Ignoring the sometimes politically incorrect values of the heartland should be a flashing warning sign to the Democratic Party going forward, say political leaders and experts in northwest Ohio.
Though it was Midwestern voters whose changed votes returned a Democrat to the White House last year, the observers suggest the Democratic Party risks alienating Middle America with excessive attention to the interests of the East and West coasts — even stacking leadership and committee posts with coastal Democrats.
Republican President Donald Trump’s victory in Ohio, even after a campaign of unsupported claims of election fraud and relative indifference to the coronavirus pandemic, shows that large parts of the country don’t relate to the progressive drift of the Democratic Party.
Like a canary in the coal mine, Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo sounded the alarm recently in interviews with The Hill website and The Blade.
Ms. Kaptur opined that the Democratic Party is controlled by wealthy elites on the coasts who can’t relate to the economic anxiety experienced in flyover country. She noted that Democrats overwhelmingly represent the wealthiest enclaves in the United States — including 19 of the 20 richest congressional districts.
“It’s been very hard for regions like mine, which have had great economic attrition, to get fair standing, in my opinion,” Ms. Kaptur said to The Hill.
She amplified that in The Blade, citing a chart of the 435 districts arranged by wealth, with blue, or Democratic, districts tending to be in the top and red, or Republican, districts tending toward the bottom. Ms. Kaptur’s district is one of the urban Democratic districts with low median income.
“Normally, in the era in which I was raised, Democrats represented those who have less and Republicans represent those who have more. But when you look at the chart it’s like, oh, what am I looking at here?” the 74-year-old member of Congress said.
She added that the coasts are overrepresented in leadership by both parties, not just the Democrats.
Ms. Kaptur’s frustration was voiced after she was once again passed over for powerful committee chairmanship — that of Appropriations — in favor of a northeastern Democrat, in this case Rep. Rose DeLauro of Connecticut.
Some might call it sour grapes that, after 38 years in Congress, Ms. Kaptur has never ascended to a committee chairmanship. She chairs an important subcommittee — the Energy and Water Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.
Ms. Kaptur attributes her failure to ascend to being out of sync with the more progressive social and political goals of Democrats in the Northeast and the Pacific West, and that she does not raise enough campaign money for the party.
There is precedent for Ms. Kaptur’s suspicion that her somewhat more traditional Midwestern views held her back. In 2008, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ousted Detroit Democrat John Dingell from the chairmanship of a key environmental committee in favor of Rep. Henry Waxman of California because he supported more aggressive action against fossil fuels that fueled the late Mr. Dingell’s district.
In fact, Midwesterners are in a minority in the House leadership, even more than their numbers would justify.
The U.S. House of Representatives has 20 standing committees and 105 standing subcommittees. Of the 20 committees, only one is chaired by someone from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, or Kentucky (it's John Yarmuth, D., Ky., chair of the Budget Committee).
That’s 5 percent of the committee leadership for states that account for almost 15 percent of the population.
Of the 105 subcommittees, seven are chaired by someone from the aforementioned Midwestern states.
In terms of the political leadership in the House, Democrats from New York and California account for 63 out of the 221 elected House members — or 28.5 percent, but 44 percent of the caucus leadership positions.
Democrats from coastal states account for the top seven partisan leadership positions in the House: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Assistant Speaker of the House Katherine Clark (Mass.), House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus Pete Aguilar (Calif.), and Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.).
Of the remaining party leadership positions, there are one each from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and Texas; two from Illinois; three from California, and one from North Carolina.
In other words, of 18 Democratic Party leadership positions in the House, two-thirds are from coastal states.
The more conservative viewpoints that hold sway in the Midwest make them more fertile ground for politicians who promise to defend those values, as did former President Donald Trump.
Political science Professor Rob Alexander at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, said he believes Republican rhetoric has left Democrats unable to respond convincingly to a certain segment of voters.
“I think a lot of it comes down to messaging. When you’re talking about working class values, Republicans have done a good job of painting Democrats as socialists. Democrats haven’t really found a good response to that,” Mr. Alexander said. He is director of the Institute for Civics and Public Policy based at ONU.
He said it is Democrats who offer the “meat and potatoes” that protect the economic gains of the middle class. An example is the 2009 bailout of Chrysler and General Motors that saved the domestic auto industry from a catastrophic bankruptcy, something most Republicans opposed, and which helped usher President Barack Obama to a second term.
“I think both parties are going through some purity versus practicality issues,” Mr. Alexander said. He also suggested that the divide between the Midwest and the coasts on social issues may have to do with age.
“A lot of their younger voters are in touch with those issues, generational issues,” he said. Georgia was ripe for Democratic victory in the two special U.S. Senate elections because the voting population is younger than in Midwestern states that have proven amenable to Republican messaging.
Chris Joseph, the interim chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, said that Midwesterners work in the economy, but that control of the economy is in New York. Now he said Big Tech, based in California, is a driving force in the Democratic Party.
“I don’t think the East and West coasts have the appreciation for the Midwest that they should have. What we want is less controls on our economics. The Republican Party is most likely to do that,” Mr. Joseph said.
“The Republican Party has provided jobs for the working man, while the Democratic Party, by the rules and regulations and executive orders of the prior President [Barack Obama], they’ve actually taken jobs out of here. President Obama said ‘some jobs are not coming back.’ He really did not realize what it takes to have a job in this country.
