Although they never dominated Urban areas, there was a time Republicans were competitive in them. Republican Presidential candidates like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Reagan used to get a high percentage of the Urban vote. With the GOP’s strength in suburbs, this allowed the party to go 7-3 in Presidential elections from 1952 to 1988. Then under Poppy Bush and later Pig Vomit (Karl Rove), the GOP decided to abandon Urban Areas and focus on only rural areas. The results have been electorally disastrous and the Democrats now have a lock of 240 electoral votes.
As we know from political history things do not stay static. A new generation of pragmatic Libertarian leaning Republicans are now appearing in Urban areas. They distance themselves from the negative image of the national GOP and focus on issues that Urban voters can relate with.
A decade ago, Democrats made a concerted effort to bring rural and exurban voters back into the party’s fold. Today, Republicans are struggling with the opposite problem — how to win over voters from America’s booming cities.
National Republicans have given remarkably little thought to how to reverse their decline in urban areas, even as they have grappled with how to be more inclusive and diverse
But there are stirrings of a renewed effort by a handful of GOP candidates and activists to edge the party into being more competitive in America’s cities. They see their efforts as a necessity for the party’s long-term competitiveness given the rapid growth of America’s urban centers.
“Half the battle is showing up,” Patrick Mara, a GOP candidate for Washington, D.C., Council, told POLITICO, arguing that urban Republicans need to step up and run even in jurisdictions that aren’t necessarily friendly turf to the party.
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“One of the biggest challenges is when something happens on TV with one of the national Republicans,” Mara said with a note of exasperation. “You sometimes get blamed for that even though you have nothing to do with it.”
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His party affiliation — if not necessarily his platform — has become a major campaign issue. The website PatrickMaraIsARepublican.com aims to remind voters that Mara backed Mitt Romney, John McCain and other national GOP figures.
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“We are missing an opportunity,” Homan said. “The case for cities is really about following the population growth and the trends. With cities growing faster than suburbs, you have more people who are living in metropolitan areas than nonmetropolitan areas.”
Homan’s prescriptions for a revitalized urban party include firing up local GOP voters and organizations and outreach to the new class of young professionals increasingly choosing cities over suburbs and to minority voters. She points to Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Paul Ryan’s recent speeches to urban audiences — even if those voters voiced their strong disagreements.
And Homan says that urban Republicans need to educate fellow conservatives about the specific issues cities face, such as public transportation and crime.
“I don’t feel that it’s urban versus nonurban,” she said.
If the Republican Party is ever going to be able to compete at the Presidential level against the Democrats they must develop an Urban arm. There was a time the GOP was a broad based diverse party. But in recent decades the Corrupt Consultant Class led by Pig Vomit (Karl Rove) has narrowed the GOP to just rural voters and have created an anti-Urban mentality in the Party. They have manipulated Republican base voters into hating anything Urban and agreeing to write off those voters.
