Illinois, Illinois, Illinois. No Illinois governor has served two full terms since the 1990s. It's a combination of the divide between Chicagoland and the rest of the state, along with deindustrialization/population decline and the general reputation for corruption.
Alaska seems to also come to mind. They also haven't had a governor serve out two full terms since Knowles, but I'm not sure what the deal is there.
Rhode Island also has some problems.
Best states to be governor are probably small, relatively rural ones like Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas. Utah also seems to have a good political culture.
I think Alaska has something to do with the constant fluctuation in oil prices and the Governor is somehow always blamed
Yeah, they’ve been having big budget issues because oil has tanked in the last decade. They don’t have a state income tax and there’s a lot of resistance to implementing one. Pretty sure that their state HoR approved one (controlled by a Dem led coalition), but the heavily Republican state senate didn’t agree. Palin suddenly quitting didn’t help Alaska’s current reputation of chewing up and spitting out governors. Idk if Walker could have won if Begich hadn’t entered.
The answer overall though is Illinois. Blago brought it upon himself and I’m still sad about The People’s Pat losing in 2014 and losing the AG Primary last year. Mostly because of the People’s Pat meme. Granted, Governor Madigan has been serving a long time (since like 1983 other than 1995-1997).
California has had its issues, somewhat self-imposed. Pete Wilson nailed the hammer in the coffin of the state GOP with his exuberant support of Prop 187. Gray Davis got focked by the Enron crisis and was kind of seen as a wimp. Hell, he almost lost in 2002, with Camejo (Green) breaking 5%. Arnold was popular for a while until things actually got tough. Fortunately we don’t need 2/3 for a budget anymore, which was a big part of the governing problems in 2009ish. Brown did a pretty good job of keeping the state going, but we still face huge issues such as wildfires and housing (in part exacerbated by wildfires). I’m hopeful that Newsom can take charge on these issues while keeping up CA’s reputation as an innovator.
VA is bizarre with their single term limit.
VT and NH are small enough states that it’s not too big of a deal that their have gubernatorial elections every two years.
Simple majority veto override is perhaps the stupidest feature of a state government.
