Washington Post: Jack Dalrymple Is 3rd Most Popular Governor In America

The Washington Post’s The Fix blog ranks America’s ten most popular governor (actually eleven, they score a tie for the tenth spot).

A couple of things worth noting.

First, of the eleven governors listed, it’s worth noting that eight are Republicans.

Second, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple came in third:

3. North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R): A late 2012 poll from independent pollster Mason-Dixon showed Dalrymple’s favorable rating at 61 percent, with just 10 percent unfavorable, and there’s little reason to believe anything has changed since then. It’s a great time to be governor of North Dakota, that’s for sure.

“It’s a great time to be governor of North Dakota, that’s for sure.”

I think that sort of sums it up. We could have a debate about Dalrymple’s leadership, and personally I could find things worth praising and things worth criticizing, but let’s face it. With an oil boom driving explosive economic growth, and rivers of tax revenues, North Dakota is a pretty easy place to govern right now.

Taxes are coming down (not as quickly as some of us would like) as tax revenues grow. Personal incomes are growing. Low unemployment rates mean lots of opportunity. And, by plenty of measures including this most recent one from Gallup, North Dakotans are both healthy and happy.

Which is also why you’re going to see a lot of investment by politicians and their media surrogates in painting North Dakota as an unhappy place. Satisfied voters tend to want to keep the status quo in place. The only way North Dakota Democrats, who are about as marginalized as a political movement can be right now, can upturn that apple cart is with a steady stream of negativity.