"Thirty-six states will choose governors this November. These states are home to 79 percent of the total U.S. population. They face a range of challenges, from too few jobs to too little water, that are as varied as the candidates they’re voting for. Some of the candidates are long-time incumbents, others are new to politics. Some are quite liberal, others not so much. Some served as governor back in the 1970s, others were born in that decade. 

"But despite those differences, the candidates for governor in 2014 share something important in common: From Colorado to Florida, voters are likely to see them as Democrats and Republicans first, and as individual candidates a distant second. In recent years, gubernatorial elections have become increasingly nationalized, to the point where voting patterns in these races bear a striking resemblance to those in presidential races."

"The president may think that a March madness ad blitz during the NCAA basketball tournament may save ObamaCare. But if the past pattern holds, any further surge in enrollment will provide the scheme with a false sense of security. Until we get a full accounting not only of those who signed up on a website but completed the process by paying for the plan they chose, we’ll have no idea how many people truly are enrolled. Seen in that light, the president’s enrollment promises may well turn out to be no different from other pledges he has made about the ACA in the last few years: completely untrue."

"WASHINGTON — The Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. 

"The administration cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy. Most agencies also took longer to answer records requests, the analysis found. 

"The government’s own figures from 99 federal agencies covering six years show that half way through its second term, the administration has made few meaningful improvements in the way it releases records despite its promises from Day 1 to become the most transparent administration in history.  ... 

"Sunday was the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information."

"Scott Brown is expected to launch an exploratory committee to run for Senate in New Hampshire as soon as Friday, sources confirmed to POLITICO, another boost for Republicans pushing to expand the map of competitive races into purple states. 

"The former Massachusetts senator, who moved to the neighboring Granite State this winter, has told multiple people that he plans to challenge Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. 

"Brown, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is scheduled to speak at 4:30 p.m. on Friday in Nashua at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference."

"President Obama’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that the individual mandate is vital to making the whole law work, and they surely meant it. So the suspension of the mandate means the administration has quietly given up on making the thing work, at least for now. 

"All they’re looking to do is keep the shell in place while they make up as talking points about how it really is succeeding, and/or ways to change the subject. They won’t even ask Congress to fix it, because they’d have to admit they had no idea what they were doing in the first place. 

"Presumably, the plan (to the extent they have one beyond getting past the next election) is to keep the law on the books and let Hillary fix it, hopefully with the help of a Democratic Congress. ... 

"Bottom line: This mess is only going to grow worse for the next two years. Try not to get sick before 2017."

"Tuesday night's special election in Florida should be a serious scare for Democrats who worry that Obamacare will be a major burden for their party in 2014. Despite recruiting favored candidate Alex Sink, outspending Republicans, and utilizing turnout tools to help motivate reliable voters, Democrats still lost to Republican lobbyist David Jolly — and it wasn't particularly close. 

"The Republican tool: lots of advertisements hitting Sink over Obamacare, even though she wasn't even in Congress to vote for it. Sink's response was from the Democratic playbook: Call for fixes, but hit her opponent for supporting repeal. Sink won 46 percent of the vote, 2 points behind Jolly and 4 points below President Obama's 2012 total in the district. 

"Special elections don't necessarily predict the November elections, but this race in a bellwether Florida district that both parties aggressively contested comes as close as possible to a November test run for both parties."

"Some Democrats hope to minimize the importance of Obamacare as a political issue by focusing on other topics in this November's midterm elections. Some hope to win by promising to fix the flawed national health care plan they passed in 2010. And others hope to turn the issue on Republicans by appealing to voters who have been helped by the law. 

"The problem is, none of that will work. The importance of Obamacare as an issue in November 2014 cannot be controlled by either political party. It will be determined by just one thing, and that is the performance of Obamacare as a law in the months preceding the election. 

"The Obama administration obviously understands that. There is no other explanation than political expediency for its announcement last week that it is extending the 'keep your plan' fix until 2016 for Americans who have coverage that doesn't meet Obamacare's minimum standards."

"The idea that politicians should write laws restricting people critical of them is as perverse as the idea that the sprawling, opaque IRS bureaucracy should be assigned to construe and apply such laws. It is bad enough that there is the misbegotten Federal Election Commission to do what the First Amendment forbids — government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political speech.  

"This column has previously noted that in 1996 a Republican Senate candidate called the FEC to dispute campaign finance charges made by Democrats. The head of the FEC’s enforcement division told the Republican: 'Promise me you will never run for office again, and we will drop this case.' So spoke Lois Lerner.  

"There almost certainly are people, above her and beyond the IRS, who initiated or approved the IRS’s punitive targeting of conservative groups and who hope Lerner’s history of aggressive partisanship will cause investigators to conclude that she is as high as responsibility for the targeting rises. Those people should hire criminal defense attorneys."

"What a small and politically vicious man New York's new mayor is. Bill de Blasio doesn't like charter schools. ... 

"Some 70,000 of the city's one million students, most black or Hispanic, attend charter schools, mostly in poorer neighborhoods. Charter schools are privately run but largely publicly financed. Their teachers are not unionized. Their students usually outscore their counterparts at conventional public schools on state tests. Success Academy does particularly well. Last year 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. Citywide the figure was 30%.

"These are schools that work. They are something to be proud of and encourage. 

"The very existence of charter schools is an implicit rebuke to the public schools. It means they are not succeeding, and something new must be tried. That something new won't be perfect — no charter school is, and some are more imperfect than others — but people still line up to get into them. And there's something to the wisdom of crowds. When a school exists for the students, you can tell. When it exists for the unions, you can tell that too."

"A new poll by the Washington Post shows that amnesty is a vote-loser for GOP legislators. 

"The poll of 1,002 adults shows that pluralities of independents and moderates oppose candidates who support amnesty, which was euphemistically dubbed 'a path to citizenship' by the poll designers. 

"The poll showed that 41 percent of independents and 37 percent of moderates were less likely to vote for an amnesty-backer. 

"Only 28 percent of independents and moderates said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who backs amnesty.  ...

"The poll also showed that the GOP’s opposition to amnesty doesn’t lower their one-in-four support among Latinos."