From hardscrabble mining communities to affluent New Jersey suburbs, GOP attacks on the economy are forcing Democratic House candidates in must-win Northeast districts to confront an issue that has bedeviled them.
Persistent inflation and fears of a recession have become a simple rallying cry for Republicans who blame economic woes on spending by President Joe Biden and Democrats. For Democrats, the counterattack is more complicated.
The party’s incumbents in three toss-up districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey — Tom Malinowski, Matt Cartwright and Susan Wild — are rushing to write closing arguments on the make-or-break issue of the November election.
In dozens of interviews, voters brought up issues including abortion, gun rights and crime. But they all eventually come back to the economy. Inflation is running near a 40-year high, and Bloomberg Economics projects the U.S. will slip into a recession next year as the Federal Reserve combats rising prices by lifting interest rates.
Malinowski-Kean
At a recent event at a home in Readington, New Jersey, Malinowski highlighted recently passed laws to lower drug prices and boost semiconductor manufacturing.
“I have something to talk about and it feels so good,” Malinowski told dozens of Republicans and Democrats over cocktails and finger food.
But Steve Foster, a retired marketing executive and Malinowski supporter, worries it won’t work. Malinowski’s policy-heavy message, he said, is no match against GOP challenger Tom Kean Jr.’s simple argument that Malinowski helped Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi drive inflation.
“I can’t tell what Tom’s 20-second story is,” Foster said.
The two-term congressman’s central New Jersey district now includes more GOP-leaning rural areas, further giving Republicans an edge.
Malinowski gained ground against Kean — the former state Senate GOP leader and son of a popular former governor — amid backlash to the Supreme Court’s decision overturning national abortion rights. But voter attention is shifting back to what Republicans have dubbed “Bideninflation.”
Malinowski ardently defends COVID-era federal spending while campaigning, saying he makes “no apology” for preventing another Great Depression.
“Everything is going up. The only thing going down is politicians’ poll numbers,” Craig Halloran, 68, said outside an Oct. 13 debate at a Holiday Inn in Clark, New Jersey.
During a debate with Malinowski, Kean said he wants to “break the back of inflation” by reversing “out-of-control” spending and lowering taxes. But he refused later to answer questions about what spending cuts he would make. His campaign also declined an interview request.
His spokesman, Harrison Neely, said Kean would prioritize cutting the Internal Revenue Service tax audit budget and clawing back COVID-era relief given to deserving businesses like golf courses, neither of which would put much of a dent in the federal budget.
Neely also said, “Tax relief for the middle class should be part of the equation.” Cutting taxes, though, could stoke inflation further.
Malinowski says he wants to combat inflation by cracking down on price gouging, boosting legal immigration to address worker shortages and punishing OPEC nations to motivate them to lower oil prices.
Many economists say price-gouging isn’t the root cause of today’s inflation. And Malinowski’s plan to bring more manufacturing to the U.S. isn’t a quick inflation fix.
Some local Republicans said they liked the policy-heavy pitch and are enthused about an immigration deal to add more workers.
“I guess he’s made me into a RINO,” Readington resident John Reardon said, using the acronym for Republican in name only.
Wild-Scheller
Wild’s district is centered in the Lehigh Valley, — Pennsylvania’s third-largest metro area which includes Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton. Redistricting added struggling former coal mine communities in mountainous Carbon County — a boon for Republicans who are confident they can win there.
“People, whether you are a Republican that made the mistake of not supporting Donald Trump in 2020 or independents or some Democrats, they have realized what a disaster the Biden economy is,” Lehigh Valley GOP Chair Joe Vichot said in an interview.
Although Democrats in some races focus on abortion rights, Wild tells voters she’s primarily focused on lowering prices.
“I feel the pain of people right now,” Wild said in a WFMZ-TV Allentown debate. “I pump my own gas, I buy my own groceries.”
Wild says the area, which is home to Lafayette and Lehigh universities, needs higher-paying jobs. She envisions transforming the region into a high-tech manufacturing hub.
The jobs issue is where she attacks GOP challenger Lisa Scheller, the chief executive of Silberline Manufacturing Co. Inc., which makes aluminum pigments. At an event with union workers at a shuttered Silberline plant in Lansford, Wild blasted Scheller for outsourcing jobs to China.
“Personally I think it is always all about the money,” said Francis Loughney, 58. “If you look around town here you can see it is a depressed area.”
Scheller says it’s a “lie” to say she has sent U.S. jobs overseas and touts her remaining factory with more than 160 workers. She said in an interview she’s growing her domestic business and that Wild doesn’t understand the difficulties businesses face.
“We have been creating jobs in the United States since 1945 and in Pennsylvania continuously since 1963,” she said.
Scheller said she would block Democratic attempts to increase spending, cut the IRS budget and root out waste.
Cartwright-Bognet
Pennsylvania’s northeast Eighth District race is a rematch between Cartwright and Jim Bognet. The district, which twice backed Donald Trump, was reconfigured to become slightly more Democrat-leaning.
In his ads, Bognet blames Cartwright for inflation and reprises many of the attacks from the 2020 campaign.
Cartwright, a five-term incumbent, says he can direct federal dollars to the Scranton area, which has yet to reclaim its coal-era glory, and the Poconos, where good-paying jobs are scarce.
“Nobody expects a local congressman to revive an entire local economy but there’s a lot you can do as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee,” he said.
Cartwright claimed credit for millions in local projects, including $16.6 million to build a science and cybersecurity research facility at the University of Scranton.
At an NAACP event in Stroudsburg, residents peppered Cartwright about plans to increase federal subsidies for home heating and housing. He said both were on the table. He rejects excess federal spending as a cause for inflation.
“You would have to have something wrong with you to believe that, given that Europe and every other nation is experiencing the same post-pandemic inflation,” he said.
Bognet, who declined an interview request, has stuck by the GOP inflation script.
“We are about to enter a recession,” Bognet said at an Oct. 20 televised debate. “This recession is caused by the Biden-Pelosi-Cartwright inflation.”
