MONTCLAIR, N.J. (AP) — A few years ago, Allison Posner was barely involved in politics.
Now the 42-year-old mother of two from Maplewood, New Jersey, hands out food and diapers to immigrant families outside a nearby detention facility. She waves signs on a highway overpass in between school pickups and orthodontist appointments. And this weekend, she’ll lead a “No Kings” protest march across this affluent town alongside her husband, her children and thousands of others who are convinced that President Donald Trump represents a direct threat to American democracy.
“The people in the suburbs are definitely radicalizing,” said Posner, a freelance actor.
A growing faction of concerned citizens living in suburban communities across the United States — places once known for political moderation or even conservatism — are increasingly positioned on the front lines of the anti-Trump resistance. More than a year into the Republican president’s second term, the so-called “soccer moms” are becoming bona fide activists taking to their well-manicured streets to fight Trump and his allies.
The leftward lurch could cost Republicans control of Congress for the president’s final two years in office. It could also reshape the Democratic Party by elevating a fresh crop of fiery progressive candidates emboldened to push back against the Trump administration more aggressively than the establishment may prefer.
Indivisible, the activist organization spearheading the third round of No Kings protests this weekend, said roughly two-thirds of more than 3,000 planned demonstrations will be held outside urban areas. Overall, more than 9 million people are expected to turn out nationwide for what leaders predict will be the largest single day of protesting in U.S. history.
“We’re going to be everywhere,” said Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin.
Organizers said sign-ups have been especially enthusiastic in suburban areas with high-profile congressional races like Scottsdale, Arizona; Langhorne, Pennsylvania; East Cobb, Georgia; and here in northern New Jersey’s 11th district, which holds a special election April 7.
Democratic voters last month chose Analilia Mejia, a former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders, as their candidate to replace Mikie Sherrill, the more moderate Democrat who was recently elected as New Jersey’s governor.
Posner said she’s excited to have a fighter represent her district, someone who can channel the outrage that she sees every day.
“I’m seeing people from the PTA or the neighborhood who would have never joined a protest in the past, who are now asking how they can get involved,” Posner said. “This is not some other people’s fight. This is our fight.”
‘Hair on fire’
For decades, affluent suburbs like those in northern New Jersey helped elect Republicans who fit the districts they represented: business-oriented, culturally moderate and disinterested in ideological fights.
That began to change in the Trump era.
Across the country, college-educated suburban voters recoiled from Trump’s brand of politics. They shifted sharply toward Democrats in the 2018 midterms and in the presidential elections that followed. Districts like New Jersey’s 11th, once a Republican stronghold, have since become part of a new liberal coalition rooted in places that were, until very recently, politically competitive.
Even in Summit, New Jersey, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, Jeff Naiman feels like he’s living in an “authoritarian nightmare” of Trump’s making.
“It’s like our hair is on fire,” says Naiman, a 59-year-old radiologist who leads his local chapter of Indivisible. “Our country’s being torn apart.”
He’s supporting Mejia, and he has no doubt that she will win next month’s special election — and again in November’s general election.
“In this environment,” Naiman said, “I think the chances of her losing the general election are basically zero.”
Mejia, an outspoken progressive activist endorsed by Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., emerged from the crowded Democratic primary last month, beating more moderate candidates like former congressman Tom Malinowski.
She’s critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, calls for the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and backs Medicare for All. She’s also eager to raise concerns about what she describes as Trump’s dictatorial tendencies, and will be one of the featured speakers at a “No Kings” protest this weekend.
“A ZIP code does not protect anyone from rising violent authoritarianism,” she said in an interview.
Mejia still describes herself as a “soccer mom,” even as her Republican critics accuse her of trying to soften her activist image ahead of Election Day.
“My youngest plays baseball and soccer, my oldest lacrosse and basketball,” she said. “And when I take my children to activities, to games, and I speak to other parents, I know that we’re all experiencing this economy and this political moment very similarly.”
Mejia defended herself against accusations of antisemitism for her position on Israel, which she accused of committing genocide in the war in Gaza, a topic that emerged as a key issue in the race.
“When I say Palestinians have rights, like Jewish people and Israelis have rights, that is not antisemitism, that is humanism,” she said while acknowledging there is antisemitism within the Republican and Democratic parties. “I am an Afro Latina raising two Black sons in America. I know othering kills. I know how dangerous it is when we dehumanize communities.”
A Republican balancing act
New Jersey’s 11th district was represented by a Republican until Sherrill was elected during the 2018 midterm elections that served as a harsh verdict at the halfway mark of Trump’s first term.
Joe Hathaway, the Republican nominee in next month’s special election and a town councilman from Randolph Township, hopes to convince voters that Mejia is too radical for them. Republican strategists in Washington, too, believe a surge of far-left Democratic candidates nationwide like Mejia in otherwise moderate districts might help their party maintain its razor-thin House majority this fall.
Yet suburban Republicans are facing serious political headwinds from the leader of their own party in the White House. Hathaway, for example, initially declined to say whether he voted for Trump.
“I don’t think it’s important,” he said in an interview, before acknowledging that he cast his ballot for the president three times. “This job is representing the district, NJ-11 comes first, before a president, before your party.”
Hathaway backs the president’s war in Iran and many of the economic policies in Trump’s “one big, beautiful” bill. But he was also quick to highlight areas of disagreement.
The Republican said he supports most of the Democrats’ demands in the Department of Homeland Security shutdown fight, including proposals to require federal immigration agents to wear body cameras, clearly identify themselves, take off face masks and receive better training.
He also wants Republicans who lead Congress to stand up to Trump, whose use of executive authority Hathaway said is “pressure testing” the checks and balances outlined in the Constitution.
“Congress needs to reassert that it is the first branch of government and take more of a leadership role than it’s been doing,” he said.
Inside the suburban shift
Suburban Americans have been slowly moving away from the Republicans over the past 15 years, according to Gallup polling that tracks party affiliation over time.
Trump was unable to stop the shift despite warnings that Democrats would “destroy” the suburbs with low-income housing.
In 2020, Joe Biden won 54% of voters who said they lived in the suburbs while Trump won only 44%, according to AP VoteCast. That was a substantial improvement on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s performance in a smaller survey of validated 2016 voters conducted by the Pew Research Center, which found that Clinton and Trump split the group about evenly.
The suburbs have also grown more diverse and educated over the past few decades, demographic shifts that may make Democrats more confident. In both of the past two presidential elections, AP VoteCast found that college-educated and non-white suburban voters were much likelier to support the Democratic candidate.
Naiman, the Summit radiologist, said he’s witnessed a transformation in his town, which was represented by Republicans at the state and federal level for decades until Trump took over.
“I don’t think that Summit is going to be swinging towards Republicans anytime soon — at least not as long as Trumpism is around,” he said.
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Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed.
Steve Peoples, The Associated Press