“That’s a problem with Democrats — a lot of them have not worked in the private sector and do not understand what it takes to create a job in this country,” Mr. Joseph said.
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) said, “the Democrats have become an East and West Coast party with a few large cities in between.
“When I meet with countless people across my district, their concerns are about their families, their paychecks, and making sure that their kids have a future. When you look where the Democratic Party has gone, they don’t represent them or their values,” said Mr. Latta in a written response to The Blade.
Ms. Kaptur said she ended up throwing her support behind Ms. DeLauro in exchange for a caucus commitment to give consideration to her goal of creating a Great Lakes Authority that would finance development of water, energy, and economic growth, as well as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. Industries such as steel and automaking would benefit.
“We are attempting to lift some of the financial burden off this region. To help public private partnerships launch investment in those industries,” Ms. Kaptur said.
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, a Democrat like Ms. Kaptur, said he agrees with her that the Democratic Party is too coastal oriented.
But, he said, it’s Democratic policies that have always been the mainstay of the middle class, not the policies of the Republican Party, which he said have not changed for a century: cut taxes and hope the benefits trickle down.
“Right now the conversation is about the Democratic Party and its failure to connect with white, working-class voters in the Midwest. What I would say it’s not like Republican policies have really benefited Ohio either,” he said, noting the nearly uninterrupted GOP leadership of Ohio for the last 35 years.
Mr. Kapszukiewicz acknowledged that the hated North American Free Trade Agreement that was especially harmful to the Midwest was ushered in under Democratic President Bill Clinton, but he said the few voices in opposition were those of Democrats, including Ms. Kaptur, not Republicans. President Trump borrowed from the Democrat playbook by attacking NAFTA and erecting tariffs against other country’s imports - a repudiation of Republican holy writ.
That said, the mayor agrees that the Democratic Party is too obsessed with cultural and social issues that leave too many Midwestern voters cold.
“I think there are some voices within the Democratic Party that would abandon the Midwest, some who look at the demographic changes and say Georgia is turning blue, and the Sunbelt, and let’s spend our resources there,” said Mr. Kapszukiewicz, though he excludes President Joe Biden from that fraternity. “There is no question some, especially on the coasts, want the focus of the Democratic Party to be there.”
Melissa K. Miller, a political science professor at Bowling Green State University and an expert on elections and voting behavior, noted that understanding and appealing to Midwestern voters was a key Democratic goal in the 2020 election.
“This is where this presidential election was going to be decided — whether the upper Midwest would go back into the Democratic column,” Ms. Miller said. “There is merit in this question whether the party would be helped by a more visible leadership role by Midwestern Democrats. That Midwestern Democratic party strength has got to be nurtured and not taken for granted.
“You can’t win the presidency without Democratic strength in key states. Exhibits A and B are Michigan and Wisconsin,” she said.
She said Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been successfully demonized by the Republican Party, with subtle negative gender references.
“The way Democrats can respond to that is by adding faces at a very visible level through those leadership posts that are from the heartland. That’s where Marcy Kaptur and [U.S. Rep.] Tim Ryan (D., Ohio] and others have tried to push that a little bit, and not yet succeeded.”
She cited exit polls from the last election that show there is a divide, at least between Ohio and Michigan on one hand, and California on the other.
The economy is cited as the most important issue for 40 percent of Ohio voters and 39 percent of Michigan voters, but only 21 percent of California voters. Meanwhile, perceptions of racial inequality are practically identical, with “racial inequality” cited by 18 percent of Californians, 17 percent of Ohioans, and 16 percent of Michiganders.
The 2022 Ohio Senate election for retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s seat will be a rehearsal for whether the anti-Democratic Party animosity stoked by former President Trump has taken root.
“It’s quite clear that the vast majority of Republicans feel the winning formula is holding on to [Mr. Trump’s] base, but can they win, and bring back an ‘America First’ policy?” Ms. Miller said. “Jane Timken and Josh Mandel clearly think so. Can they win statewide on that formula?”
Ms. Timken, the former state Republican chairman, and Mr. Mandel, former Ohio state treasurer, are considered front-runners for the GOP nomination to replace Mr. Portman in 2022.
Chris Redfern, a Marblehead inn owner and former state Democratic chairman, who noted that Ms. Kaptur’s district along Lake Erie is also “coastal,” said she is right in that the party has to resist being taken over by the extreme wing.
“We cannot be taken in by issues that speak to the extremes within our party. That doesn’t mean you abandon hard-core beliefs, but it means you talk about what matters most to the most people,” he said.
“The majority of the 9th Congressional District don’t get up in the morning and think about the most polarizing issues of the day,” he said.
He said President Biden’s economic stimulus package speaks to the Midwest, as would his infrastructure plan.
“It would do enormously good things for the Midwest. If the Congress can vote out both, we’re going a long way in addressing the concerns that Marcy points out,” Mr. Redfern said.
Lucas County GOP chairman Mr. Joseph said, “There certainly is a divide. The notion that they’re elite and we’re not is insulting to Midwesterners. They are not better than us.”
He said the Electoral College, a favorite target of liberal Democrats, protects the rights of smaller states to have a say in the federal government.
As for Ms. Kaptur’s feeling of alienation from the Democratic Party, Mr. Joseph offered a suggestion.
“She should become a Republican,” Mr. Joseph said.
First Published February 14, 2021, 12:30 p.m.
