RGA Launches Red State Recovery Video Series Highlighting Success of GOP-Led States

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Republican Governors Association today launched the first installment in its new video series, “Red State Recovery.” The series will highlight how states led by Republican governors have fared better during the post-pandemic recovery than their Democratic counterparts and in spite of Joe Biden’s often counterproductive and reckless policies. Democrat governors failed to strike a balance approach during the Covid pandemic and their states are now worse off than Republican run states because of it.

Today’s video focused on the economy explains how Republican governors took innovative and historic action to hold up their states’ economies and enact meaningful policies that have protected small businesses, cut taxes, modernized regulations, and invested in their states. Today’s installment features Governors Pete Ricketts (NE), Brian Kemp (GA), Bill Lee (TN), Kim Reynolds (IA), Greg Gianforte (MT), Mike DeWine (OH), Doug Ducey (AZ), and Brad Little (ID).

“It is no coincidence that Republican-led states across the country are consistently ranked as the best places to live, work, and raise a family,” said RGA Communications Director Jesse Hunt. “While Democrat governors follow along with Joe Biden’s out-of-touch liberal agenda, Republican governors have put in the work to prioritize the issues that really matter to voters heading to the ballot box in November. This series highlights their critical work and elaborates on exactly how these Republican governors rose to the extraordinary occasion to protect livelihoods and ensure their states would continue to prosper.”

Watch Red State Recovery here and read a transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT

GOV. PETE RICKETTS: The pandemic really highlighted the difference between Democrat’s policies and Republican-led state policies.

GOV. BRIAN KEMP: This forty-year high of Biden inflation, it is literally killing people when they go to the grocery store and it’s killing them when they go to the gas pump.

GOV. BILL LEE: And we’re very close to a ditch.

GOV. KIM REYNOLDS: Tax and spend policies, the unconstitutional mandates that are pitting Americans against Americans

GOV. LEE: The supply chain problem affected every person in every state.

GOV. GREG GIANFORTE: It’s harder to fill up with a tank of gas. It’s harder to get groceries.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE: Spending at the federal level by the Biden administration is certainly driving this.

GOV. RICKETTS: And it is the most corrosive thing to an American family’s pocketbook.

GOV. LEE: A lot of the things that have been taking place in the last couple of years have moved us and inched us closer and closer to that ditch.

GOV. RICKETTS: As governors, one of the ways that we can help offset that is by promoting policies that create growth and great job opportunities.

GOV. DEWINE: What we’ve done in Ohio is to cut taxes. Our taxes are low. We cut taxes by over $2 billion this year.

GOV. DOUG DUCEY: We’ve been able to simplify and cut taxes every year I’ve been in office. In the last year, we actually had the largest tax cut in Arizona state history: a 2.5% flat tax across the board, for every Arizonan.

GOV. BRAD LITTLE: What we’re doing in Idaho is we’re giving people their money back. We – last year we did the first ever tax rebate and this year we’re doing an even bigger one.

GOV. KEMP: Because of keeping our economy open and our coffers full, we were able to pass the largest state income tax cut in our history.

GOV. LEE: We joined together with a large number of governors across the country to create an initiative called Operation Open Road that really looked at the ability to deregulate trucking for example, licensure, the kind of things that if we get the government out of the way we can actually operate more efficiently.

GOV. GIANFORTE: In Montana, because we’ve enacted pro-business policies, we’re seeing people return to work. We have more people working than ever before in the history of the state. Record low unemployment at 2.3%.

GOV. RICKETTS: If you look at the fastest recovering states from the pandemic, the top 10 were all Republican. The ones that struggled the most were all, the bottom 10, were all Democrat. The red state recovery was much better because it’s our policies that help people live a more normal life and then rebound faster from the pandemic.

GOV. DUCEY: Red states protected lives, livelihoods, and individual liberty. Blue states shut down small businesses, shuttered our schools, put unnecessary mask mandates and vaccine mandates out there and you can see Americans voting with their feet.

GOV. LEE: What can happen this fall is that we can move right back into a place where we safely move down the road.

GOV. REYNOLDS: Republican governors across this country are taking on big issues, they’re making tough decisions, and most importantly what you see coming out of our states is they’re getting things done.

GOV. GIANFORTE: It’s hitting the headwinds of these federal policies that are making our paychecks go not as far.

GOV. DEWINE: Continuing Republican governors and getting more Republican governors is really very, very important.