If a significant number of these Republican governors lose, the results from their races will be as instructive as the results from the competition for control of the Senate. We'll learn something if governors who undermined public education, like Sam Brownback in Kansas and Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, lose. We'll learn at least as much if anti-labor governors like Maine's Paul LePage, Michigan's Rick Snyder or Wisconsin's Scott Walker lose. And, yes, it will be telling, indeed, if Republican Rick Scott loses to Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist in the ultimate battleground of Florida.
It will be just instructive if Democratic governors who have rejected austerity, such as California's Jerry Brown and Minnesota's Mark Dayton, are re-elected. And if Democratic Governor Pat Quinn is re-elected in Illinois, that will be a win for labor unions -- as would be a win for an advisory referendum on raising the minimum wage in that state.
The same would go for wins for proposals to increase wages in the Republican-leaning states of Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. And if Massachusetts endorses a paid sick leave proposal, that will be a big deal.
Control of the Senate matters. And there will be plenty of talk about what it means if -- as has so frequently happened in the past -- the party of a president in the sixth year of his tenure loses seats in the chamber.
But the Senate competition is not all that matters. The signals from those contests for control of the statehouses -- and the even more direct signals from referendums on minimum wage and paid sick leave referendums -- will matter, as well.
If Republican governors who have embraced austerity are re-elected, that could confirm that another Republican wave has swept America. But if some of those Republican governors who have embraced austerity lose, and if Democratic governors who have rejected austerity win, then there will be more -- much more -- to say about the 2014 election.
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