TOP JOB — If you haven’t noticed, television ads have reached a fever pitch, campaign emails begging for money are getting more frequent (and more desperate) and candidates are adding some extra flair to the stump speeches they’ve been delivering for months. Election Day must be fast approaching. With eight days to go, POLITICO Nightly will be bringing you previews of the key races to watch and issues to follow. First up: governors races. In an era where state capitals are playing an increasingly consequential role in policymaking, these elections have drawn close national scrutiny this year. And many of them are highly competitive , with ad spending closing in on $1 billion . We spoke with Zach Montellaro , a POLITICO state politics reporter, about what to watch. This conversation has been edited. How many governors races are there this fall, and what are some of the major issues driving these campaigns? Are those issues any different from House/Senate races? So there’s 36 governors races, but not every one of them is competitive. Some of the competitive governors races track pretty closely with your “traditional” battlegrounds — there’s competitive races in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, etc., etc. — but because governors are kinda idiosyncratic, the map stretches out a bit further than that. There’s a Democratic governor up for reelection in Kansas, for example, and Oregon is going to be one of the closest races of the cycle. And Republicans are even spending in Oklahoma! Because governor races are idiosyncratic, I hesitate to say there’s one major issue across all the states. Every state is different and unique, and governors races don’t nationalize in quite the same way a House or Senate race would. But speaking broadly, across the states: The economy is, of course, a big, big deal that is going to pop up one way or another. There’s been a fair amount of focus on crime from some Republicans as well, and a lot of Democratic candidates talk about abortion rights in their particular state. Can we focus in quickly on Arizona and Georgia, competitive states where Republican candidates for governor appear to be outrunning Republican Senate candidates? Is this just a simple case of candidate quality ? What else might be driving that difference? Georgia feels like a pretty straightforward one that’s a combination of candidate quality — Gov. Brian Kemp versus former football star and Senate candidate Herschel Walker — and an axiom I’ve heard repeated ... a lot over the last couple years: One of the hardest things to do in politics is defeat a sitting governor. Folks on both sides of the aisle say that, and I generally think that’s true. Does that mean an incumbent will never lose? No. But if you’re just blind guessing results, picking the incumbent is usually a pretty strong bet. But Kemp has also held his own against Democrat Stacey Abrams, too. He’s raised a lot of money, shaken off Donald Trump’s disdain for him and rallied the party in Georgia. Arizona, I’d push back against your premise a little bit. I think both the Senate and governor’s races there have gotten really, really tight. Some polls there show Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake up a little while Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters trails, but I don’t think it was the yawning gap it used to be. Another state worth a mention, here: In Pennsylvania, it looks like Democrat Josh Shapiro is going to win the governorship by a pretty healthy margin, but the Senate race is real dang close. I’ll leave the prognosticating there to my colleagues who cover the Senate as to why. You’ve mentioned three of the highest-profile governors races in the country. Are there others that may not have gotten as much national media attention but are still worth watching next week? My general pitch, and I’ll break the fourth wall here and address you, our dear reader, directly: You should really care about your governor, even if your state isn’t getting national attention! Governors are very, very important — I would argue they probably have more sway over your day-to-day life than your senator — but they often play second banana to federal races. Care about your governor! That aside, two races that I think are interesting are in Oregon and Maryland. Oregon is going to be one of the closest elections in the country, I think, even though it heavily voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. There’s an unusual dynamic there of there being a really well-funded, third-party candidate that gives Republicans a chance to win in that state. If I was a betting man — and I am not — I wouldn’t place any bets in Oregon anyway just because it is so unusual. And Maryland’s pretty much a sure thing; the election itself is not a big question mark. There, Democrat Wes Moore will almost assuredly beat Republican Dan Cox, to flip the seat after two terms of GOP Gov. Larry Hogan. But once he’s in office, I think there’s a good chance for Moore to emerge as a newer voice for the national Democratic Party. He’s going to be a history-making candidate: The first Black governor in Maryland, and just the third ever elected nationwide. If Abrams doesn’t pull off the upset in Georgia, he’ll be the only Black governor in America. He thinks about and talks about politics differently than a lot of Democrats — I wrote about that for Nightly earlier in the month — and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him get a larger national platform soon. Are there any races we should mention that we haven’t gotten to? I’m gonna twist your question a little bit, because it is eight days before the election and I can do what I want at this point, to point to other statewide races people should care about: secretary of state races. A handful of states are very, very close to electing conspiracy theorists to run their future elections. These races don’t get a lot of attention, but they should. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh .
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