UPDATE 1-In U.S. campaign homestretch, Democrats focus on healthcare


Reuters | Updated: 01-11-2018 20:52 IST | Created: 01-11-2018 20:52 IST

From suburbs to conservative rural areas, Democrats seeking a majority in at least one house of the U.S. Congress in next week's elections are spending the last days of the campaign on one message: They will protect Americans' healthcare coverage.

The strategy is clear in campaigns like that of Democrat Andy Kim, who has spent the past 16 months trying to unseat Republican U.S. Congressman Tom MacArthur of southern New Jersey for his role in passing a House of Representatives bill that would have repealed the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

That effort failed in the Senate by a single vote following dozens of Republican votes over the years to repeal former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature domestic law, popularly known as Obamacare. Democrats warn that if Republicans keep control of Congress in Tuesday's elections, people could lose coverage for pre-existing health conditions and other protections afforded by the law.

MacArthur is one of 67 vulnerable Republican incumbents who have voted to repeal Obamacare. If they lose their seats, it will be partly because of voters like Laurel Smith, who has a son with a rare genetic disorder. She voted for MacArthur in both 2014 and 2016 before he authored a last-minute amendment that resuscitated the repeal effort in the House in May 2017.

"I voted for Tom MacArthur because I truly believed he was the best person for the job," said Smith, 58, from Medford, New Jersey. "I've never been so disappointed in my life."

Democrats' focus on healthcare extends beyond House races to key gubernatorial and Senate races, including contests in deeply conservative states where Republican President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2016.

The strategy is a sharp shift for Democrats, who were wary of defending Obamacare in previous election years when the law was unpopular with many voters.

Democrats are favored to flip the 23 seats they need to secure a House majority, although they are considered a long shot to pick up the two seats needed to take over the Senate.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll http://polling.reuters.com/#!response/TR112/type/week/dates/2018 1001-20181030/collapsed/true of 2,673 Americans conducted Oct. 1 through Oct. 28 found healthcare was the top issue on the minds of Democratic and independent voters heading into the elections, and third in priority among Republicans, behind immigration and the economy.

It is a factor in races across the country, including Arizona where Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick is seeking to flip a Republican seat in a congressional district covering much of Tucson and return to the House.

First elected to Arizona's 1st Congressional District in 2008, she was defeated in her 2010 re-election bid mostly because, she said, of negative reaction to her vote for Obamacare.

Now running in the 2nd Congressional District, she believes the picture has changed.

"I hear from people, 'Please don't repeal the Affordable Care Act,'" Kirkpatrick said in an interview.

Her Republican opponent, Lea Marquez Peterson, supports replacing Obamacare with "piecemeal" provisions that offer businesses and insurance providers more flexibility.

"What we have now is not working," Marquez Peterson said in an interview.

TRUMP TAKES ON ISSUE

Vulnerable Democratic senators in states won by Trump are also focusing on the issue. Among them is Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who has criticized her Republican challenger, state Attorney General Josh Hawley, for joining a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general seeking to overturn Obamacare.

Trump, who vowed throughout his campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act and fumed when the effort failed, is due in Missouri on Thursday, the second stop on his six-day campaign tour of battleground states.

On Friday, he will travel to West Virginia, which he won by more than 40 percentage points in 2016. The state's Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, has attacked his opponent, Republican state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, for participating in the same lawsuit joined by Hawley.

Republicans have argued that they are also committed to maintaining those protections, drawing accusations of hypocrisy from Democrats and healthcare experts who say the repeal of Obamacare would have sent premiums skyrocketing for certain people with pre-existing conditions.

Last week, Trump tweeted that Republicans would "totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not!"

Former Vice President Joe Biden may also address the issue in a Thursday campaign appearance in North Dakota with embattled Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

'SUPER PASSIONATE'

Democrats are hoping healthcare can help them draw in young voters like Bianey Diaz, a student at LaGrange College in Georgia, who attended a recent rally held by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who will be joined at campaign events on Thursday by Oprah Winfrey.

"I'm really super passionate about pre-existing conditions – that's the big thing with personal experience in my own family and friends, loved ones," Diaz said.

The New Jersey race between MacArthur and Kim, a former national security adviser in Obama's administration, is a virtual tie, according to recent polls. In 2016, MacArthur won re-election by 20 percentage points, while Trump carried the district by 6 points.

At a Wednesday night debate, Kim again excoriated MacArthur for the Obamacare repeal amendment he wrote that would have "gutted" pre-existing conditions protections by making costs for those patients prohibitively expensive.

"This is personal," Kim said. "This is not about politics."

MacArthur countered that the amendment specifically guaranteed protections for pre-existing conditions.

"You continue to say things like that that you know are dishonest," he said.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in New York; additional reporting by Maria Caspani in Atlanta, David Morgan in Pittsburgh, Jilian Mincer in New York and Daniel Trotta in Tucson, Arizona; Editing by Scott Malone, Peter Cooney and Jonathan Oatis)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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