A Good Year for Democratic Govs?

The Washington Post noted on Sunday that the GOP has to defend 22 of the 36 governorships that are up next November. Republicans also currently hold seven out of the eight states where the sitting governor won't be running for re-election. "The math is not in our favor this time," Mitt Romney of Massachusetts said upon assuming the chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association.

It's been widely speculated that Romney himself won't run again next year, in favor of tending to his presidential bid. In that case, Democrats will salivate over the prospect of finally taking back the governorship of one of "their" states, which they haven't managed to do since Michael Dukakis.

But November is a long ways away. And Republicans can find comfort in the fact that state budgets are in much better shape now than they were back in 2002, when voter dissatisfaction helped produce a record number of new governors in the Class of 2003.