The NPR Politics Podcast - Cindy Axne Rode In On 2018's Blue Wave. Now, Is The Tide Going Out?

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Rep. Cindy Axne was elected in a Democratic wave year from Iowa's 3rd congressional district. Now, she faces a tough reelection fight against Republican Zach Nunn. The campaigns have largely eschewed talking about local issues in favor of more national topics like inflation and abortion access.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Anonymous Listener 6419 recording from the parking lot of an intelligence agency in the D.C. suburbs. I just turned in my badge capping a 20-year career keeping America safe. This podcast was recorded at 1.08 p.m. on Monday, October 31st. Happy Halloween. Before I checked out, I reviewed some intelligence that confirms, yep, things have already changed by the time you'll hear this. Here's the show. I love it. A top secret timestamp. I know. We have spies listening to us. I'm just delighted. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And Election Day is in eight days, but millions of Americans have already voted. And Republicans are in a strong position to take control of the House and maybe even the Senate if it's a big night for the GOP. Republicans need to net gain about five seats for the House majority. And today we're going to talk about one of those key races, Iowa's third district. So Danielle, you are our native Iowan. You just got back from reporting in your home state. Tell us about this race. So I swear I went to cover this race, not because it let me go back to my beautiful homeland, but because this is a really interesting district and a very hotly contested district. People at the top of both parties will tell you that this is a really interesting district and a very hotly contested district.

People at the top of both parties will tell you that this is one they are watching very closely and that they see as one of the key ones to flipping or not flipping the House, depending on which party you're in. So it is held by Democrat Cindy Axne. She has held the seat since 2019. She was part of that sort of blue wave that came in in 2018. But she is in danger of losing also worked in cybersecurity before he decided to run for the seat. It is the district that covers the southwestern part of the state. It is a really interesting place to go because it goes from Des Moines, the state's biggest city at the northeastern part of the district, to almost the entire southwestern part of the state, which includes a lot of really rural areas. You really get the full spectrum of what kinds of people are in Iowa. So what did voters there tell you they were thinking about when it comes to this election?

Well, let me start by playing two cuts of tape for you. The first one is a guy named Jack Wharton. He is a lawyer. I met him at a rally for Zach Nunn at a farm place just west of Des Moines. And I asked him, well, just like everybody else, inflation is right up there. Abortion is way down here, non-existent. I don't care about that. The border, the economy, the military. It's almost like a top five list of the concerns of Republican voters that he just ticked off. Absolutely. And in contrast, let me tell you about Karen Riley Seavers. I met her at a coffee shop in the very small town of Panora, which is, I don't know, about an hour west of Des Moines.

And I asked her, what are your top issues? Woman's choice for our reproductive and beyond that. I think we have to stop and think that what we're really dealing with, bottom line, is democracy. And inflation will not make a bit of difference if you don't have the system that allows you to do the fair voting and to have your voice heard. On the one hand, this is not remarkable at all because, you know, I've been to a whole bunch of states this election, so have you guys, I imagine. And you hear the same thing from so many voters, whether it's Ohio or Kansas or Texas, all over the place. On the Republican side, it's inflation. Immigration on the Democratic side, it's democracy and reproductive rights. And that is one very striking thing about politics this year is just how similar the answers are wherever you go.

Ron, one of the greatest cliches of politics is that all politics is local. But is that even true anymore when you talk about these races all over the country, which all seem to all hinge on the same national debate that's being had everywhere else? Many years ago when the speaker of the House was Tip O'Neill and he made that remark about politics in his era, I think what he was talking about was individual districts and states. That's how you win a race. You don't run nationally. You run in your hometown and in your home state. And that's how you focus on the voters that are going to matter the most to you. But even then, and probably throughout most of our history, certainly now with television and social media, there is a list of issues that become the national environment for all those

local races. So you've got a landscape in which people are talking about the issues that you mentioned. I'd throw crime in there too. I think that's very potent in helping Republicans expand the number of races they can make competitive in the Northeast in particular. But you've got a national landscape in which everyone sort of keeps hearing about the same issues wherever they go, whatever television they watch, whatever social media they go to. And that then gets translated into the thoughts of the people in each of those local districts. So in a sense, the politics remains local, but in a national environment, in a national landscape. You know what I think about sometimes

is that politics has also become so much more black and white between the two parties. Like abortion is a great example of an issue in which 20, 30 years ago, there used to be a lot more Republicans who supported abortion rights in public office. And there used to be a lot more Democrats who were more conservative on the issue of abortion. But A, you know, there's very little bleed between the two parties on that issue, right? Like it's so stark, the contrast. So in terms of localizing your politics, like you're just not going to find a Republican running for the House in Iowa who's running in support of abortion rights right now, you know, like it makes it the choice for voters

much starker. One way you can measure it is in the number of people who are splitting their ticket while they vote. Increasingly over time, the partisan vote in any given House district tends to track more with the presidential vote. What I'm saying there is that increasingly roughly the same share of people who vote for the Democrat in whatever district are voting for the Democrat for president. Partisan sorting, a thing that we have talked about on this podcast in the past, goes hand in hand with nationalization. Many pundits talk about nationalization as a bad thing or a thing that can really, really hurt voters or the democratic system, right? Because it can flatten, get rid of geographical distinctions. It can mean things like agriculture

