“If you’re a Republican, conservative or libertarian looking at millennials who have generally voted Democrat, your silver lining is that there’s this freedom interest that they have,” Grayson said in an interview.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster who runs the firm Echelon Insights, said Uber’s city-by-city trench warfare “created this poster child example of what happens when the status quo uses government regulation to keep competition out of the market.” She added: “It doesn’t feel ideological, but it creates this example for what Republicans have been saying all along.”

In a statement, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus praised the role of innovators and companies shaking up old markets — and said government shouldn’t stand in the way of the innovation that consumers clearly want.