Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Reality check: Forecasts of a blue wave may be off the mark
YARDLEY, Pa. — Sitting at her pumpkin-decorated dining room table, Kristen Donnelly ticked off her top political concerns: pay equity for women, gun control and anti-immigrant sentiment. (Her husband of five years has a green card.)
As for the president? “I would never vote for Trump,” Donnelly declared.
An independent, and co-chair of the local chamber’s Women in Business committee, Donnelly, 35, is the kind of educated, affluent suburban woman whom Democrats are counting on to fuel a “blue wave” in November’s elections and sweep away the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Except that Donnelly plans to vote for Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican congressman who represents Pennsylvania’s closely contested 1st District, north of Philadelphia.
“He’s definitely on the moderate side,” Donnelly said, praising his support for the nuclear family, the police department and “the idea that America as a nation is good, and that we can continue to protect the American experiment as it stands.”
With two weeks until the election, Republican leaders and President Donald Trump are increasingly bullish about Republican voters and moderate independents rallying behind the party’s candidates rather than taking a chance on a Democratic challenger or a Democratic-controlled House. A healthy economy, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight and, most recently, Trump’s ominous warnings and baseless charges about a migrant caravan threatening the border have energized supporters at rallies and candidate forums.
While Democrats remain favored to pick up House seats in the Nov. 6 midterms, which historically produce losses for a president’s party, many of the 70 most competitive House races are now exceptionally close. Polls show a majority of registered voters lean Democratic, and Trump’s favorability ratings dragged along the low 40s before rising in recent weeks. Democratic turnout could continue to break records — yet it could also be concentrated in predictable Democratic strongholds rather than crucial swing districts.
Lost in all the talk about a Democratic blue wave is a set of sober reality checks — from the quantifiable to the emotional — that may help Republicans reduce their losses, and possibly even retain their 23-seat majority.
In many neighborhoods with key House races, daily life is pretty good. Unemployment is at a five-decade low. Confidence is spilling over among consumers and businesses. The economy is on track to grow at its fastest pace in years.
Those developments benefit people whom Democrats have targeted, too: Women in upscale, right-of-center, white suburbs where Hillary Clinton edged out a victory; Trump voters in struggling rural and industrial areas with deep Democratic roots; and minorities in racially diverse metro areas.
While the president looms large over this election, drawing out both opponents and supporters, local issues like school funding or mining are in the forefront of some races. In others, Republican incumbents’ blend of personality and policy positions has won over independents and moderates.
In recent months, The New York Times interviewed dozens of voters in battleground House districts, and spoke at length with three of them about the nuances of the races in their areas, how politics affected their lives, and their views and concerns about the midterms. These voters have a history of crossing party lines in their districts — one in Pennsylvania, one in Minnesota and one in California — and discussed what would ultimately persuade them to vote Democrat or Republican.
Donnelly in Bucks County, for instance, noted Fitzpatrick’s independent streak. “I have had personal interactions where I’ve told him he’s dead wrong,” she said, “and he’s been very respectful.”
His reputation as a moderate and his constituent record have helped Fitzpatrick pick up endorsements from the State Education Association, the local police and firefighters union and the state’s AFL-CIO. “If you’re for us, we’re for you,” said Rick Bloomingdale, the organization’s president.
Poll results have been mixed. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed Scott Wallace, the Democratic challenger, leading. A recent survey by the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute put Fitzpatrick in front by 4 percentage points among likely voters.
“When you look at the underlying political environment in this district, you would expect the Democrat to be ahead,” Patrick Murray, the institute’s director, said. “But Fitzpatrick has been able to overcome this with a solid reputation among his constituents.”
Donnelly said she is willing to give Fitzpatrick the benefit of the doubt because “he has earned my trust.”
In Minnesota, voters do not publicly declare any party affiliation, but for many years preferences were easy to discern in the state’s northeastern 8th Congressional District, where the economy is powered by the mining, agricultural, timber, tourist and shipping industries. For 67 of the past 69 years, a candidate from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has represented this predominantly white, union stronghold in Congress.
So when Republican candidate Pete Stauber first asked Larry Cuffe, the mayor of the small town of Virginia, for his support at the town’s Land of Loon festival last summer, Cuffe turned him down. “I was already committed to Rick Nolan,” the Democratic incumbent, he said.
