LAWRENCE, Kan. — A decade ago, a Democrat was governor of Kansas. And Illinois. And Michigan. And Wisconsin. Since then, Republicans have dominated, winning gubernatorial races across much of the Midwest and implementing conservative policies that have remade the region in their image.
On Tuesday, there were signs of a shift toward the politics that had long defined the region. Although Republicans remain the strongest party in the center of the country, voters returned governorships to Democrats in those four states and sent Democrats to Congress in many suburban districts that had long been solidly Republican. Moderation plays well in the Midwest.
The results suggested that the much-discussed decline of the Midwest Democratic Party may have been exaggerated following President Trump's 2016 victory.
What happened in the Midwest this week, ending Republican control of three state capitals, was in some ways less a sharp shift in national ideology and more a return to the once-familiar political middle ground.
For at least some voters, the choices seemed less about heated debates over illegal immigration or who should be on the Supreme Court and more about meat-and-potatoes issues like fixing potholes and paying for schools. Some voters said they just don't care too much about one thing — red, blue or otherwise.
“I hope it's a shift to a more moderate coalition,” said Dorothy Hughes, 35, a Republican from suburban Kansas City, Kan., who is an ally of President Trump in the governor's race. She had become troubled by her party's dominance of the state, she said, and its growing conservatism. She was ready for something different.
“It benefits people in power to be challenged,” Ms Hughes said. “They will find better solutions if they have someone to deal with.”
Signs of Democratic strength spread across parts of the region. Democrats won several congressional seats held by Republicans in the Midwest, including Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Michigan. They secured full control of state government in Illinois by toppling Gov. Bruce Rauner, the Republican incumbent.
But there were also significant signs of Republican dominance. The party held the governorships in Iowa, Ohio and South Dakota despite close contests. He also held all but one of the state legislatures that he controlled in the Midwest. And races in that region helped Republicans maintain their hold on the Senate: They flipped three crucial seats in Midwestern states where Mr. Trump's message resonated, defeating Democrats Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.
The mixed result added to the uncertainty ahead of the 2020 presidential election. For both Republicans who had come to rely on the Midwest and Democrats who had written it off, all bets were off.
“There is an argument that the blue wall is being rebuilt,” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, who described the results in Minnesota as “at least a mini-blue wave.” There, Democrats held the governor's office and two seats in the United States Senate (including a special election for the seat vacated by Al Franken). Four competitive House seats from Minnesota districts were split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
“This was a kind of return to normality, which is political parity,” he said. “What I would call them are realistic elections.”
But Jennifer Carnahan, the chairwoman of the Minnesota Republican Party, attributed her party's losses in suburban congressional and state legislative races to “a very motivated bloc” of Democratic voters who register their distaste for the president.
“I don't think this was a vote on a middle ground,” Ms. Carnahan said. “I think it was really a vote against the president and it's unfortunate because the president has done so many great things.”
Across the region, some Democratic candidates have tried to frame their campaigns with blunt, local messages that distanced themselves from contentious philosophical debates and President Trump. Some seemed to celebrate the universal appeal of such messages – and their grassroots simplicity.
“Fix the Damn Roads” became a rallying cry for the campaign of Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat elected governor of Michigan. At one point, she shot an ad from the back of her car seat, promising to improve the state's roads and bridges.
In Kansas, Ms. Kelly promised to be “the governor of education,” a pitch that appealed to voters across party lines and helped her win big leads in several populous counties held by Mr. Trump.
Although Kansas is reliably Republican in presidential elections, residents have long elected fairly moderate governors from both political parties. That changed eight years ago, when Sam Brownback became governor and ordered a hard-right shift in state policies, including sweeping tax cuts that led to painful revenue shortfalls.
Tuesday's election between Ms. Kelly and Mr. Kobach, a Republican whose style and policies are similar to President Trump's, amounted to a choice between the state's more centrist past and its very conservative present.
“Everything has become very extreme,” said Rachael Pirner, 58, a Republican lawyer from Wichita who donated to Ms. Kelly's campaign and voted for her. He saw Ms. Kelly's victory as a return to her state's moderate roots, “a turn back to where we really are.”
“What happened in Kansas was a wave of common sense, a wave of bipartisanship,” Ms Kelly told supporters on Tuesday night. “This was not one side beating the other. They were all Democrats and Republicans and independents coming together to get our state back on track.”
In Wisconsin, Democrats kept Tammy Baldwin's US Senate seat and flipped the governor's seat, ousting Scott Walker, who had pushed the state sharply to the right for eight contentious years.
Mr. Walker, a shrewd politician, has long been a target of Democrats in the state, but they have failed to defeat him during three hotly contested elections, including a recall effort. After he took office in 2011, Democrats had often complained that his positions on issues like limits on union power and voter ID restrictions had polarized the state in ways it wasn't used to.
In the end, though, it may not have been the polarizing issues that made the biggest difference at the polls. Tony Evers, the Democrat who won an extremely close race to be elected governor, talked mostly about protecting health care coverage, fixing highways and paying for education.
“I think Scott Walker was overconfident and out of touch with the pressing concerns of people in Wisconsin,” said Sally Mather, a retired social worker who said she had voted for Mr. Evers. “People were looking at their schools, looking at their streets and saying, 'Wait a minute, what about me?'
