In House battle, Dems eyeing key rural seats
Districts Obama, Trump both won become top targets
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — White, working-class voters fueled President Donald Trump’s rise to the White House. If his party loses the House majority on Tuesday, it will be, at least in part, because those same voters abandoned the GOP.
While Democrats’ suburban offensive is well-known, an often-overlooked battle is underway across rural and working-class districts in states including Maine, Iowa and Minnesota. Trump’s coalition of blue-collar voters here may offer Democrats an alternate route to the House majority.
Specifically, Democrats are targeting 21 House districts carried by former President Barack Obama in 2012 that shifted to Trump in 2016 — districts now testing the strength of a Trump-era political realignment shaped by education, race and gender
With the election days away, Democrats have cause for optimism. Public and private polling suggest Democrats are poised to capture at least two-thirds of the Obama-Trump districts, according to operatives in both parties who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely before Election Day.
While Republicans privately blame an underwhelming slate of GOP incumbents, the Democrats’ prospective success is a reflection of a strong class of first-time candidates, extraordinary fundraising and a message focused on health care and the economy — not Trump.
In northeastern Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, 29year-old Democratic upstart Abby Finkenauer reflected on her blue-collar roots at a rally this week alongside the Democratic Party’s strongest liaison to working-class voters, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“He shares the belief that every kid who grows up in a working-class family like mine has a right to a bright future,” Finkenauer said as she introduced Biden.
Obamawonthedistrict by nearly 14 points in 2012. Trump scored.a 3-point victory here four years later.
The state representative, whose father and grand- father were union workers, has made her working-class roots central to the campaign in a district once dominated by union manufacturing and meatpacking jobs.
She made a name for herself last year blasting a Republican-backed bill that dismantled public-employee unions, shouting against it near tears on the Iowa House floor in Des Moines.
“This is personal,” she said at the time.
She is facing off against two-term Republican incumbent Rep. Rod Blum, a wealthy businessman.
In working-class southern New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, Democrat Andy Kim is laserfocused on health care and the Republican tax cuts in his bid to defeat two-term incumbent Rep. Tom MacArthur.
Obama twice won the district, which Trump carried by 6 points in 2016.
Kim, a national security official in the Obama administration, told The AP that he doesn’t want to impeach Trump. He condemned the increasingly divisive tone in politics, which he said was a problem l ong before Trump’s election.
The first-time Demo- Iowa State Rep. Abby Finkenauer, center, after her primary win in June. She has made her working-class roots central to her campaign to represent Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. cratic candidate is eager to bring up MacArthur’s votes for the Trump tax cuts and a GOP health care plan that would have replaced the nation’s system with one that wouldn’t guarantee coverage of pre-existing conditions.
“It isn’t politics. It’s personal,” said Kim, the father of two young sons, noting that his father survived polio and his mother has other pre-existing conditions.
The Republican MacArthur said he was simply working to improve both bills for his constituents.
He also recognizes his political challenge in a district that has swung from one party to the other in recent presidential elections.
“A member, to represent this district, can’t just be a Trump opposition person,” MacArthur said in an interview. “He’ll offend half of his constituents. You have to work with the president when you can. You have to have the backbone to push back when you need to.”
College-educated voters, particularly women, turned against the GOP long ago. But polling indicates that Democrats’ comeback in the Obama-Trump districts, if there is one, will be born of a more subtle shift among non-college-educated white women, according to Jesse Ferguson, who previously led the House Democrats campaign arm.
“If we take the majority, it won’t only be built on suburban, Clinton-voting districts alone,” he said. “Democrats are winning congressional districts that voted for Donald Trump as people who work for a living see that the Republican majority sold them out.”
It’s not all good news for Democrats.
In the fight for the Senate majority, Trump’s standing remains strong among rural voters in states like North Dakota, Indiana and Missouri, where the GOP is on offense.