While the eyes of the nation remain focused on the presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, equally riveting dramas are playing out in various states, including here in New Hampshire.

The nation’s governors and gubernatorial candidates haven’t exactly distinguished themselves lately. Kathy Hochul of New York jettisoned a perfectly sensible congestion pricing plan that would finally have brought some relief to Manhattan, and when Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic flooding in Tennessee last week, Bill Lee, the governor, declared a “voluntary Day of Prayer and Fasting” rather than ask for an emergency declaration that would have provided federal relief.

Jeff Landry, governor of Louisiana, signed a bill mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms. Another bill allows schools to hire chaplains instead of school counselors.

Following his re-election in 2022, Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, declared that Oklahoma belonged to the Almighty, addressing the deity directly: “Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus.”

Apparently, the state’s superintendent of public education, Ryan Walters, took the governor seriously, mandating that public schools teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments.

“Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” he decreed.

Gubernatorial candidates are not much better.

The electoral drama in North Carolina surrounds Mark Robinson, the current lieutenant governor who is also the Republican nominee for governor. Robinson has a history of incendiary comments. He criticized women for seeking abortions, thereby “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” and he used the word “filth” to describe gay and transgender people.

In 2022, Donald Trump called Robinson “the hottest thing in politics” and described him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

It turns out that Robinson has something of a sordid past. According to CNN, Robinson was a frequent contribution to a porn site called Black Africa.

There, he described himself as a “black NAZI.” He declared in 2012 that he preferred Adolf Hitler to Barack Obama and slammed King as “worse than a maggot.” Robinson also acknowledged that he enjoyed transgender pornography.

Robinson has denied the account, but he clearly has some explaining to do.

So does the Republican nominee for governor here in New Hampshire, although nothing so salacious as Robinson’s forays into the dark recesses of the web.

Kelly Ayotte served a single term as New Hampshire’s U.S. senator from 2011 to 2017. Earlier this year, she cruised to the Republican nomination for governor, and her campaign website portrays her as a tough and decisive leader, a defender of the Constitution.

As senator and member of the Senate’s judiciary committee, however, Ayotte colluded with Mitch McConnell’s smarmy scheme stack the Supreme Court with Trump appointees.

Following the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016, with nearly a year left in Obama’s presidency, McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on Obama’s appointment to succeed Scalia, Merrick Garland. That snub was unprecedented and violated decades of Senate protocol.

Ayotte, as member of the judiciary committee, however, raised no objection.

McConnell reserved that Supreme Court seat for Trump’s appointee, Neil Gorsuch, and Ayotte served as the “sherpa” for Gorsuch, taking him to the offices of various senators in advance of his party-line confirmation on April 10, 2017.

That set in motion a radical reconfiguration of the court, abetted by McConnell’s hypocrisy. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, less than two months prior to the 2020 election, McConnell hurried another Trump appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, through to confirmation, once again along party lines.

Having lost her bid for reelection in 2016, Ayotte was no longer in the Senate in 2020. But thanks in part to her complicity in McConnell’s plot, we now have a conservative super majority on the Supreme Court, one that has overturned Roe v. Wade, has demonstrated little regard for the First Amendment and appears eager to absolve Trump of any responsibility for his actions.

The voters of New Hampshire will soon decide whether to reward Ayotte for her role in McConnell’s Supreme Court chicanery, but in light of the court’s recent rulings, her rhetoric about defending the integrity of the Constitution rings hollow.

Sometimes, though, gubernatorial follies come at a cost. Robinson in North Carolina appears headed for defeat. In New York, Hochul’s approval ratings have fallen, as have those of Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa.

Ever since becoming governor in 2017, Reynolds has mounted an all-out attack on the First Amendment, especially the separation of church and state, by diverting taxpayer funds to religious schools.

A recent Des Moines Register poll, however, found that Reynolds is losing popularity; Rob Sand, the Democratic state auditor and the only Democrat to hold statewide office, is now more popular than Reynolds.

Randall Balmer teaches at Dartmouth College and is the author of Solemn Reverence: The Separation of Church and State in American Life.