In Case You Missed It: The Trumping of Darrell Issa [THE NEW YORKER]
Ryan Lizza examines Trump superfan Darrell Issa’s reelection prospects in The New Yorker five years after profiling the San Diego Congressman. That interview gave us insight into Issa’s Trumpian qualities. Lizza asked about a fire at one of Issa’s company’s factories that an insurance company called suspicious and potential arson.
Issa blamed local firefighters for letting it spread.
ICYMI
The Trumping of Darrell Issa [Excerpts]
The New Yorker
By Ryan Lizza
…Issa transferred his allegiance to Trump with an almost Chris Christie-like enthusiasm. At a May 27th Trump rally in San Diego, Issa compared Trump to Ronald Reagan. A few weeks earlier, he had published an op-ed in The Hill chastising fellow Republicans for not backing Trump. The piece was headlined “Memo to Bushes, Other G.O.P. Holdouts: Get on the Trump Train.”
During his spring transformation into a Trump superfan, Issa may have calculated that his own primary, on June 7th, would benefit from a surge of Southern California Trump voters. California uses a so-called jungle-primary system, in which candidates of all parties run in the same race, and the top two candidates advance to the general election.
…Issa won just fifty-one per cent of the vote. The runner-up, who is now Issa’s general-election opponent, was the retired Marine Colonel Doug Applegate, a Democrat who had never run for office and was outspent by Issa fifteen to one.
Issa has never received less than fifty-eight per cent of the vote in his eight winning general-election campaigns. Polls released by Democrats, which should be treated with caution, suggest the Issa-Applegate race is within the margin of error. In other words, Issa, one of the best-funded and strongest Republican House candidates of the two-thousands, may now be an indicator that Trump is a Presidential-level Todd Akin who will bring down much of his party with him in November.
It’s not too surprising that Issa, in the year of Trump, is having some trouble. His San Diego-area district has more millennials, more Latinos, and fewer older white voters than ever. “I think the reality of the evolving demographics in San Diego County, coupled with the influx of turnout from the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, created a much more challenging environment for Darrell than we’ve seen in years past,” Kurt Bardella, a former top aide to Issa, said of the closer-than-expected primary.
…[Bardella] noted that the Issa race is yet another sign of the obvious demographic changes to which Republicans know they must adapt. “Having Donald Trump and his racist immigration policy at the top of the ticket certainly doesn’t help, especially in an area as diverse as San Diego County,” he said.