Democrats are running as unabashed progressives to keep the White House and retake the Senate. But when it comes to expanding their thin ranks of governors, they’re touting something else entirely: support for gun rights, fiscal conservatism, homespun rural values — even suing the Obama administration and criticizing Hillary Clinton.

The Democrats in this year’s top gubernatorial races are running in a red-state parallel universe compared with the blue-tinged presidential and Senate map. In Indiana, Missouri, Montana and West Virginia, their candidates are trying to outrun long-term political changes as well as 2016 polls in which Donald Trump still holds a presidential advantage, despite his struggles nationally.


Democratic candidates’ conservative positions will be key as the party seeks to add to its current total of 18 governors, down from 29 in 2009. Early polls show pickups in Indiana and purple North Carolina are strong possibilities. But to gain ground, Democratic gubernatorial candidates must also protect governor’s mansions they already hold in red states, where they have to convince voters to ticket-split with Trump, the same way Republican senators are trying to peel off Clinton voters in state after state right now.

“I cannot be a supporter of Hillary Clinton,” said Jim Justice, the coal billionaire-turned Democratic candidate for governor of West Virginia, in a radio interview Monday morning. Justice’s reasoning comes straight from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republican songbook: “The reason I can’t be is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways.”

In spite of his stumbles in the polls, many of the key states in the gubernatorial map are still Trump country.

“In governors races, close ties with Hillary is proving to be more toxic than ties to Trump," Republican Governors Association spokesman Jon Thompson said.

In Missouri, Democrats’ nominee to replace term-limited Gov. Jay Nixon is Attorney General Chris Koster, a Republican-turned-Democrat eager to highlight his prosecutorial experience, an “A” rating in the past from the National Rifle Association, and a historic endorsement from the Missouri Farm Bureau.

While Republicans plan to attack Koster by relentlessly linking him to Clinton, Koster’s own TV spots paint him as a defender of Missouri against federal overreach by his own party’s president.

Koster listed his accomplishments in his first ad: “Protecting victims of violence and corruption; putting crooked corporate bigshots in prison; even suing Barack Obama’s EPA to keep federal regulators off our land.”

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, has centered his campaign on public land and water access. And in Indiana, Democrat John Gregg’s campaign has tried to keep the focus on his rural upbringing and education.

“They’re running for president; I’m running for governor,” Gregg said in a recent campaign ad, jabbing thumbs at the national candidates, after Republicans started trying to connect him and Clinton in voters’ minds. “My opponent seems a little confused about that.”

Republicans insist it’s not going to work. They say that the Democratic Party moved too far left in recent years, including this year’s presidential race, to properly represent red states.

Indiana Republican Eric Holcomb’s campaign said Gregg’s ad shows that the link to the national campaign hurt the Democrat. “That’s a defensive posture,” Holcomb campaign manager Mike O’Brien said.

“Jim Justice willingly joined Hillary Clinton’s party at the high point of the war on coal,” said Kent Gates, the top consultant for West Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Bill Cole, after Justice’s disavowal of Clinton.

So far in the state, internal and public polls alike show Justice — a self-funding, larger - than - life figure in West Virginia who owns coal mines and a major resort — with a significant lead over Cole. But West Virginia is the inverse of a typical 2016 Senate battleground state. Trump is expected to run roughshod over Clinton there, potentially improving on Mitt Romney’s 62 percent result in the state in 2012, and Trump’s coattails could be the easiest path to victory for Cole.

Cole’s campaign has aired ads featuring him and Donald Trump together at a West Virginia rally. “Donald Trump stands up for our coal industry,” the narrator says. “Together, the Bill Cole-Donald Trump team will fight for working families, helping make West Virginia, and America, great again.”

Justice’s campaign says his accomplishments will separate him from national Democrats.

"Jim Justice is truly his own brand,” spokesman Grant Herring said. “He's not a politician, and distinguished himself over the years by creating new jobs in West Virginia.”

Unlike the battle for the Senate, which overlaps almost fully with the presidential swing states, Democrats’ red-state gubernatorial hopefuls likely won’t have the presidential candidates right on top of them.

Asked whether he would campaign with Clinton in Missouri, Koster said in an interview that he “wouldn’t object” to it. But he doesn’t expect to see Clinton — who has moved left after years in politics, Koster said — down in Missouri’s Bootheel or out in the Ozarks, the rural, GOP-leaning areas where his gubernatorial campaign will spend much of the fall.

Indeed, even in states where Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine are rallying voters, they have focused on the urban and suburban areas where Democratic voters are now clustered.

Just one Democratic Senate hopeful is making a notably conservative pitch this year: Evan Bayh, Gregg’s ticket-mate in Indiana, who is touting his work on welfare reform and specifically branding himself as a “fiscal conservative.”

National Democrats haven’t needed to make the same cross-party pitch as much this year; instead, the Senate races have featured Republicans like Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania or Rob Portman of Ohio touting unusual support from gun-control groups or union locals.

But while the conservative Democrat may be largely forgotten in 2016, they are not gone — and they are about to become a major focus for the party once again.

If Democrats successfully retake the Senate in 2016, they will need the conservative pitch on display in this year’s gubernatorial races to help defend their majority in 2018, when Democratic senators are up for reelection in many of the same states: Indiana, Missouri, Montana and West Virginia, as well as North Dakota.

The Democratic incumbents in those states successfully outran President Barack Obama in 2012. But strategists are already anticipating a midterm backlash against a President Clinton or Trump that could become the dominating factor in the 2018 congressional elections, a potentially punishing environment for red-state Democrats.

“Next cycle, it’ll be the opposite” of 2016’s blue state-focused politics, said Democratic Governors Association political director Corey Platt, a veteran of Missouri politics. “It could be about trying to stop Hillary Clinton’s agenda.”

Visit the Campaign Pro Race Dashboard to track the candidates and consulting firms engaged in the top House, Senate and gubernatorial races of 2016.