Be like Jeb! A suburban agenda for Republicans, with models to emulate.

THE stories of Tim Pawlenty and Mark Green are, up to a point, similar. Both are Midwestern Republican ex-legislators, and both ran for governor. But Pawlenty succeeded--first in a hard-fought three-way contest for governor of Minnesota in 2002, and again in a narrow three-way contest in 2006--while Green fell short in his 2006 bid to unseat Democratic governor Jim Doyle in Wisconsin. A respectable case can be made that suburban voters accounted for the difference between their fates. Pawlenty won suburban majorities in both of his gubernatorial runs, with particularly large margins in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Green, a four-term congressman, managed no better than a tie with Doyle in the overall Wisconsin suburban vote, and flat-out lost most of the suburban neighborhoods except those around Milwaukee. If Pawlenty had only matched Green's statewide performance in the suburbs, he would have been a gubernatorial also-ran, rather than a two-term governor on John McCain's shortlist for VP.

The notion that the Republican ascendancy of the 1990s was propelled by a growing and favorable suburban electorate is commonplace and oversimplified. But it's also true. While in a few southern and western states GOP candidates were able to win primarily by racking up huge majorities in rural areas and small towns to offset huge deficits in urban votes, the electoral math worked differently in most competitive states. Republican-leaning independents in burgeoning suburban and exurban communities were a pivotal element of winning coalitions in states from Washington to Florida. The suburbs contained large numbers of the kinds of voters who had been gravitating to the GOP during the past two decades, such as entrepreneurs and married couples with children. High rates of homeownership made suburban voters especially allergic to tax increases, a core Republican issue.

Not surprisingly, then, Republicans have repeatedly outpolled Democrats in suburban precincts, although not always by much. According to the 2004 exit polls, Republican candidates for U.S. House won 51 percent of the suburban vote, while the two parties each won handily in their respective geographical bases--Democrats by 55-43 in urban precincts and Republicans by 54-44 in rural ones. But in 2006, Democrats managed a slight edge (50-48) in the suburbs, which made up nearly half the electorate that year. The significance of suburban voters to winning GOP coalitions is even more pronounced when you look at state races. In 1994, 1998, and 2002, Republican candidates for governor in New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, and other non-southern states typically won their victories by strong showings in the suburbs. In states that went for the Democrats in 2002, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, the successful Democratic candidates had erased or reversed the suburban-vote margins. And by 2006, Democratic candidates for governor were able to crush Republicans in the suburbs of many of these states--by 57-40 in Ohio, 59-41 in Pennsylvania, and an astounding 61-34 in Arizona. It is no exaggeration to say that the GOP is simply dead in the water in such places unless it regains its ability to attract suburban voters.

In fashioning a national strategy to accomplish this, it makes sense for Republicans to begin with a closer analysis of their (few) 2006 victories in competitive states. For example, what did Pawlenty in Minnesota and Charlie Crist in Florida do to retain the allegiance of suburban voters in an otherwise challenging year for their party? The short answer is that they retained the traditional GOP advantage on tax and fiscal policy (albeit somewhat clumsily in Pawlenty's case) while communicating effectively and credibly in the suburbs on close-to-home issues that swing voters there care deeply about, such as education and health care. Novel? Hardly. But essential.

A SHIFTING MIX OF ISSUES

To some extent, Republican politicians and the post-1980 GOP coalition have lately been victims of their own policy successes. Victories over rampant inflation, economic sclerosis, and the Soviet empire during the 1980s resulted in a general changing of the political subject. Similarly, during the 1990s, growing Republican strength in Congress and state and local governments led to the implementation of tough conservative policies on crime and welfare. From their peaks in 1992, rates of violent and property crime in the U.S. had fallen by 38 percent and 33 percent, respectively, by 2006. Regarding the need to reform cash welfare programs, GOP governors such as Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson led the way during the early 1990s, setting the stage for historic federal legislation in 1996. Welfare caseloads plummeted, as did the poverty rate (the latter did post an uptick during the recent recession, but the long-term trend remains downward).

These issues had captured public attention and propelled Republican electoral gains for decades. Crime and welfare dependency had both soared during most of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. These trends worried otherwise-centrist swing voters, for good reason. In 1964, as President Lyndon Johnson began articulating his plans for the Great Society, about 2.1 percent of Americans were receiving cash welfare assistance. The rate rose to 5.2 percent by 1972 and averaged around 5 percent for the next quarter century; in 1996, it was 4.8 percent. But by 2000, it had fallen back to the pre-Great Society rate of 2.1. This was a breathtaking achievement. It also had the effect of moving an issue with a traditionally Republican edge off the public agenda.

