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Letters to the editor | December 24, 2024
It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump's support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency. In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris , Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis. Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds. But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote. Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected. There were some notable pieces to how Trump's victory came together: Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden's total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion's share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden's mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. It wasn't only Harris' shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5. Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County. It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states. Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states' broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs. Trump's team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories. When James Blair, Trump's political director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties. “The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said. AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45. Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan. Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris' candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively. In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania. In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump's support grew by more — in some states, significantly more. That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points. In Wisconsin, Trump's team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains. In the three largest suburban Milwaukee counties — Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha — which have formed the backbone of GOP victories for decades, Harris performed better than Biden did in 2020. She also gained more votes than Trump gained over 2020, though he still won the counties. That made Trump's focus on Rock County, a blue-collar area in south central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home of the former automotive manufacturing city of Janesville, than he did in 2020, while Harris underperformed Biden's 2020 total by seven votes. That helped Trump offset Harris' improvement in Milwaukee's suburbs. The focus speaks to the strength Trump has had and continued to grow with middle-income, non-college educated voters, the Trump campaign's senior data analyst Tim Saler said. “If you're going to have to lean into working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We saw huge shifts from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.” Of the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in the number of votes cast in the presidential contest — slightly more than 4,000 votes, in a state with more than 3.3 million ballots cast. That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits to Arizona by Trump, Harris and their running mates and more than $432 million spent on advertising by the campaigns and allied outside groups, according to the ad-monitoring firm AdImpact. Arizona, alone of the seven swing states, saw Harris fall short of Biden across small, midsize and large counties. In the other six states, she was able to hold on in at least one of these categories. Even more telling, it is also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every single county. While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous as the home to Phoenix, dipped slightly from 2020 — by 14,199 votes, a tiny change in a county where more than 2 million people voted — Trump gained almost 56,000 more votes than four years ago. Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden's total, contributing to a shift significant enough to swing the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020. The biggest leaps to the right weren't taking place exclusively among Republican-leaning counties, but also among the most Democratic-leaning counties in the states. Michigan's Wayne County swung 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican-leaning Antrim County for the largest movement in the state. AP VoteCast found that voters were most likely to say the economy was the most important issue facing the country in 2024, followed by immigration. Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris', the survey showed. “It’s still all about the economy," said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won North Carolina’s governorship on Nov. 5 as Trump also carried the state. “Democrats have to embrace an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in the kind of terms that people get, rather than giving them a dissertation of economic policy,” he said. Governor’s elections in 2026 give Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the past and winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego this year. “So there’s an opportunity to really make sure people, who governors have a connection to, are feeling some specificity and clarity with the Democratic economic message,” Omero said.MAUPIN — The No. 5-ranked South Wasco County High Redsides capped a fabulous season by advancing to the OSAA Class 1A six-man football semifinals where they lost, 40-30, on Nov. 23 against top-ranked Powers. The game was played at Cottage Grove High School, where the Redsides finished their season with an 8-4 record, while the No. 1-ranked Cruisers (11-0) advanced to the championship game against Harper. “We took a great group of kids who have been playing football together for a long time and we built them into something bigger than we expected and they were able to compete at a really high level this year,” said Coach Mike Waine. “When we look back on the season, we can proudly say that the only teams we lost to, were the teams in the state championship game. We played both of those teams early in the season and when we met them again, we played them even better.” The contest was a rematch of an Aug. 30 season opening nonleague loss between the two squads, which Powers won, 66-29, at home. “We had several opportunities to possibly get a win against Powers, but it just wasn’t meant to be for us this year,” said Waine. South Wasco took the lead at the outset when junior receiver George Barnett (five catches, 147 yards receiving) scored on a 56-yard touchdown reception on a pass from senior quarterback Storm McCoy (18-for-33, 431 yards passing, four touchdowns). Sophomore Marcel Sandoval kicked the two-point PAT, lifting the Redsides in front 8-0 with 9:01 left in the first quarter. The Redsides remained on top for most of the opening quarter until the Cruisers scored a touchdown with 1:39 left, making it 13-8 and they never trailed again. Both squads scored two second-quarter touchdowns: South Wasco senior Marcos Chavez scored on a 14-yard touchdown reception on a McCoy pass; Coy Shirley scored on an 18-yard touchdown pass from McCoy. The Cruisers outscored the Redsides 14-8 in the third quarter, to make the score final. The Redsides’ TD came from Gavin Hagan (seven catches, 190 yards receiving) on an 88-yard receptioin from McCoy. It was final prep football game for seniors McCoy, Hagan, Nicholas Packard, Coy Shirley, Chavez and Xavior Baca. Hagan led the Redsides defensively with a team leading 12 tackles. Waine said: “The seniors are an incredible group of athletes, and they were probably the smartest guys that we’ve ever had on the football team. We were able to turn them loose on audibles on offense while letting the receivers choose their own routes to run. They were the most intelligent group we’ve ever had because they were able to execute defensive schemes with every formation that we had. “They were a great crew and they were good leaders for the younger guys; so, they set the bar high for sure.”Army-Navy game has added buzz
