Governors on the Run

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When political analysts predict a chilly November for Bill Clinton, they're usually referring to the congressional elections. Justifiably so: in a TIME/ CNN poll, 41% of adults surveyed said if the vote were held last week, they would choose the Republicans in their district, vs. 35% who supported Democrats. Those figures, a stark reversal of the 42%-to-34% edge the Democrats held just two months ago, mark the first Republican plurality since 1952.

But Congress is only one place where Clinton may feel frozen out. In Governor's mansions around the U.S., he may lose some of his most crucial supporters. Consider Zell Miller, the Democratic Governor of Georgia. In 1992 he was extremely helpful to candidate Clinton, barnstorming the state with his old friend and even changing Georgia's primary date to Clinton's advantage. When Clinton won Georgia by a scant 13,000 votes in November, thus grabbing the state's 13 electoral votes, many credited the margin to Miller.

It's questionable whether he will be able to help Clinton again in 1996; last week polls gave Miller a narrow five-point lead in his own race against Republican Guy Milener. Yet for a Democrat, he's fortunate. With 36 states electing Governors next month, the Republicans are on the verge of controlling a majority of state houses for the first time since 1968. Of the eight most populous states, Pennsylvania is a toss-up; but Michigan, Illinois and Ohio will almost certainly go Republican. And in the four electoral-vote behemoths -- California, New York, Texas and Florida -- once favored Democrats, some of them political legends, are stumbling badly. If they fall, Clinton in '96 will forfeit the nitty-gritty, dig-out-the-vote effort he got from Miller in '92 -- in states he cannot afford to lose.

The gubernatorial shift, unlike the upheaval in Congress, cannot be traced directly to fatigue with incumbents in general or Clinton in particular. Governors' races spotlight local personalities and such issues as immigration, gambling and state income taxes. But that is small solace for the Democratic leadership, which is wondering what went wrong in the Big Four.

NEW YORK: If progressive Democrats maintained their own private Rushmore, Mario Cuomo, the immigrants' son who became his party's conscience, would be on it. New Yorkers, however, have had 12 years to study the cracks in the granite. Cuomo's supporters, especially in New York City, still revere his full-blooded liberalism and bouts with presidential candidacy, his vetoes of the death penalty and defense of New York's generous social programs. But the same acts infuriate critics in rural areas and suburbs. And Cuomo has had trouble keeping businesses in the state or helping reduce local taxes.

The result was what Republicans last summer called ABCD: Anyone But Cuomo, Dummy. Into the role of Anyone stepped a little-known protege of New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato's, a state senator named George Pataki. Pataki has presented a detailed crime-fighting plan and a fuzzy promise of a $5.6 billion tax cut.