WA-08: Suburban-Rural Districts Are Turning on the GOP
SSAQUAH, Wash.—It was difficult to find a good word for Donald Trump from patrons walking outside the public library in this quiet suburb just southeast of Seattle on a crisp recent afternoon.
“I will choose a Republican, but I wouldn’t choose Trump,” said Robin Pineda, a medical auditor, as sunlight slanted through trees turning yellow, red, and orange. “The way he behaves, the way he portrays our country to the international community, the way they are laughing at him and us—it’s embarrassing.”
Trump fans were easier to find the next morning in Wenatchee, a town of about 35,000 on the other side of the Cascade Mountains that bills itself as the “apple capital of the world.” “Just follow the stock market and unemployment rates—people are getting jobs,” said Werner Segesser, a retired teacher and Air Force veteran, as he sat in the driveway of his daughter’s home. “The tax cut went through; people have more money in their paychecks. What are they hollering about?”
Separated by about 130 miles, one very large mountain range, and a huge cultural chasm, Issaquah and Wenatchee are two poles of the same electoral battleground: Washington’s Eighth Congressional District. There the race to succeed retiring Republican. Congressman Dave Reichert encapsulates into one district both sides of the central geographic divide shaping the 2018 election.
On one side of that divide is growing Democratic strength in white-collar suburbs recoiling from Trump; on the other is continued Republican dominance in rural places and blue-collar communities that flocked to Trump in 2016 and haven’t wavered much since. These divergent forces explain why Democratic opportunities are expanding in well-educated suburban districts around major metropolitan areas all over the country while the party is still facing an uphill climb in almost all the House seats outside metropolitan areas that it hoped to contest this year.
The Washington race between first-time Democratic candidate Kim Schrier, a pediatrician, and Republican Dino Rossi, a three-time GOP nominee for statewide office, is one of several contests that capture both of those dynamics inside the same district. Democrats this year are mounting serious challenges for Republican-held seats that sprawl from suburban into rural areas around Richmond, Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa; Topeka, Kansas; Columbus, Ohio; Springfield, Illinois; and parts of upstate New York, among other places.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/washingtons-8th-district-spans-trump-and-never-trump/572488/
KIM SCHRIER
https://www.drkimschrier.com
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