Everyone in Red Areas Is Going to Suffer

A lot of people, including Betty Cracker at Balloon-Juice, have been posting about Harriet Hageman’s terrible town hall. While you’re watching her talk, remember that this is the person that beat Liz Cheney in a primary. Take that as a lesson about Wyoming politics — they’re redder than a baboon’s ass, and they don’t like carpetbaggers.

In the clip I saw, a fired USDA employee got up and explained how important her job is, and Hageman tried to push back because, as a farmer, she had some form of knowledge about how the USDA isn’t that important. Hageman was drowned out by the crowd, but she knows that it would take an apocalypse to get her thrown out of office. I’m frankly surprised that she had a town hall in the first place.

Mike Lawler, who represents D+3 NY-17, a Hudson Valley district, knows that he’s not in a good place, so his tactic is to put on a shocked Pikachu face about the closing of a Social Security office in his district:

Hageman’s “fuck you, eat shit” approach, and Lawler’s “I didn’t know the gun was loaded” excuse aren’t going to age well. Still, let’s just take a teeny-tiny peek at some less-than-obvious cuts.

Let’s start with Wyoming, where 34.7% of the state’s spending in 2022 came from the federal government. Wyoming is one of the few red states that sends in more money per capita than it receives from the federal government (the other is Utah). So, not only are the DOGE cuts hurting Wyoming, they’re going to lose even more money on their balance of payment to the federal government than they would have without King Musk’s intervention.

Second, red states and red parts of blue states have no idea just how many different government benefits they get. We all know about critical access rural hospitals, Medicaid and other healthcare benefits. But did you know about Essential Air Service? This is a program that subsidizes air service to small airports. These small airports also get a ton of federal money to modernize their facilities. An aviation YouTuber named Noel Phillips gets clicks by flying into some of these airports. Most recently, he flew across country via essential air services. His flights — even a 50-seat regional jet — had 2-12 people flying the route. Here’s a list of the essential service airports in the US — it’s long, and it’s red. Cody and Laramie, WY are the two in Hageman’s state. Nobody ever talks about this “wasteful” program, but millions of dollars have been poured into small communities to make sure a few people can fly in and out.

In New York, it’s tough to focus on Lawler’s district alone, but overall the state sends $2,200 more back to the federal government than what they spend. 27% of New York’s budget is federal cash.

Lawler’s district has a large Orthodox Jewish community, and like most deeply religious communities that have large families, there’s a lot of poverty there. In Monsey, Rockland County, which has 4.2% of the world’s Hasidic population, 31% of the population is under the poverty line, and 38% of the under-18 population lives in poverty. So, in addition to the loss of a Social Security office, Lawler is going to have to pretend to care that a good number of what I would assume are solid voters for him are going to have their Medicaid, SNAP and other benefits taken away.

Wyoming Democrats are on life support, so the possibility that they’re going to have a decent challenger to Hageman is pretty dim. At some point I need to write something about how the 50-state strategy was more talk than action, but that’s long in the past, and there’s little money to fund a challenger in a R+25 district that regularly goes 70/30 for the Republican candidate for President.

But Lawler is another story. He’s going to be in serious trouble — New York Democrats are going to pour some money into a Biden/Harris district like NY-17. At some point, I assume he and a few others like him are going to hit the panic button. Gabe Evans, newly elected Republican in CO-8, is another example. He’s in a district ranked EVEN by Cook Political. I was at the gym the other day, the only place I see broadcast TV, and some third party is already running ads in support of Evan’s vote for the CR — they’re framing it as a vote for “clean energy.” So perhaps folks like Lawler think they’ll skate by, powered by millions of dollars of ads. We’ll see, is all I have to say about that.