WASHINGTON – State and local elections across the country this week produced warning signs for both Democrats and Republicans as they press toward the 2016 presidential contest, now just a year away.
Democrats lost more ground in legislatures and governor’s mansions, raising questions about the party’s strength when President Barack Obama’s name isn’t at the top of the ballot. Democrats still have important demographic advantages in the states that often determine presidential elections, but the party is struggling in power centers outside Washington that influence policy and steer congressional redistricting.
But the elections weren’t all good news for the Republicans. For party leaders anxious about Donald Trump and Ben Carson’s lead in the GOP presidential primary, the win in Kentucky for Matt Bevin – a wealthy businessman who has never held political office – could be a sign that many voters are serious about electing outsider candidates.
Party leaders are skeptical that outsiders’ rebellious appeal will be sufficiently deep and lasting to send such a candidate to the White House.
“We’re at this interesting moment where clearly there’s a lot of frustration in the electorate, which means voters are going to be more volatile,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster.
To be sure, off-year elections are imperfect predictors of presidential contests. Turnout is far lower and the voters who do show up tend to be older and less diverse, favoring Republicans.
Still, Tuesday’s contests across the country are being scoured for signs of the electorate’s mood less than three months before the lead-off Iowa caucuses.
For Democrats, results in Kentucky, Virginia and elsewhere were part of a troubling pattern. Since Obama was elected in 2008, the party has lost 13 governorships and more than 900 state legislative seats, ceding control of 30 legislative chambers. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have given up control of both the House and Senate.
The fresh losses raise serious questions for Democrats about how the party will fare next year when Obama isn’t on the ticket. It’s also raising questions about where Democrats will draw their next generation of leaders.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, is making specific campaign appeals to the Hispanics, blacks and young voters who helped propel Obama to victory. And she’s promising she’ll work to help candidates down the ballot win their races, too.
The Democratic defeats have implications for policies as well as politics. While most Democratic governors have expanded their states’ Medicaid coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act, several Republicans have resisted, including in Florida and Texas. Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe tried to expand Medicaid but was blocked by Republicans.
Democrats’ efforts to fully implement “Obamacare” got even harder Tuesday. McAuliffe failed in his campaign to put Virginia’s legislature back in Democratic hands. And in Kentucky, Bevin won in part on a pledge to repeal the state’s Medicaid expansion, propelling a Republican into the state’s governor’s mansion for just the second time in four decades.
Bevin cast himself as a political outsider, one who was self-funded and shunned by Kentucky’s political establishment after he challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 GOP Senate primary. It’s an approach that fits with the outsider appeal of Trump and Carson, who are roiling the GOP presidential primary and worrying establishment Republicans who fear neither of them could defeat Clinton in a general election.
Asked Wednesday whether Bevin’s win bodes well for his own political future, Trump sounded confident. He said, “There is something happening, folks, I will tell you. There is something happening.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who is struggling in the GOP presidential polls, aligned himself with Bevin’s success as a political outsider.
“That’s the same thing I ran on when I ran in 2010,” Paul said of his Senate victory five years ago.
Bevin wasn’t the only outsider who won this week. In Mississippi, Republican poultry and cattle farmer Vince Mangold made his political debut by ousting Democratic House Minority Leader Bobby Moak, who had been in office for 30 years.
Republicans targeted Moak with mailers displaying his photo next to Obama’s under the headline, “Bobby Moak and Barack Obama ... A Liberal Love Affair.” Mangold said he campaigned on lower taxes and a good education system, but he attributed his victory not to any particular policy stances but to his outsider status.
“As I traveled around the district, the overwhelming reply was they were ready for a change,” Mangold said Wednesday.
Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. AP writers Adam Beam in Frankfort, Kentucky, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.
