Governor's Race Research Articles

Governor's race: a TV reporter's chronicle of the 1993 Florio/Whitman campaign

How did Christine Todd Whitman become the first woman governor of New Jersey? How did Jim Florio recover from a miserable 18 percent public approval rating in 1990 to almost win reelection? Political correspondent Michael Aron followed the race, day by day, as he reported it for TV. This is his chronicle of events in this neck-and-neck race. Aron covered the campaign strategies and scandals as they unfolded. His interviews, insights, and stories that never made it into the daily broadcast give a behind-the-scenes slant on the political process.

Maine and the Elections of 1860

governor's race, all six of the Maine congressional district races, and various statewide offices. If Maine returned a large Republican majority to Congress and the state legislature and elected a Republican governor, it could affect elections in the rest of the country, especially in key states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana, states that Abraham Lincoln had to carry to win the election. The citizens, press, and politicians of Maine were intensely aware and involved during the crisis. At every step along the way, they rejected the pleas of moderates and the policies of the Democratic Party. They overwhelmingly supported and voted for Republican Party candidates in the state and national elections of 1860, a victory so sweeping that no one could doubt how firmly they stood against disunion. The threat of secession and the predictions of economic calamity did not cause them to deviate one iota. Certainly, the citizens of the state risked a great deal by supporting the Republican Party. During the decade of the 1850s, Maine was a state on the move. Almost every leading indicator reported in the 1860 census documented that the Maine economy was expanding. The population of the state increased by 45,110 during the decade, from 583,169 persons in 1850 to 'Local and statewide elections in Maine were held on the second Tuesday in September until 1960.

A portrait of modern Texas politics: The regional geography of the 1990 governor's race

The 1990 governor's race in Texas provided a unique opportunity to analyze the state's regional geography. Moderate Democrat Ann Richards' defeat of conservative Republican Clayton Williams permitted a spatial analysis of the supporters of these two distinct candidates. A stepwise regression analysis of the electoral returns showed Germanic ancestry and higher income countries to be associated with the vote for Williams. In addition, the regional voting patterns were striking, and confirmed the continuing persistence of D.W. Meinig's (1969) cultural regions of Texas.

Greg Mitchell. <italic>The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics</italic>. New York: Random House. 1992. Pp. xx, 665. $27.50

Greg Mitchell. <italic>The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics</italic>. New York: Random House. 1992. Pp. xx, 665. $27.50

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.

Review: The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, by Gregg Mitchell

Review: <i>The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics</i>, by Gregg Mitchell

How They Killed Upton Sinclair

On August 28, 1934, Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle and forty-six other books, won the Democratic primary for governor of California, defeating the favored gubernatorial candidate of the party regulars, George Creel, by 150,000 votes and accumulating a larger vote total than his eight competitors combined. He had campaigned on a program to End Poverty in California-dubbed EPIC-at the core of which was the premise that the great number of California farms and factories that lay idle in the Depression had failed because they were devoted to for profit. Sinclair proposed to integrate the farms and factories into a system of colonies committed to what he called production for use; the unemployed would consume what they produced, and any surplus in one colony would be exchanged for surplus goods from others. The rest of the EPIC program comprised a medley of redistributive measures, including a progressive income tax, steeper inheritance taxes, property tax exemptions for owner-occupied homes and farms valued at less than three thousand dollars, and a pension of fifty dollars a month for, among others, all needy people over sixty who had resided in the state at least three years. With some half a million Californians unemployed, the EPIC idea had spread like fire in the chaparral, and nearly fifty EPIC-backed candidates had won Democratic party nomination for seats in the state senate and assembly. Sinclair's primary victory stunned much of the state's political establishment and sent a shiver through its body politic. Although Republicans had won every governor's race in California since 1899, the number of registered Democrats there had been rapidly overtaking the number of registered Republicans and, not least because of EPIC enthusiasts, the Democratic party rolls had swelled by 350,000 in the first six months of 1934 alone. Some 25,000 more votes had been cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican one. Moreover, Republican votes were expected to go in the general election

The campaign of the century: Upton Sinclair's race for governor of California and the birth of media politics

The campaign of the century: Upton Sinclair's race for governor of California and the birth of media politics

Grunig's Situational Theory: A Replication, Application, and Extension

Grunig's situational theory segments publics from a larger population based on the activeness or passiveness of communication behavior. This study found support for the Grunig model in a survey conducted during the 1990 governor's race in Kansas. The variables of the theory—problem recognition, level of involvement, and constraint recognition—accurately predicted different levels of communication activity about the election. The theory also predicted the outcomes of communication successfully. In contrast to previous studies using the situational theory, this study found a strong relationship between the situational variables and standard demographic characteristics of age, education, and income—thus suggesting the possibility of using segmentation procedures that include both situational variables and media demographics. Finally, the article suggests that the situational theory could be enhanced by including an energy variable—specifically Hull-Spence's behavior equation—and a media use variable.

