Democrats 2020: Governors try to crack the senator scramble

The opening months of the Democratic presidential primary have been dominated by senators who have staked their campaigns on personal narratives and sweeping liberal policies.

Now come the governors.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee was the first state executive to enter the presidential field, launching his campaign Friday by declaring climate change the nation’s most pressing task and his campaign’s defining issue. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is expected to join soon. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe are considering bids, as well.

Most of them will use some variations of an argument that governors from Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have used to reach the Oval Office: We get things done, unlike those Capitol Hill peacocks. “If America wants to see a Washington that actually works, look west to Washington state,” Inslee, a former congressman, said Friday in his Seattle announcement.

Yet governors face notable headwinds in the era of President Donald Trump.

Many Democratic voters are transfixed by the daily saga in the nation’s capital, and that allows presidential candidates including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to remain front and center in the battle for attention.

“I don’t want to diminish being a governor, but it’s just not as important as it used to be,” said Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor.

Richardson ran for president in 2008 but never gained traction, as a freshman senator from Illinois named Barack Obama won the nomination and the general election. Eight years later, Republicans went even further afield from Obama’s thin resume when they nominated Trump, who’d never held elected office at any level.

Adding to the governors’ challenges, they are middle-aged to older white men at a time when the Democratic Party base is dominated by women nonwhites and young voters — an electorate that may not be clamoring for the offerings of conventional politicians. Inslee and Hickenlooper are in their late 60s. McAuliffe is 62. Bullock is the youngest, at 52.

For those Democrats looking for a white man, they’ve already got Sanders, who is anything but conventional, as a 77-year-old democratic socialist. Potentially joining the fold soon: former Vice President Joe Biden, a 76-year-old with decades in the limelight, and Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, a 46-year-old who built a national following in his unsuccessful bid to topple Republican Sen. Ted Cruz last year. Both men would bring an immediate fundraising jolt that governors might not match.