Red, White and Who? The Inflation Election

It's around 3 p.m. on Thursday. A restaurant cook is frying up some pairs, preparing for dinner. What do we have here for dinner? It goes on a new salad we're doing, a stirrupola, pairs, some chives, cherry vinaigrette salad. New salad starts today. Michael Rusconi owns the restaurant. It's called Rusconi's American Kitchen. You know, the concept was always to create a fine dining experience at a moderate price point. I've been very successful doing that. Michael says over the last several years, it's been a lot harder to run this restaurant. Things are just more expensive, from the cost of beef to labor to fuel. He sat down with Eliza Collins, our political reporter based in Phoenix. I think fuel prices hurt people. I know I'm affected because my deliveries have fuel surcharges on them that have increased. What was the increase look like? 25 dollars. Per delivery. Some are higher, some are lower, some are $10. But I see that a lot more than I used to. Michael's restaurant is in North Phoenix near Scottsdale. It's located in Arizona's first congressional district. Home to one of the most competitive house races in the country. It's one of the districts that Democrats think they can flip in their quest to win back the house. So you spent a few days with our producer Pierce talking to voters. What at a high level is your takeaway from like how voters in this area of the country are feeling? They feel stressed about the economy. Almost every voter we talk to talks about the cost of gas. And how high it was. Gas prices have gone up substantially. Well, I've lost my job. And so now I'm retired involuntarily. And just cost more to fill up my truck as I go along. People talked about making choices at the grocery store. I get an Italian express. And it used to be $12 a bag. It went up to $18 a bag. As far as groceries and the economy and everything else, everything's gone up. And everybody is feeling it. I used to not pay attention to the price of groceries. And then all of a sudden I looked at my receipt one day, a couple years back and was like, "Okay, I got to start shopping with price in mind." People were certainly feeling economic hardship. I'm seeing a lot of inflation. That's why I have a second job. Because everything costs more. Everything's more expensive. Electrical or power costs are rising. Water costs are rising. Food costs are rising. Gosh, where do I stop? From the journal, this is Red White and Who. Our series about the road to the midterms. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Wednesday, October 14th. Coming up on the show, the inflation election. On day one of my new administration, we're going to throw out bydynamics and we're going to replace it with. Magnomics. Back in 2024, then Canada Donald Trump made the economy the central focus of his campaign. His story of the economy was that Joe Biden broke it. We're going to stop the Biden spending free. We're going to halt his inflation death spiral. We're going to terminate his green news scam. It's going to be. And the Kamala Harris would make it worse. With four more years of Harris, your finances will never recover. They're never going to recover. Trump promised to fix it. And that was what people heard. That was definitely a winning strategy for him. But after two years, the economy isn't going the way some voters thought. Inflation is ticked back up. When Trump was elected, inflation was 2.6%. Now, it's at 3.4%. And economists say tariffs and the war in Iran have contributed to rising prices. All right, so Democrats need to flip at least three seats in order to win the House. Let's talk about one of those seats that's in play. AZ1, where you went around and talked to voters. Where is it and why is it important to this year's midterms? So AZ1 is one of the most competitive seats in the country. It includes part of Northern Phoenix. And then it sweeps into Scottsdale, which is essentially a suburb connected to Phoenix. And these voters have tended to prove to be very swingy. Arizona is really a libertarian state at the end of the day. Voters like people who are willing to break with their party and who stay right in the middle and focused on the economy. It was a Republican state for a long, long time. The last Republican governor here was Doug Ducey. He was a very business-focused tax-cutting Republican. Those types of Republicans have tended to do very well here. And the Democrats that have been able to come in in their wake have been very centrist. The state voted for Trump in 2016, then Biden in 2020, and then Trump again in 2024. And it has two Democratic senators. Voters here want to vote with their wallets. And they do. And that's why we've seen it swing back and forth. In Arizona, the unemployment rate is above the national average at 4.9%. And gas prices are higher, too. But AZ-1 is a higher income district. And voters are relatively well off. The median household income is around $102,000. So people have more wiggle room to take some of these hits. But when they finally meet their threshold, they are done. And that is something we're seeing here with people who are starting to say, you know, day in and day out, these costs are getting to me, and we're having to make choices. Arizona has suffered with really high inflation in the past, and a rapidly growing high cost of housing, because of how quickly it's developing. Eliza and our producer, Pierre Singy, went to talk to voters. Do you find that the microphone freaks people out? It does something. Yeah. I wish that there was a lower profile. Well, I know. Unless it's less than a case. So when Pierre and I were out, we went to gas stations to talk to voters. It was over $5 a gallon at that point. Hi there. We're at the Wall Street Journal. We're talking to people about the economy and the midterm elections, asking how much they're paying for gas if they're going to vote. Any chance we can ask you a couple questions for a podcast? Sure. Great. Okay, I'm Eliza. This is Pierre. Can we get your name? Casey O'Neill. Casey O'Neill is a general contractor. He was driving a pickup truck and filling up a gas can with diesel to take to a job site. How much are you going to pay for gas today? So today I'm getting some diesel for some equipment at the job site. So what are we paying? 640. 