America’s Best and Worst Governors

In 2022, Chris Edwards released his Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and calculated that Kim Reynolds of Iowa was the best in the nation.

That was an improvement over her 2nd-place finish in 2020.

How did she do this year (the Report Card is issued every two years)?

She held on to first place in the 2024 Report Card, thanks to policies that are making Iowa the “Florida of the North.” Here are the best and worst governors in the nation, with Reynolds on top by a comfortable margin.

Notice, however, who is in last place.

Tim Walz of Minnesota has been very unfriendly to taxpayers, earning an F thanks to a dismally low score of 19.

In his Report Card, Chris provides details on why Reynolds came in first place and Walz came in last place.

We’ll start with Table A.1, which shows that Reynolds presided over spending restraint. Walz, by contrast, increased his state’s spending burden more than seven times faster.

Next we have Table A.2. Once again, wee see a big gap between the two governors. Reynolds has dramatically reduced both personal and corporate income tax rates. Walz, however, increased Minnesota’s already-high top tax rate on households.

John Hendrickson of Iowans for Tax Reform must have suspected Reynolds would be first and Walz would be last. He compared the two governors last month in a column for Townhall. Here is some of his analysis.

Under the leadership of Gov. Walz and a Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) legislature, Minnesota is being transformed into a California-style socialist state. This is the opposite of what is occurring in Iowa under the leadership of Gov. Kim Reynolds and its Republican-led legislature. …Minnesota has some of the highest tax rates in the Midwest and, just as with other high-tax states, a mass exodus is taking place as families and businesses pack their bags for states friendlier to the pocketbook. …Overall, Gov. Walz and the DFL legislature increased taxes by $10 billion… Gov. Walz and the DFL legislature are also increasing the size and scope of government by increasing spending. The governor and DFL legislature exhausted an $18 billion budget surplus. A $1.5 billion deficit is looming as a result of unsustainable spending. …Iowa seems like another world by comparison. Since 2018, Gov. Reynolds has made tax reform a priority. Iowa once had some of the highest income taxes in the nation. The income-tax rate in Iowa was close to 9 percent and the corporate tax rate was 12 percent, the highest in the nation. Starting in 2025, however, Iowa will have a 3.8 percent flat tax and a corporate tax rate of 7.1 percent, which is scheduled to fall until it reaches a flat 5.5 percent. Gov. Reynolds also places a priority on conservative budgeting. The budget has been in surplus the past several years. The surplus for Fiscal Year 2024 is projected to be $1.9 billion and the surplus for Fiscal Year 2025 is projected to be $2.4 billion. …In Iowa, Gov. Reynolds and the legislature removed barriers to education by establishing a strong school-choice program based on Education Savings Accounts.

Some very damning analysis, at least for those who like Walz.

I have a series of columns comparing Florida and New York and another set of columns comparing Texas and California. Maybe I’ll need to do something similar for Iowa and Minnesota.

P.S. I wrote in August about the failure of Minnesota’s class-warfare tax policy.

P.P.S. If you want to see how every state ranks for overall economic policy, I recommend Economic Freedom of North America and Freedom in the 50 States.

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Image credit: MN Senate DFL | Public domain.