The ongoing struggle for suburban voters now extends to Critical Race Theory:

“In suburban areas, the number one cultural issue is critical race theory. The suburbs are on fire with anger,” said Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist who works on congressional races. “We are at the beginning of this issue, not the end.”…

While critical race theory is animating the party’s base, Republican operatives say the issue will have wider appeal than other cultural wedge issues because some parents see it as having a direct impact on their children’s education.

Republicans are zeroing in on winning back the white college-educated, suburban voters that abandoned them during former President Donald Trump’s tenure. A new study from Pew Research Center found that Biden won suburban voters by 11 percentage points in the 2020 election after Trump won them by two points in the 2016 election.

“Parents all over the country have been mobilized because they do not want their children being taught they are automatically racist because of their skin color. I fully expect Democrats’ support for this controversial theory to be at the center of 2022 campaigns,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer said in a statement to McClatchy. “The most compelling electoral issues are those that focus on the issue of fairness, and that’s why critical race theory will be incredibly damaging to every vulnerable Democrat.”

While it remains to be seen how effective this will be, multiple aspects of suburban life and history may fit:

1. Many suburbs were built on exclusion where whites worked to keep particular racial and ethnic groups out. Even as suburbs overall have become more diverse in recent decades, this has not necessarily occurred in all suburban communities.
2. Suburbanites are often viewed as individualistic and emphasizing meritocracy. They feel they made it there by their own success and then want to live in their private spaces (usually single-family homes).
3. While suburbanites in regular social life might want to avoid confrontation with neighbors, the emphasis on local control in suburbs means that national issues can spark conflict at the local level.

As the article asks, will this issue that touches on what suburbs are crowd out other common election issues like the economy or taxes?