While gubernatorial elections in the United States get a lot less media attention both domestically and internationally than contests for federal office they are extremely important. There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly there are the governmental reasons. Governors are quite powerful. Like the President they sit atop large bureaucracies of state organisations, administer large budgets and wield great political influence. Governors really can change states, setting priorities and shepherding legislation through state legislatures. Gun control, healthcare, law enforcement, infrastructure and a host of other issues have all been pushed by various governors across the country during their time. Franklin Roosevelt used to conceive of the state governments as fifty laboratories for testing policy, and history has shown a great deal of truth to this.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare if you would rather, gained considerable inspiration from Mitt Romney’s experience reforming healthcare in Massachusetts. They can also set precedents and give the lead to other states as California did with its emission standards and carbon reduction schemes. So from a policy and governance standpoint winning gubernatorial elections is important.

Secondly there are political reasons to care about performance in these contests. It is usually governors who run for Senate and President, so the more you have the deeper your bench of talent is. This is how one avoids the sad state of affairs in the Democratic party in the recent cycle, where the pool of high-profile and top-tier candidates was depressingly small, mostly due to Republicans thrashing them in gubernatorial contests across the country during the Obama years.

Having a large contingent of proven politicians with executive experience to run for higher office is of inestimable value to a political party. It also provides you with partners in state government to help with the implementation of federal laws and initiatives. By contrast it is often quite difficult to force a recalcitrant governor into compliance, draining political capital and slowing down the process of reform even further.

There are also other political dividends that can accrue form good performance in gubernatorial contests. For instance, influence or control of state redistricting boards to try and redress the gerrymander currently benefiting the Republican party or just make sure that election law is fairly and properly implemented.

The governorship will be up for grabs in 36 states in 2018, and while some of these are states like Texas or Arkansas where the Democrats have little chance of unseating incumbents in conservative states many others are up for grabs. This is either because the incumbent is term-limited, retiring or a Democrat, as well as a few others where Republican incumbents will be running in what are largely Democratic or swing states.

Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Hawaii should all be pretty easy to keep in the blue column. These states have Democratic incumbent governors in pretty safe states.

Of the rest the most promising looking targets to me are states with term-limited or retiring Republican governors. Florida, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio will all have open seats as well as having given their electoral votes either to Clinton or to Trump by a small to moderate margin. If the Democrats can nominate good candidates in these races and resource them properly there is no reason why any should be unbelievable. That is important, because some of these states are large with powerful and influential state governments. For political purposes its also pretty useful to have a guy hanging around in the wings who can deliver Ohio, Florida or Michigan. That is a pretty good feather  in the cap for a Presidential aspirant, as well as making it easier to challenge sitting Republican senators in any of those states.

The other category worth mentioning are states where a Republican incumbent is running for re-election but might be vulnerable, or where the incumbent isn’t running. Places like Illinois, Maryland, Massachusets, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin and Iowa spring most obviously to mind.

Previously Democrats have allowed their performance in Gubernatorial contests to slide. Partly I think this is because Liberals in particular tend to think in a to-down fashion, without the emphasis on local solutions and offices that Conservatives often evince. The increasingly liberal ideology of the democratic party is much more focused on national solutions and programs, as are their donors and activists.

But there has also been a part for hubris. Excellent performance at the federal level during the Bush years, where they could run against an increasingly unpopular Republican program and incumbent was seen as a protection against more conservative State administrations. And then the election and re-election of President Obama provided something of a false sense of security. It didn’t matter so much that they kept getting creamed in races for governor, because they had the Presidency.

Now no such reasoning can be employed. Democrats have a reasonably favorable map, a soon-to-be President with historically low approval ratings to run against and a base that is virtually being galvanized for them by the daily toxic emissions from the Trump camp.

Being at the nadir of your political powers is disheartening and sad for any party. But from here the only way is up, and it seems like a lot of people have realized that the best route back to serious national power for the Democratic party runs through governors offices all around the country, and not from a myopic focus on the House and Senate.