GOP hails election as health care victory
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The election of a conservative outsider as Kentucky governor has given Republicans a laboratory to show the rest of the country how they’d replace President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Three years into a coverage expansion that has brought the share of uninsured Americans to historically low levels, Matt Bevin’s lopsided victory underscores how politically divisive the law remains. But experts say slamming the brakes in a state already deeply entrenched in the Affordable Care Act would cost lots of time and money, testing the new Republican administration’s ability to rein in costs.
Kentucky has been one of the health care law’s success stories. The share of uninsured state residents has been slashed from about 20 percent in 2013 to 9 percent by the middle of this year, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a major independent survey. Experts credit that to a synergy between Kentucky’s state-run insurance marketplace and the decision to embrace Medicaid expansion.
But the expansion added 400,000 people to the state’s Medicaid rolls, more than twice what officials had predicted. Combined with the existing Medicaid program, Kentucky taxpayers now pay for the health insurance of a quarter of the state’s population. The state will begin paying for the expansion in 2017, and costs could surpass $300 million by 2020.
“(Bevin) is the one who has received the mandate here. We have to do something different,” said Republican state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, a doctor who opposes the Affordable Care Act. “The legislature and the governor needs to follow through. It’s clear on what voters are telling us they want to do.”
Outgoing Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear initiated both the insurance exchange and the Medicaid expansion by executive action. Bevin has said he’d dismantle the insurance marketplace, which would revert to federal operation. Kentucky would become the first state to do so for political reasons. Residents covered through the marketplace would continue to get subsidized health insurance, but they would do so through the federal website HealthCare.gov.
On Medicaid, it’s unclear how far Bevin would push for changes. He has said he would reverse the expansion “immediately,” and his campaign website says the Medicaid expansion “should be repealed.” But Bevin has tried to walk back those comments when confronted with the fact that a complete rollback would mean 400,000 people losing coverage.
Robert Stivers, president of the Republican-controlled state Senate, said lawmakers are preparing to find an extra $75 million to pay for the expansion in 2017, plus another $175 million the following year. He said he has already had discussions with Bevin about how to replace the program.
“I believe we can develop a system where they will have health insurance,” Stivers said. “We think we can develop a plan that will not expose us to $400 million of cost but still provide health insurance and health care for those individuals.”
The White House signaled it expects Bevin to take a measured approach once in the governor’s office. Spokesman Josh Earnest keyed on comments made by Bevin before the election that people would not be kicked off Medicaid.
“I think this is an indication ... that (while) vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act in some cases has been used as an effective political strategy, that’s not a terribly effective governing strategy,” Earnest said.
Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an adviser to Republicans nationally, said conservatives do have options.
Bevin has said he wants to do what Indiana and Montana have done by asking the federal government to change the expansion by charging recipients a small premium. But he has also said he would impose stricter income requirements for Medicaid, which are currently based on federal poverty levels.
Requiring modest premiums from those newly enrolled might find acceptance from a Democratic administration. But dramatically restricting eligibility for the coverage expansion would likely be rejected.
If Bevin and the Obama administration can thread a middle path, Holtz-Eakin said that might defuse some of the contentious politics around the health care law. In any case, Democrats should be more open to changes once Obama leaves office in 2017.
“Once the president leaves, his signature domestic accomplishment is on the history books, and they don’t need to preserve it in its current form,” Holtz-Eakin said.
So far, 60 votes in the GOP-led House have failed to slow the health care law’s momentum. Two Supreme Court decisions left the basic structure in place. Now, a Republican with fundamentally different views has a chance to get his hands on it.
However, whatever Bevin does, it’s not likely that much will be accomplished overnight.
The federal government requires at least 12 months’ notice from a state that’s seeking to shut down its insurance exchange, said Judy Solomon of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, which supports the health care law.
“You can’t turn the switch so quickly,” Solomon said. Bevin takes office next month. The current open enrollment season on Kentucky’s marketplace started Sunday and ends Jan. 31.
Medicaid changes could also turn into a protracted negotiation if Bevin seeks a federal waiver to put a conservative spin on the coverage expansion.
“We can all take a deep breath and see how this plays out,” Solomon said.
