in Missouri, where Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon won the seat of departing Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican. Nixon defeated Republican Congressman Kenny Hulshof.
Bucking that tide, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, cruised to re-election after shrugging off his ties to an unpopular president and unprecedented spending by the Democratic Party. Daniels, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bush, held on to his job by emphasizing his efforts to boost the state’s economy.
Eleven gubernatorial seats were up for grabs in Tuesday’s voting, with Democrats already in control of 28 across the nation, compared with 22 held by Republicans. At stake was substantial influence over redistricting after the 2010 census, which experts say could alter the composition of the U.S. House.
Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, noted that governor’s races are less heavily influenced by national politics than Senate contests. But fellow Democrats counted on Barack Obama to help in “turning out Democratic voters,” he said.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, handily won a second term Tuesday, and four other races were won by their two Democrat and two Republican incumbents. Voters in Puerto Rico rejected indicted Democratic Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila in favor of his GOP opponent, Luis Fortuno, who is currently a nonvoting member of Congress.
The gubernatorial races in North Carolina and Washington both featured blisteringly negative campaign ads and record-setting expenditures from outside groups. The Republican Governors Association invested $6 million apiece in both states to wrest them from Democratic control, more than 5 1/2 times the amount the group paid four years ago for television, phone and direct mail campaigns, according to Executive Director Nick Ayers.
“We’re not operating under any false illusions about the challenging environment,” Ayers said before the votes were counted.
Democrats, meanwhile, spent $4 million in each of those states in a bid to maintain power, Daschle said.
The Washington contest pitted current Gov. Chris Gregoire, a Democrat, against former GOP state senator Dino Rossi, who was vying to become the state’s first Republican governor in nearly three decades.
