6 Rabidly Right-Wing Republican Governors Who Might Get the Boot

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/6-rabidly-right-wing-republican-governors-who-might-get-boot



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1. Florida’s Tea Party Republican Rick Scott. Florida under Scott has not been a state of warm sunshine and welcoming beaches. Joblessness, foreclosures, crimes preying on the elderly, economic inequality have all risen under his tenure. Scott also has overseen cuts in needed programs, from education to social welfare. Scott made his fortune as the head of a hospital chain that was fined $1.7 billion in the late 1990s for Medicare fraud— as Politifact Florida put it, stealing from the elderly. His re-election strategy is based on spreading fears about Obamacare and trashing the health reform. Like most ideological Republicans, he did not expand his state’s public health care for the poor—Medicaid—under the Affordable Care Act, despite federal funding covering the startup costs.

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2. Wisconsin’s Union-Buster Scott Walker. Two years ago, Walker became the darling of the GOP’s union-busting wing by ripping up collective bargaining rights won by most of the state’s public employee unions—teachers and civil servants but not police and fire fighters. That prompted tens of thousands of people to protest for weeks at the Capitol in Madison and sparked a special recall election. However, Walker won after Democrats put forth the same lackluster candidate who lost to him in 2010. His tough-on-crime policies also have been singled out as racially discriminatory, leading to the country’s highest rate of African-American men behind bars, the New Republic reported. Walker also refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. This year, he faces Democrat Mary Burke, an ex-Trek Bicycle executive and ex-state secretary of commerce. She has a record of creating jobs, while under Walker the state has seen poor job growth compared to its nieghbors.

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3. Kansas Pro-Business Libertarian Sam Brownback. Most pundits consider Kansas to be a irrevocably red state, but voters are apparently rethinking their anti-government attitudes after seeing what Gov. Sam Brownback, the former U.S. senator, has done as governor. Brownback ran on a platform that embraced the conservative fantasy that cutting corporate taxes would create so much economic growth that revenues would balloon and cover public programs. Brownback’s plan, adopted after taking office, is spectacularly backfiring. State tax revenues have fallen by 9 percent, leading to cuts in teacher salaries, larger classrooms, draining the state’s rainy day fund, and lowering its bond rating. Brownback, like other GOP governors who like to throw their weight around (i.e., New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christy), is under investigation by the FBI for “whether members of his inner political circle tried to pressure companies to hire certain lobbyists close to Brownback’s administration,” the AP reported.

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4. Pennsylvania’s Anti-Teacher, Pro-Fracking Tom Corbett. Like other governors elected in 2010’s Tea Party wave, Corbett, a former state attorney general, ran as an anti-tax crusader and then proceeded to gut basic public services while pandering to private interests—especially the natural gas fracking industry. Upon taking office, he faced a $4 billion deficit. Corbett’s response was to not raise taxes but to cut thousands of teacher jobs and social services for the poor. A year later, he pushed Act 13, perhaps the nation’s worst new environmental law, through the GOP-led Legislature. It gave gas companies unchecked authority to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning, seize private property and muzzle physicians from discussing fracking-related illnesses in patients.