Trump’s love of eminent domain strikes another contrarian note

It's clearly to the advantage of Donald Trump that the 2016 Republican nomination race is not about ideas — because so many of the GOP frontrunner's ideas diverge quite sharply from those of the party's conservative base whose votes he needs. 

This week, the issue was “eminent domain,” the doctrine endorsed by the Supreme Court in June 2005 in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, prompting fierce criticism on the left and the right. The ruling upheld the right of a municipality to force the transfer of land from a private owner to a private developer when the redevelopment is deemed to further the public good. 

But unlike the conservative and liberal critics who branded it a misinterpretation of the Constitution and a dangerous precedent, Trump called eminent domain a “wonderful thing.”

Speaking to Fox News’ Bret Baier on Tuesday, the real-estate mogul praised the process. “You're not taking property. … You're paying a fortune for that property,” he said, contending that the original owners are paid “four, five, six, ten times what it’s worth.”

Trump, citing his own experience with eminent domain in clearing areas for his property developments, said that people who resist such transfers “just want money,” and that the redevelopment created “thousands of jobs.”

Critics have questioned that argument, pointing to negligible job gains in many such developments, while events since the Supreme Court decision have played out awkwardly in New London, Connecticut, home to the Kelo property. First, city officials tried to charge residents of the condemned area back rent for the time they didn’t vacate after the declaration of eminent domain. Then, after some political wrangling, compensation for the displaced was increased and most of the area tenants moved to other parts of the state. The home of Susette Kelo was physically moved to another neighborhood, but Kelo moved to another town.

The redeveloper of the property never obtained financing, so the land remained undeveloped. Standing empty, the Kelo lot provided no tax revenue to the city or state.

Pfizer, the company whose employees were supposed to populate the new development, went through a spurt of mergers, consolidating properties and eventually abandoning its New London facility in 2010, eliminating over 1,000 area jobs. The cost to New London for the purchase and clearing of the tract has been estimated at $78 million. Ten years after the landmark decision, the land remains undeveloped.

A 2007 study by the Institute for Land Justice, a think-tank opposed to eminent domain, listed a number of what it said were disparate effects of eminent domain. “Taken together, more residents in areas targeted by eminent domain — as compared to those in surrounding communities — are ethnic or racial minorities, have completed significantly less education, live on significantly less income, and significantly more of them live at or below the federal poverty line,” read the report, as quoted in the International Business Times.

But Trump’s praise of eminent domain is unlikely to win him more friends in the conservative wing of the GOP — in the Baier interview, Trump was confronted with the staunch opposition to eminent domain by the Club for Growth, a mainstay of conservative Republican economic policy which has taken out ads attacking the frontrunner on the issue. 

“I think it's a great subject — it's a very interesting subject,” Trump said. “I fully understand the conservative approach, but I don't think it was explained to most conservatives.”

Eminent domain is unlikely to become a make-or-break issue among a significant segment of early primary voters in this election cycle, but it is an issue that resonates with some populists in the GOP (especially those who live near nature preserves and in waterfront communities). And this is far from the first time this year that Trump has adopted positions considered anathema to Republican die-hards.

With each contrarian emanation, political soothsayers have waited for Trump’s supporters to flee; as of today, they still wait. Though Trump’s poll numbers have started to slip a bit, he still leads most surveys, with the other nonpoliticians, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, often filling out the top three. And in leading the polls and never having been elected to anything, that’s about where the similarities end.

Eminent domain might not be a popular idea these days in GOP establishment circles, but with Republican rank-and-file, the 2016 election does not seem to be about policy ideas. Instead, voters appear fed up with “insiders.” For Trump, the challenge might not be so much about convincing voters he shares their positions, but in holding on to the mantle of “outsider.”

Unfortunately for Trump, it is one piece of territory eminent domain cannot claim.