A tank of gas for Drew Brazie’s truck cost $35 more than it did toward the start of the year. Tariffs and rising prices kept scrambling the numbers for the construction projects he managed. A subcontractor said last week it would have to charge 23 percent more, because the price of steel was jumping — again.
It seemed to Brazie that President Donald Trump was doing exactly what he once railed against: starting wars, raising prices. And his party was going along with barely a peep.
The GOP congresswoman Brazie helped elect was distancing herself from Trump lately, but Brazie, a 39-year-old registered Republican, was unimpressed.
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She’s trying to get reelected, he told his wife, Kayla.
“I see through that ploy to try to separate themselves,” Kayla said.
Voters in red and blue states alike are heading to the polls deeply frustrated, fed up with high prices and skeptical of a war that’s disrupted the global economy and dragged on far longer than the president predicted. Reliably conservative places like Iowa — and this area south of Des Moines — have become fierce battlegrounds as Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to record lows.
Democrats are dreaming of a blue wave that breaks GOP control of Washington, curbs Trump’s final years in office and delivers a resounding public condemnation of his second term. Republicans are trying to hold on to at least the Senate and minimize their losses, arguing to voters that however frustrated they may be, Democrats would make things worse.
Angry voters head to the polls as the election is fought in red America
