Democrats win majority of US governorships

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 8: Democrats won a majority of US governors' offices for the first time since 1994, taking seats from Republicans in six states and scoring a potential advantage in 2008 presidential battlegrounds.

New York, Ohio, Maryland, Massachusetts, Colorado and Arkansas switched to Democratic governors, but in California, celebrity Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger crushed his opponent.

''That could bear more on the presidential election than the House going Democratic or the Senate being dead even,'' said Stuart Spencer, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

''Democratic governors who have only been there two years, haven't got into too much trouble, they could have a big impact on the outcome of that state in terms of the presidential election.'' Democrats also won control of the US House of Representatives and picked up Senate seats amid growing discontent over Republican President George W Bush's war in Iraq.

''If you're a candidate for governor it's always good to be sailing with the wind at your back, and clearly the Democratic candidates were benefiting from a national mood to change direction,'' former California Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, told Reuters.

In California, former action film star Schwarzenegger won re-election in a landslide. ''I love doing sequels,'' he told supporters.

Republicans also held Texas and Florida to retain power in three of the four most populous states key to presidential contests.

Republicans had held a majority of the 50 governorships since their party's 1994 congressional landslide, and went into the election holding 28 states.

Of the 36 seats up yesterday, Democrats defended 14 they held and took six more for a total of 20 on top of eight Democratic seats that were not involved in the election.

New York elected Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to replace departing Republican Gov George Pataki, restoring the governor's seat to Democratic hands for the first time in a decade. In Ohio, which was decisive in the 2004 White House race, Ted Strickland, six-term congressman and Methodist minister, became the first Democrat in 16 years to be elected governor.

Maryland voters ousted Republican Gov Robert Ehrlich in favor of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. In Arkansas Democrat Mike Beebe, the state's attorney general, defeated former Homeland Security chief Asa Hutchinson for an open seat that had been in Republican hands.

In Colorado former Denver prosecutor Bill Ritter defeated Republican congressman Bob Beauprez for an open Republican-held seat. Massachusetts returned its governor's job to Democrats for the first time in 16 years by electing Deval Patrick as its first black governor and only the second black governor ever from any state.

He succeeds Mitt Romney, who did not seek a second term and is expected to make a presidential run in 2008.

Among the 36 states electing governors, Democrats were headed to re-election wins in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, Wisconsin, Maine, Arizona, Oregon, and Tennessee and held onto to an open Democratic seat in Iowa.

Republican incumbents were returned to office in Georgia, Nebraska, Connecticut, Vermont, South Dakota, South Carolina, Hawaii and Alabama. They were also leading in partial returns from Alaska, Idaho, Nevada and less than two points with nearly 97 per cent of the precincts reporting in Minnesota.

REUTERS