Suburbs paint '08 election a new hue

A week ago, Marge Hoffa was fretting. As the DFL's chair in Minnesota's Third Congressional District, she had to scrape up a candidate -- in truth, a sacrificial lamb -- to run next year against Rep. Jim Ramstad, the district's enormously popular nine-term incumbent.

Then, to the surprise of many, Ramstad announced his retirement last Monday. And the scramble, among DFLers and Republicans alike, was on.

The race in the Third District, which embraces the Twin Cities' western arc of suburbs, instantly became the hottest congressional contest in the state next year, in the eyes of political handicappers. And if that seems surprising, you haven't been keeping up with the recent political transformation of America's suburbs, home to half of the nation's voters.

No longer are suburban voters reliably Republican, recent election cycles show.

If suburbs haven't switched completely from red to blue, many are becoming increasingly purple.

"The old stereotypes about the suburbs, where middle-class whites have fled and become more conservative and Republican, just isn't true anymore," said Norman Ornstein, who has long studied congressional politics at the American Enterprise Institute. "The Third's not a district I'd put in the Democratic column just yet, but it's not the Republican bastion. Even Edina's changing."

In fact, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry won Edina in 2004. President Bush carried the district overall, but with only 51 percent of the vote. Bill Clinton had carried it both times he ran.

At the tipping point?

This increasing Democratic strength can be traced to the fact that many suburbs, especially those adjoining central cities, have become more racially, culturally and economically diverse. Republicans' low-tax message and social conservatism doesn't necessarily play well with all parts of that changing population. Many suburbs are struggling with the effects of sprawl and aging public infrastructure that Democrats are more likely to address with calls for increased government spending.

"This is going to be a tough race, but I really believe the district is trending blue instead of being totally red," DFLer Hoffa said of the Third. "What always was here in the suburbs is not what is."

Jerry Parr, Hoffa's GOP counterpart, agreed. "We're optimistic, but nothing's a slam-dunk anymore," he said. "The demographics have changed, and everyone's aware the district's more purple now."

Democrats' suburban march

Even east of the Third, in the more reliably Republican Sixth District, east and north of the Twin Cities, Democrats are eagerly lining up to challenge freshman Rep. Michele Bachmann in a race also seen as potentially competitive.

"The suburbs will swing whichever way the wind is blowing," said David Wasserman, who studies House races nationwide for the Cook Political Report newsletter. "Unless things change, things could get very ugly for Republicans."

Wasserman, who has predicted that Democrats could pick up anywhere from two to seven primarily suburban seats next November, called Minnesota's Third "a dead-even district" and said the Sixth "is still likely Republican, even though Bachmann's reputation as a loose cannon makes her vulnerable."

In the aftermath of the Democrats' thumping of the GOP in 2006, the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech published an analysis of the election that confirmed the Democrats' new-found suburban clout.

In effect, recent election cycles show that Republicans are moving to the fringes of the nation's big metro areas, the study concluded.

Democrats in 2006 carried nearly 60 percent of the vote in House races in the inner-ring suburbs of the nation's 50 largest metro areas, including the Twin Cities, the analysis found. That was up from 53 percent during the 2002 midterms.

Overall, 2006 exit polls found that Democrats won the total suburban vote 50 percent to 48 percent after losing it in the two previous presidential elections.

"The further the Democrats can push into the suburbs -- and in the 2006 midterm elections they practically ran the board -- the greater the likelihood they will prevail," the Virginia Tech study's authors concluded.

A challenge for both parties

It wasn't always this way. Between 1980 and 1988, the Republicans' presidential nominee won by an average of 58 percent of the suburban vote, according to the National Journal.

In the case of the Third District, long represented by a self-described moderate Republican, "when you lose someone like Ramstad, you have to expect it to be up for grabs," said Ornstein, who grew up in the district.

Nearly a dozen potential candidate names have been floated, and none has immediately emerged as a front-runner in either party, Hoffa and Parr said.

During the DFL's central committee meeting last week, a half-dozen candidates or representatives made a pitch, Hoffa said. "I don't think the candidate has to be a Ramstad-light," she said. "But people in the Third are moderate, fiscally conservative and moderate or liberal on social issues."

Both parties in the district share a dilemma in trying to win Ramstad's seat, the Cook Report's Wasserman said. "It remains a tossup race unless one of the parties screws up with its nominee" by choosing a candidate who appeals only narrowly to the Democrats' liberal base or the GOP's conservative one, he said.

What about Bachmann?

In the Sixth District, where two announced and one potential Democratic candidate are taking aim at Bachmann, a Democratic win is less likely, but the national attention -- and money -- likely to pour into the Third next door could divert both from the Sixth, further jumbling the race, Wasserman and Ornstein said.

Compared with most elections, when most of the state's eight congressional races are yawners, the prospect of two competitive suburban races is unusual, and that is compounded by the fact that southern Minnesota's First District could be lively, too.

National Republicans have made freshman Rep. Tim Walz a target there and at least four Republicans are trying to knock the Democrat out of office.

Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184

Bob Von Sternberg • vonste@startribune.com