The Shame of the Cities, 2013
There has been considerable discussion in GOP circles lately about the party’s problems with Latinos, Asians, gay people, single people, young people, secular people, and half a dozen other segments of the electorate. This is a discussion worth having, but there is a part of this conversation that is not yet part of the debate: what these segments of the electorate largely have in common is they live in urban areas*.
Within my political lifetime the GOP has been all but driven out of the major urban areas of California… mostly into the deep suburbs, x-urbs, or rural turf. Take maps of what party holds which seats of the State Assembly or Congress in California over the last decade and you can watch our retreat in slow motion. As urbanity expands, the GOP contracts. Urbanity is continuing to expand. Seats that were considered ‘safe Republican’ are now in the mix.
This week I had the opportunity to speak as some length with one of the last Republican partisan officeholders to represent a major city. He got it: the culture of people who live in urbanized areas is simply different than people who live in other types of communities. Republicans,… Read More