Hello Everyone:
It is Tuesday and The Blogger Candidate Forum decided to make an appearance one day early. Apparently, Blogger has a dentist appointment tomorrow and The Candidate Forum wanted to be nice an step into the blogosphere today with a post on the suburbs. Before we get started, a quick update on yesterday's post: The Department of Defense issued a statement that it was not targeting Iranian cultural heritage sites for potential air strikes. Okay, onward.
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| Suburban Mesa, Arizona blogs.voanews.com |
Mesa, Arizona is the kind of suburb that seems idyllic. Daily carpool, watching sports on the weekends, summer barbecues, and vote Republican in November. Then came the election of Donald Trump and it was like someone dragged a needle across a vinyl record, amplified at full volume.
Suddenly the tidy subdivisions and family friendly communities that ring our cities' became a no-go zone for Republicans, "as college-educated and upper-income women flee the party in droves, costing the GOP its House majority and sapping the party's strength in state capitals and local governments nationwide" (latimes.com; Nov. 29, 2019; date accessed Jan. 7, 2020).
This dramatic shift also has the potential to reshape the presidential race, raising Democratic prospects in traditional Republican strongholds in states like Arizona and Georgia, forcing the Trump campaign to redouble rural voter turnout to offset soft Trump supporters, who may drift toward Democrat candidates as long as the president is on the ballot.
| Downtown Mesa mesaaz.gov |
Emily Romney Sanchez is typical of potential defectors. Ms. Sanchez, a distant relative of Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), spoke to the Los Angeles Times, saying that the Republicans have
...gone from defending principles "like free trade and a muscular stance against Russia and North Korea to defending [Trump's] latest Tweets (Ibid).
Ms. Sanchez did not mince words when the Times asked her thoughts on the current state of the Republican party. She considers the president
reprehensible as a human being and the party morally bankrupt. I couldn't be a part of it anymore (Ibid)
So strong is her distaste for the current Republican party, that Ms, Sanchez recently re-registered as an independent and is considering voting blue (Democrat; red for Republican) for the first time.
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| Emily Romney Sanchez Photograph by Caitlin O'Hara/for the Times latimes.com |
In an email from Trump campaign, spokesperson Sarah Matthews wrote
...over the next year, our robust 'Women for Trump' coalition will continue working to mobilize supporters across the country and share the President's record of success (Ibid).
You can trace the erosion of support back to the moment, late in 2016 campaign when that infamous Access Hollywood tape came out, in which then-candidate Trump boasted of grabbing women by their genitals (Ibid; Oct. 17, 2016) and even more so in the 2018 midterm elections, costing Republicans control of the House of Representatives (Ibid; Nov. 28, 2018).
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| Women for Trump politico.com |
The trend has continued in off-year elections in suburbs from Wichita, Kansas, to northern New Jersey, to DeSoto County, Mississippi (Ibid; Nov. 29, 2019). In the last three governors' races, Democrats in Kentucky and Louisiana beat Republican incumbents in large measure because of their strength among Republican doubters.
This sentiment has moved down the ballot. Democrats took control of Delaware County, Pennsylvania for the first time since the Civil War. In suburban Virginia, the Democrats won every state House seat in Fairfax County, a change near on par with the 2018 Democratic sweep of congressional seats in Orange County, California (Ibid; Nov. 17, 2018).
Q. Whitfield Ayers, a pollster who has spent decades strategizing Republican campaigns and causes, observed,
It's amazing the change, in the last few years,... It's not anyone place. It's everywhere (Ibid; Nov. 29, 2019)
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| Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) abcnews.go.com |
This includes Arizona, where in 2018, Phoenix-area Representative Kyrsten Sinema became the first Democrat in 30 years to win a Senate seat. Senator Sinema ran as a bipartisan problem-solving centerist, a direct appeal to the more pragmatic suburban voters. Her success is considered a model for flipping red states in this year's elections--or at least, making Arizona more competitive in ways it has not been for years.
Arizona, is a bigger electoral prize than Wisconsin. Although Wisconsin is considered a must-win by both parties, Arizona has 11 electoral votes, one more than Wisconsin. Thus, it can expect to be lavished with attention from both campaigns. When Vice President Mike Pence visited Arizona in October, he told the audience that both he and the president are going to be in and out of Arizona a lot (Ibid).
Arizona has been been the ancestral home of conservative legend Senator Barry Goldwater and 2008 Republican nominee the late-Senator John McCain. However, in recent years the state has undergone a slow but steady transformation as an increasing Latino population and transplants from places like neighboring California flood the state, eroding the Republicans' strangle hold on state politics.
The shift in state politics has been accelerated by the president and his alienation of voters in traditionally Republican suburbs in Scottsdale, Gilbert, and Mesa. Be that as it may, the president does have plenty of supporters in suburban Arizona.
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| Martha McSally (R-AZ) washingtonpost.com |
Some women, like Sarah Roork, have come around to the president after some initial skepticism. Ms. Roork is still not completely convinced of the president but thanks to the bubbling economy, she has more money in her paycheck as a result of the Trump tax law. She told the Los Angeles Times,
Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised on policy (latimes.com; Nov. 29, 2019).
Sandy Wong, a retired healthcare executive and part time web designer, said,
Sure he has a so-called unpredictable, so-called un-presidential manner of speaking.... But his very explosive rhetoric is very effective to stop this toxic metastasizing political power that Democrats, even more left of [President] Obama, represent at this time (Ibid).
Surveys have consistently shown that the opinions expressed by Ms. Roork and Ms. Wong are in the minority. The majority of suburban women have disdain for the president.
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| Typical Trump tweet axios.com |
Sometimes I want to print every single one of Tweets and tape them to people's door,... I want them to see in writing that theses are the things he's saying. Those are worth tax cuts to you? (Ibid).
Neither Ms. Black or her friend Kaija Flake Thompson are lapsed Republicans or decided on a candidate in this year's contest, however both like former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. A self-described conservative, Ms. Black said she could even see herself voting for Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), with her vision of expanded federal government (Ibid). Christie Black expressed her concerns about eroding democratic principles,
We would still have our checks and balances,.... I think right now the most important thing is to get those tied down, get that return to regular order, and then we can worry and get back to squabbling about conservative versus liberal (Ibid).
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| Trump rally in Arizona cronkitenews.azpub.org |
The Trump campaign is not giving up on the suburbs just yet. Although it is still heavily relying on massive rural support to win a second, the president and his campaign hope to win back female voters by highlighting a strong economy and promoting issues like paid family leave, school choice, female entrepreneurship, and aggressive effort to secure the southern border. The most crucial thing for the Trump campaign and Republican strategists is the hope that the Democrats field a nominee who will be more off-putting than he. Not likely to happen but anything is possible. Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant in Phoenix and unaffiliated with the Trump campaign, told the Los Angeles Times,
If the Democratic nominee wants to get rid of ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--decriminalize the border, give free healthcare and eliminate the private option, and believes there's more than two genders...they're not going to win here (Ibid).
Realtor Courtney Davis remains open to a Democratic candidate. Ms. Davis voted for the president in 2016 as the less of two evils (Ibid) because she was not with Her. Ms. Davis is also not a big fan of the president's belligerent and childish behavior but she is a registered Republicans and can see voting for him again, depending on who the Democrat nominee is.
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