Suburbs revolt against Trump
Democrats’ gains signal alienation from GOP among upscale moderates
RICHMOND, Va. — The American suburbs appear to be in revolt against President Donald Trump after a muscular coalition of college-educated voters and racial and ethnic minorities on Tuesday dealt the Republican Party a thumping rejection and propelled a diverse class of Democrats into office.
From the tax-obsessed suburbs of New York City to high-tech neighborhoods outside Seattle to the sprawling, polyglot developments of Fairfax and Prince William County, Va., voters shunned Republicans up and down the ballot in off-year elections. Leaders in both parties said the elections amounted to an earsplitting alarm bell for Republicans ahead of the 2018 elections, when the party’s grip on the House of Representatives may hinge
on the socially moderate, multiethnic communities surrounding major cities.
“Voters are taking their anger out at the president, and the only way they can do that is by going after Republicans on the ballot,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. “If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.”
The Democrats’ gains were deep and broad, signaling profound alienation from the Republican Party among the sort of upscale moderates who were once a pillar of their coalition.
Democrats not only swept Virginia’s statewide races but neared a majority in the House of Delegates, a legislative chamber that was gerrymandered to make the Republican majority virtually unassailable. They seized county executive offices in Westchester and Nassau County, N.Y., and captured bellwether mayoral elections in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Manchester, N.H., all races that had favored Republicans only months ago.
In Washington state, Democrats won a special election to take control of the State Senate, establishing total Democratic dominance of government on the West Coast. Democrats took council seats in voterich Delaware County, in the Philadelphia suburbs, a perennial battleground for control of the House.
Georgia elects Dems
Even in the Deep South, Georgia Democrats captured two state House seats where they previously had not even fielded candidates while snatching a State Senate seat in Buckhead, Atlanta’s toniest enclave.
“Republicans are being obliterated in the suburbs,” said Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. “I don’t think the Republican Party has a future in any state like Washington or Virginia, or Oregon or California, or many other places, where the majority of the voters are from urban or suburban areas.”
Vance placed the blame squarely on Trump: “Among college-educated suburbanites, he is a pariah.” In Washington, D.C., congressional Republicans braced for a new wave of retirements just one day after another pair of House members, veteran Rep. Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, declared they would not seek re-election. Dent, channeling the exasperation of his colleagues, suggested an exodus might be imminent.
“Our guys know they’re going to be running into a fierce storm,” said Dent, a leader of his caucus’s moderate wing who has already announced he will not run again. “Do they really want to go through another year of this?”
Even in the White House, where Trump’s first reaction was to savage Ed Gillespie, the party’s defeated gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, two advisers acknowledged on Wednesday morning that Trump was likely to help drive Democratic turnout next year in much the same way his predecessor, Barack Obama, did for conservative voters during midterm elections.
Democrats were as buoyant as Republicans were dejected. Party leaders gleefully predicted that the Senate, where the Republicans hold a two-seat majority, might now be in play, and they said that their fundraising and candidate recruitment would take off going into the new year.
“We’ll get a lot of candidates who are going to want to run, and I think for donors who have been on the sidelines, dispirited for the last year, I’m telling you people are jazzed up,” said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, the ever-upbeat former national Democratic Party chair.
Suburban resurrection
Democrats still face formidable obstacles in the 2018 election, including some not at work in this week’s elections. If a suburban insurrection might help Democrats take the House, the Senate seats at stake next year are overwhelmingly in conservative, rural states, where feelings about Trump range from ambivalent to positive. So far, only two Republican Senate seats appear in play, the Arizona seat being vacated by Jeff Flake and Dean Heller’s seat in Nevada.
In House races, Democratic candidates are likely to face Republican attacks tying them to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the unpopular Democratic minority leader, and a range of liberal policies, like single-payer health care, that are causing divisions in the Democratic ranks.
But to many Democrats and, much to their consternation, some Republicans, the results recalled the last time a radioactive Republican was in the White House and voters took out their frustrations on a Republican-held Congress. In 2005, Democrats rolled to victory in Virginia and New Jersey, presaging a wave election in 2006, and inspiring throngs of Democrats to run for office in difficult districts.