Blue State Blues

We are now one month into Minnesota’s latest experiment with one-party (Democrat) rule.  Judging by the liberal tweets in my Twitter feed, Minnesota’s current 5.5 percent unemployment rate is proof—both that the experiment is working and the Minnesota “Blue” model is vastly superior to the one employed by newly red-state Wisconsin.  (Like Minnesota, Wisconsin had a split government prior to the November 2012 election.)

Included in today’s Wall Street Journal (p. A12) is an interesting color map showing which states have an all-Republican government (GOP governor and a GOP-majority legislature), which are split between the parties, and which state governments have an all-Democrat makeup.

Curious as to how the all-Blue (Democrat) states fare on the jobs front, I looked up the unemployment rates at the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the 12 other states identified as one-party Blue states by the Journal.

December 2012 Unemployment Rates

California          9.8 %

Colorado          7.6

Connecticut       8.6

Delaware          6.9

Hawaii               5.2

Illinois               8.7

Maryland          6.6

Massachusetts  6.7

Oregon             8.4

Vermont           5.1

Washington      7.6

West Virginia   7.5

Minnesota         5.5 %

Ten of the twelve other blue states have higher unemployment rates than Minnesota.  None of the ten are within a point of Minnesota’s 5.5 percent.  Only Vermont, at 5.1 percent and Hawaii at 5.2 percent enjoy rates lower than Minnesota’s.  Likewise, only Vermont, Hawaii, and Minnesota have rates lower than Wisconsin’s 6.6 percent.

I guess we need to either convert Minnesota into a tropical paradise or start working on ramping up our maple syrup industry.

Interestingly, Vermont had a Republican governor, Jim Douglas, who served during the same eight years that Tim Pawlenty served as Minnesota’s governor (2003-2011).  Under the Republican Douglas, Vermont saw its unemployment rate fall as low as 3.3 percent (May 2005).

Coincidentally, Hawaii had a Republican Governor, Linda Lingle, who served during almost the same time frame (2002-2010).  Under the Republican Lingle, the Hawaiian unemployment rate fell as low as 2.3 percent (December 2006).

On the flipside, Wisconsin had a Democrat Governor, Jim Doyle, serving from 2003-2011.  During the final two Doyle years, Democrats controlled both houses of the Wisconsin state legislature.

During Democrat Doyle’s tenure, the unemployment rate never fell below 4.6 percent and peaked at 9.2 percent during the all-Blue year of 2009.

Simply put, there is no model out there of a reliably-Blue, one-party state producing low unemployment.