With President Biden presiding over gridlock and divided government for the next two years, Democrats aiming to advance progressive legislative policies are turning their attention away from Capitol Hill and toward statehouses, where the party made significant inroads in the midterm elections. 

Democrats flipped three governors’ mansions this November, bringing the total number of blue governorships to 24. For the next two years, Democratic state executives say they will be pursuing tax reform, infrastructure spending, education funding, and much more.

Democrats’ success at the state level — holding every governorship they had while picking up three more, flipping three state legislative chambers, and expanding majorities in others  — speaks to their voters’ enthusiasm and, more importantly, allows the party to advance its agenda despite Republican control of the U.S. House. 

A progressive campaign strategist, Leah Cohen, says she wants Democratic governors to find the courage to legislate on behalf of their voters. “I’m hoping that the enthusiasm demonstrated by the midterms, particularly with regards to abortion rights, gives them the mandate to seek justice and preservation of rights for the people that voted for them,” Ms. Cohen said. 

Much of the Democrats’ 2022 campaign messaging centered on abortion, and it paid off. In the week following the Dobbs decision, ActBlue, the Democrats’ fundraising software, processed nearly $90 million in donations. In Pennsylvania, for every five women who registered to vote this year, four were Democrats. According to exit polls, abortion was the top issue for 27 percent of midterm voters, just behind inflation and far ahead of crime.

While abortion motivated their voters, Democrats are hoping to advance other policy items as Washington deals with divided government.

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, led her Democratic ticket to an unmitigated success in the Wolverine State. Ms. Whitmer won re-election by double digits, riding the coattails of a successful ballot measure guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and her party won its first state government trifecta in 40 years.

A number of pressing legislative items are likely to be introduced by the new Democratic majorities in Michigan, ranging from gun control to expansion of abortion services to education reform. 

Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, like Ms. Whitmer, just won a second term by nearly 20 percentage points. Mr. Polis made a fortune in the tech sector before serving five terms in the U.S. House, eventually running for his state’s top job. 

After his election in 2018, Mr. Polis made education his top priority. He established universal preschool education and full-day kindergarten. His administration also increased school funding and teacher pay, to the delight of the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. His more libertarian stances on taxes and guns — he has said the state income tax “should be zero” and resisted calls to ban assault rifles — could make him a formidable national candidate. 

Other Democratic executives also see opportunities in newly formed trifecta governments. In Massachusetts and Maryland, Democrats fully control state government for the first time in eight years following the retirements of two moderate Republican governors. Governor-elect Wes Moore will be the first Black executive of Maryland, and Governor-elect Maura Healey will be the first woman to lead the Bay State. 

In Massachusetts, the outgoing governor, Charlie Baker, recently signed an economic development bill that would cut taxes for the middle class, reform the estate tax, and invest in housing construction. Ms. Healey has said building on that legislation by making the tax cuts permanent and establishing a $600 per child tax credit is her priority on “day one.”

Mr. Moore, a combat veteran and Rhodes Scholar, has already been compared to Barack Obama, and could be a fierce contender for the presidency in the future. Ms. Healey and Governor-elect Tina Kotek of Oregon will be the first openly lesbian governors in history. Mr. Polis is the first openly gay governor in the United States. 

Beyond advancing the party’s agenda at the state level, the personal stakes could be high for these up-and-coming Democrats. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the three candidates who went the farthest were a septuagenarian, a socialist who was even older, and a U.S. senator who couldn’t place in the top two of her home state’s primary. Worries about a lack of a Democrat presidential “bench” have been assuaged by the electoral success of a younger generation of governors. 

As Democrats look beyond the Biden presidency, governors with records of policy success will actually have something to run on. Governor DeSantis has become popular with the Republican base mostly due to his staunchly conservative record in leading the Sunshine State. Now, Democrats have the same opportunity to raise their profiles by making state-level reforms.