[City Journal] Can Republicans Capitalize on Urban Political Opportunity?

Johns Hopkins political scientist Steven Teles asks

"Can Republicans Capitalize on Urban Political Opportunity?"

https://www.city-journal.org/how-republicans-can-become-viable-in-american-cities

excerpt:

. . . As the urban Left works to defeat mainstream liberals and gain the whip hand in urban politics, big-city Republicans will have an opening to cobble together a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats. Even in New York City and Los Angeles, Donald Trump received approximately one-quarter of the vote in 2020. But Republicans must add about one-third of nationally Democratic-voting urbanites to become competitive. Can they do it?

Republicans in big cities cannot compete simply by presenting an attractive package of policy alternatives. If voters in city elections were choosing between two parties defined exclusively by local issues, such as policing, housing, and education, general elections would be far closer. But as it stands, the only general-election banner on which challengers to Democratic governance can actually run is “Republican,” a brand to which many urban voters—including those who might otherwise split their tickets between Democrats nationally and conservatives locally—have become ill-disposed. In the most reductive terms, that brand signifies disinterest in cities; suspicion of immigrants and of racial, religious, and cultural pluralism; and an overall style of politics shot through with exurban and rural concerns. Too often, a vote for a big-city Republican is a referendum on the culture war rather than an expression of how the voter wants her schools managed or streets repaired.

Still, national Republicans can creatively and effectively connect their platform to battles playing out in America’s cities. If factional conflict breaks out at the national level, politicians everywhere will begin to identify not just as Democrats and Republicans but as particular flavors of each—yielding more municipal competition.

Party factions resemble “frenemies”: while they may work together on some legislation and in general elections, they will also engage in intense conflict for control of their own party. They will seek furiously to recruit new groups of voters and organized interests to their side. They will attack, sometimes viciously, members of their own party. The more they do this, the more that ordinary voters will come to distinguish, for instance, a populist and sometimes chauvinistic Republican faction with strongholds in exurban and rural areas from a market-oriented, cosmopolitan, more educated and professional “liberal-conservative” faction with footholds in America’s metropolitan areas.

If that happens, the national party brands would become more heterogeneous. A Republican running for mayor of Los Angeles could show his scars from fights with populists, while also attacking the city’s Democratic Party for stifling economic growth and entrepreneurship, kowtowing to public-sector unions, advancing divisive school curricula and attacking charter schools, compromising public safety, and mismanaging the city’s fiscal affairs.

A national liberal-conservative faction should make ticket-splitting more palatable to big-city voters—especially when their city’s Democrats have been taken over by the DSA faction. Governors Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker, both Republicans who have personally distanced themselves from the national party, already earn favorable marks from urban and suburban voters. Such brand differentiation would become even more potent if Republican candidates could identify themselves with a notable, clearly defined faction that voters could use as a shorthand for political identity.

A strong Republican faction competing in big cities would have potent consequences for national politics. Republican mayors could experiment with new policies that could trickle up to the national stage, clearing a path for ambitious, liberal-conservative candidates to campaign on effective governance rather than culture-war signalling. Republicans could recruit stronger candidates, including ethnic minorities and aspiring politicians who may not currently wish to be associated with Trumpian populism, to the party. Successful liberal-conservative mayors could fill the national political pipeline and, having established a reputation distinct from that of the national party, operate with more independence from party leadership.

Liberal-conservative Republicans in America’s cities would also influence urban governance. They would have to work with more moderate Democrats to govern effectively. They would give Democratic moderates more leverage inside their own party, since these moderates could plausibly threaten defection if the party veered too far left. And they would grease the wheels of municipal policymaking by spurring the formation of cross-partisan, strange-bedfellows coalitions on issues like education, criminal justice, and economic development.

The above is merely a plausible scenario, not a prediction. Making it a reality will depend upon considerable, sustained political investment at both the national and local levels. If Republicans don’t develop a national party faction that can be viable with the median urban voter, they will face continued disappointment at the municipal level. And if they don’t drop an organizing anchor in a big city and capitalize on the opportunity to demonstrate what a serious, multiracial Republican Party can do in government, party entrepreneurs at the national level will face constraints in Washington in building such a faction.

But the GOP ought to prioritize becoming competitive in cities, and not only for its own sake. While I am a lifelong Democrat, I firmly believe that our democratic institutions can be preserved only if there is healthy two-party competition everywhere in the country. Republicans aren’t competitive in cities right now. Building a strong liberal-conservative faction in the GOP would change that.

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