Suburbs Rebel Against Trump, Threatening Republicans in Congress
"VIRGINIA REJECTS YOUR HATEFUL POLITICS, MR. TRUMP"
By ALEXANDER BURNS and JONATHAN MARTINNOV. 8, 2017
Supports of Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, at his election night party in Richmond on Tuesday. President Trump’s brand of politics did not lead to a victory for Mr. Gillespie. Credit Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times
RICHMOND, Va. — The American suburbs appear to be in revolt against President Trump after a muscular coalition of college-educated voters and racial and ethnic minorities on Tuesday dealt the Republican Party a thumping rejection and propelled a diverse class of Democrats into office.
From the tax-obsessed suburbs of New York City to high-tech neighborhoods outside Seattle to the sprawling, polyglot developments of Fairfax and Prince William County, Va., voters shunned Republicans up and down the ballot in off-year elections. Leaders in both parties said the elections were an unmistakable alarm bell for Republicans ahead of the 2018 campaign, when the party’s grip on the House of Representatives may hinge on the socially moderate, multiethnic communities surrounding major cities.
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In Washington State, Democrats won a special election to take control of the State Senate, establishing total Democratic dominance of government on the West Coast. Democrats took council seats in vote-rich Delaware County, in the Philadelphia suburbs, a perennial congressional battleground.
Even in the Deep South, Georgia Democrats captured two state House seats where they previously had not even fielded candidates while snatching a State Senate seat in Buckhead, Atlanta’s toniest enclave.
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Democrats won on Tuesday with a historically diverse slate of candidates: Having long struggled to bring diversity to the leadership tier of their party, they elected the first transgender legislator in the country, the first Vietnamese-American legislator in Virginia, the first African-American female mayor of Charlotte, N.C., and the first black statewide officer in Virginia in more than a quarter-century, among other groundbreaking candidates.
Kathy Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant who was elected to the House of Delegates in a Fairfax-based seat that Republicans previously held, said voters there had mobilized to rebuke Mr. Trump and his brand of politics. She urged national Democrats to follow Virginia’s example by recruiting candidates from a range of backgrounds for the midterms.
“This was a clear rejection of racism and bigotry and hateful violence,” Ms. Tran said of the elections, adding: “People are hungry for a government that reflects the diversity of our communities.”
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