Blue in the Burbs

Four suburban counties in Pennsylvania will dictate the fate of three congressmen in next month's elections, and perhaps the course of the next Congress. "If you see Democrats taking two of those three House seats, you’re looking at a Democratic House,"
 Democratic strategist Paul Begala told Bloomberg News this week.

Think that's pure spin? Consider that in the past two weeks, the national Republicans, Democrats and interest groups like the National Rifle Association and the League of Conservation Voters have poured $6.4 million—almost one-sixth of their national spending—on those three races alone. In Florida, Illinois (reg.req.) and others locales, suburban voters will largely determine the makeup of congressional delegations and state legislators.

Early in this midterm election cycle, the suburbs were targeted as the key to winning the House. The GOP led the charge with their Suburban Agenda—a sort of Contract for America aimed at school- and safety-minded suburbanites—but the agenda never gained much traction, and late surges show Democrats edging Republicans in a number of traditionally "red" suburbs.

Going into the elections, Republican worries had to do with the flow of Democratic-leaning African-Americans and Hispanics out of cities into the suburbs the GOP had dominated for a generation and more. But polling since the campaigns heated up show that the Republicans are beset by their conservative positions on abortion and stem-cell research. Suburbanites are "leaning Republican on economic issues, but liberal on social issues," says Michael Hagen, director of the Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University in Philadelphia.

With the GOP's success at revving up the base in 2004 with ballot initiatives on gay marriage, Democrats have answered this year with ballot initiatives on stem-cells and the minimum wage, the latter a historic African-American cause, to bait blue suburbanites to the ballot box.