What Max Rose Can Teach Democrats About Beating Republicans
Max Rose became the first congressional Democrat to represent the Republican stronghold of Staten Island since 2008.
*His pedigree might have alienated potential constituents, but his rhetoric did not. He offered a simple, unifying message that was progressive in substance but relatively neutral in its delivery: that the system is rigged to benefit special interests, that the little guy is getting stiffed over and over, that we need better infrastructure and stronger unions.
He didn’t fight a culture war; he talked about oppressively long commuting times and the opioid crisis, which has ravaged Staten Island, and he relentlessly made the point that his opponent had taken money from Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. He managed a narrative that was both big picture and small bore.
Of course, like any winning candidate, he benefited from larger forces, in this case, the realities of gentrification, which liberals so often demonize. . .
In Bay Ridge, for example, the proportion of the population over 25 with a bachelor’s degree has climbed significantly. This change was also a big factor in the apparent ousting of Marty Golden, the Republican state senator who has represented the district including Bay Ridge for 16 years. . .
It was not just that Mr. Golden and Mr. Donovan seemed to make so little effort to attract younger voters; it was that they seemed hostile to the idea of youth itself. This was clear in the campaign vehicle they sent up Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, a vintage car with the blaring sound of a horn that recalled Bonnie and Clyde and seemed to say, “Vote for us and we’ll all pretend it’s 1926.”
The housing crisis has also resulted in shifting demographic patterns that are less visible than the ones that give rise to restaurants with organic wines and specialty berries. . .
On Tuesday I met a young couple who had been living in Marine Park, a white working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, until they wanted to buy a house, three years ago. All they could find there were $400,000 places that required gut renovations, Dina Nosworthy, who is a midwife, told me. . .
But eventually they did find something they could afford: a two-bedroom house for $240,000 in New Dorp, a traditionally Catholic, socially conservative, white working-class neighborhood in Staten Island that is becoming much more diverse. They voted for Mr. Rose, and they were encouraged to see the blocks surrounding their house full of signs for the Democrat — a fact that would have been inconceivable not long ago.
Soon after meeting them, I ran into a middle-aged African-American couple, supporters of Mr. Rose, who had moved to central Staten Island because the rents in Park Slope, and anywhere in Brooklyn, had become untenable.
What this suggests is that the lack of affordable housing, paradoxically, has the potential to produce ideological reconfigurations at the local level that could serve as a counterpoint to aggressive gerrymandering.
On a rainy corner on the North Shore, just outside a polling site on Tuesday, a high-school student holding a Max Rose sign told me that she welcomed gentrification in her neighborhood. Staten Island was an insulated place, and now, as she put it, the passions of the rest of the world were finding their way in.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/nyregion/what-max-rose-can-teach-democrats-about-beating-republicans.html?
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