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LOS ANGELES — As the Dodgers officially welcomed their latest gazillionaire pitcher to a remodeling Dodger Stadium last week, the churning of the bulldozers in the infield was momentarily drowned out by the whining around the baseball world. Boo-hoo! The Dodgers are buying another championship! For shame! The Dodgers have an unfair advantage! It’s not right! The Dodgers are ruining baseball! On and on the tears flowed, from Pittsburgh to Minnesota, from Northern California to South Florida, with many blubbering that signing two-time Cy Young Award-winning Blake Snell to a $182-million contract officially makes the defending World Series champions bad for the game. Stop it. Just stop it. Far from being a blight on the major-league landscape, right now the Dodgers’ front office is everything that is good about the game. They are smart, savvy and fearless. They base decisions not only on analytics but also attitude. They spend a lot of money, but only because they make a lot of money, and since when is reinvesting revenue into your fans a bad thing? Many think the Dodgers should be grateful to win the World Series this year and humbly behave like other recent defending champions by cutting corners and reducing costs and receding back into the pack. Forget that. These Dodgers are intent on running it back, going even harder for an encore, sparing no expense in an attempt to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions in a quarter-century. Deal with it. Endure it. Maybe even learn from it? The Dodgers need not apologize to anyone for doubling down on a Commissioner’s Trophy, because they have created a championship the right away. They’ve built it, not bought it. Andrew Friedman spent nearly a decade creating the sort of smart culture that strengthened the clubhouse and stocked the farm system. Stan Kasten spent that same time running a Guggenheim business model that restored the fan experience at baseball’s largest stadium, selling record numbers of tickets while enduring much justified criticism to score big TV money. Finally, with the infrastructure in place and the new money flowing, the Dodgers then opened their fatted wallet for the players that created the championship. Players didn’t want to come here only for the big money, they wanted to come for the winning baseball, which is something that could have happened with any team that was lucky enough and brainy enough and focused enough. “Winning is hard. There are teams that have a lot of resources that have trouble winning,” Friedman said. “Winning is hard. It goes way beyond money. It gets to culture, the type of people you have around.” Everyone talks about the nearly $2 billion in committed money, the more than $1 billion owed in deferred payments from 2028 to 2046, and a current annual payroll that will exceed $350 million, more than triple some of baseball’s cheaper operations. But did you know that for the first five years of his reign, Friedman did not sign a player for more than $100 million? He used that time to build an atmosphere where players wanted to be and, soon enough, the superstars essentially began signing themselves. Listen to Snell, who signed so early in the offseason that the stove was not yet even hot. “It was really easy,” he said of his choice. “... You look at the team, you look at what they’ve built, what they’re doing, it’s just something you want to be a part of.” Over the last couple of years, one has heard the same thing over and over. Mookie Betts was traded here, liked what he saw and signed his giant contract four months later. Freddie Freeman wanted to stay in Atlanta, didn’t feel the love and quickly moved into the Dodgers’ embrace. Shohei Ohtani moved up the road from pleasant Anaheim because he desperately coveted a championship. Money was a major factor in all three signings, for sure, but the offers were maximized by the atmosphere. Players saw how other players got better here. They saw the Dodgers rescue the careers of Max Muncy and Chris Taylor. They saw how young Walker Buehler grew into a lights-out pressure pitcher here. They saw Will Smith go from ordinary catcher to a $140-million man. The final piece to the complicated economic puzzle occurred last winter with a simple handshake. Ohtani agreed to defer all but $2 million annually of his $700-million contract if it would help the Dodgers pursue championship players. The Dodgers agreed, living up to their promise by signing the likes of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernández. It is no coincidence that Snell agreed to defer $66 million of his contract. The Ohtani agreement grows stronger and deeper. “The pledge that we made when we met with him about how aggressive we were going to be to try to win, we feel some responsibility and obligation to fulfill that,” Friedman said of Ohtani. “I think no matter what, our mindset was, ‘Let’s be aggressive to add to the core that we had.’” So they recently added Snell, and tacked on a $74-million extension for National League Championship Series most valuable player Tommy Edman, and here’s guessing they’re not done yet. “What’s really difficult is to win; what’s even harder to do is repeat,” Friedman said. “And to a man, all the guys that we talked to, our players, coaching staff, everyone was of the mind, ‘Let’s run it back. Let’s do everything we can to be in a position to win.’ We feel like we’ve got a really talented team in place. So everything for us was centered around, ‘What can we do? What can we add to put ourselves in the best position to do that?’” And to all of you who are complaining about the Dodgers’ passion, does your team have the same basic commitment? A chart called “The Scrooge Index” compiled by Travis Sawchik of the Score would indicate it does not. According to the index, the Dodgers ranked second in baseball last season by investing 67% of their total revenue into payroll. The Tampa Bay Rays were last at 32%. The Dodgers spend more than half of their big money on talent as part of an unspoken pact with fans that Kasten, the Dodgers’ chief executive who arrived with Guggenheim in 2012, refers to as their virtuous cycle. “This is our investment in our fans, and our fans keep investing in us,” Kasten said. “The first day I got here, we said we think this market would support us if we do the right things, and our fans have supported us, and this is us supporting them, so they can support us, and on and on.” Come spring training, there actually may appear a Dodgers story in this newspaper that doesn’t contain a dollar sign. But for now, sit back and enjoy the spending while understanding that the nurturing of this dynasty is about something much richer. Get local news delivered to your inbox!
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