Lessons From An Election: Listen, Don’t Lecture

Voters appeared to be all over the lot in the recent election. The Republicans lost a governor’s race they could have won in Virginia to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, while Gov. Chris Christie swept New Jersey Democrats away in a landslide.

Here in New York, Bill de Blasio trounced the Joe Lhota-led Republicans, who had won the last five mayoral elections, by just shy of a 3–1 margin. Yet the Republicans held county executive seats in Nassau and Westchester Counties by landslide margins. Despite these disparate outcomes, I believe we can deduce a common thread from these races. In each of these races voters were really saying to candidates, “Focus upon what we want addressed, not your wish list.”

In Virginia the Republicans pushed aside moderates when they shifted to a nominating convention instead of a primary. They wound up with the stridently conservative ticket led by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli as their candidate for governor. Cuccinelli got sidetracked by hard-right positions on transportation, abortion and gay marriage.

Admittedly, McAuliffe’s margin tightened the last two weeks of the campaign when reaction against the rollout of Obamacare hardened, but Cuccinelli could not overcome the perception that he cared more about vaginal ultrasound mandates than sound approaches to curing the traffic jams plaguing the exploding suburbs of Northern Virginia.

In New Jersey we saw the exact opposite effect take hold. Christie held the Republican base, while carrying women and Hispanics and securing the votes of two-thirds of independents. The result was no surprise that his landslide margin transcended New Jersey’s Democratic reflexes, given that Christie’s approach to governing, particularly in the wake of Sandy, has transcended partisan differences.

In New York City de Blasio swept almost all demographic groups, running particularly well among the minority majority (exit polls showed minority voters cast 55 percent of the total vote), demonstrating that his call to confront the linked concerns of poverty, inequality and affordability united rather than divided city voters.

The incumbent GOP county executives, Ed Mangano in Nassau and Rob Astorino in Westchester, both used the property tax issue to successfully hammer their Democratic opponents. In Nassau it did not matter that former Democratic County Executive Tom Suozzi had raised property taxes back in 2002 to end the fiscal hole left by his Republican predecessor but then held the line for the next six years. Nassau’s voters rewarded Mangano for not raising county property taxes, only remembering that Suozzi raised them, not why. (Full disclosure: I worked on both Suozzi’s 2009 and 2013 races.)

In Westchester Astorino ran on a record of reducing property taxes, and he effectively shaved Democratic margins among Westchester’s emerging black and Hispanic communities in securing his landslide margin.

In New York’s suburbs, where the GOP can credibly assert holding the line on property taxes, the elephant can still trample its opponents.

To sum up, in Virginia voters spanked Republicans for Tea Party extremism, while in New Jersey they embraced Christie for putting aside partisanship in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

In New York City middle class and poor voters applauded de Blasio’s assault on the affordability gap while voters in the downstate suburbs underscored that property taxes remain the overriding factor driving their votes. Looking forward, neither party can afford complacency. Nationally, voters’ patience has worn thin both with the Republican’s miscalculation on shutting down the federal government and the Obama administration’s rollout debacle on healthcare.

Here in New York State progressive Democrats might remember, when inclined to dismiss Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s focus on property taxes, that there is no margin for error on property taxes in the swing suburbs, upstate as well as downstate. Democrats may come to see Cuomo’s approach to property taxes as a protective cloak should cooler fall seasons loom.

The enduring lesson is that candidates ignore the real concerns of voters at their peril.

Bruce N. Gyory is a political consultant with Corning Place Communications and an adjunct professor of political science at SUNY Albany.