Democratic governors are facing a messaging conundrum: they say American democracy may hinge on their elections in 2022, but they're not sure they can get most voters to care.
Attempts to meddle with the certification of the Electoral College count and the partisan takeovers of the voting infrastructure don't seem to be front of mind for an electorate drained by nearly two years of pandemic living and a creeping sense of economic panic, and that worries a range of Democratic governors gearing up for campaigns who gathered in New Orleans this weekend for grim meetings about their 2022 electoral prospects.
They see former President Donald Trump cheerleading Republican efforts to twist state election laws in the GOP's favor. They fear he'll launch another presidential campaign in 2024 and that a bad Democratic year in 2022 could remove bulwarks of the democratic systems meant to ensure impartial vote counts -- and results determined by those counts.
But the dozen Democratic governors who assembled for an annual policy workshop and donor conference definitely don't want to be the next Terry McAuliffe, whose campaign for Virginia governor went down last month amid a fevered effort to make his GOP opponent out as the horseman of a Trump apocalypse.
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, who chaired the Democratic Governors Association in the flush Democratic 2018 campaign year, has a different horseman in mind.
"We have to be Paul Revere every chance we get to let people know what is at risk and why it is at risk. We live it. Every time we eat breakfast we think about these things," he said. "I don't think you can be overly concerned about this. The American psyche has not recognized we were one vice president away from a coup."
Inslee is not up for reelection in 2022 -- he won a third term last year -- but the other governors focused on next year's races say they're struggling with how to have this conversation with voters.
They think their commitment to fair elections should be a plus in the minds of voters. "Democratic governors believe that every single vote should be counted and that the results should be the results," said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who became the new chair of the governors group over the weekend. "And I shouldn't have to say that as an attribute, but you do, because there are people who are beginning to take positions who don't believe that and almost would prefer an autocracy, as long as their person is in charge."
For over a decade, North Carolina has been a Republican laboratory for voting rights cutbacks and gerrymandering. Cooper won in 2016 and again, by a wider margin, in 2020 without spending much of his campaigns talking about any of that. But that was before Trump started questioning the election results, and before his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January trying to overturn Joe Biden's victory. Even so, in his new campaign advisory role, his advice to other governors hasn't changed.
"Most everyday people are worried about their kids getting a good education, worried about getting paid for, making sure their roads are fixed, being able to connect to high-speed internet," Cooper said. "The political process issues -- I've never been a real fan of making them a central part of messaging."
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