Republicans learning to compete for urban votes
Democrats do well in cities, Republicans in suburbs and cow-land which should be bad news for the GOP as America becomes more urban.
But in Michigan, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder ran big on saving Detroit and it snagged him 1,895 new votes in a close re-election.
Snyder, a former tech-industry exec and venture capitalist, took two risks in letting Detroit go bankrupt 16 months ago.
The first was looking like an irresponsible fiscal steward to voters outside of Detroit in letting the Motor City default.
Even with less than half of its mid-century population, Detroit is still a huge city with nearly 700,000 people, bigger than Baltimore, Boston, Las Vegas and Atlanta.
And it owed a lot of money $18 billion, the biggest municipal bankruptcy ever.
It was the conventional wisdom that a responsible governor would do anything he could to avoid a big-city default.
Albany bailed out Gotham back in the 70s, and Gov. Cuomo continues to bail out broke Nassau County.
As Snyder said earlier this year, When they write the history books, theyre gonna write, Rick Snyder was governor when Detroit went bankrupt.
The politically traditional thing wouldve been to scare state lawmakers into approving a bailout, kicking Detroits impossible promises to another governor.
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Republicans learning to compete for urban votes