Why electing former governors may help ease the partisan gridlock in the US Senate

The US Senate now hosts more than 20 former state governors, a group which played an important role in ending the recent government shutdown. In new research, Alex Keena and Misty Knight-Finley examine the bipartisan role that former governors play in the US' upper house. They find that former governors were 8 percent more likely to vote with the other side, compared to legislators who had not previously been in charge of a state.