Governors

* Designates incumbent DELAWARE (100%) *--* Party Candidate Vote D Thomas Carper* 69 R Janet Rzewnicki 31 *--* INDIANA (99%) *--* Party Candidate Vote D Frank O'Bannon 51 R Stephen Goldsmith 47 *--* MISSOURI (100%) *--* Party Candidate Vote D Mel Carnahan* 57 R Margaret Kelly 40 *--* MONTANA (99%) *--* Party Candidate Vote D Judy Jacobson 20 R Marc Racicot* 80 *--* NEW HAMPSHIRE (100%) *--* Party Candidate Vote D Jeanne Shaheen 57 R Ovide Lamontagne 40 *--* NORTH CAROLINA (100%) *--* Party

Gov. Jerry Brown is testy. He's defensive. He's very frustrated. He's only human, after all - not a demigod, not the all-wise, powerful supergov he portrayed himself to be when running for the office. It's hard to know who believed that portrayal the most: the voters, the Sacramento insiders or the candidate himself. Regardless, it hasn't panned out the way most people had hoped, and certainly not the way Brown had envisioned. So on Monday, he was in the governor's press conference room - built by his father, incidentally - trying to explain why the state budget hole had grown 71% deeper since January, expanding from $9.2 billion to $15.7 billion.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown is expected to formally announce Tuesday morning that he is running for governor, a job he last held nearly three decades ago. Brown, 71, an Oakland Democrat who faces no serious primary election opposition, is expected to make his announcement online. His aides said he would make a "major campaign announcement" at 11 a.m. via his website, www.jerrybrown.org "> www.jerrybrown.org . Brown spent eight years as California's governor, from 1975 until 1983, but is eligible to hold the office again because today's two-term limit was not in effect when he first occupied the Capitol.

SACRAMENTO - Jerry Brown told voters he was different - that only he, a septuagenarian government veteran with no aspirations to higher office, could fix the cycle of swelling budget deficits that has plagued California for more than a decade. But the release of Brown's updated budget plan Monday shows that he is being trapped by the same partisanship and dysfunction that hobbled his predecessors when they tried to repair the state's finances. "No governor, under the system we have in California, really has the ability to deal with the mess we've created," said Mark Paul, a former deputy state treasurer and the coauthor of a book about the state's financial quandary.

Governors across the country have received letters from a quasi-religious, anti-government group ordering them to step down from office in three days, in what the group's website said was the first step to disband parts of the U.S. government. Homeland Security Department and FBI officials said Friday that there didn't appear to be an immediate threat, and they were investigating whether the message could be considered dangerous. The Guardians of the Free Republics describes its plan as a nonviolent and legal attempt to "restore the true Republic."

Offering increased flexibility to the nation's governors, President Obama announced Monday that he supported changing the 2010 healthcare law to allow states to move sooner to develop their own alternative plans to expand coverage. As long as states meet the goals of the federal law, Obama said, he is willing to allow governors to devise their own strategies as early as 2014 ? instead of waiting until 2017, as the law provides. "If your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does, without increasing the deficit, you can implement that plan," the president told governors gathered at the White House.

The NBA's Board of Governors on Wednesday unanimously approved Michael Jordan's $275-million bid to buy the Charlotte Bobcats from Bob Johnson. Jordan will immediately take over after serving as a minority investor with the final say on basketball decisions since 2006. "Purchasing the Bobcats is the culmination of my post-playing-career goal of becoming the majority owner of an NBA franchise," Jordan said in a statement. "I am especially pleased to have the opportunity to build a winning team in my home state."

