Apathy, That's Why

Only 44 percent of Floridians approve of the job that second-term Florida Governor Rick Scott is doing. That's better than when he was in his first term, during which, at one point, he had the lowest rating of all 50 sitting governors. Today, even with a dismal 44 percent rating, Scott is only the 8th most disliked Governor in the U.S. Who's doing worse? A lot of other second term governors, it seems. Why are they all still in office? Ask the voters.

Kansas' Sam Brownback is the most reviled governor in the nation, with an unthinkable 18 percent approval rating. Brownback parlayed a spectacular failure in his 2008 presidential bid into a 2010 gubernatorial victory in his home state. The former Congressman and Senator promised to bring all of the Koch-favored, ultra right-wing ideas from his presidential platform to the state level, mercilessly cutting government spending, deregulating industry at every turn, recklessly slashing taxes, and shifting state business toward privatization, all on the back of an ultra-conservative social agenda.

The results have been disastrous. Rather than leave Kansas swimming in revenues as Brownback promised, his massive tax cuts simply tore a huge hole in the state's revenues while the economy remained stagnant, with growth trailing the national average by a full four points. This all happened before he somehow managed to get reelected in 2014. Since then, he's had to cut education spending and highway funding to balance the budget, just as his opponents (including many of the state's Republican legislators) warned would be the case.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's story is quite similar. He was elected in the same year, made the same promises and got largely the same results, including a narrow reelection victory after avoiding a recall effort and a current approval rating of only 40 percent. Nonetheless, Walker, who briefly sought the GOP presidential nomination this year, could probably win another election in Wisconsin if they held it tomorrow.

Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, who also dropped out of the GOP presidential primaries recently, only has a 35 percent approval record with 60 percent of Louisiana voters disapproving of the job he's doing. Jindal made it through two terms and despite his low numbers, it isn't inconceivable that he too could have won another election in his state, considering that Democrat John Bell Edwards barely squeaked past David Vitter last month, an utter laughing stock of a candidate who was at the center of the D.C. call girl scandal while serving in Congress.

So, why doesn't the math work out? Well, it would seem that people are much more willing to complain to a pollster than get off of their keyster and cast a vote. With so little public interest in state and local politics, the impact of money in those races becomes magnified, and because of the unfortunate prevalence of party-line voting, having an enormous fundraising advantage and good registration ratios is usually enough for a sitting governor to be reelected, even if most citizens eligible to vote, don't like them or their policies.

It's easy for us to sit back and blame those dynamics, especially money in politics. But the truth is, big money only works when voters aren't paying attention. In countries where low-information voters are not as prevalent as they are in the United States, there tends to be much less money invested in electioneering. It seems to make sense that an informed voter who is following a race and has done their homework on both candidates is far less likely to be swayed by bogus attack ads or name recognition.

So, instead of lamenting the system and marveling that a schmo like Scott would ever consider a Senate run in 2018, Floridians would be much better served to take a closer look at the electorate rather than the elected. I realize that if you're reading my column you're unlikely to be among the apathetic, but if we convince ourselves that it's the largely immutable dynamic of money in politics and not the decidedly more changeable one of the participation rate of informed voters, we're sowing the seeds of our own demise.