In 2003, Barbour became the second Republican governor of Mississippi since Reconstruction when he defeated Democratic incumbent Ronnie Musgrove. As governor he oversaw his state's responses to Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the state's two most damaging environmental disasters since the 1927 Mississippi River floods. Barbour was expected to be a candidate for President in 2012, but announced he would not run in April 2011.