What Do Voters Want?

Out on the hustings, Democratic candidates who pay attention to the voters are learning quickly that Trump, Putin and Mueller aren't as pressing for them that they are for MSNBC hosts. As Alexi McCammond explained at Axious yesterday, what the presidential candidates want to hear about are issues that impact them day to day, "most often health care, climate and immigration." At the Iowa town halls with candidates there were lots of "hard-hitting questions about biofuels, money in politics, taxing the wealthy, preventive health care, arts in education, immigration reform, the environment, abolishing the filibuster rule in the Senate, and foreign policy." McCammond believes that "at least in the first caucus state, the most active Democrats don't seem to be driven by personalities, polls or media portrayals."

Monday progressive Democrat Audrey Denney launched her campaign for Congress in northeast California, a very rural and small town corner of a state everyone assumes to be universally blue. They're wrong. This district has a PVI of R+11 and Hillary scored a miserable 36.5% of the vote in 2016. Last year, a first time candidate with ZERO help from the DCCC or any of their affiliates, did a lot better, holding entrenched Trump puppet Doug LaMalfa to a 160,046 (54.9%) 131,548 (45.1%) win, the best any Democrat has very done against LaMalfa. Denney also won the biggest and third biggest of the 11 counties in the district, Butte and Nevada counties, while giving LaMalfa a close call in Siskiyou. I asked her what voters in the district want to talk with her about when she goes from town to town.

Unsurprisingly, she told me that "the voters in my district are the most concerned with issues that directly impact their lives.  Rural healthcare, forest health and fire prevention, and protecting Social Security are of major concern. We talk a lot about Career and Technical Education as a path to better lives and better jobs for many people. I’m often asked about solutions to our challenging infrastructure issues--dangerous rural roads and rural broadband. There are large swaths of my district where people don’t have cell phone or internet access. Eight percent of the population of CA-01 are veterans, twice the national average. I’m often asked how we can improve services, care, and opportunities for our servicemen and women. People are concerned about the real, practical, challenging issues that they see in their everyday lives."

Progressive Democrat Eva Putzova is running for Congress in a vast district that includes part or all of almost every region of Arizona. It is very rural with Flagstaff as a population hub and with lots of small towns. The district has a PVI of R+2 and Trump edged Hillary by just one point in 2016. I asked Eva the same question-- what do voters in the district want to talk with her about when she goes from town to town to introduce herself. "When I visit with Arizonans in their living rooms," she said, "the conversations vary but two issues tend to rise to the top-- healthcare and climate change. Just today, a father shared with me how his 25-year old daughter will be getting off his family health insurance plan and can't afford to pay for her own plan. Or a grandmother expressed her worries over the future of her newly born grand daughter in the world where effects of climate change lead to frequent natural disasters and displacement of large populations of people. Even when we talk about big challenges, people don't despair. Instead, they see a great opportunity and demand political courage to invest in the future of the next generations. And that's what Medicare for All and the Green New Deal are for Arizonans I meet: great investments worthy to pursue and champion."

Kara Eastman nearly beat Trump-puppet Don Bacon in the Nebraska district that encompasses Omaha and suburbs and small towns around it. This swing district has a PVI of R+4 and in recent elections it was won by Obama, Romney and Trump. Last year, a first time candidate with no real help from the DCCC or any of their affiliates, Kara did a lot better than Hillary's 46.0%, holding Bacon to a 51-49% win, just 5,000 votes separating them. She actually out-right won the Omaha part of the district but struggled in some of the rural parts of Sarpy County. Again, I asked her what voters in the district want to talk with her about when she goes from neighborhood to neighborhood, town to town. "Voters here in the Nebraska Second," she said, "talk about healthcare-- rising premiums and having to choose between medical care and putting food on the table. Education and student debt is also a big topic at the doors. In general, people tell me they are looking for someone who will stand up to the corruption they see in our current system. They are looking for someone to bring government back to the people."

Down in Texas Mike Siegel has had similar experiences running for Congress in a very gerrymandered district that incongruously goes from north Austin through a very rural part of Texas into the Houston suburbs. The district has a PVI of R+9 and Trump beat Hillary 52.3% to 43.2% in 2016. Mike did better than Hillary (47%)-- holding McCaul down to a bare 51.1% win. When I asked Mike what voters in the district want to talk with him about he said "the leading issues are as diverse as the constituents. On the Houston side of the district, in towns like Cypress and Katy that were hard-hit by Hurricane Harvey, a big concern is that the federal government has bungled the disaster relief program. So even though Congress authorized several billion in aid to help folks rebuild their homes, the Ben Carson-led Department of Housing and Urban Development has not published rules for the relief program, and had to to announce they won't be ready until May at the earliest. This incompetence affects thousands of families in the District.

"In more rural areas, like Waller County, the concerns range from needing good jobs to needing the Postal Service to assign a zip code. The latter issue sounds completely mundane, until you realize that the lack of a zip code in the town of Prairie View means that students at the historically-black college, Prairie View A&M can't get on-campus mail delivery, which in turn makes it hard to register to vote, and which in turn disenfranchises a huge portion of the 9,000 student voters.

"The TX-10 Indivisible chapter recently held a town hall, on February 16, 2019, that the incumbent was invited to, but of course McCaul did not attend. All to the better. I took questions from 36 participants, ranging from concerns about the emergency declaration, family separation policies, and the Mueller investigation, to several Green New Deal questions, concerns about the Border Wall disrupting fragile ecosystems, and a pointed question about a person who committed suicide while in Waller County jail-- the same place where Sandra Bland tragically died in custody.

"My goal is to keep getting deeper into each community. On one hand, this puts more pressure on me to be prepared on a wide range of issues, but on the other, this is what representation looks like, and this is what it takes to flip a district that was drawn to give the Republican a 20 point advantage."

I'm sure it isn't lost on anyone that no one mentioned Trump and no one mentioned Putin or Mueller or Ivanka or Jared or Roger Stone.