Thoughts and Policy for Building a Better Pennsylvania

Brews & Views Podcast

I had the pleasure of joining Matt Brouillette on the Commonwealth Partners Brews & Views podcast to talk about local politics. 

As former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neil famously said, all politics is local. In this episode, entrepreneur and East Lampeter Township Supervisor Ethan Demme takes a hyper-local look at how local governments can foster—or hinder—economic growth and opportunity. Particularly, Ethan explained the commonsense principle that people should have the freedom to use their own property to earn income.

WGAL Comments on Municipal State Police Fee

Here are my comments from a WGAL news piece about the Governors proposed PA State Police Fee for Municipalities,

This proposal is just another example of the state gov trying to force local gov to increase taxes or cut expenses because they don’t want to increase taxes or cut expenses.

The Main Street Project

Salena Zito has been a political journalist for almost 15 years. In an article for the New York Post, she explains that when she travels throughout the United States, her rule is “no planes, no interstates, and no hotels.” Zito has a fascinating reason for this rule: “Planes fly over and interstates swiftly pass by what’s really happening in the suburbs, towns, and exurbs of this nation. Staying in a hotel doesn’t give me the same connection I can get staying in a bed and breakfast where the first person I meet is a small-businessperson who runs the place and knows all the neighborhood secrets. The same is true of going to locally owned restaurants versus chains.”

Zito’s latest project is taking Harvard kids on tours of Middle America, showing them the rural counties and struggling industrial towns that played such a pivotal rule in the 2016 election. Zito describes the demographics of the Harvard class:

“Nearly all of them said they didn’t know what life was like outside the coastal cities and states. Only one student, Henna Hundal, 20, had grown up in a rural environment — an almond farm in Turlock, Calif. — while Kessler, a computer science major, was the only member of the class who had ever fired a gun. The students ranged in age from 19 to 21, with an equal number of girls and boys and a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. The majority of them hailed from cities and suburbs in blue states along the East and West coasts. One was from Wales.”

So far, Zito has led three different classes as part of Harvard’s Main Street project. Her and her students visiting rural and industrial towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Zito explains that “most of the trips were a two- to four-night stay, getting from place to place in a van and sleeping in locally owned B&Bs.” Along the way, her students encountered women who find empowerment at the gun range, artisans who make pottery, and third-generation small business owners.

Zito writes that by the end of the class, her students had “taken a walk down Main Street and made a lot more friends than judgments.” The key takeaway for these students is a lesson we can all benefit from learning: “in order to understand a country’s politics, you first have to understand its people. That means getting out of your bubble and spending time away from people like you.”

Further reading:

The Harvard Main Street project is a perfect example of the kind of practices that will help us rebuild our civic society and strengthen our democracy. Of course, not all of us will be able to travel the nation like these students, but Zito has given us the next best thing: her book The Great Revolt introduces us to towns and the citizens who live in those towns as part of a substantive analysis of the “populist coalition reshaping American politics.” (Click here to read my review of Zito’s book.) Another important aspect of the Main Street project is that implicitly highlights the importance of intergenerational learning as a core dimension of civic engagement: I’ve written on those topics here and here, and these ideas are the building blocks in my extensive article on Reconnecting Democracy Finally, Zito’s book and the Main Street Project remind us that the greatest tool for democracy is meaningful and charitable dialogue with each other.

Affordable Housing Keeps Republicans Politically Active

As an elected Republican in Lancaster County, I spent a lot of my time thinking about regulatory reform. I work hard to strip back burdensome government regulation and restrictive zoning, allowing the market to respond to the needs of buyers and developers while still providing accountability and oversight to keep people safe. As it turns out, not only is getting rid of restrictive zoning a bipartisan solution to the housing crisis, it can also strengthen political engagement and keep Republican voters loyal to the party.

Citylab reports on a study by Stanford University political scientists Andrew Hall and Jesse Yoder which finds that “homeownership is a significant factor in political participation, both national and local.” More specifically, after analyzing detailed local and national election data for more than 18 million voters in Ohio and North Carolina, the researchers found that “owning a home causes a striking 35 percent increase in turnout in local primaries.” The effect of homeowning on voter behavior is even pronounced when tied to specific policy issues: for example, “zoning issues have the largest effect, increasing turnout by roughly 75 percent.” In addition to zoning, aggregation issues also drive civic engagement: Citylab explains: “these are votes on whether the community should negotiate rates for public utilities, like electricity, collectively.” And of course, “homeowners are also more likely to turn out for measures that are related to public safety, schools, kids, and seniors.”

Unfortunately, the political stances that homeowners take are often a leading cause of the affordable housing crisis. Yet another study found that homeowning voters in the Boston area “overwhelmingly (and to a much greater degree than the general public) oppose new housing construction.” And it is noted that “these participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs.” In other words, while it is praiseworthy that homeowners are civically informed and active, it is concerning that the restrictive zoning they often seek to implement creates artificial barriers on the market and drives up the cost of housing.