The race to be the next governor of New York became a two-man heat Monday. In one of those the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend moments, Rick Lazio, a former congressman from Long Island, took himself out of the running in order to give "tea party" favorite Carl Paladino a better shot at beating their Democratic rival, state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo. This month, Lazio lost badly to Paladino for the Republican nomination, yet kept his name on the ballot for the November election as the Conservative Party candidate.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary in Illinois is a tossup between Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes as controversy over an inmate early-release program and an imploding state budget has cut into Quinn's once-sizable advantage, a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll has found. On the Republican side, three candidates also are in a close battle ahead of the Feb. 2 primary. Former state GOP Chairman Andy McKenna, former Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan and state Sen. Kirk Dillard lead the field, but none had reached 20%, according to the new poll.

President Bush thanked the nation's governors for a bipartisan "constructive relationship" on education Monday, even as Democrats stepped up their protest against the Administration's latest tax proposal. Bush addressed the governors at their National Governors' Assn. annual summer conference, speaking by telephone from Washington.

Some major cuts proposed in Gov. Jerry Brown's revised budget plan Monday: Health care for the indigent -- $1.2 billion State welfare programs -- $880 million Funding for trial courts -- $544 million State worker pay -- $402 million Additional cuts proposed if voters reject higher taxes: Public schools, community colleges -- $5.5 billion UC and CSU systems -- $500 million ($250 million each) Programs for the developmentally disabled -- $50 million Source: California Department of Finance

Gov. Jerry Brown's May budget revision leaves blood all over the Capitol walls. The era when California governors could make their cuts with a scalpel ended before Brown took office, so he does his trimming with a chain saw. The results are cuts in Medi-Cal payments to hospitals and nursing homes, cuts to those who care for the disabled, cuts to state courts and cuts in hours and pay for state employees. So far schools have been largely spared from this grisly exercise, but that will probably change in November if voters fail to approve a tax-hike initiative.

"Welcome to Ohio," Mitt Romney told President Obama with more than a dash of sarcasm in an open letter on the eve of Obama's rally Saturday in Columbus. "I have a simple question for you: Where are the jobs?" Romney got an answer to that question last week from Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Campaigning for Romney outside the capital, the Republican governor could hardly have strayed further off message as he painted a bright picture of economic recovery in Ohio just as Romney was trying to do the opposite.

SACRAMENTO — Under pressure from state lawmakers and environmentalists, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has agreed to write regulations for one controversial oil extraction method and reexamine rules for another that led to a worker's death last year. The administration is seeking money in the next state budget to regulate the booming oil industry and assuage public concern over hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking. " Officials plan to develop rules that would ensure the integrity of oil wells and establish reporting requirements for operators that inject chemical-laced water and sand deep into the ground to tap oil, according to a California Department of Conservation document released this week.

WASHINGTON - Ten months into his term as Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney was abruptly confronted with an emotionally charged issue: The state's highest court ruled that gays had the legal right to marry, thrusting the state into the forefront of the same-sex marriage debate. Romney, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, faced one of the biggest challenges of his four years in office. His response would alienate constituencies on both sides and contribute to criticisms that he shifted positions for political gain, a charge renewed in his two bids for the White House.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Turban bombs had become too obvious. So the two men who apparently set out Saturday to assassinate Kandahar's governor looked to their footwear instead. The assailants used the unusual tactic of concealing weapons and explosives in their boots to make their way past police checkpoints and into the governor's heavily guarded compound in the city of Kandahar, leading to a gun battle that left them and two Afghan police officers dead, a provincial spokesman said.

Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered prison officials to consider a single-drug method of executing condemned inmates as the state appeals a court order that has blocked California from carrying out the death penalty. Mention of the directive came in a notice of appeal filed Thursday by Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris seeking to counter a February ruling that halted a revised three-drug lethal injection method. The filing came just three days after certification of a November ballot measure that would offer voters the chance to repeal California's death penalty.

Anticipating the bitter battle to come, governors from five Western states will meet in Salt Lake City on Friday to devise strategies to convince Washington to give them more control over federal land within their own boundaries. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who will host fellow governors from Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming, says Western states need unity in their stance against federal control of millions of acres of land. He says burdensome regulations restrict energy development and limit recreational access in states where the federal government owns a majority of the land.