640. Right here. Oh, 640 a gallon. So it's 40 for you. Okay, and you're getting just a small tank. So I'm getting five, five gallons. So that's, you know, 30, 35 bucks. When I fill up my tank, now it's $5 and five cents. That's the highest I've seen it. So I'm filling up my tank. It's 140 bucks. 145 bucks. That's bonkers. Casey says he's an independent and didn't vote for Trump. He's going to vote for a Democrat in this year's midterms. What do you think of, you didn't vote for Trump? So you didn't vote for this, but how do you feel? Somebody who voted for Trump didn't vote for this, right? Didn't you say no new words? He said no new words. And a lot of people voted on the economy. And the economy's horrible, right? For Republicans, Eliza heard a mixed bag of responses. Some were frustrated by high prices and said they'd vote for Democrats this year. Others said they still supported Trump and his party. Like Laura Johnson. Any chance we can ask you a couple questions? She was filling up a Mercedes. Well, gas prices aren't so well right now. Yeah, but he had to do what he had to do so that, you know, we don't get into a war with somebody that has a nuclear bomb. So you're supportive of the war? Yes. You're okay still being in it as long as you're kind of willing to take the hit. Yes, yes. So can I ask, do you know how much it'll cost you to fill up your tank? No, no. If you're known, this isn't where I typically fill up. Okay. But it's not cheap for sure. Yeah. But it wasn't cheap when Biden was in office either, so. Among Trump supporters, that was something Eliza heard fairly often. But the economy and gas prices are bad now. But things felt bad under Biden too. It's a point that Michael, the restaurant owner you heard from earlier, made as well. So for the moment, Michael is unsure of which way he's going to vote. I have no idea yet. You know, I'll sit down with my daughter and my wife and we'll probably about a week out. Two weeks out, we'll start to talk about it a little bit. My daughter's in law school, so she's very much connected to what's going on in the world. And we'll just see. There are two people according his vote for AZ1. A former NFL kicker. Join me. Let's take back our country, strengthen Arizona, finish the work that President Trump started. And an ER doctor. When you come into the ER, we don't care about your food. political party. We only care about saving your life. That's next. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, you've been all far-spirited ♪ ♪ As the sky's as strong and bright as the rain ♪ ♪ For ever ♪ - Eliza went to a campaign event at a retirement community in Scottsdale. The Democratic candidate, Amish Shah, is speaking to a room of about 20 retirees. - Dr. Amish Shah. (audience cheering) - I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much, I don't know if you're on a show, but I'm not. - Shah is an ER doctor, and has served as a state representative. He ran for this seat last cycle and lost to the retiring Republican. And he talks a lot about the economy, putting the blame on Trump. - Our job is to care for the people in this district, all of you, solve problems for you, and that's what I intend to do. That's what I wanna fix. What am I hearing out there? Tariffs causing price rises. The war in Iran, again, causing the gas to grow. - He has sort of the more traditional message you would expect for a district like this one. So he is really trying to make the pitch of being a bipartisan lawmaker. He has said that he would vote to end the tariffs. Under Trump, he's been very critical of the war, and those are two major factors we're seeing on the economic pain. - So he's sort of saying vote for me because I will stop Trump and Trump as it bad for us on the economy. Is essentially his sort of economic message, rather than like I go. - Yeah, and that's really Democrats economic message. Like in general, this cycle, which is it's not super detailed. They're basically banking on people feeling unhappy with Trump and unhappy with the economy and saying, like vote for us will be a check on him and be something different. - Shaw is running as an economic moderate, especially compared to some other high profile Democrats around the country. At the town hall, he was asked about the rise of the democratic socialists, and what do you think of that wing at the party? - What about the people who are currently running for both the House and the Senate who are professed to be socialists and/or communists because they're in the democratic socialists of America? How are you going to work with them and do you denounce them for being against our constitutional republic? - Yeah, I don't have much in common with those types of folks in terms of what my beliefs are. What can I say about them? This is politics. You've got people in both parties that I absolutely don't agree with. And while I was down there, if you saw, in the state legislature, I'd vehemently disagree with a lot of my own party again and again. And so all I can do is I try to go down there and I try to work with people. I try to ask myself, where can I find something in common or do I don't care what it is? We'll find something in common that we can work on together and solve problems with the American people. Maybe they believe in some of the things that I just talked about. - Shaw's Republican opponent is Jay Feeley. He's a former NFL kicker who played for several NFL teams, including the Arizona Cardinals. He was recruited to run for the seat by President Trump. It's his first time running for office. Eliza met him outside his campaign office. - That's good, guys. - Okay, thank you guys for making the time. And we're gonna-- - I want you to have a ball for dinner. - I have been there since 2019. - No, thanks. We also sat down with Feeley at his campaign office and had a conversation basically about why he was running and what he would do and he really is trying to pitch himself as a different personality than Trump, for sure, but not much daylight between him and the president, not very critical of the president. And he's calculating that this is a district that has gone for Trump before and that voters here tend to lean a little bit more Republican. - What Feeley is doing is talking a lot about democratic socialists. Here he is and his interview with Eliza. - And there is a fear of the Democrat party embracing socialism. There's a fear