<<  <  >  >>

Page 6

statehouses have a decidedly Republican flavor today.

That remarkable shift of the balance of power in favor

of Republicans has at least partially reflected the voters'

general preference for more fiscal restraint at the state

level.  Both 1990 and 1991 brought record tax increases in

the states.  Arizona, California, Connecticut, Kansas, Mas-

sachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and New York en-

acted multi-billion-dollar tax hikes--mostly income tax rate

increases.  In almost every case those tax policies had

crippling effects on the state's economy and exacerbated its

fiscal crisis.

Most tax-raising governors were rejected by voters at

the polls and replaced with more fiscally conservative suc-

cessors, such as Engler of Michigan, Ridge of Pennsylvania,

Whitman of New Jersey, and Pataki of New York.  Each of

those governors ran for office pledging spending restraint

and broad-based tax cuts.  Whitman's unexpected victory over

Florio in the 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial race stemmed

largely from her bold proposal for a 30 percent income tax

cut.  Since then, Whitman's tax cut platform has been

widely, and usually successfully, imitated by other Republi-

can gubernatorial candidates across the country.  The most

recent example of the continued potency of the tax issue in

state elections was the victory by Republican Jim Gilmore of

Virginia in a race that became a referendum on Gilmore's

pledge of "No Car Tax."

Republican governors have introduced many innovative

fiscal and economic reforms to state government.  Since 1993

some 30 states have enacted supply-side tax rate cuts.  Only

a handful has raised taxes since then.  Republican governors

have also been highly active in promoting education reform

through school choice (Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, Arne

Carlson of Minnesota, and Voinovich of Ohio); work-based

welfare requirements (Engler of Michigan, Fordice of Missis-

sippi, and Rowland of Connecticut); and tort reform (Bush of

Texas).  "We are overthrowing all the unworkable liberal ab-

stractions of the past and replacing them with a revolution

of conservative ideas," boasted Pataki who defeated Mario

5

Cuomo in New York in 1994.

But on budget restraint, Republican governors have a

mixed record at best.  Despite the almost universal rhetoric

of governors about government downsizing, in the past two

years as the national economy has surged, many Republican

governors have launched state spending sprees, reminiscent

of state fiscal behavior in the 1980s.  In those prosperous

Reagan years, popular governors such as Michael Dukakis of

Massachusetts, Mario Cuomo of New York, Tom Kean of New Jer-