State governors: how much power do they have, does it vary state to state?

25 comments

1. Chief executive of the state

   Has veto powers

   Signs legislation

   Commands the national/state guard

   Can issue executive orders

   Can appoint people to executive positions

2. Each state has a constitution that sets out the responsibly and powers of its branches of government.

   Indiana’s Governor is among the weakest in the nation. Indiana does not allow for line-item vetoes and the Governor’s veto can be overridden with a simple majority. IN Gov also doesn’t have a “pocket” veto. If the Gov chooses not to sign a bill that passes, then it by default becomes law without their signature.

   It’s said the Speaker of the (Indiana) House is the most powerful in the state when the legislature is in session

   People vote differently depending on the office, the party, and even the individual.

   Without delving into 200+ years of history, “Liberal” in terms of Boston and Massachusetts is different than “liberal” in the Bay Area.

   Some may even make the argument that a Republican who can get elected Gov in Mass would basically be a Democrat anywhere else.

   The most popular governors tend to be in “different” states. The Dem Governor of Kentucky, for example, has something like a 60%+ approval rating last I checked. Massachusett and Maryland also had recent GOP Governors that were very popular.

3. The governor is basically the “President” of their state. They are the chief executive. Just like with the federal government, each state’s government structure is based on that state’s constitution. As long as the state government fits the mold of being a republican form of government, they can structure their government however they like.

4. Generally they are powerful but it very much depends on the state, each state has its own constitution and determines who has what power in a different way. Like in Texas the lieutentant governor is arguably the more powerful position because it absolutely dominates the senate and therefore controls the legislative agenda, something the governor usually has little influence over.

5. Also another question, I always thought capitol was an American state capital but my friend from America says it refers only to the capitol building, since it’s in DC the capital I thought it was the capital building and it was just an accent. I’m getting mixed results from opera, can someone explain to me what the whole thing is?

6. Massachusetts is liberal but not obsessed over being “Democrat”. New England while very progressive, seems to be willing to vote for a Republican if the candidate seems stronger. Very progressive Vermont also has a GOP gov.

   I’m liberal and dont like many of Charlie Baker’s positions (like public money for charter schools, etc) but he’s smart, competent, measured, diplomatic and an adult. He’s also not all bluster and formality. I’d vote for him for president this election, even though I like Biden (I just think Biden is too old to exude strength).

   He’s not right wing enough so he’s NEVER get a chance.

7. It does vary by state. The Texas governor is middling to low on power, but our Lt Governors are unusually powerful due to the role they play in which bills go to a vote when in the legislature, to use my own state as an example.

8. Wyoming, a staunch Republican state, has a history of electing Democrat governors.

9. It varies by state.

   Texas is notorious for having a weak governor while New York has a stronger than average governor. Frequently it just comes down to the individual people in the positions too.

10. The governor is somewhere between the king of england and the prime minister. The US president is like the President of the European Commission.
    Think of states as seperate countries.

11. State political parties and national political parties have different issues. Sometimes it’s more about ballot access and a mechanism than ideology

12. In Kentucky the governor used to be extraordinarily powerful. That’s because until the 1990s, the state legislature only met once for 60 days every two years. In the time that the legislature wasn’t in session (22/24 months) the governor held pretty much all the power in the state. He or she could de facto legislate as the executive and then whatever decisions they made could only really be overturned when the legislature met which could be nearly two years later. Basically, the governor was a de facto semi-dictator until the 90s.

    Now, the legislature meets every year, and much of the informal power the governor held has been lost as the legislature has begun to assert itself more and more. They’ve been trying for the past couple of years to pass an amendment that would enable them to call themselves into a special session, but they haven’t been successful so far.

13. Well California’s governor is disrupting the insulin monopoly by producing affordable insulin and under cutting big pharma

14. Varies by state

15. The governor is basically the president of a state. Each state has its own government that basically resembles the federal government. With the exception of Nebraska, each state has a bicameral legislature. Each state also has a supreme court equivalent, a constitution, and a bureaucracy of departments such as transportation, justice, labor etc..

    The governor is the state-level equivalent of the President, which is why some argue that the most successful presidents have experience as governors rather than as Senators or Representatives.

16. It varies by state. But in general they have more power to affect your everyday life than the president as a lot of power is left to the states to govern themselves.

17. It depends on the state and is defined by their constitution. The governor is the chief executive, just as the president is for the nation.

    Virginia Executive Branch

    https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitutionexpand/article5/

18. >also why do some democratic states like Massachusetts sometimes vote Republican governor

    Because our Republicans aren’t schizos.

19. Each state has their own constitution, that will lay out the powers of the executive branch.

    My governor is Kristi Noem.

    For a power example, it was heavily contested if my governor even had the power to lock things down with covid. I think it was eventually decided that she did not have that power. I remember there being a minor spat with the legislative branch when things first started happening. Obviously, other state governors did have that power, or at least said they did and did what they wanted regardless.

20. During covid, most of them showed that they had way too much power.

21. North Carolina has a relatively weak governor. Our governor only got veto power and the ability to serve more than one term in the 1990s and late 1970s respectively.

    To override the governor’s veto only requires 3/5 of the legislators *present for the vote* and there is no time limit so canny legislative leaders can park veto votes and spring them out when they have the numbers. The GOP NC House notoriously override a governor’s budget veto while a lot of the Democrats were at a 9/11 memorial, for example. Also the Governor’s veto power does not extend to redistricting bills so after the last two censuses the Dem governors were just spectators to the gerrymanders that the GOP legislature cooked up. Ironically this system was set up by Democrats who thought while they might lose the governorship a few times, they’d always control the legislature.

    Plus most of the Governor’s powers are statutory rather than constitutional so for example when Democrat Roy Cooper defeated the Republican incumbent in 2016, the legislature stripped most of his powers in a lame-duck session.

22. A republican is MA is more liberal than a Democrat in more conservative states.

23. Answering the last part of your question: regional political parties can be very different from the national brand. Republicans in Massachusetts and California are very different from those in Texas and Alabama. The same goes for Democrats.

    It’s better to think of the two major political parties as coalitions of smaller parties, rather than unitary organizations. In fact, every state has its own party organization.

    All of the major political factions you see in Europe exist in the US too (Christian Democrats, Liberal Business, Ethno-Nationalist, Social Democrat, Democratic Socialist, Green, Socialist, etc), they just have to organize themselves into two blocks to be viable nationally. Different factions will be over-represented in different regions.

    The Republicans who get elected in blue states tend to be more in the mold of the CDU or FTP in Germany who can achieve mass appeal with moderate voters, whereas those in more conservative areas tend to skew more to the right.

24. Our governor seems to think he is the president, and is just announced he running for president. Basically as long as the governor has both the state house and senate as well a judicial appointments in his party, he can be like a king/dictator and get pretty much any law that he wants… to a certain degree that the US and State constitutions let him. For instance, he cant declare war, make trade deals with foreign nations, etc.

25. Alabama has a relatively weak Governor. The State Legislature can override vetoes with the same majority it passed the legislation with.