Missouri elects a Dem as governor

Associated Press

Democrats picked up a governor’s seat Tuesday as voters in Missouri elected Attorney General Jay Nixon in an open race. In Indiana, voters re-elected Gov. Mitch Daniels Tuesday as the Republican easily turned back a Democratic challenger hoping to benefit from an expected strong turnout for Barack Obama.

The win in Missouri gave Democrats a momentary 29-21 edge in state capitals nationwide.

Among other incumbents, Democrats in Montana, West Virginia and New Hampshire won re-election by a wide margin, as did Republican governors in North Dakota and Utah. In Delaware, Democrat Jack Markell easily won the open seat.

Voters in 11 states were choosing governors, deciding close contests in North Carolina and Washington as Republicans tried to chip away at the Democrats’ slim majority of gubernatorial seats.

Tuesday’s races were a prelude to 2010, when four of every five states will elect governors who will help preside over the redrawing of legislative and congressional districts.

The campaigns in North Carolina and Washington offered hints of the battle to come, as the national Republican and Democratic governors’ associations spent about $4 million on each of their candidates in each of the two states. Both groups have reported record fundraising this year as part of a four-year plan that will culminate in 2010.

“That’s where the real action is for the governors’ races,” Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said Tuesday.

In Washington state, Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire and GOP challenger Dino Rossi, a former state senator, restaged their 2004 contest that Gregoire won by 133 votes after two recounts and a lawsuit.

Results may not be clear until later in the week because of mail-in votes that could be postmarked as late as midnight on Election Day.

The outcome could be delayed even longer in Vermont. The Republican incumbent, Gov. Jim Douglas, was leading in the polls but had less than 50 percent of the vote in the most recent surveys of his three-way race with Democratic House Speaker Gaye Symington and independent Anthony Pollina.

If no one gets 50 percent, the election goes to the Democratic-controlled state Legislature, which doesn’t convene until January.