By the beginning of this decade, then, the Reagan-era Republican coalition had begun to lose some of its issue edge. Foreign policy seemed less salient. Crime rates, welfare rolls, and even social indicators such as teen pregnancy and abortion rates were down. Taxes remained a core issue for GOP campaigns, but as many families saw prices rise dramatically for services such as college education and health care, some became at least willing to listen to the Democratic argument that smaller government wouldn't necessarily save them enough money in taxes to offset the benefits of existing or potential government spending programs. More generally, says Democratic campaign consultant Brad Crone, Republicans stopped being the party of new ideas, at least in the minds of independent voters. "They had been disenchanted with the status quo in the 1990s, and that gave Republican candidates an opening to communicate something new," says Crone--but by the end of the decade, the GOP began to look as if it were more interested in "protecting incumbents" than in "selling new ideas." The underwhelming performance of George W. Bush and many Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates in 2000 was a clear sign that the GOP coalition had electoral problems. Its leaders weren't prepared to present independents or even some marginally Republican voters a credible set of solutions on emerging suburban issues such as education, health care, and transportation. (Remember when presidential candidate Al Gore talked about traffic congestion? Conservatives laughed. Swing voters didn't.)

But only a few months into the precariously established Bush administration came September 11. Suddenly, foreign and defense issues were again of paramount political importance, and again Democrats proved to be ham-handed and untrustworthy on foreign affairs. Ensuing Republican victories in 2002 and 2004 were the result primarily of wartime politics plus superior campaign logistics. Even as they won federal races on foreign policy, however, Republicans tellingly began to lose key state and local races. While 2002 was a good year for Republican legislative candidates, Democrats picked up governorships in big states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois. In 2004, Republicans posted significant losses in state legislatures even as President Bush was reelected.

In November 2006, the hollowness of the down-ballot Republican party finally resulted in a cave-in, with Democrats picking up six governorships, more than 320 legislative seats, and hundreds of city and county offices across the country. Much that the GOP had gained over the previous twelve years was erased, with Democratic governors in power in 28 states and Democratic legislatures in 23 (compared with 22 Republican governors and only 15 GOP legislatures). While many congressional losses could be chalked up to personal scandals and disaffection with the Iraq War, the state and local losses point to a weakened Republican party with major challenges in message and relevance, and with particularly bleak prospects outside the South.

THE MINNESOTA PATH

A notable, if complicated, exception could be found in the blue state of Minnesota. The state house flipped from Republican to DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor, the Democratic ticket in the state); the DFL majority in the state senate grew far stronger; Republicans lost ground in the congressional delegation; DFL nominee Amy Klobuchar easily won her race for U.S. Senate--but at the same time, Governor Pawlenty was able to eke out a 47-46-6 plurality win over DFL attorney general Mike Hatch and Peter Hutchinson, the nominee of the Independence party of former governor Jesse Ventura. This was actually an increase in Pawlenty's vote from 2002, when he won 44 percent against the DFL's Roger Moe (37 percent) and Tim Penny (16 percent), the Independence nominee that year.

Pawlenty demonstrated in his 2002 election an ability to mix traditional GOP messages on taxes with appeals to suburban voters on other issues. His no-new-taxes pledge was essential to securing the Republican nomination and mobilizing conservative voters for the general election that year, but Pawlenty also called for higher academic standards in the public schools, merit pay for teachers, and billions of dollars in new bond funding for highways to alleviate congestion in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, one of the ten most-congested metro areas in the country. "Pawlenty is a conservative but he is also very much a pragmatist," says Mitch Pearlstein, president of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis. As majority leader in the GOP-controlled state house during the Ventura years, Pawlenty had worked effectively with an independent governor and Democratic senate to enact tri-partisan legislation, including tax cuts, so it wasn't much of a stretch to present himself to unaffiliated voters as a problem-solver. He is also a likable politician with a regular-guy image: During the campaign, Pawlenty said that Republicans should be "the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." Independents in the suburbs broke his way in 2002. (The third-party bid by Penny, formerly a DFL congressman, also played a role in Pawlenty's victory, by pulling votes disproportionately from the DFL column.)

