PORTLAND, Maine — A single senator has jeopardized parts of President Biden’s domestic agenda. The president’s approval ratings are anemic amid deep discontent with Washington. And as both Mr. Biden, 79, and Donald J. Trump, 76, announce their intention to run for president again, voters are demanding fresh blood in national politics.
Enter the governors.
“Governors are the CEOs,” said New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican who hopes a governor will win his party’s presidential nomination in 2024. He added that lawmakers in Washington “are not creating new systems. They do nothing. They operationalize nothing.”
In other years, those comments might have amounted to standard patters from a state executive whose race was overshadowed by the struggle for control of Congress.
All that dynamism was on display this week at the National Governors Association’s summer meeting in Portland, Maine, which took place when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin III appeared to derail negotiations in Washington on a broad climate and tax package.
His move destroyed vital parts of Mr Biden’s agenda in the evenly divided Senate, though the president promised to “take strong executive action to address this moment”. And it sharpened the argument of the leaders of both parties in Portland that, as Washington swings back and forth between chaos and paralysis, US governors and future governors have a more powerful role to play.
“The stalemate in Washington has been frustrating for a long time and we are seeing more and more of the importance of governors across the country,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, the president of the Democratic Governors Association, pointing to Supreme Court decisions that question weapons, abortion rights and other issues to states and their governors.
Americans, he added, “view governors as someone who gets things done and who doesn’t just sit at a table and yell at each other like they do in Congress or the state legislature.”
The three-day conference of governors came at a time of growing unease among national leaders of both parties.
A DailyExpertNews/Siena College poll showed 64 percent of Democratic voters would prefer a new presidential flag bearer in 2024, with many concerned about Mr Biden’s age. In another poll, nearly half of Republican primary voters said they would rather nominate someone other than Mr. Trump, a view that was more outspoken among younger voters.
And during the NGA meeting, private dinners and seafood receptions crackled with discussion and speculation about future political leadership.
“I don’t care as much when you were born or what generation you belong as what you stand for,” said Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a 47-year-old Republican. “But I think there’s definitely some fear in the country right now about the gerontocracy.”
In a series of interviews, the Republican governors in attendance — some of them critical of Mr Trump’s plans to retire, or both — hoped that some of them would emerge as key 2024 players.
But despite all the debate about office power, governors have often been overshadowed on the national stage by Washington’s leaders, and have struggled during the recent presidential primaries. The last governor to run for president was now Senator Mitt Romney, who lost in 2012.
Democrats, preoccupied with a perilous medium-term environment, have gone to great lengths to emphasize their support for Biden if he gets back on track as planned. Still, some suggested voters may feel that Washington’s leaders weren’t fighting hard enough, a dynamic with implications for the election this year and beyond.
“People want leaders—governors, senators, congressmen and presidents—who stand up for our rights vigorously, and people who can mobilize public support for them,” said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat.
Mr. Pritzker has drawn attention for planning appearances in the major presidential battlefields of New Hampshire and Florida and for his fiery remarks about gun violence following a shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Mr. Biden, for his part, was criticized by some Democrats who thought he should have been much more forceful immediately after the Supreme Court overthrown Roe v. Wade.
When asked whether Mr. Biden had been “firm enough” in his responses to gun violence and the abortion ruling, Mr. Pritzker, who has repeatedly promised to support him if he flees again, did not answer directly.
“President Biden is committed to ensuring that we protect those rights. I told him that I think he should say something every day to remind people that he is thinking about it,” replied Mr Pritzker. He added that Americans “want to know that leadership — governors, senators, president — you know, they want to know that we’re all going to fight for them.”
Governor Phil Murphy, a New Jersey Democrat and the new president of the National Governors Association (which hopes to host the summer meeting on the Jersey Shore next year), praised Washington lawmakers for finding a bipartisan agreement on a narrow gun control measure and said that mr. Biden had “done a lot.”
But when asked whether voters believe the Democrats in Washington are doing enough for them, he replied: “Because governors are closer to the ground, what we do is more direct, more — perhaps more deeply felt. I think there’s frustration that Congress can’t do more.”
Few Democrats currently believe that a serious politician would challenge Biden no matter what Washington’s problems were. He has repeatedly stated that he relishes the possibility of another match-up against Mr. Trump, citing the DailyExpertNews/Siena College poll that showed he would still beat Mr. Trump, with strong support from the Democrats.
A Biden adviser, who also quoted that poll, emphasized that voters continued to place great importance on perceptions of who could win — a dynamic vital to Biden’s primary win in 2020. He is still working, the said. consultant, to carry out more of his agenda, including cutting costs, even though there have been other economic benefits ahead of him.
“Last time we had younger people come forward. President Biden won the primaries. President Biden defeated Donald Trump,” said another ally, former Representative Cedric Richmond, who served in the White House. “The Biden-Harris ticket was the only ticket that could have beaten Donald Trump.”
But privately and to some extent publicly, Democrats are chatting about who else could succeed if Mr. Biden doesn’t eventually rejoin. A long list of governors — with varying degrees of youth — are among those mentioned, including Mr. Murphy, Mr. Pritzker, Mr. Newsom, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, if she wins her reelection.
Some people around Mr. Cooper hope he will consider fleeing when Mr. Biden doesn’t. When asked if that would interest him, Mr. Cooper replied, “I’m for President Biden. I don’t want to go there.”
Indeed, all those governors have emphasized their support for Mr Biden. But this week’s poll brought some of the talks within the party more quietly into the open.
“There is a serious gap between where the Democratic Party leadership is and where the rest of our country is,” said former Representative Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina Democrat running for governor who has called on Mr. Biden. from re-election to making way for a younger generation.
Signs of Mr Biden’s political challenges were also evident at the NGA. Asked if she wanted Mr. Biden to campaign with her, Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat in a competitive race for reelection this year, was noncommittal.
“I haven’t made that decision yet,” she said.
In a demonstration of how much 2024 talk permeated Portland this week, a dinner at Fore Street Restaurant could be overheard talking about Mr. Biden’s legacy and wondering how Mr. Murphy would fare nationally. At the next table was Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who confirmed he was still “testing the waters” for a presidential run.
Some of the most prominent Republican governors considered hopeful for 2024, most notably Mr. DeSantis, were not in attendance. But a number of others often cited as possible contenders — with varying levels of seriousness — were in attendance, including Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.
“I call them the ‘frustrated majority,'” Mr Hogan said, typifying the mood of the electorate. “They think Washington is broken and we have too much division and dysfunction.”