It’s Not All About Trump

If there’s a big blue wave, Florida will be among the places to feel it, and Democrats in close races there will ride it to victory. That, at least, is the conventional thinking, which casts the Sunshine State as another mirror of the national mood, another test of Donald Trump’s potency and limitations.

But I have news for the president. It’s not all about him. The competitive House contests in Florida — there are several of them — could as easily be determined by local figures and local factors.

For example, there’s a fierce battle for governor between Ron DeSantis, the Republican, and Andrew Gillum, the Democrat. What if Gillum does precisely what his party fantasizes about and turns out atypically large numbers of minority and younger voters? Once they’re at the polls for him, they’re almost sure to support whichever Democrat is running for the House in their district, and that trickle-down advantage could make all the difference.

There’s also a ferocious Senate race between the departing Republican governor, Rick Scott, and the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson. Scott’s heavy spending and ruthless attacks could do more than propel him to victory. They could bolster other Republicans in Florida, including House candidates in tight battles.

We tend to talk about midterm elections as barometers of the political atmosphere countrywide — and they most definitely are. But they’re also driven by geographical quirks that aren’t necessarily a part of the national pattern.

A House candidate can be foiled — or saved — by the performance of a Senate candidate in the same state. The fortunes of someone running for the Senate are sometimes inextricable from the fate of someone running for governor.

Some House districts become magnets for volunteers and money for reasons unrelated to the charisma of the candidate benefiting from them. The political map, like life, is serendipitous.

Take Texas. In this indisputably red state there’s all manner of blue hope. Such Democratic candidates as Colin Allred, Gina Ortiz Jones and Lizzie Fletcher have turned Republican-held congressional districts into tossups. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, emerged as a serious threat to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, and has become a bona fide celebrity in the process.

But there’s a variable outside O’Rourke’s and his fellow Democratic aspirants’ control: Greg Abbott. He’s the Republican governor, he’s up for re-election, he doesn’t mess around, and his voters aren’t likely to be their voters. “If Abbott ultimately closes the election 20 points up, it’s sure to cost some down-ballot Democrats dearly,” Harold Cook, a former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, told me.

Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said that the Abbott effect is something that “a lot of folks outside Texas — and some here — have either missed or are late to noticing.”

“The Abbott campaign will have the infrastructure and more than enough money to reach out and touch every past and potential GOP voter they can identify,” Henson told me. “This will help every Republican on the ballot.” He cited Cruz in particular.

Or consider Utah. In its 4th Congressional District, Rep. Mia Love, a two-term Republican, is locked in a tight race against her Democratic challenger, Ben McAdams, the mayor of Salt Lake County. Her potential savior isn’t Donald Trump, whose approval rating in the district is at least as low as it is nationwide. It’s Mitt Romney, who’s back in the game and running for the seat that Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, is vacating.

Dave Wasserman, who analyzes and handicaps House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told me that Love’s fate could well be determined by Romney — “the fact that he’s on the ballot and such a beloved figure in the state and is likely to win the state by more than 2-to-1.”

Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan all have both governor’s and Senate races in which the Democratic candidates are favored to win, and each state also has several highly competitive House races. This could be a boon to Democrats. And part of what bolsters Democratic hopes for the 2nd Congressional District in Kansas, a deep-red state, is the failure of the far-right Republican nominee for governor, Kris Kobach, to establish any lead over his Democratic rival.

Some Democratic House candidates stand to benefit simply because their districts are the only competitive ones within easy driving distance of urban centers teeming with people who are willing to go door-to-door to turn the House blue. When I met recently with Ethan Todras-Whitehill, the executive director of the voter-mobilization group Swing Left, he told me that its 500,000-plus volunteers aren’t evenly distributed across the 84 House districts on which the organization is focused. Some districts get more love than others.

“California 10, for instance,” Todras-Whitehill said. “It’s the swing district closest to San Francisco, so it gets a lot of San Francisco energy.” The Republican incumbent, Jeff Denham, is in serious danger of being unseated by his Democratic challenger, Josh Harder. Will Harder’s geographic good luck land him in the winner’s circle?

Virginia’s 10th Congressional District absorbs volunteers from Washington; New York’s 11th and New Jersey’s 7th get progressive pilgrims from Manhattan and Brooklyn. Texas’ 31st draws liberal canvassers from Austin, and liberal canvassers from Denver flock to Colorado’s 6th. All of these districts are represented by Republicans, all are considered competitive, and all are near the top of Swing Left’s list of places with the most on-the-ground volunteer activity.

Just how much these volunteer efforts improve Democrats’ chances is unclear. “I’m a huge believer in the ground game,” said an influential Republican strategist who conceded that the Swing Left activity concerns him.

“But you have to be careful,” he added. “Ask Jon Ossoff what happens when you become a cause that outsiders flock to.” He was referring to the Democratic nominee in a 2017 special House election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Despite enormous help from beyond the district and state, Ossoff lost, and was portrayed along the way as a darling of interlopers with no real understanding of, or investment in, that patch of suburban Atlanta.

The conditions that will lead to a blue wave, a blue ripple or a blue washout include the ones that get robust and warranted attention: the anger of many women, the anxiety of many men, the degree to which Trump picks wise fights between now and Nov. 6, the extent to which he stages dumbfounding scenes like the one with rapper Kanye West in the Oval Office on Thursday.

But there’s more to it than that. There’s the blessing of a gubernatorial candidate with enough buoyancy to keep a whole raft of other candidates afloat. There’s the curse of a Senate candidate who’s a lead weight. Trump has upended much of our politics. He hasn’t changed that.