And, the top ten strongest approval ratings:
North Dakota John Hoeven R 71% 20%
South Dakota Mike Rounds R 70% 19%
Wyoming Dave Freudenthal D 67% 20%
Connecticut Jodi Rell R 66% 23%
West Virginia Joe Manchin D 64% 24%
Utah Jon Huntsman R 64% 21%
Vermont Jim Douglas R 60% 27%
Arizona Janet Napolitano D 59% 32%
Oklahoma Brad Henry D 59% 30%
Hawaii Linda Lingle R 59% 27%
Note, if you take the lowest approval versus strongest disapproval, this list would change.
Ohio Bob Taft R 19% 74%
Alaska Frank Murkowski R 27% 66%
Missouri Matt Blunt R 33% 57%
Washington Christine Gregoire D 34% 58%
Michigan Jennifer Granholm D 36% 57%
New York George Pataki R 36% 56%
Illinois Rod Blagojevich D 36% 54%
Alabama Robert Riley R 36% 52%
Kentucky Ernie Fletcher R 36% 50%
Oregon Ted Kulongoski D 36% 48%
Bob Taft of my home state of Ohio is pretty bad, it’s true - not venal, exactly, but bland, inarticulate, unwilling to do anything much and completely ignored by the Republican leadership of the General Assembly (state legislature). Several tax hikes still haven’t fixed the state’s budget situation, tuition at state universities keeps rising, and the economy has been very lackluster. Taft half-heartedly opposed the gay-marriage ban adopted by the voters last fall, not because it was discriminatory, mean-spirited and morally wrong, but because it might make Ohio less attractive to major out-of-state employers.
Taft is so unpopular that the Bush-Cheney campaign essentially had to work around him while courting Ohio voters all last year.
Yeah, Taft is my governor, too. And he’s so ill thought of that local republican leaders disavow any connection to him. They hate him and want him out and are embarassed by him.
I don’t even see this as ‘running away’ from an unpopular official. I think they genuinely dislike him.
Ernie Fletcher’s approval rating has improved considerably since he first came into office and tried to make a dent in the budget problem by gutting the health benefits of state employees (including teachers, who raised the biggest stink about it), giving some pretty obvious handouts to cronies in the health insurance industry in the process. He was down in the teens for a while in the middle of all that.
Where do you live, Jonathan? I’m in Cleveland, where Taft has never been popular (up here in the Democratic bastion of NE Ohio 
).
Republican stronghold - Marietta, OH. When John Edwards came to speak 2 days before the election there were more hecklers than supporters.
What, he didn’t make his detractors stand far away in a “Free Speech Zone”? What is the guy, a standup comedian?
Taft is my Governor as well. I live in “Ohio’s first Capital”…also a strong GOP area. School funding is the big issue in the state at the moment…and the Democrats stand a good chance of making some progress if they pick up that banner and run with it.
I lived in Columbus until Dec. of last year. I considered Taft a joke and I think Larry Householder probably considered himself to be the governor. Ken Blackwell was more prominent during the 2004 election than Taft who I don’t remember even making a campagin appearance with Bush and Cheney.
I considered Taft for my worst governor, but I think, although weak, he isn’t using political diversions like gay marriage or Terri Schiavo to deflect attention from real problems in his state.
I do laugh at his tax increases: Anyone remember the “Tax Hike Tim Hagan” commercials that the Taft campaign ran? Hagan was so weak and never ran a single state wide television ad in the 2002 campaign.
Or the latest nonsense: Taxing businesses on their gross revenues instead of their net.
There’s a reason I’m setting up in another state. Good God.
“Michigan Jennifer Granholm D 36% 57%”
I thought Granholm was a rising star in the Democratic Party? Anyone know why she is so unpopular in Michigan?
I don’t know about North Dakota, but following in the footsteps of former South Dakota governor Janklow makes anyone look good in comparison. Charles Manson would probably have a 65% approval rating in SD if he was running things.
Nice cite! 
I guess this isn’t the thread to mention that Bob Taft is my fourth cousin.
Stagnant economy and an extremely antagonistic legislature. The Republicans knew in 2002 that there was a huge budget mess to clean up so they put up a stiff to succeed John Engler. The stiff lost big and the task fell upon Granholm to tackle the tough budgetary issues. Of course, the GOP accused her of raising taxes for proposing to delay a scheduled tax rollback (which the state could not afford). Every proposal of hers was shot down and ridiculed by the state GOP chairperson, Betsy DeVos. Coincidentally, it is Richard DeVos (Betsy’s husband and heir to the Amway fortune) that is running as one of the candidates in 2006.
So with no means to raise revenue, Granholm has had to slash the budget. Some, like aid to universities, causes real pain. That and the continued doldrums in the auto industry have the state in a funk.
Fast Eddie Rendell, Mayor of Pennsylvania and Governor of Philadelphia. He has raised taxes with no notable returns, he has looked the other way while doctors have fled the state just as fast as they can due to malpractice going through the stratosphere, and his most recent plan for “property tax relief”, Act 72, was rejected by 80% of the school districts so now he’s thinking about making participation mandatory. Act 72 consists of legalization of slot machines and using the proceeds to fund schools. He expects everyone to gamble that the money raised in this manner will be more than the districts can get themselves.
Two flaws in this thinking:
If it doesn’t, taxes go through the roof. Also, the gambling is just a different form of wealth redistribution, so while there may be a net increase in revenue there will be a LOT of people that have to pay the price for that, with all of the attendant social costs which will eat into any real gains.
History has borne out that the money will not be used for what they say it will be used for. I don’t trust the legislature to follow through. I trust them implicitly to claim some sort of emergency shortfall and use it somewhere else. There will be no relief. This is a way to sneak gambling through the front door rather than the back door.
I don’t want to see Pennsylvania become a gambling Mecca. I’ve been to Atlantic City, and I don’t want to see that here. While I support controls on school boards’ ability to tax I don’t think this is the way, and it’s being forced on us by a guy who couldn’t care less about anywhere but Philadelphia.
Bob Taft is a weenie.
I really don’t know that you can accuse him of anything particularly heinous, but he’s a complete and utter weenie. And everyone knows it. So he’s completely ineffectual, which might be a good thing.
Weenie.
(With apologies to Annie-Xmas. I have some weenie relations, too!)
You said it better than I could have, Airman. I was just about to nominate Rendell.
Add to it the fact that PA has a tax structure, legal system, and labor structure that are hugely business unfriendly. It is long past time to fix these issues that have been holding back the state’s economy for, oh, decades now.
Neither party has shown the necessary guts to address the structural problems in the state, and Rendell is a guy who came up through that structure. He’s not one to rock that boat too much.
Meanwhile, I’m living down here, and my kids don’t see their grandparents as much as they should. I would have considered moving back to Pittsburgh after the Navy, but there were no jobs there at all.
Pittsburgh’s gone corporate, so there are plenty of jobs (unless you’re an old-school blue collar worker since all the mills are gone), but Eugene V. Debs…err, Mayor Tom Murphy, has run the city into the ground, deep in debt. Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania is sucking hind tit while Rendell falls all over himself giving Philadelphia the crown jewels.