A question from a non-USian perspective - becoming governor of a state seems to be an aspiration in itself and also a stepping stone for greater things for the hyper-ambitious.
Given the rag-tag opportunism of many people who hold governatorial ambitions (perhaps my unfair distant view) I’d like to know what governorship actually requries as a job, in terms of competencies and prior skills. For example, can any reasonably well-organised person do it? Does someone who spends their life, say, lifting weights and starring in movies, have any inherent disadvantage in doing whatever it is that governors do? Could I (not too tall, impossibly handsome, not great on finishing sentences) do it with a team of competent accomplices?
We saw lots of US state governors on TV in the past few months. I can’t say I was impressed by many of them. Looking up how they’d managed the existential crises of covid and Trumpian lunacy, I’m not sure i’d even bother to sell any one of them my snot. Am I being fair?
States may have age limits, like the way the US presidency requires a president to be 35.
Besides that, it’s about getting elected, and you get elected by 1) being able to convince people you’d be good at the job, especially donors, and 2) working with the party structure.
As far as the “look” of candidates, it’s important to remember that at the state level, there’s a lot less Media Training in elected officials than at the top Federal levels. I’m sure they’ve had some coaching, but they are still managing their own images, more or less, often without a lot of relevant experience. Whatever local elected office they may have held before this was even less in the spotlight. So they are going to look less “slick”. Also, a lot of states term-limit governors, so they don’t have a ton of experience.
Sure. Even someone who isn’t reasonably well-organized can do it successfully with the right team around them. It’s not rocket science, and there are fairly few formal requirements for most governorships.
The main requirement is getting more votes than anyone else.
For a governor of a large state, I’d say the ability to work with a state assembly that is often far more rural than it should be. Many southern state governors are elected to an office which is far weaker than you might expect due to the design of the state constitution. In Florida, just about every cabinet office is elected, not at all like the cabinet of the President. The office of the Governor in Texas is constitutionally designed to be weak, there’s more power in the Lieutenant Governor.
FTR Schwarzenegger was already a self-made millionaire from his construction and real estate enterprises before his movie career took off. We can argue whether businessmen going into politics is a good thing (and it’s certainly harder to argue that right now!) but Arnold was never a dumb hulk.
What make someone “qualified” to be a governor (besides the obvious answer of getting the most votes) is hard to answer because the role and authorities of a governor vary a lot among states. Some governors have a line-item veto over spending bills, some do not. Some governors have a lot of authority to direct state agencies and bureaucracies, some states delegate this authority to other officeholders or independent boards.
And these roles and authorities are always subject to change – see how Republicans in state legislatures in Wisconsin and North Carolina rushed to strip powers from their Governors when a Democrat was elected. State constitutions tend to be much easier to amend than the federal Constitution, so even constitutional authorities are not written in stone.
We only have three cabinet positions, though (not including the governor, who chairs cabinet meetings) - the Attorney General, Chief Financial Officer and the Commissioner of Agriculture.