A GOP Tax-Law Writer Faces Skeptics in His Minnesota District

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.—Rep. Erik Paulsen followed the classic congressional playbook: Score a plum committee spot, rack up bipartisan accomplishments, raise millions in campaign cash and help write a major tax law delivering tangible gains back home. That may not be enough. Seeking a sixth term in the Twin Cities’ western suburbs, Mr. Paulsen faces a pair of problems. The tax law isn’t popular among Americans—and neither is the president who signed it.

Mr. Paulsen is the most endangered Republican member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. His district, which includes the Mall of America and the headquarters of UnitedHealth Group Inc., hasn’t elected a House Democrat in 60 years. But Hillary Clinton won here in 2016, putting Mr. Paulsen on Democrats’ target list despite his 14-point victory two years ago. The race now leans Democratic, according to the Cook Political Report.

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Mr. Paulsen isn’t running from the tax law. He’s a fervent advocate, trumpeting the strong local economy to business owners and workers and arguing that the law’s effect on the economy has exceeded expectations. His ads hammer challenger Dean Phillips, suggesting the Democrat’s opposition to the law means he objects to the middle-class tax cuts it contained... Mr. Phillips is running, in part, on opposition to the law. The first-time candidate managed his family’s distilling company and co-founded gelato maker Talenti before launching a quirky campaign featuring a “Government Repair Truck” and a “Conversation Cottage” headquarters.

The Democrat says he would have voted against the law and instead sought a gradual corporate-tax rate cut and a plan tilted more toward middle-income families. “Many have been clinging to the Republican platform because of fiscal responsibility and consider this bill fiscally irresponsible,” Mr. Phillips said in his pitch to the district’s centrist Republicans. “Using this national credit card, that’s easy politics.”

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Three other Ways and Means members—Peter Roskam of Illinois, Mike Bishop of Michigan and Carlos Curbelo of Florida—are in tossup races as they try to sell their biggest achievement.

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Christopher Gibbons of Plymouth, a grocery-store manager, said he voted for Mr. Paulsen in some earlier elections but opposes him now. The tax law, he said, is “geared more toward the upper tier.”

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gop-tax-law-writer-faces-skeptics-in-his-minnesota-district-1538991000