50 Fun Facts About US Governors

Which film star replaced Gray Davis as governor of California after winning the 2003 recall election?

Arnold Schwarzenegger topped a replacement ballot that listed 135 candidates. Davis became only the second governor in American history to be recalled by voters.

Which former pro wrestler beat both major parties to win the Minnesota governor's race for the Reform Party?

Jesse Ventura ran a low-budget campaign built on unusual advertising, and he remains the only Reform Party candidate to win a major government office.

Who is the only person ever elected governor of two different states, first Tennessee and later Texas?

Sam Houston also led the Republic of Texas as its president. He lost the Texas governorship in 1861 for refusing to swear loyalty to the Confederacy.

Where did aides say South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was hiking in 2009 when he was really in Argentina?

The Appalachian Trail story collapsed within days, when Sanford admitted he had been visiting a mistress. State lawmakers censured him.

Which Illinois governor was impeached and removed in 2009 for trying to sell Barack Obama's old Senate seat?

Rod Blagojevich served nearly eight years of a 14-year federal prison sentence before it was commuted in 2020.

Which state, nicknamed the Equality State, made Nellie Tayloe Ross the first woman governor in American history?

Wyoming elected Ross a month after her husband, the sitting governor, died in office. She later ran the United States Mint for 20 years.

Which former vice president lost the 1962 race for governor of California and called it his last press conference?

Richard Nixon accused the media of favoring his opponent the morning after the defeat, yet six years later he won the presidency.

Which governor did a famous Chicago Daily Tribune headline wrongly declare the winner over Harry Truman in 1948?

Thomas Dewey had made his name as a prosecutor pursuing the Mafia. Truman held the mistaken front page up for the cameras two days after the vote.

Which former Screen Actors Guild president served two terms as governor of California before winning the White House?

Ronald Reagan raised state taxes as governor and turned California's budget deficit into a surplus, years before he ran for president as a tax cutter.

Which governor of Alaska was John McCain's 2008 running mate, the first woman on a Republican national ticket?

Sarah Palin was the youngest person and the first woman elected governor of Alaska, and she resigned in 2009 before finishing her term.

Which state's governor William Goebel, shot in 1900, is the only sitting state governor ever to be assassinated?

Kentucky swore William Goebel in on his deathbed the day after he was shot, and he held the office for only four days.

Which state made Stevens T. Mason, known as the Boy Governor, the youngest state governor in American history at 24?

Michigan's Stevens T. Mason was named territorial secretary at 19, before he could even vote, and went on to guide the territory to statehood.

Which governor of Georgia used his 1971 inaugural address to declare the time for racial discrimination over?

Jimmy Carter shocked the crowd, and segregationists who had backed his campaign felt betrayed. Five years later the former peanut farmer won the presidency.

Which state had both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt as its governor before each became president?

New York has seen four of its governors elected president: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland and both Roosevelts.

Woodrow Wilson left the presidency of Princeton University to become governor of which state in 1911?

As governor of New Jersey, Wilson broke with party bosses and won several progressive reforms, and within two years he had been elected president.

Which state did both Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley serve as governor before reaching the White House?

Ohio made Hayes the first person to earn a third term as its governor, and he helped found Ohio State University while in the job.

Which state made 32-year-old Bill Clinton the youngest governor in the country when he took office in 1979?

Arkansas turned Clinton out after one two-year term, and he joked that he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history. He won the office back two years later.

Which Texas governor, famous for a witty 1988 convention keynote, lost her re-election bid to George W. Bush?

Ann Richards was the second woman to hold Texas's top office. Her 1994 defeat came in a Republican landslide that also swept both houses of Congress.

Which state did Jeb Bush govern while his brother George W. Bush was in the White House?

Florida made Jeb Bush its first Republican governor to win re-election, and its disputed 2000 recount decided his brother's first presidential victory.

Which governor of Massachusetts won national fame for his handling of the 1919 Boston police strike?

Calvin Coolidge declared that nobody had a right to strike against the public safety, and within two years he was vice president.

Which former Louisiana governor, nicknamed the Kingfish, was assassinated in 1935 while preparing a run for president?

Huey Long was shot inside the Louisiana State Capitol. By then a senator, he was pushing a Share Our Wealth plan to cap personal fortunes and guarantee every family an income.

Which Alabama governor stood in a University of Alabama doorway in 1963 to block two Black students from enrolling?

George Wallace later apologized to the two students he had tried to bar and said he had been wrong. A 1972 shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Which governor of California, elected to three straight terms, left office in 1953 to become Chief Justice?

Earl Warren went on to arrange the Supreme Court's unanimous 1954 decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

Which Californian, governor from 1975 to 1983, returned in 2011 and became the state's longest-serving governor?

Jerry Brown was both the oldest governor in California's history and one of its youngest, thanks to a 28-year gap between his second and third terms.

Which governor of Massachusetts signed a near-universal health insurance law that critics later likened to Obamacare?

Mitt Romney came to the job after rescuing the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and he was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012.

