Venable partner Bart Stupak was quoted in the November 18, 2016, issue of Politico about how House Democrats lament blue-collar collapse. The article mentions how Democrats’ shrinking ranks of House members from blue-collar districts watched glumly as President-elect Donald Trump ran up the score in their backyards earlier this month, fearing their party is forfeiting wide swaths of America — and with it, any prospect of taking the House for years to come.
In northern Michigan, Lon Johnson ran ads promising to “stand up to my own party to protect our 2nd Amendment rights,” but was nevertheless handily defeated as well. Mr. Stupak, who cut a TV ad for Johnson, said Clinton’s appeals to an increasingly diverse electorate didn’t help Johnson in a rural district that’s 92 percent white. “I think his message was overshadowed by Secretary Clinton’s message, which was, ‘We’re focusing on specific groups,’” Stupak said. “‘We’re not interested in you.’”