Upon becoming governor, Pawlenty received an unpleasant surprise. He had promised on the campaign trail to balance a state budget more than $1 billion in the red without raising taxes, only to discover after the election that the budget hole was really closer to $4.5 billion. To his credit, Pawlenty followed through on spending restraint and resisted calls for tax hikes. To his discredit, though, he eventually resorted to the gimmick of endorsing a 75-cent-per-pack increase in tobacco taxes that he called a "health-impact fee." It passed. Fortunately, the terminological trick proved to be too cute: The national tobacco settlement with state governments in the 1990s had allowed the states to raise taxes, but not fees; a court struck down the "fee" hike at the end of 2005, just as new revenue numbers were revealing a welcome budget surplus. In general, though, Pawlenty stayed to the right on budget matters, and in the 2006 vote he ended up winning a solid 92 percent of Republicans and 87 percent of self-identified conservatives.

That GOP support certainly helped. But his reelection bid was also greatly strengthened by his ability to address the everyday concerns of suburban parents--and independents. Savaged by political and media critics for education "cuts," for example, Pawlenty was able to focus public attention on his success in instituting higher academic standards and graduation requirements. (Minnesota's reading and math scores on national tests were in fact slightly higher in 2005 than they had been before his election.) This is not to suggest that Pawlenty was able to wrest the education issue away from the DFL nominee, Hatch; according to surveys by the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, Hatch still retained a sizable edge on education. But the margin was narrowed. "The difference was not big enough to propel Mike Hatch to victory," says Eric Ostermeier, a political scientist at the institute and author of its Smart Politics blog.

On transportation, the Pawlenty administration delivered major road-construction projects ahead of schedule by using an innovative contracting model, and also converted the car-pool lanes of a major Minneapolis artery into high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes--a promising strategy both for managing congestion and for raising needed highway revenues from specific users rather than general taxpayers.

As for health care, Pawlenty was able to avoid the familiar trap of GOP defensiveness. He went on the attack with a TV spot warning that a Mike Hatch proposal would increase the cost of health plans by encouraging lawsuits against insurers for punitive damages. In public appearances, Pawlenty talked enthusiastically about health savings accounts and the broader industry movement toward consumer-driven health care, based on price transparency and patient incentives. (While he has also talked about "universal coverage" for all Minnesota children, and after the election promised to promote policies to accomplish that goal in alliance with the now-Democratic legislature, it would be a mistake to assume that Pawlenty favors simply expanding current government-insurance programs.) Hatch still outpolled Pawlenty on the issue of health care, and it was likely less important to swing voters than were taxes and education; but the governor made it impossible for Democrats to label him callous or inattentive. "Republicans allow themselves to be put in a box of defending the status quo and looking tentative about reform," says Greg Scandlen, a former insurance-industry analyst who now heads the Maryland-based group Consumers for Health Care Choices. On this, as on other suburban issues, Pawlenty stayed out of the box--and now has a second term.

SUNSHINE SUPERMAN

If Tim Pawlenty can be described as a maverick politician marrying conservatism and populism in a blue state, the best description of outgoing Florida governor Jeb Bush would be a transformational politician marrying conservatism and innovation in a red state. Actually, while Florida did reelect a solidly Republican state legislature and essentially gave Bush a third term with the election of Gov. Charlie Crist in 2006, it's important to remember that the state is highly competitive--and not just, famously, in recent presidential races. Crist won by more than 300,000 votes in a state where Democrats still outnumber Republicans by more than 300,000 votes. The GOP has done well in Florida state politics because it has been successful in both its campaign mechanics and its administration of state government. The outgoing governor deserves, and widely receives, credit for these accomplishments.

Jeb Bush was one of the few talented, well-funded Republican candidates who lost in 1994 (even as his less-wonkish brother became governor of Texas). Immediately setting his sights on another gubernatorial run four years later, Bush created a public-policy foundation and convened political and policy experts to map out a plan not just for attaining power in Tallahassee but for what to do with it. After the 1998 election, Bush was ready with a broad and aggressive agenda--on fiscal restraint, tax cuts, and social issues, to be sure, but also on education, health care, transportation, and conservation. For just about every free-market idea articulated by think tankers and policy veterans over the past two decades, you can find a corresponding policy that the Jeb Bush administration sought to implement, often effectively. For example:

Education. Bush promoted higher academic standards, merit pay, regular testing, and consequences for failure (including public and private school choice). His main voucher program has been challenged in court--but at least Bush, unlike some of his fellow Republican governors, had enacted a voucher program to be challenged. Reading and math scores rose markedly during the Bush years.

Fiscal discipline. Bush signed into law nearly $20 billion in tax cuts during his tenure, using his line-item veto, reductions in the state workforce, and privatization to spend state dollars more efficiently. Although some private contracts have proven problematic, a risk that can be mitigated but not eliminated through careful program design and administration, most of Bush's more than 100 privatization initiatives have succeeded, freeing up more than $2 billion to return to Florida taxpayers and spend on high-priority public services.

