Governor

Next to the president, governors are the most powerful elected officials in the United States. Some preside over a state, such as Ohio, that is larger than many foreign countries. Some deal with a legislature, such as New Hampshire's, that has almost as many members as the U.S. House of Representatives.

Many regard executive experience as a governor as more akin to that of the president than service as a legislator, military commander, or business leader, which helps to explain why four of the five presidents since 1977 were governors or former governors. In all, seventeen U.S. presidents have been state governors.

Like the president, a governor must depend on political skills to achieve a record of accomplishment in office. Many have served as a state legislator and therefore are acquainted with the legislative process. Of the 225 elected governors in office between 1970 and 1994, forty-three or 19 percent had been state legislators just before becoming governor.

Harry S. Truman Library

[Page p190]As political scientist Larry Sabato has observed, today's governors are a far cry from the glad-handing “good-time Charlies” of the past. He described the new breed as being, for the most part, “vigorous, incisive, and thoroughly trained leaders.”

Governors' duties vary in detail from state to state, but basically they are the same. Most state constitutions today have the “strong governor, weak legislature” system, which is the reverse of the situation that prevailed in the “good-time Charlie” era, the first half of the twentieth century.

The governor's chief responsibility is to enforce the laws of the state. Other duties include reporting to the legislature on the “state of the state”; preparing the state's operating and capital budgets, along with a tax budget to provide the revenue; appointing department heads and other officials, often subject to legislative confirmation; signing or vetoing new laws; participating in the federal grant-in-aid system; issuing pardons of criminals, sometimes in conjunction with a pardoning board; and commanding the state militia.

Unlike the federal system, in which the president makes major appointments subject to Senate confirmation, some state appointments are made by the legislature or other officials, subject to confirmation by the governor. Political scientist Thad L. Beyle, using Council of State Governments data, found that in most states in 1994 someone other than the governor appointed top officials in six major areas—corrections, education below college level, health, highways, public utilities regulation, and welfare—with the approval of the governor, the legislature, or both. Only in Ohio could the governor [Page p191]appoint all six of these officials with no confirmation needed; in Pennsylvania, four of the six required senate confirmation.

Most governors have long had a power that the president gained only recently (and temporarily)—the line-item veto, which is the authority to disapprove individual items in an appropriations bill without vetoing the whole bill. As president, former California governor Ronald Reagan was denied the line-item veto by a Democratic Congress. But a Republican Congress granted it to Democratic president Bill Clinton, former governor of Arkansas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the presidential line-item veto unconstitutional in 1998.

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