The abortion issue down ticket: The Virginia lieutenant governor's race of 1989

The abortion issue down ticket: The Virginia lieutenant governor's race of 1989

Voter Preference and Emotion: Using Emotional Response to Classify Decided and Undecided Voters1

This study tested the utility of using the emotioneliciting qualities of candidates to classify both decided and undecided voters. Based on Mehrabian and Russell's (1974b) theoretical perspectives, a hypothesis was developed that emotional response to candidates could be used to discriminate between voters.Three hundred eighty‐six registered voters in Bexar County, Texas, were randomly polled. These voters were asked a series of attitude and behavior questions. Of special interest for this study were questions about the Texas Governor's race between Bill Clements and Mark White. Voters were asked to identify their preference for either man and to respond to questions that tapped the emotioneliciting qualities of each candidate. The results indicated that the emotioneliciting qualities of the political candidates could be used to discriminate both decided and undecided voter preference. Specifically, over 90% of the decided voters and 80% of the undecided voters were accurately classified. This was seen as important for two reasons. First, it supported the claim that emotions may play an important role in voter preference. Second, it suggested a method for discriminating between voters even when voters were unable to immediately identify their own candidate preferences. Also of importance was the finding that the emotioneliciting quality scales became a “clarification” tool for some voters who were “on the fence” about the two candidates. After these voters responded to questions about thek feelings, candidate preference could be more clearly verbalized.A refinement of the “emotion‐eliciting quality” instrument was suggested for future research.

Third Parties and Voters' Decisions: The Liberals and the General Election of 1945

Political history is the record of the pursuit and exercise of state power. In a democracy the search for such authority usually begins with the contest of elections. Elections, as a consequence, are of great importance and their systematic analysis, particularly the extrapolation of conclusions about popular attitudes from their results, has achieved in the last few years the status of a separate scholarly craft.Historians have their own way of explaining elections. Traditionally, they tend to concentrate upon comparisons of programs and of party leaders. They assume the electorate made a choice between platforms and personalities and they tend to explain observable results in terms of most easily demonstrable causes. In dealing with the British General Election of 1945, for instance, they argue that the Labor party won because voters found its program more believable than that of the other party. This explanation, of course, is tautological. One is reminded of Calvin Coolidge who explained his victory in the race for governor of Massachusetts by saying that he received the most votes.Yet of all elections in the twentieth century, the poll of 1945 needs critical investigation. The importance of its results have obscured the complexities of the election itself; historians have been so fascinated by what Labor did in office that they have ignored how the party got there. Labor's victory was as unprecedented as it was unexpected. As neither Churchill nor the leaders of the Labor party could believe, even in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that the electorate would dismiss the man who had led Britain through the war, the mystery of the election derives not from the Labor victory but from the breakdown of understanding between the leaders of the nation and its citizenry.

The 1968 Presidential Elections

The electoral events of 1968 constitute a classical case of the vanity of political prediction. In 1964, in the wake of Mr Johnson's crowning mercy of November, political scientists were affirming the end of the Republican Party; the most that was to be looked for in the future was a one-and-a-half party system. In 1962 it was universally agreed amongst the politically sophisticated that Mr Nixon, by losing the California governor's race and, worse still, by publicly displaying his wounds and his chagrin, had wrecked all chances of a presidential nomination. In 1968, even after the New Hampshire primary, it was the conventional wisdom that Senator McCarthy's was, for all its gallantry, a children's crusade, of no serious significance for the course of American politics. Dis aliter visum. The two-party system fully reasserted itself, even in a three-party year; Mr Nixon easily won the nomination and, by a hair's breadth, the presidency; finally, Senator McCarthy, despite his failure to win either, decisively affected the course of American policy in Vietnam, was probably responsible in large degree for Mr Johnson's abdication and may, by his own autumnal aloofness, have tipped the electoral balance from Humphrey to Nixon.

LAKE OKEECHOBEE AND SAFETY FROM TROPICAL STORMS

SYNOPSIS This paper describes Lake Okeechobee as to area, depth, configuration, drainage area, and other features, particularly with reference to the hurricane disasters of 1926 and 1928. Lake Okeechobee is in the south-central portion of the Florida peninsula; it is between 30 and 40 miles in diameter. The surface of the lake is between 700 and 800 square miles; its depth varies from a maximum of 15 feet to only a few inches at the outer circumference, especially on the south and west shores where the water is shallow. The configuration of the lake is nearly round, and its drainage area comprises 5,300 square miles. The Everglades, an area about 90 miles long and 40 miles wide, compose an area of 4,500 square miles; they are just to the south of the lake and over which shore (south) the flood waters of Lake Okeechobee found their exit to a large extent. It was to drain these glades that inspired the first efforts of Gov. N. B. Broward in seeking a platform in race for governor. Broward made the race on “...