Which governor of Texas was seriously wounded while riding in President Kennedy's limousine in Dallas in 1963?

John Connally recovered to serve as Treasury secretary, and a decade after Dallas he switched to the Republican Party.

Which governor used the National Guard in 1957 to keep Black students out of Little Rock Central High School?

Orval Faubus lost control of the troops when President Eisenhower federalized them and ordered them back to their armories.

Which longest-serving governor of Massachusetts lost the 1988 presidential election to George H. W. Bush?

Michael Dukakis was hurt by a campaign photo op in an M1 Abrams tank: a quarter of voters polled said the ride made them less likely to support him.

Which Illinois governor lost the presidential elections of both 1952 and 1956 to Dwight D. Eisenhower?

Adlai Stevenson came from a political dynasty: his grandfather and namesake was vice president under Grover Cleveland.

Which governor of Maryland became vice president in 1969 and resigned four years later amid a corruption case?

Spiro Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion after taking kickbacks from contractors as governor, and he was only the second vice president ever to resign.

Which state, which elects its governor the year after each presidential election, bans consecutive terms in the office?

Virginia does allow comebacks after a term away, and Patrick Henry and James Monroe are among the few governors who served non-consecutive terms there.

Besides New Hampshire, which state still elects its governor every two years instead of every four?

Vermont and its neighbor are the only holdouts: the other 48 states all give their governors four-year terms.

Which state elected Ella Grasso, the first woman governor who was not the wife or widow of a previous one?

Connecticut's Ella Grasso resigned on the last day of 1980 after a cancer diagnosis, and she died less than six weeks later.

In which state did Janet Napolitano become the first elected woman governor to succeed another elected woman governor?

Arizona's Napolitano later became the first candidate in state history to win every county, then left to run the Department of Homeland Security.

Which state did Terry Branstad lead for more than 22 years, the longest any governor has served in American history?

Iowa first elected Branstad at 36, its youngest governor ever, and he finally left in 2017 to become the United States ambassador to China.

Which state's governor Lynn Frazier became the first in American history to be recalled by voters, back in 1921?

North Dakota voters sent Frazier to the United States Senate just a year after removing him, and he stayed there until 1941.

Which state's governor Scott Walker became, in 2012, the first American governor to survive a recall election?

Wisconsin's vote was forced by more than 900,000 signatures after Walker's bill sharply limited collective bargaining for most public employees.

Which state made George Ariyoshi the first Asian American governor in the history of the United States?

Hawaii's George Ariyoshi, the Honolulu-born son of Japanese immigrants, went on to become the longest-serving governor the islands have had.

Which state made Jared Polis the first openly gay man to be elected governor anywhere in the United States?

Colorado's Jared Polis had already been the first openly gay parent in Congress, and he is also the state's first Jewish governor.

Which state made Susana Martinez the first Hispanic woman to serve as a governor in the United States?

New Mexico had never had a woman as governor of any background before Susana Martinez took the oath of office in 2011.

Which US territory has chosen its own governor by popular vote since 1948, after centuries of appointed ones?

Puerto Rico had its governors picked by the king of Spain until 1898, and then by the American president for the next fifty years.

Which grandson of enslaved people became, in 1989, the first African American ever elected governor of a state?

Douglas Wilder earned a Bronze Star in the Korean War after he and two comrades bluffed 19 enemy soldiers into surrendering.

Which South Carolina governor left office in 2017 to become the United States ambassador to the United Nations?

Nikki Haley was South Carolina's first woman governor and the first Indian American to serve in a presidential cabinet.

Which four-term governor did Gerald Ford appoint as vice president in 1974 under the 25th Amendment?

Nelson Rockefeller had sought the Republican presidential nomination three times without success before he reached the vice presidency by appointment.

Which Mormon leader did President Millard Fillmore appoint as the first governor of the new Utah Territory?

Brigham Young, the founder of Salt Lake City, was also made superintendent of American Indian affairs, and he kept the governorship until 1858.

Which Texan, nicknamed Ma, won the governorship after her husband was impeached and barred from holding the office?

Miriam Ferguson issued almost 4,000 pardons across her two terms, many of them to people convicted of breaking Prohibition laws.

Which elected official usually takes over when a state's chief executive dies, resigns or is removed from office?

Lieutenant governor is not a universal office: in the few states without one, the secretary of state or the state senate's leader steps up instead.

Which power, denied to presidents, lets most governors strike single appropriations out of a budget bill?

Line-item veto power exists in some form in more than 40 states, yet the Supreme Court ruled a federal version for presidents unconstitutional.

Which governor of Pennsylvania resigned in 2001 to lead the new homeland security office created after September 11?

Tom Ridge, a Bronze Star veteran of the Vietnam War, became the first Secretary of Homeland Security when the office grew into a Cabinet department in 2003.

Which governor of Kansas lost the 1936 presidential election to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide?

Alf Landon lived to 100, and his daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, represented Kansas in the United States Senate for nearly two decades.