Trump rebellion may be threat to GOP in ’18

‘Voters are taking their anger out at the president.’

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, Virginia, 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, New York, and captured bellwether mayoral elections in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Manchester, New Hampshire, all races that had appeared to favor 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 vote-rich Delaware County, in the Philadelphia suburbs, a perennial battleground for control of the House.

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.