Restrictive zoning doesn’t just lead to housing inequality: it also turns red-voting regions blue. A study published in the journal Political Geography has found that places with restrictive land-use regulation tend to become more Democratic. A CityLab article explains that “the study, by political scientist Jason Sorens of Dartmouth College, finds that land-use restrictions gradually tilt places leftward—not just by attracting more highly-educated Democrats, but even more so by repelling non-college-educated workers who have become more Republican over time.”

I think the research is clear. If we want strong civic engagement in our local elections, we need to make home ownership a possibility for more people. And if we want to retain the Republican vote, we need to retain the Republican voter by removing unnecessary zoning regulations and allowing developers to build more affordable housing.

(To read more about affordable housing in Lancaster County, click here.)

Why Ronald Reagan Won Macomb County:

 

On April 2018, Washington D.C. hosted its annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner but the man who lives in the White House wasn’t there: he was holding a Make America Great Again rally in Macomb, County. President Trump opened his speech by saying “I love this state and I love the people of this state. I was invited to another event tonight, but I’d much rather be in Washington, Mich., than Washington, D.C.”

If you’re not a Michigan native, you’ve likely never heard of Macomb County, and yet this Detroit suburb is the preeminent case study location for Stanley B. Greenberg, the pollster who helped elect Bill Clinton. In his 1995 book Middle Class Dreams, Greenberg devotes a whole chapter to analyzing this one county which he sees as the perfect image of Middle America. You’ve likely never heard of Macomb County Community College: Greenberg notes that “this one simple community college has hosted seven presidential candidates since 1984.”

Before I reveal its voting habits, here’s a brief survey of its history. Greenberg writes: “Macomb’s population, just over 100,000 in 1949, nearly quadrupled by 1960 and increased by another 200,000 by 1970 […] Home construction boomed: sixty thousand houses were built in the 1950s and continued at that pace for a quarter of a century. The factories moved to Macomb as well: Gm’s Buick assembly division, Chrysler’s stamping plants, and Ford’s transmission and chassis division.”

If you guessed that Macomb citizens voted for Trump, you’d be right. But you might be surprised to know that Macomb also voted for Obama, both times. Macomb rarely votes red. In fact, the only other time that a significant percentage of Macomb voted for a Republican candidate for President was when that candidate was Ronald Reagan. Before Reagan, Macomb gave John Kennedy 63% and they gave Lyndon Johnson 74%. But Macomb soon soured on the Democrat party, and when Reagan’s campaign resonated with them, they gave him 67%. Flash forward to 2016: guess which of the two candidates spent the most time in Macomb…

Reading Greenberg’s book in 2018 is illuminating. Greenberg’s chapter on Macomb set out to explain to Democrats why Reagan won the county. The answer he gives continues to be relevant both in showing the cause of disillusionment among Middle America voters, and pinpointing what campaign messaging is most effective in giving them hope.

Greenberg writes: “underlying all the political talk was a lot of simple fear. Givebacks and layoffs, foreign imports and robotics, and the sight of industries moving South.” These voters “felt squeezed and neglected.” The voters did not believe in the promises of each party: instead, they felt that “the Republicans thought mainly about ‘big business,’ and the Democrats concentrated mainly on the minority groups.”

Here’s what Greenberg says are the reasons that these voters rallied around Reagan:

“Ronald Reagan touched these voters because he could represent the nation as a whole and because he stood with the ‘small people.’ This vote was not about party or ideology or specific policies. In the minds of Macomb voters, Reagan transcended those aspects of election decision making. He elicited affection and pride, insinuating himself into the lives of middle-class voters.” Greenberg quotes one voter from his focus group who said of Reagan: “I’ll tell you what: I definitely believe that he is trying with all of his heart to do the best he can for this country.”

Regarding Middle America, Greenberg writes: “There is no new Democratic or Republican majority in middle America. The New Deal dream that had brought working American to the suburbs remains as shattered as supply-side economics. This is a completely new game with new rules, though the players can hardly dispel the images and themes, the old rules, that dominated their consciousness over the past four decades, maybe longer.”

I think that Greenberg’s assessment of Middle America is as true today as it was in the 90s, and I think that future political successes will depend on our ability to craft a vision “encompasses the values, aspirations, and vulnerabilities of middle-class America.” As Greenberg reminds us, “the story of Macomb is not just about two parties and two perspective candidates contesting the Presidency. It is about two broken contracts and the search for something new that people can depend on.”

Further Reading:

Salena Zito has been a political journalist for almost 15 years. Her rule for traveling is “no planes, no interstates, and no hotels.” This rule leads Zito to stay at local bed-and-breakfasts and to eat at local diners. Zito’s book The Great Revolt (co-written with Republican strategist Brad Todd) introduces us to Macomb and other such places, profiling the locations and voters that form the “populist coalition reshaping American politics.” You can read my review of Zito’s book here.