US Governors
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50 free US Governors trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every one of the 50 states has a governor, and the job has produced some of the most colorful stories in American politics. Governors have been film stars, wrestlers, peanut farmers and prosecutors. Some went on to the White House. Others were recalled, impeached or sent to prison. This quiz covers the people and the rules. You will meet the trailblazers who broke barriers in state capitols, the governors who became presidents and vice presidents, and the ones remembered for a single dramatic moment. A handful of questions look at how the office works: who takes over when a governor leaves, how many years a term lasts, and which powers a governor holds that a president does not. It is written for civics students, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone who likes political history with a good story attached. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which film star replaced Gray Davis as governor of California after winning the 2003 recall election?
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger topped a replacement ballot that listed 135 candidates. Davis became only the second governor in American history to be recalled by voters.
Q 02Which former pro wrestler beat both major parties to win the Minnesota governor's race for the Reform Party?
Jesse Ventura
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.
Q 03Who is the only person ever elected governor of two different states, first Tennessee and later Texas?
Sam Houston
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.
Q 04Where did aides say South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was hiking in 2009 when he was really in Argentina?
Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Trail story collapsed within days, when Sanford admitted he had been visiting a mistress. State lawmakers censured him.
Q 05Which Illinois governor was impeached and removed in 2009 for trying to sell Barack Obama's old Senate seat?
Rod Blagojevich
Rod Blagojevich served nearly eight years of a 14-year federal prison sentence before it was commuted in 2020.
Q 06Which state, nicknamed the Equality State, made Nellie Tayloe Ross the first woman governor in American history?
Wyoming
Wyoming elected Ross a month after her husband, the sitting governor, died in office. She later ran the United States Mint for 20 years.
Q 07Which former vice president lost the 1962 race for governor of California and called it his last press conference?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon accused the media of favoring his opponent the morning after the defeat, yet six years later he won the presidency.
Q 08Which governor did a famous Chicago Daily Tribune headline wrongly declare the winner over Harry Truman in 1948?
Thomas Dewey
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.
Q 09Which former Screen Actors Guild president served two terms as governor of California before winning the White House?
Ronald Reagan
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.
Q 10Which governor of Alaska was John McCain's 2008 running mate, the first woman on a Republican national ticket?
Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin was the youngest person and the first woman elected governor of Alaska, and she resigned in 2009 before finishing her term.
Q 11Which state's governor William Goebel, shot in 1900, is the only sitting state governor ever to be assassinated?
Kentucky
Kentucky swore William Goebel in on his deathbed the day after he was shot, and he held the office for only four days.
Q 12Which state made Stevens T. Mason, known as the Boy Governor, the youngest state governor in American history at 24?
Michigan
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.
Q 13Which governor of Georgia used his 1971 inaugural address to declare the time for racial discrimination over?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter shocked the crowd, and segregationists who had backed his campaign felt betrayed. Five years later the former peanut farmer won the presidency.
Q 21Which former Louisiana governor, nicknamed the Kingfish, was assassinated in 1935 while preparing a run for president?
Huey Long
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.
Q 22Which Alabama governor stood in a University of Alabama doorway in 1963 to block two Black students from enrolling?
George Wallace
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.
Q 23Which governor of California, elected to three straight terms, left office in 1953 to become Chief Justice?
Earl Warren
Q 14Which state had both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt as its governor before each became president?
New York
New York has seen four of its governors elected president: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland and both Roosevelts.
Q 15Woodrow Wilson left the presidency of Princeton University to become governor of which state in 1911?
New Jersey
As governor of New Jersey, Wilson broke with party bosses and won several progressive reforms, and within two years he had been elected president.
Q 16Which state did both Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley serve as governor before reaching the White House?
Ohio
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.
Q 17Which state made 32-year-old Bill Clinton the youngest governor in the country when he took office in 1979?
Arkansas
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.
Q 18Which Texas governor, famous for a witty 1988 convention keynote, lost her re-election bid to George W. Bush?
Ann Richards
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.
Q 19Which state did Jeb Bush govern while his brother George W. Bush was in the White House?
Florida
Florida made Jeb Bush its first Republican governor to win re-election, and its disputed 2000 recount decided his brother's first presidential victory.
Q 20Which governor of Massachusetts won national fame for his handling of the 1919 Boston police strike?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge declared that nobody had a right to strike against the public safety, and within two years he was vice president.
Earl Warren went on to arrange the Supreme Court's unanimous 1954 decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
Q 24Which Californian, governor from 1975 to 1983, returned in 2011 and became the state's longest-serving governor?
Jerry Brown
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.
Q 25Which governor of Massachusetts signed a near-universal health insurance law that critics later likened to Obamacare?
Mitt Romney
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.
Q 26Which governor of Texas was seriously wounded while riding in President Kennedy's limousine in Dallas in 1963?
John Connally
John Connally recovered to serve as Treasury secretary, and a decade after Dallas he switched to the Republican Party.
Q 27Which governor used the National Guard in 1957 to keep Black students out of Little Rock Central High School?
Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus lost control of the troops when President Eisenhower federalized them and ordered them back to their armories.
Q 28Which longest-serving governor of Massachusetts lost the 1988 presidential election to George H. W. Bush?
Michael Dukakis
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.
Q 29Which Illinois governor lost the presidential elections of both 1952 and 1956 to Dwight D. Eisenhower?
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson came from a political dynasty: his grandfather and namesake was vice president under Grover Cleveland.
Q 30Which governor of Maryland became vice president in 1969 and resigned four years later amid a corruption case?
Spiro Agnew
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.