in this district, for example, or get less attention in favor of abortion and whatever. However, I mean, it's also true that it's not irrational for a voter to vote based purely on this national political picture. Here is a guy that I talked to. His name is Dan Hopkins. He is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. And he talked about, yeah, often voters are making rational choices. And furthermore, candidates are feeding into that frenzy of making sure people vote in a partisan way. It's not that voters are rational or irrational. It's that our current highly nationalized political system has us in a groove where we focus on a set of symbolic, emotionally

fraught, easily available and accessible issues that are prominent and resonant across the country. The one thing I would add to that is that it's not that it's irrational for people to, for example, worry about a national ban on abortion or to champion a national ban on abortion or to worry about inflation at a broad level. But it is also true that there is the other side of nationalization, which is partisan sorting, polarization, all and all of the bad things that go along with that. All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about the candidates in the race. And we're back. And Danielle, we've heard from voters who say they care about the things they care about all over the country, inflation, abortion. But how is all of this impacting how Axne and Nunn are campaigning for this district? Well, one notable thing is that you don't hear a lot in their campaign speeches about super hyper local issues.

So, for example, you might not hear much about the farm bill, which is set to be reauthorized in 2023. Axne talked a bit about infrastructure improvements that are being made in southwestern Iowa. But again, largely they focus on inflation, abortion, those sorts of things. Not only that, though, one thing that caught my ear was bringing in other politicians who are not connected to Iowa and who may not in past elections have seemed very relevant to these voters. For example, here is Cindy Axne speaking to some Democrats in Iowa in early October, and she told them about what could happen if Democrats don't win the House. If we don't hold the House, folks, Jim Jordan becomes head of judiciary, begins impeachment proceedings against the president,

drags him through the mud for two years so we don't win the presidential election, and we lose it all. And similarly, at a Zach Nunn event I went to, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was there stumping for Nunn, and he brought up Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is a Democrat from Massachusetts. Don't let them kid you.

This price increase doesn't belong to Vladimir Putin. It belongs to President Biden. It belongs to Senator Warren. political landscape we have, politicians from other states who get attention for, you know, their fiery congressional questionings of people, that sort of thing, for their runs for other offices, those people become symbols of all that is wrong with the other party. And so thus, they end up popping up in these what might have in the past been relatively more local races. Lauren, I'm a bit of a skeptic, but I'm curious what you think. Like, I get why people use these proxies. I think Nancy Pelosi is probably the best example of it. You run against party leaders or you run against people.

Most definitely. But I'm just, I admit, I am skeptical that there are a critical mass of voters in Iowa's third congressional district who are thinking heavily about what Jim Jordan's role is going to be potentially in the next Congress? It's very hard to imagine that Jim Jordan has that kind of presence. But we do know that demonizing national figures is a successful strategy, and we have seen it work. And it's also possible for some of these candidates, and here I would be talking more about Zach Nunn, to plug into an entire mindset, to plug into an entire belief system, simply by mentioning a few

names and without really having much to say about what goes on in southwestern Iowa or his own particular background. Not that it's not a perfectly respectable background, but he doesn't have a lot to run on. But if he plugs into this national network, and it is very easily done by mentioning just a few names and getting people riled up about that, it can be a successful tactic in this kind of environment. Danielle, how are you watching this race as we approach Election Day in just a couple days? I mean, do you see this place as a bellwether for how the house is going to go? I do. And I mean, the race will go how it goes. But what is most interesting to me is the

urban versus rural split there. Because Des Moines, Polk County especially, which is the most urban county in this district, is going to be where Axne does her best, right? So to me, the question is, how well does she do there? And what can she make up on the rural margins? Because as you both know, one of the biggest and growing divides that we've seen develop during our careers as reporters is definitely the divide between urban and rural. So I'm curious how she'll do because I think, especially in Iowa, that will tell us a lot more about that divide elsewhere. Ron, what about you? I'm curious what you're watching most closely as we basically are in the homestretch now of this campaign.

It seems as though it's very hard to make a case for the Democrats holding on in the House. When you look at the average back over the last four times that there's been a Democratic president having his first midterm after being elected, that is a very ugly landscape for the Democrats, averaging something like 40, 45 seats lost in each one. If they lose even half of that, it's going to look pretty good for the Republicans. It'll be more than enough for them to take over the majority. So I think the interest at this point largely shifts to the Senate, where the Democrats have some hope in that a number of Republicans are telling pollsters they would like to see the Republicans run the Senate, but they just can't bring themselves to vote for fill in the blank. One particular senator in one particular state,

Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, the nominee in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, has his sero problems like Masters in Arizona. So it's possible that the Republicans could fall short in terms of taking over the Senate. But that same pattern that we have seen in Democrats who have just been elected president having their first midterm has applied to some degree to the Senate, now not nearly to the same degree. So there's a lot of pressure on Democrats at this point, and they're really hoping for individual candidate matchups to save them in that one chamber. You know, it seems counterintuitive because when there's divided government, so often the tail is gridlock, nothing gets done, partisanship. But honestly, if you look at the elections we've had,

certainly in the post 9-11 era, like this country kind of prefers divided government. They choose it more often than unified government. So I think I would probably be more surprised than not if Democrats are able to hold on to both chambers of Congress because the country doesn't actually really seem to want unified control of government. All right, that's it for us today. Susan Davis, I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover politics. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.