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Are the suburbs turning purple and will that continue?
The suburbs of America are purple, except for the ones that are already blue. It is not all that complicated why.
The late Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut once said, “You can’t be a suburb of nowhere.” While that is just as true today as it was when he said it decades ago, the suburbs of today are more than just bedroom communities. They are becoming filled with people who don’t want to have to travel into the city for quality health care, transit options or competitive schools.
These same people want food and entertainment that is culturally intriguing. They want a vibrant arts community and outdoor recreation options like parks and trails right there in their neighborhood. They want employment opportunities and colleges. And, yes, they want to be relatively near the big shows like the Indianapolis 500, Colts, Pacers and all the world-class sporting and performing acts that will appear only in a real city.
Now, who would want to live in a community that fits that description? Just about everyone, now that I read it back. Which is the reason the suburbs are changing politically: They are becoming places in which just about anyone would want to live. People of any age, race, religion or sexual orientation, etc., could rationally be attracted to living on the outskirts of virtually any urban area in America these days. And that is exactly what is happening.
Demographic diversity brings with it the true gold of American culture: diversity of thought. And the presence of that specific diversity is the reason the politics in American suburbia are changing.
Corporate America is changing in an identical way. Diversity is an asset to organizations for both internal purposes like innovation and entrepreneurial thought and external reasons like being attractive to broader customer groups. Extremely few corporate success stories of today are ignoring diversity’s value.
The changing face of suburbia is the primary reason for the changing politics. The GOP has failed to give diverse groups, no matter where they live, a reason to be attracted to its platform. The Trump years have only exacerbated that fact. The party tolerates racism and bigotry, and even if one takes issue with that, its membership is blindingly white. The white share of the electorate is the only one that is shrinking these days, and that is increasingly true in every suburb.
Indiana is trending the same direction as every other state—with the only lagging contributor being the Indiana Democratic Party’s own failings. State Democrats still need to give new members a reason to not just join, but actively engage in government and politics.
The beginnings of political change started in the suburbs because the people who live there started to change. And now, there are competing perspectives there on what life in America should be. There is no evidence of that trend slowing.
The party of Trump—with its border walls, family separations and the villainization of minority groups—has little chance to stay the course and still be attractive to new suburbia. Whether the party of Biden will seize this generational moment remains to be seen.•
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Leppert is an author and governmental affairs consultant in Indianapolis. He writes at MichaelLeppert.com. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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