The Hill 5/9/06

By Patrick O’Connor

With the war in Iraq , high gas prices and the Medicare prescription-drug plans dominating most political headlines, a big block of Republican House members is hoping to woo voters with a series of less controversial issues.

The goal of these rank-and-file members is to highlight the concerns of their suburban constituents and introduce legislation to address those issues.

The Suburban Caucus, led by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), is scheduled to unveil a sweeping agenda tomorrow that they hope will appeal to the same suburban voters who have been influential in national elections.

Legislation could include tax incentives to encourage parents to create college and home savings accounts for their children, the creation of an interlocking state-by-state database for sex offenders and incentive programs to curb overdevelopment in the suburbs and exurbs that have come to characterize the so-called “purple” America , divided between Republican red and Democratic blue.

While leadership has been supportive of their efforts, the agenda itself has been completely member-driven and comes during an election year when congressional Republicans have been hammered on many of the major issues of the day, particularly those originating in the White House.

The agenda is broken down into four main categories: education, healthcare, conservation and economic issues. Members of the Suburban Caucus are working on smaller pieces of legislation to fit into each of those categories and have prepared a number of bills, many of which have already been reviewed by the committees of jurisdiction.

The urban sprawl that created these suburban and exurban communities has also created a set of kitchen-table issues that have come to prominence in national politics since Republicans took control of the House in 1994. With that focus trending more toward major issues such as Iraq and the strength of the overall economy, members of the Suburban Caucus hope that returning to the kitchen-table issues will give Republicans an edge in November.

“If you look at Republican success, or how we became the majority, it’s because we’ve been successful in suburban districts,” said Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who represents the suburbs around Orlando . “No. 1, it’s good policy. No. 2, it’s good politics.”

Republicans represent 138 suburban districts and Democrats represent 86, as defined by Kirk’s office. They include districts such as those of freshmen Reps. Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) and Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.), who represent significant rural and suburban constituencies.

All of the members involved said politics were less important than addressing the issues that voters in these districts expect members to address.

“Our constituents are less concerned about Republican or Democrat,” said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who represents suburban Atlanta . “They just want to see action. I think [the suburban agenda] addresses issues just below the headlines.”

Given the national trends working against congressional Republicans, the rollout comes at a perfect time for party leaders. Eighteen of the members involved met with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove last week, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is scheduled to attend tomorrow’s press conference to announce the agenda.

To be successful, though, members of the Suburban Caucus know they will need the support of congressional Democrats and are hoping the popularity of these issues will help make some of these proposals law.

“We need bipartisan support and will be asking Democrats to help support us,” Kirk said, although he noted that those talks had yet to begin.

Some of the other proposals include allowing teachers in public schools to search students whom they deem a potential threat to classroom safety, expanding electronic medical records, giving parents tax incentives to create “401 KIDS” accounts to help their children save for college or their first home and incentives to encourage individuals and businesses to donate land as open space for environmental conservation.

Tomorrow’s rollout is the culmination of a major push by Kirk, who has been actively recruiting other rank-and-file members over the last six months.

Kirk, who has been focused on suburban-voter issues since 2001, hosted a panel during the Republican National Convention in New York in August 2004 about these constituencies. He then began speaking to other Republicans in the House and has since assembled a group of more than 50 members with whom he works on the collected legislation.

“Because we had crossed that line, I thought I should look at these families and see what they need,” Kirk said.

In January, Kirk commissioned Republican pollster John McLaughlin to conduct a national poll of 22 key suburban districts across the country, such as Bucks County , Pa. ; Orange County , Calif. ; and Montgomery County , Md. Kirk presented the findings to his colleagues at a retreat of House Republicans on Maryland ’s Eastern Shore earlier this year.

McLaughlin found that a majority of these voters believed the country was headed in the wrong direction. While many of these voters were focused on the war in Iraq , they were similarly concerned with a number of issues closer to home.

Child safety and education are an obvious focus of these other issues, and many of these prospective voters are also concerned that it will be harder for their children to remain in the middle class than it was for them or their parents to get there.

McLaughlin tested a number of smaller issues, such as should the government provide tax credits to help small businesses offer health coverage to their employees or should schools and libraries be required to put Internet filters on their computers. He found overwhelming support for each of them.

“The consensus for these issues is so broad and so wide, that they can certainly attract support from a majority of suburban voters,” McLaughlin wrote in a paper circulated by the Ripon Society.

Republicans were eager to get involved because these issues were not tied to classic partisan strains.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said he got involved in the Suburban Caucus because his Dallas-area district is “the classic suburban district in the country” with an almost equal split of supporters and opponents of abortion rights.

If the debate does bog down into a partisan skirmish, Republicans vowed to use this as an example of Democratic intransigence on issues with real relevance to a broad cross-section of American voters.

“It’s a great political opportunity to contrast” the Republican agenda with that of congressional Democrats, Feeney said.

But Kirk hoped the popularity of these issues would help dissolve that partisan tension.

“This came from the grassroots,” he said. “It sets [the Democratic Party] on a course to be against something highly popular.”