GREENWICH, Conn. — Democratic Rep. Jim Himes says he isn’t afraid of the Tea Party. Specifically, the Connecticut freshman doesn’t worry about the anti-bailout fervor endangering his Democratic colleagues.
“There’s a 50-mile radius around New York City,” Himes, a former Goldman Sachs banker, tells me, “where ‘everything-is-Wall-Street’s-fault’ doesn’t fly like it does in Iowa.”
The 2008 Wall Street bailout helped ignite the Tea Party rebellion of 2010 that could give Republicans control of Congress. But if Himes is right, GOP enthusiasm could be lower in the New York suburbs than in the rest of the country because anti-TARP anger — which Himes called “insane anger” before catching himself — is nearly absent in these New York and Connecticut towns full of bankers and professionals with seven-figure retirement portfolios.
Connecticut and Long Island have a handful of districts along the Metro North commuter rail line and the Long Island Railroad that were Republican a decade ago, and are now Democratic — and where Democrats could survive on Tuesday.
Republicans Nancy Johnson and Chris Shays represented most of Connecticut’s Western half through the late 1980s and all of the 1990s. When Connecticut lost a House seat to reapportionment, Johnson even beat a Democratic congressman in an incumbent-vs.-incumbent matchup in the 2002 general election.
Johnson lost in the Democratic wave of 2006, and Shays fell in the Obama tsunami of 2008. But unlike many of the Democratic pickups those years, the Connecticut results felt less like reversals and more like the last hurrah for a dying breed — the northeastern suburban Republican.
Similarly, nearly all of Long Island was represented by GOP congressmen as recently as 1994. Today, there’s only one Republican left out there. What’s behind this trend?
Harold Bachmann, a retiree and Suffolk County native, blames the influx of city folk, which goes back to the 1960s when he noticed a new class of customers at the bar he owned. “You could tell, because they drank Rheingold.”
In Connecticut, freshman Democrat Chris Murphy attributes his party’s gains to GOP extremism. “There are a lot of Rockefeller Republicans in my district,” he told me Tuesday night, “who feel they didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left them.” Particularly, he cited “extreme social views.”
Some Republicans seem to buy this line. Randy Altschuler, challenging Rep. Tim Bishop (D) on Long Island, calls himself pro-life, but he’s quick to change topics. “I think the campaign is about economic issues,” he says.
But this year, if the GOP lags in the ‘burbs — at least in the New York area — it may be because one of the Democrats’ greatest vulnerabilities nationwide isn’t a weakness along Metro North and the Long Island Rail Road.
“I’m proud to have supported the financial rescue,” Murphy told the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford. Bishop, too, says he’s “proud” of his bailout vote, which he says “averted a catastrophic financial collapse.” Himes — who wasn’t even in Congress for it — backs the bailout, too.
Most of America hates the bailout. Scott Drapkin, a union member who was in a slightly ragged T-shirt at the Coram (N.Y.) Fire Department for the Bishop-Altschuler debate, said, “I had a business too. Nobody bailed me out.” He’s voting Republican.
Down the street, though, Joe Wisnoski, a successful hospital executive watching the Giants on “Monday Night Football” at O’Brien’s Pub (no Rheingold on tap, he was drinking white wine), is voting Republican, but he still had no beef with the bailout. He says it prevented “panic in the streets.”
“Panic on the commuter rail” might be more accurate. Murphy in Connecticut says many of his constituents are in the financial sector, and it’s even more acute in Himes’ district. But you don’t have to work for Goldman to be grateful for the bailout. You just have to have a large stock portfolio.
This may be the key: Upper-middle class baby boomers in Fairfield and Suffolk counties may resent congressional waste, overspending, and corruption as much as the next guy, but they can’t really get worked up about the Troubled Asset Relief Program, because that might have just saved their retirement.
Himes says his constituents tolerate bailouts because they are “very well educated.” Whether it’s the extent of their education or the portion of their net worth in the stock market, these voters don’t get upset about the TARP.
That could save Bishop, Himes, and Murphy.
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
