Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, is campaigning for Democratic candidates for governor in eight states in the final stretch before the Nov. 3 election, the association said on Thursday.
“This comes as the DGA is aggressively going on offense and there is a very real opportunity for Democrats to win the majority of governorships in our country for the first time since 2010,” the group said in a release.
The states are Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma. President Donald Trump carried all of them in 2024 except New Mexico. Democrats are defending the governorships in New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Kansas, and are trying to flip the other five, according to the group’s release and memo.
The DGA also announced $500,000 for the Oklahoma governor’s race, adding to spending it laid out in an Oct. 13 memo from Executive Director Meghan Meehan-Draper.
The memo says Democrats have a chance to hold a majority of the nation’s governorships for the first time since 2010. Democrats hold 24 governorships, the group said, up from 15 in 2017.
To get there, the memo says, Democrats need to hold Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Kansas, and flip Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. It describes races in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Nebraska as increasingly competitive.
The DGA said it is spending at least $10 million each in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and seven figures each in Alaska, Kansas, and Texas. It said it does not disclose all of its future spending plans, to avoid tipping off Republicans.
The group said its $10 million in Georgia makes it the largest donor to Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. It has also put more than $37 million into states where black candidates—including Bottoms, Wisconsin’s David Crowley, and Nevada’s Aaron Ford—could make history, and has helped fund more than $5.5 million in Spanish-language ads in Nevada and Arizona.
Georgia, Iowa, and Ohio have not elected a Democratic governor in 20 years, according to the memo.
The memo says Republicans are drastically outspending Democrats. It points to self-funding billionaires and their allies spending more than $100 million each in Georgia and Ohio, three Republican megadonors who spent $24 million in Wisconsin in the most recent reporting period, and more than $18 million from Turning Point USA and other conservative groups in Arizona.
It also says national donors are reluctant to give to state races, and that grassroots money is the hardest to raise in the final weeks. The DGA said it plans a late surge of at least $20 million to close the gap.
The memo frames governors’ races as a check on Trump. Governors will shape future congressional maps and appoint thousands of state judges, it says, adding that several Republican nominees have echoed Trump’s claims about a rigged 2020 election and could undermine certification of the 2028 results, the group said.
“When a Democratic candidate wins their race for governor, it puts that state on the map for 2028,” the memo says.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Republican Governors Association for comment but did not hear back prior to publication.
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