I too find governor to be more situational, although I rarely use it for the remodel function (something I need to fix). If there aren't +buy and discard attacks on the board, then I ignore governor a lot of the time. Again, maybe I should rethink that.
Honestly, the main reason I like governor was that it enabled my first 150+ point game. Governor, Border Village, Goons. That should be enough said. At the end, I had five goons and was regularly drawing my entire hand and playing them. My last buy was province, province, estate, copper, copper, copper, for a 42 point turn.