Stakes high in 2014 governor battles

By: James Hohmann, Politico
MILWAUKEE — Next year, Democrats have a chance to begin to blot out a rare bright spot for Republicans: the nation’s governorships.
For all the GOP’s well-documented problems winning national elections lately, it’s easy to overlook the party’s dominance at the state level that its banner 2010 election produced. Three in five governors are Republicans — and they used that power to push through far-reaching conservative agendas and quite possibly lock down the House of Representatives for a decade through redistricting.
Thirty-six states have governor’s elections on the ballot next year, a list that includes a batch of Republican incumbents up for reelection in key presidential swing states — including Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results could reverberate for years, shaping both parties’ presidential benches, providing an organizational leg-up in critical 2016 battlegrounds and potentially even playing into the next round of redistricting in 2020.
 
Read the full article at Politico here.