of what is happening within their party. I do believe they're having a civil war within their own party. And for the first time in my lifetime, we've seen a political party willing to embrace these policies that would fundamentally change our country forever going forward. And they are not hiding the policies that they want to embrace. Things like abolish prisons, abolish borders. Like you haven't heard these terms in politics ever in the history of our country. And so I think that very much concerns the average voter. - And so Feeley is really trying to lean into that part of the democratic party and the division and make the pitch that like capitalists, Trump's economic policies are the ones that make the most sense. Shaw is not a socialist, but if you were driving down the street here, you would absolutely think he was. There are many, many signs with him and Bernie Sanders that say socialist on them. - How is Feeley talking about the economy? Or is he trying not to? - I think you can't not right now because it is the biggest issue for voters, but he is talking about it like yes, people are in pain and he's blaming a lot of it on Biden. - But when I talk to them, this is the way that I would say it to them. If you bought something in 2020 that cost $100, today it cost $127 because it's gone up 27%. 21 of those dollars are from Joe Biden. The increase in inflation under Joe Biden does not go away after his term ends. Trump then is responsible for say six to seven dollars of that increase. - He's talked about how Trump has tried to make things better, acknowledging that the war raised gas prices. This is again sort of what we heard from other Trump supporters, but felt like it had to happen. He said he would like to be out of war soon, but it's difficult to do. - Feeley has also suggested tax cuts to lower costs and supports data center development because he says they bring in new jobs and boost the local economy. Though he thinks consumers should be protected from rising energy prices. - So just broadening out of Arizona a bit, like how would you say the economy is resonating as an issue in these midterms? - The economy is the biggest or one of the biggest issues across the entire country. And it depends where you're looking on what specifically, but nobody is feeling great about their day-to-day costs. The Midwest has been particularly problematic for Republicans this cycle. We have seen races come online for Democrats that really have no business being competitive for Democrats. Iowa, Kansas are seen as toss ups. The huge part of that is the tariffs and different policies from the Trump administration related to farming that have really hit the agriculture community economically. Alaska is seen as competitive. Alaska has very high gas prices right now. That's what's affecting voters every single day. When they are making choices at home, when they're walking out the door, at least according to polling, at least according to how things are looking right now, people are not giving Trump and Republicans high marks on the economy. And that might just benefit Democrats. - If Democrats do take the House in the Senate, what would that even mean for the country's economic agenda? I mean, how much of a difference would it potentially even make? - It's not really clear because Trump is still in power. So Democrats can pass all the legislation they want. And by the way, if they do by some chance take back the Senate, there's almost no way they're getting the super majority in the Senate, which would be 60 votes needed for most things. - To overcome the cell-abuster. - Yes. So they would need bipartisan chips still on things. And so it's really hard to see what they can actually put forward. They can make life much more miserable for Trump. They can stop him from passing priorities. They can open investigations into him, his cabinet, his allies. They can stop him from getting nominations through. So if you're a Trump, you certainly don't want them to take back the House and the Senate, but then actually getting to put forward an economic agenda that will make a difference. The chances of that are very low. (soft music) - Around the country, we heard from our listeners about how the economy is influencing our vote. - The economy is affecting how I'm voting. I think we all are feeling it. It's feeling like our money can't help us at all. It feels like we keep falling into more debt. And it's unfortunate. - Obviously prices are high across the board. And I'm worried about having to pay higher prices on diesel, especially. When it comes to buying groceries, the grocery store. - I'm a millennial and I just have never felt like I'm working harder and getting less ahead. And it's just been really demoralizing to be a small business winner. And to feel like we don't have the means to compete with the large monopolized conglomerates that now exist and dominate the market. - I have had conversations recently with high-level advisors who are on these campaigns that are like, unless the war stops, unless something dramatically changes. and the cost of living, we are going to lose. And we're seeing that because voters vote with what affects them. And there are a few things that affect them more than how much it costs to live. And something like gas or groceries, things you absolutely need to have. If those are starting to feel out of reach for people, it's not a good sign for the party in power. And unfortunately for Republicans right now, they have all the levers of government. (upbeat music) Next week on Red Widenhoo, the GOP won a lot of Latino voters in South Texas in 2024. Can it keep them? - Do you regret your vote for Trump? - Uh, well, yes, I regret my vote for Trump the same way. I regret it my vote for Biden. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Red Widenhoo is part of the journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. (upbeat music) This episode is produced by Pierce Singy and edited by Katherine Burr, audio engineering by Sam Bair. I'm Ryan Cunison. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Fact checking by Nicole Posolko. Special thanks to Matt Quang, Chris Matthews, Sarah Platte and the whole journal team. The journal will be back with a regular episode this afternoon. And the next installment of Red Widenhoo will be out next Wednesday. (upbeat music) See you then.