Voters in Big States Prefer Skinflint Candidates

"Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive," the candidate's website

proclaims. "We must get our state's fiscal house in order by immediately imposing a cap on state

spending and freezing salaries of state public employees as part of a one-year emergency

financial plan, committing to no increase in personal or corporate income taxes of sales taxes and

imposing a local property tax cap."

A Tea Party candidate? Some right-wing Republican? No, it's Andrew Cuomo, son of

three-term Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo. Interestingly, he's the only Democrat with a

significant polling lead in the governor races in our eight largest states, which together have 48

percent of the nation's population.

It's a poorly kept secret that government is growing not only at the federal but also at the

state and local levels. Especially in some of the biggest states, public employee unions have

successfully pressed for higher pay and lavish pensions (one Illinois school superintendent's

pension is valued at $26 million) to the point that public employees' salaries and benefits are

higher than those of the private-sector taxpayers who pay for them.

So while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector job

losses is near zero.

Barack Obama's solution is to send borrowed federal dollars — one-third of the $862

billion stimulus package last year and now a proposal for another $23 billion for teachers — to

states and localities to prop up the pay of unionized public employees. One reason: Unions gave

Obama and the Democrats $400 million in the 2008 cycle.

State governors can't resort to deficit spending without risky gimmicks, and what's more,

as Andrew Cuomo's platform suggests, voters don't want them to.

As a result, Republicans are leading or running even in governor races in seven of the

eight largest states. In California, Democrat Jerry Brown — at 72, seeking the office he first won

at 36 — is below 50 percent against eBay billionaire Meg Whitman. In Texas, Tea Party favorite

Rick Perry leads Democrat Bill White, who had a moderate record as mayor of Houston.

In Florida, all polls have shown Republicans leading the one Democrat in statewide

office.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Tom Corbett seems likely to regain the governorship for his

party in a state where party control has shifted every eight years since 1950.

In Illinois, would-be tax-raiser Pat Quinn, elevated to the governorship when Rod

Blagojevich resigned, trails a little-known downstate Republican legislator.

In Ohio, Democrat Ted Strickland, popular for his first two-and-a-half years, is only even

with John Kasich, former chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee.

Perhaps most surprisingly, in the nation's No. 1 unemployment state, Michigan, voters

are leaning toward replacing tax-raising Democrat Jennifer Granholm with one of the four

Republicans running in the August primary over either of the two Democrats.

That's pretty good proof that in times of economic distress voters don't want to keep

feeding the government beast, but believe it needs to cinch the belt a little tighter, as most

Americans have been doing.

It's not only in America's big states that we're seeing this phenomenon. As former

Economist editor Bill Emmott notes in London's Times, parties of the left have been getting

shellacked all over Europe, most recently in Britain.

You might wonder whether spending cuts will prove as unpopular as big spending

programs. That's unclear — but there's an interesting test case in the nation's 16th largest state,

Indiana.

In 2008, even while Indiana voters went 50 percent to 49 percent for Barack Obama, they

re-elected spending-cutting Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels by a 58 percent to 40 percent margin.

Daniels carried young voters 51 percent to 42 percent and college-educated voters 62 percent to

34 percent. He ran ahead of Ronald Reagan's 1984 showing in Indiana's most affluent county

while winning 25 percent from blacks and 37 percent from Latinos. Among all these groups, he

ran ahead of John McCain by double digits.

Daniels' skinflint instincts were unpopular with Republican as well as Democratic

members of Congress when he headed the Office of Management and Budget in George W.

Bush's first term. But they seem to have struck a chord with Hoosiers of all stripes.

His performance is evidence that the polls showing voters in our biggest states favoring

smaller government may not just be a passing fancy. Congress may vote more money for the

public employee unions. But in New York, Andrew Cuomo seems to have gotten the message.

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner. To find out

more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and

cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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