RED-STATES SUBURBS WOMEN COULD BE THE REASON FOR A GOP LOSS

…A Stacy Abrams Mural in Atlanta, Georgia

2020 could mean even more women in the US Congress, and more women voting

I’m taking a look at what may be the best activity for the Democrats in taking over the US government.  All this interest in a change to support a Democratic candidate in the suburbs started in 2018 with the campaign for Georgia Governor by a very capable Black woman, Stacy Abrams.

This activity is something that is already happening, and if it continues across the country, the Dems could take over three of the four houses of US government.

What I am saying is that in the red-state city suburbs, that have long been the bedrock for the GOP, taking these could be the way the Democrats become successful. 

These red state suburbs are being moved by the stormy results of President Trump’s recent racial attacks, and by Trump’s poor economic spending decisions.  In addition, the frustration with the governments lack of response after the deadly mass shootings in California,  Texas and Ohio is causing them to reconsider who is working for them..

The GOP lost its House majority in 2018 after it lost many suburban voters, particularly women.  Party leaders are increasingly alarmed with their lack of progress winning these voters back. Instead, Trump’s incessant feuds, his lying, his hard-line position on immigration, including those federal raids that left children without their parents, this combined with the stock market’s tumult and his trade standoff with China, these were the final straw.

All of this threatens to further change the votes of the suburban voters ahead of the 2020 campaign, even in states that have traditionally elected Republicans.

Republican leaders also worry that Trump’s bazaar policy moves and his Twitter outbursts, such as last month’s racist tweets about the four minority Freshman women in Congress, this could allow for more suburban GOP lawmakers to take a hike.  They would rather leave than to mount a defense for staying in Trump’s government. 

Many Republican lawmakers are considering following in the footsteps of several Texas Republicans and others who have decided not to seek reelection.  Rep. Will Hurd, the Republican’s only Black Representative in Congress has announced that he will be leaving the GOP.

“There is so much angst with these retirements and there is so much hope that President Trump would just talk about the economy for three days straight,” said Scott W. Reed, the US Chamber of Commerce’s senior political strategist. And he warned that the Republican-controlled Senate could be at risk if the GOP does not make an “aggressive effort” to win the suburbs.

It is amazing that the Democrats have been making inroads in long-time Republican strongholds such as the Atlanta suburbs.  In fact the GOP enclave that had sent the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) to Washington has flipped to a Democrat in 2018.

Lucy McBath, a gun control advocate, flipped Newt Gingrich's old seat.  The Democratic Lucy McBath, a first-time candidate and black woman, who ran on gun control in a long-held GOP Georgia district.   Ms. McBath has made targeted appeals against Trump’s poor economic record and the nation’s health care issues.

It was interesting and it must have galled the president when the Washington Post published a picture of Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) with “The Squad’s”  Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN.), Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KA), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).  They had posed together before the start of the State of the Union address on Feb. 5, 2019.

The issue of gun control for Ms. McBath, and her husband, is due to the fact that they lost their 17-year-old son Jordan to gun violence in 2012.

Rep. McBath narrowly won Gingrich’s former seat last year by building a coalition that drew support from college-educated white Republicans who have drifted away from Trump.  The campaign is one that the Democrats nationally have called “a model for more suburban gains”.

'Everyone is at risk, whether you’re a gun owner or not': Rep. McBath has stated on Congress' gun debate.  The recent mass shootings at Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH, they prove out Rep. McBath’s statement.

Several suburban Republicans in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District said that they are open to hearing out the Democrats on guns.  This raises the prospect that the gun issue could upend the dynamics in America’s suburbs as Congress is being pressured to act in the wake of the latest mass shootings.

“I’ve always supported the Second Amendment, and I grew up hunting with my dad, but you saw what happened over the weekend. It’s scary,” said the Georgia aircraft worker Chad Staggs, a 52-year-old, long-time Republican, as he was shopping at a Whole Foods Market.  “I’ve got two daughters, and I don’t want to see anything happen to them. It’s simply out of control, and something has to be done on guns.”

Liz Chase, a retired teacher and a Democrat who was also shopping nearby, said the educated residents of this bustling suburb, which is full of young families and their manicured lawns, who are unsettled and seeking reassurance.

“They’re afraid,” Chase said. She also said that on the first day of school, at many of the district’s elementary schools, several parents stood, “together in a circle at the bus stop, holding hands and praying that their kids would come home safely in the afternoon.”

For parents, said Jake Orvis, a Lucy McBath adviser, “their kids are in lockdown drills at school, they’re rightly horrified. They’ve seen Lucy’s story and they know she really is the district and not part of the usual partisanship that they’re tired of.”

The only way the Republicans are dealing with this issue is to go after Ms. McBath.  A staffer for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm, using improper language about her, the mother of a black teenager who was shot by a white man for playing his music too loud at a Florida gas station.

The staffer accused McBath of “fundraising off the mass shootings” and doing “anything for a quick buck”.  

National Republicans are now accusing me of ‘politicizing a tragedy,’ ” McBath tweeted later Wednesday. “Let’s get something straight: I lost my only son to gun violence. I now dedicate all of my love for Jordan toward our fight for gun safety.”

McBath, who was traveling abroad on a congressional trip, was unavailable for an interview.

Republican consultants today are advising the White House to focus on the suburbs in Trump-won states, from the outskirts of Atlanta, to the Philadelphia area, to the wealthy hubs near Dallas.  The advisers are saying that these need to be a priority as the president teeters from crisis to crisis and fight to fight.  According to a CityLab Analysis, a majority of the 41 seats flipped by Democrats in 2018 were “predominantly Red city suburbs”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Trump’s approval rating among suburban men at 51%, with 46% disapproving, a percentage that is very close to the "percentage of error".  But Trump was deeply unpopular with suburban women, with only 37% approving and 57% disapproving of his performance in office.  And it is well known that more women vote than do men.

Texas is more and more being looked at as turning from deep Red to Purple, and Texas is widely seen today as a flashing-red siren inside the Republican party.

Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant said Monday that he will not seek reelection to represent his Dallas-area district, leaving open a third Texas House seat heavily sought by Democrats in 2020. Marchant’s announcement comes days after Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX.) announced he would not seek reelection in his district along the Mexican border, and less than a month after Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX.) declined to seek reelection in the Houston suburbs.  All three men won reelection in 2018 by five percentage points or less, and in Hurd’s case, by only a few hundred votes.

Back in Georgia, McBath’s rise along with the extremely strong but just barely unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Stacey Abrams last year.  This has given most Georgia Republicans a new sense of urgency as they look ahead to 2020, when Sen. David Perdue (R), an unpopular and prominent and strong Trump ally, is up for reelection.

The Trump campaign has also been paying attention to the Philadelphia suburbs and Trump’s gaps with suburban women.  Last month in King of Prussia, Pa. , it launched its 2020 Women for Trump coalition. The gathering featured Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who touted the Republican overhaul of the nation’s tax code.  “Is your life better now than it was before Donald Trump got elected? Do you have a little more money in your bank account, did you get a break on your tax return this year?” Lara Trump asked the crowd.

For the people in most city suburbs, they saw little or nothing from the Trump tax cut that went mostly to the super wealthy and the US corporations.

David Wasserman, a political analyst with the usually accurate Cook Political Report, said “King of Prussia is exactly the type of place that has moved away from the Republican Party.”

The 2020 election should be very interesting in more than just the presidential campaigns.

Copyright G. Ater 2019