POLITICS : Governors’ Popularity Often a Casualty of Budget Battles

If the political cross-fire in the state capitals intensifies any this spring, many of the nation’s governors may soon be looking for combat pay.

Or other jobs.

It’s nervous time in the statehouses: While President Bush’s public approval rating sails into the clouds, many of the nation’s governors are uneasily watching their popularity plummet.

Why are the governors sinking while Bush is soaring? Call it the New Political Federalism: After a decade in which the federal government transferred increased responsibility for social programs to the states--without the funds to pay for them--governors everywhere are cracking up against the rocks of austerity.

Caught between growing demands for social services, revenue shortfalls caused by the recession, and a legal requirement for a balanced budget in virtually all states, governors from coast to coast this year are slashing programs and raising taxes--making choices that Washington has minimized by running huge deficits through the 1980s. And they are paying the price.

“A governor with over 50% approval is more the exception than the rule now and that just wasn’t true three or four years ago,” says J. Bradford Coker, president of Mason-Dixon Opinion Research, a media polling firm.

This political turbulence first became apparent last fall, when 10 incumbent governors decided not to seek reelection, and another six were blown out of office on Election Day. By comparison, despite all the talk of an anti-Washington avalanche, just one incumbent senator lost a reelection bid last year.

If anything, more governors look wobbly now than last November.

In Virginia, where first-term Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder has pursued brutal spending cuts to avoid a tax hike, one recent poll found 61% of state residents disapproved of his performance. In Connecticut, where first-term independent Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. has proposed major spending cuts and the imposition of an income tax, 63% of those polled viewed him unfavorably. In New Jersey, Democrat James J. Florio--who raised taxes and cut spending last year--now looks like the model of a one-term governor. In the latest Eagleton Institute of Politics survey, an imposing 73% of those polled disapproved of his performance.

Republicans John Engler in Michigan and William F. Weld in Massachusetts, who both won upset victories last fall, may now be wondering if it was worth the trouble. Locked in ferocious budget struggles with Democratic legislators, both have seen their disapproval rating climb near the politically threatening mark of 40%.

In New York, Democratic Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is feeling the pain of trying to close a $6-billion deficit without raising taxes. For the first time in his almost nine years in office, a majority of state residents disapprove of Cuomo’s performance, according to the most recent survey by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Some governors have avoided the carnage. Ohio Republican George V. Voinovich remains broadly popular despite an austere budget--though his numbers have already softened since he took office this winter. First-termers Pete Wilson in California and Ann Richards in Texas are also still drawing high marks--but neither state has resolved its budget shortfall yet.

In the past, governors have generally tried to make the tough decisions on their budgets during their first year in office--giving themselves three years to recover before facing the voters. That may work for some of the state executives now giving ground in the polls.

But many state budgets are even more bleak for 1992 than in the fiscal year now winding down. “The difficulty is there isn’t a real sign of recovery,” says Mark Gearan, executive director of the Democratic Governors’ Assn. And without economic recovery, no one is willing to wager much on political revival for the nation’s embattled governors.