Then in February, Nolan dropped out of the race. Within hours, Cuffe, 65, said he was on the phone, telling Stauber: “I’m behind you 100 percent.” Three other mayors in nearby towns also threw Stauber their support.
For Cuffe, a former sheriff and UPS deliveryman, the switch was not hard, and not just because he knew Stauber as a police lieutenant in Duluth, or remembered him playing hockey with the Detroit Red Wings farm team.
Like many of his friends and neighbors, Cuffe voted for Barack Obama and Bill Clinton but had been drifting away from the Democratic Party.
Trade deals that Democratic administrations had championed brought in cheap foreign steel that led to the closing of a local taconite plant and strings of shuttered storefronts. Environmentalists in the party battled the timber and mining concerns that provide many of the struggling region’s best-paid jobs. “It’s our way of life,” Cuffe said.
He and others throughout the Iron Range were won over in 2016 by Trump’s outspoken hostility to existing trade deals, support of mining and America First appeals. They helped him become the first Republican presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover to win the district. Nolan, elected by a wide margin in 2012, hung onto his seat by just 2,010 votes.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have visited several times recently, to give Stauber a boost and show their 16-point margin victory there was not a black swan event. The president has also helped shore up support by deciding to end a comprehensive federal environmental review of mining in the region.
At a labor picnic to support Democratic candidates, Cuffe wore a blue “Go PolyMet” cap, the name of a long-disputed copper-nickel mine that would be the first of its kind in the state. The $650 million project on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness promises to bring jobs, but also environmental risks.
Both Stauber and Joe Radinovich, the Democrat who locked up the nomination in August, support PolyMet.
Cuffe said that if he had not already promised Stauber his support, “I would have considered voting for Radinovich.”
Still, he noted: “Mining is the big issue, and I don’t see that in the Democratic platform.”
Local issues play less of a role in Orange County, Calif., where candidates are courting minority voters.
Once a synonym for conservatism, this wealthy overwhelmingly white region is now onefifth Asian and one-third Latino. The shift has given Democrats hope of winning one or more of the four congressional seats held by Republicans in the county.
Sal Rasheed, who lives with his wife and three children in the 45th Congressional District, is part of that demographic transformation. Rasheed, a 46-yearold immigrant from South Asia, has been in Southern California for 30 years, 15 of them in Orange County.
Although blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minorities have long been a cornerstone of the Democratic base, they have traditionally low turnout rates. This season, however, party organizers are hoping that Trump’s derogatory comments about some immigrants and African-Americans will spur more people than usual to go to the polls.
Rasheed is like many voters — white and nonwhite — whose interest in a purring economy and tax cuts overshadows other concerns. There is “more money coming to my account,” he said. A manager at an insurance company, Rasheed added that his firm is hiring more workers and recently increased its contribution to retirement accounts.
Formerly a Democrat, Rasheed said he is now registered as No Party Preference, California’s equivalent of an independent. He voted for Trump. “People are ignoring a lot of stuff that comes from Trump’s mouth,” he said. “They are feeling good about everything else.”
In 2016, Mimi Walters, the Republican incumbent, won by more than 17 percentage points. Hillary Clinton carried the district by more than five.
Now Rasheed is planning to vote for Walters, who was one of a dozen Republican representatives in California to vote for the tax bill. Her opponent, Katie Porter, maintains the tax law hurts middle-class families.
Other Republicans who represent sizable minority constituents — like Will Hurd in Texas’ predominantly Hispanic 23rd District — have underscored their independence from the president on immigration while trumpeting the “supercharged economy.”
The distinction is not that important to Rasheed. He is not particularly disturbed by the White House’s efforts to keep out people from Muslim countries and Latin America.
“As a legal immigrant who stood in line,” Rasheed said, “it sort of breaks my heart that there are so many immigrants here who are jumping line.”
As Donnelly, who has a doctorate in sociology and an affection for the Hallmark channel, likes to say, everyone is more complicated than they are given credit for. She taps her cherry-red fingernails on the table. When she slips off a shoe, Cerulean blue toenails peek out.
Before making a final decision, she plans to sit down with the latest voter guide and “go through it with a fine-tooth comb.”
“I own a uterus and, therefore, I must vote,” Donnelly quipped, “but I refuse to be a one-party voter.”