NEW ORLEANS — The future of the Democratic Party was formed over the weekend in a New Orleans hotel ballroom.
At least that’s what the donors, operatives and state executives who attended the Democratic Governors Association’s annual winter confab here think. The party last month successfully defended all but one of its incumbents and flipped three open seats, introducing or elevating a new group of chief executives onto the national stage.
This midterm class of Democrats is young and diverse, and some of its members are likely to be the next leaders of the party — or make a run at the White House sometime soon, even if it’s not in 2024.
“Is it the next generation of national leaders? Absolutely,” Tina Kotek, 56, the governor-elect of Oregon, said in an interview. “We see governors who run for president, we see governors who run federal departments, we see governors who are the thought leaders for the next generation. So this is going to pay dividends over the next two decades.”
Of the 18 Democrats elected or reelected to governorships this year, eleven are under the age of 60. Many are closer to 50. Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, 51, won reelection, and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, 49, and Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, 52, both won open seats. And all three of the party’s flips — Hobbs, alongside Maryland’s Wes Moore, 44, and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey, 51 — fall into this category as well.
The wave of new faces is also diverse and includes the country’s first lesbian governors — Kotek and Healey — and the third elected Black governor in American history in Moore.
They say they’re willing to wait their turn. For now.
At a press conference Friday at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the French Quarter, a question about which Democrat is most likely to be the next Democratic presidential nominee sparked chuckles from the assembled governors, with Shapiro jokingly shoving Roy Cooper — North Carolina’s governor and the outgoing DGA chair — up to the podium to field the question.
“Joe Biden,” Cooper quickly shot back. After being assured the question was about after Biden’s tenure in the White House, the North Carolinian offered, “I think there’s a great future for everybody up here.”
The half-dozen chief executives who spoke to POLITICO at the conference were all quick to say that Biden was doing a great job, and if he ran for a second term he would have their support.
But the fact that the future of the party — if not the next Democratic presidential nominee — was in that hotel was also hard to miss.
“We are increasingly diverse, increasingly representative of the great diversity of this country,” Whitmer said in an interview. “It is a very deep bench now of leaders who are executives who have to solve problems and have to work with anybody … And I think that those are skills and expertise that should inform a lot of the work that Democrats do across the country.”
It isn’t just that the governors are young that is raising speculation about their futures. It was the often commanding victories against Republican candidates backed by former President Donald Trump, coupled with dynamic on-the-stump presences and compelling life stories, that has Democrats buzzing about their futures.
In particular, the newcomers of Moore, Shapiro and Healey — and the newly reelected Gavin Newsom of California, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Whitmer — are seen as potentially longer-term leaders for the Democratic Party, along with the DGA’s outgoing and incoming chairs: Cooper and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy, respectively. (Moore and Shapiro were also appointed to leadership roles in the DGA, as finance chair and chair of strategic engagement.)
Shapiro, for example, is among the most successful politicians, elections-wise, in Pennsylvania history after he steamrolled a poorly funded extremist state senator to win the governorship. He became the first gubernatorial candidate in the state to clear 3 million votes, and ran ahead of Biden’s margin significantly in the state, especially in western Pennsylvania.
Shapiro credits his victory, in part, to a compete-everywhere campaign that crisscrossed the commonwealth. “We showed up, we treated people with respect, and went to places that most Democrats ignore,” he said in an interview.
He also touted his record as the state’s attorney general — where he fashioned himself as an aggressive public advocate who challenged powerful interests from the Catholic Church to drug companies culpable for the opioid crisis — and a stump speech centered around supporting “real freedom” as keys to winning over voters who otherwise don’t pull the lever in the polling booth for his party.
“I think the work I’ve done as AG has been populist, so I’m going to take that same approach as governor,” he said. “And that is just making sure everybody gets a fair shot, standing up for people that too oftentimes get screwed.”
Maryland’s Moore — Shapiro’s neighbor to the south, with whom he was publicly chummy during the weekend conference — similarly won a commanding victory to flip a governor’s mansion and replace the popular term-limited GOP moderate Larry Hogan.
Even setting aside the usual blue tint of his state, he won by historic margins that other gubernatorial candidates haven’t approached in decades, also beating a Trump-backed candidate in the process. His victory will make him the third Black man ever elected governor in America (and the first in Maryland), and the only Black governor in office next year.
Moore stands out, even in this class of governors, as a first-time candidate. He won the governorship on the strength of a compelling life story — a Rhodes Scholar and military veteran — and a gravitating stump speech about service that tries to recapture the concept of patriotism from Republicans.
In an interview, Moore said he felt during the election that his campaign was particularly motivating to young voters, who he credits as giving his campaign a fighting shot in a crowded primary where he faced off against elected officials with decades more experience.
“We were the campaign that was uniquely speaking to the issues that particularly young voters were talking about, and cared about, and were moving with a sense of urgency,” he said.
He also said he was proud that his ascension would be validating to different communities he represents. Moore will be the rare post-war on terror veteran to become a state’s chief executive — he said exit polls saw him winning the veteran vote in the state, which Democrats typically don’t do. He’s also the child of an immigrant.
“I’m honored by the fact that there are many demographics in the state that my election means something special to them,” he said. “And by the way, that happens to be some of the backbone of the Democratic Party.”
