Country Club Democrats

__"Party Hoppers" by Paul Starobin, in National Journal (Feb. 7, 1998), 1501 M St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.__

Sighting "limousine liberals" in places such multiplied in wealthy enclaves throughout the as Manhattan and Los Angeles has long been land. A National Journal-commissioned analyeasy, but now, it seems, their numbers have sis shows that over the last five presidential elections, increasing numbers of voters in 100 of America’s richest communities have been leaving their "natural" Republican home behind and voting Democratic.

From 25 percent of the vote in these mostly suburban communities in 1980, writes Starobin, a staff correspondent for National Journal, the Democratic share steadily climbed, reaching 41 percent in 1996. Nationwide, in contrast, the Democratic vote over the same period went up by only eight points (to 49 percent). The new Democratic rich are a diverse lot, he says, taking in not only aging yuppies who work in "creative" fields such as advertising but also corporate executives, wealthy "pro-choicers," affluent Asian Americans, and others.

"The towns where Democrats have improved their performance range from Los Altos Hills in northern California, a newmoney haven for the tycoons of Silicon Valley, to Fox Chapel on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, an old-money enclave for the titans of the steel industry and their progeny," Starobin writes. Many of these towns are filled with doctors, lawyers, and other professionals.

The voting analysis was done by the National Committee for an Effective Congress, a 50-yearold Democratic consulting firm founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and other liberals. The 100 communities were randomly chosen from a list of the 261 in the 1990 census that had a per capita income above $30,000 (which is more than twice the national average).

In some towns, such as Amberly, Ohio, an exclusive suburb of Cincinnati, Starobin notes, "recent Democratic inroads undoubtedly reflect the return to the party’s fold of Jews who in 1980 deserted Jimmy Carter for Ronald Reagan.... But Democrats also made strides in towns long known as preserves of polo-shirt Protestantism—such as Darien and New Canaan in southern Connecticut." In Darien, which has a large Episcopalian population, the Democratic vote increased from 18 percent in 1980 to 31 percent in 1996.

"These days, the most reliable GOP voter is a Southern white male" whose drink of choice is beer, not Bordeaux, Starobin points out. Indeed, the party’s cultural shift in its "center of gravity... from the country club to the stockcar track" has driven some of the rich away. Many wealthy Protestants, especially in the North, "just don’t identify with the new, lowermiddle-class, culturally conservative Republicans and the kind of leadership that they want to provide," observes James Davison Hunter, a professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Virginia. The same may also increasingly be true for wealthy Catholics, adds Starobin. In Wilton, Connecticut, with a large Catholic population, the Democratic presidential vote went from only 22 percent in 1980 to 39 percent 16 years later.

Not all Democrats are heartened by their party’s inroads among the wealthy. Jeff Faux, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, views it as a reflection of Democrats’ neglect of their "natural base": the working class.

Maybe so. But Starobin concludes that the "historic bond" between the GOP and America’s upper crust has been severed. "The rich," he says, "are up for grabs."