Health care. Florida's promising pilot program for reforming Medicaid through the use of consumer choice and market mechanisms has already been making national waves. More generally, Bush blocked costly regulations on health plans and held Medicaid spending relatively low--impressive, given the state's growing geriatric population.

Transportation. Bush resisted calls for expensive high-speed trains, arguing that they would consume scarce dollars needed to expand capacity to alleviate congestion on Florida's major highways. The administration contracted out the collection of tolls to private firms and pushed through legislation to build more toll lanes.

The new governor, Crist, differs from Bush on some matters of style and substance, but for the most part he asked voters to continue the Bush approach to governance. As a former Jeb Bush administration official, and the elected education commissioner when Bush pushed through his school-reform plan, Crist could correctly say that he had already had a hand in the governor's successful reform initiatives. His Democratic opponent, Congressman Jim Davis, said the Bush approach had been disastrous and it was time for a change. The voters--including solid majorities of suburban voters in southwestern, central, and northern Florida--agreed with Crist. Nearly 70 percent of voters in exit polls approved of Bush's job performance.

In Florida as in Minnesota, Republican reformers didn't try to sell their agenda merely with ideological slogans. Nor did they embrace only the most pristinely free-market ideas. For example, while Bush did promote parental choice in education, he spent more time and political capital on the issue of standards and testing. Because most suburban parents use public schools and don't feel trapped within them, having often chosen their neighborhood with the attendance zone in mind, choice alone is an insufficient education message for them (though I would argue that, for both political and policy reasons, it is a necessary component of a successful GOP message). Michael Petrilli, a former Education Department official now working at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, an education think tank in Washington, D.C., says that Republicans should avoid falling into the trap of advocating choice for its own sake; they should articulate instead the educational benefits--stronger discipline, higher standards, better teaching--their reforms seek to extend to families. Petrilli calls it the "Clinton approach": showing that you share the voters' concerns and aspirations before proposing a specific policy to address them.

Similarly, while health savings accounts are a promising reform, and consumer-driven plans are starting to gain significant market share among employer groups of all sizes, Republicans should resist the temptation to over-promise. To some extent, the rising price of health-care services is not only inevitable but is actually good news--it signifies that medical services are increasingly valued by consumers, because technology has boosted their efficacy and because people are living longer. Greg Scandlen of Consumers for Health Care Choices warns that too many opponents of government intrusion into health-care policies and decisions appear to be siding with private insurance bureaucracies that are at least as unpopular. "If the choice you put before people is between a private third-party payer and the government, a lot would choose the government," he says. The real choice is between consumer control and control by bureaucracy, public or private. Some suburban voters desire that personal control. Realistically, though, others will be nervous about it. Politicians sell the notion that government can deliver something for nothing because there is a market for that product.

While Pawlenty and Crist brought unique views and strengths to clearly distinguishable races, the political pros I've talked to consistently speak of a common characteristic: a likable, optimistic personality. Crist "was selling a message of hope and accessibility against a Democratic message of doom and gloom," says Rich Heffley, a Republican consultant who worked on the Crist campaign. In the Minnesota race, Hatch lost his temper in a media flap about an embarrassing comment by his running mate. "You may have heard of the expression 'Minnesota nice,'" says Ostermeier, the political scientist. "Hatch's conduct was not Minnesota nice."

In most of the country, in fact, independents and suburban swing voters may be worried about pocketbook and quality-of-life issues or dissatisfied with the political establishment, says Democratic consultant Crone, but they "like to see positives and solutions. Americans are basically an optimistic people." One might say that attracting these voters isn't about ideology, it's about confidence. Candidates who talk about challenging issues and propose new ideas (sometimes even risky ones), but do so with a smile, exude a comforting confidence. They obviously believe their solutions will work. Think Jeb Bush, think Ronald Reagan. Suburbanites busy with their own careers, families, and communities don't spend a lot of time pondering political questions. They are looking for someone to offer them credible, constructive answers. If Republican politicians believe that academic rigor and parental choice will improve schools, that consumer-driven health care is the right direction, and that markets and automobility are a better solution to transportation snarls than central planning and commuter rail, they shouldn't shy away from saying so, as long as they do it with a smile.

Come to think of it, if they don't believe these things, a suburban strategy for the GOP isn't worth having, anyway.

Mr. Hood is a syndicated columnist and president of the John Locke Foundation, a public-policy think tank in Raleigh, N.C.