THE day after last week's elections, Research Director David Cooper of the Democratic National Committee peered out of his office window in Washington at the late afternoon darkness; lightning flashed, rain and hail pelted down. "That damn sky is about to drop on us," he joked. "Tell them we'll give them Michigan." As it turned out, Republican Governor William Milliken did get a new term in Lansing, but over most of the U.S. the Democrats were in sunshine. They dropped the sky on the G.O.P., turning a 32-18 Republican majority of gubernatorial chairs into a 29-21 Democratic advantage—subject to scattered recounts. Among the new men in the statehouses:
THE NORTHEAST. Pennsylvania Democrat Milton Shapp defeated Raymond Broderick by a 498,000-vote margin that astonished even Shapp. Under the reign of Governor Ray Shafer, political heir to the widely admired William Scranton, the state deficit rose to $500 million (the budget is currently $1.2 billion). Broderick's plans to cut spending antagonized large blocs of voters. Shapp, a wiry and intense millionaire, will become the Commonwealth's first Jewish Governor. "The people wanted a change," said Phrasemaker Shapp.
That was just what they wanted in Connecticut, too, where Republican Congressman Thomas Meskill will evict a Democrat from Hartford's gilt-domed statehouse after 16 years of one-party rule. Meskill, a former mayor of New Britain, came across forcefully on television. His opponent, Representative Emilio ("Mim") Daddario, who was once mayor of Middletown, "went through the campaign like a mummy," as one politico put it. Meskill accused the Democrats of doing nothing to curb drug abuse, which a specially commissioned G.O.P. state poll called the top issue on voters' minds. He capitalized on the $200 million deficit that Connecticut faces despite a sharp sales tax increase.
THE MIDWEST. The Democrats did best of all in a traditionally Republican region, taking five governorships from the Republicans. Ohio was their most important triumph; scandals over the handling of state loans blunted Republican Roger Cloud's law-and-order attack on former Representative John Gilligan, an attractive Democrat. Because spreading effects of the General Motors strike were putting Ohioans out of work, Gilligan pointed out that Cloud once voted against paying unemployment benefits to workers idled by a strike at another company. Gilligan is a reddish-haired, booming-voiced Irish American with a crushing handshake and a fiery temper that sometimes gets him into political trouble.
Democrats made law-and-order work for them in Wisconsin also by underlining the fact that Republicans were running the state when student violence erupted in Madison. Liberal Democrat Patrick Lucey, a longtime Kennedy ally and a former Lieutenant Governor, profited from vexation over rising property taxes. His opponent, Lieutenant Governor Jack Olson, promised to postpone state tax increases, but Republican Governor Warren Knowles torpedoed him in mid-campaign by announcing that a tax rise was inevitable in 1971.