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Are Democratic Governors Bad for Business?

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Glenn links an interesting post considering  the “2010 State Business Tax Climate Index, which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates.”

Blogger Paul L. Caron points out that

. . . all ten of the states with the worst business tax climates voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and five of the ten states with the best business tax climates voted for John McCain (South Dakota #1, Wyoming (#2), Alaska (#3), Montana (#6), and Utah (#10)).

Something different struck me.  Of the five states with the best business climate (South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada and Florida), four have Republican Governors.  In Wyoming, the one state (on that list) with a Democratic chief executive, the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican.

Of the five states with the worst business climate (Iowa, Ohio, California, New York and New Jersey), four have Democratic Governors.  In California, the one state (on that list) with a Republican chief executive, the legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic.To be sure, this formula doesn’t work perfectly; some of the best Governors, sensitive to the business needs of their states and hence averse to increased taxation, have come from the Democratic Party, notably Tennessee’s Phil Bredesen.  And some Republicans, eager to curry favor with special interests and win accolades from the news media, have hiked taxes (and increased regulation), notably Ohio’s immediate past Governor Bob Taft.

Comments

  2. Here in NJ, it doesn’t make any difference which party has the reins…it a rotten place for business, especially small businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs. Bracketed between NYC and Philly and burdened with a crumbling infrastructure, developmental congestion and a massive, entrenched (non-productive) civil payroll and swelling underclass, there’s just no room to maneuver. Everything goes in taxes to support the unsupportable.

    At least in Taxechusetts, their center-of-population is in-state. Here, we’re just the bedroom communities, landfills and warehouse distribution centers of New York City and Philadelphia. They get the primary revenue, and we carry the parasitic tax-burden.

  3. I’d point out that in Ohio it’s not democrats. Our economy sucked under Taft, sucks under Strickland. I can hope that under Kaisich it would do better, but that’s because he’s a supply sider.

  4. One could also argue the value of Western, more libertarian minded, “live and let live” values. While many of those can be seen along left/right lines, you might also say that rural/urban values are similar. In states where you can actually have land and people respect leaving each other alone and minding their business, I would think the same would also translate to laws concerning regulation. As it is, in Montana we have a Democratic governor who only won because he picked a Republican as his running mate, and our junior senator only won by a couple thousand votes after tying his opponent heavily to Abramoff on ’06.

    I think basic libertarian values still exist in the West much more so, and in part is the reason Palin brought so much to the table last year. Republicans would be wise to return to some of those Ron Paulesque themes and ideas.