Mask wars preview the 2022 battle for the Sun Belt

The fierce political struggles erupting across the Sun Belt this summer over mask mandates and other public health precautions against Covid-19 point toward epic governors' races next year that will test how much the political balance of power has changed in the rapidly growing states at the epicenter of the confrontation.

In Florida, Georgia, Texas and Arizona, multiplying confrontations over masks, vaccine mandates and other responses to the escalating outbreak have pit local Democrats -- gaining strength in virtually all of those states' largest cities -- against Republican governors and legislatures that still control statewide power largely through their dominance of exurban, small-town and rural places, with suburban communities as the hotly contested fulcrum in between. The 2022 governors' races in those four critical states will test whether these shifting patterns of geographic support have reconfigured the electoral balance enough for Democrats to dislodge that statewide GOP dominance. Though President Joe Biden last November narrowly won Arizona and Georgia and made gains in Texas -- in each case because of growing strength in the large metropolitan areas now feuding with the GOP governors over mask requirements -- Democrats have not elected a governor in the 21st century in any of these states except Arizona. And even there, Democrats have not won since 2006.