Cultivating the rural vote in Indiana

The Washington Post published a feature over the weekend on Democrats' effort to flip red states, with a focus on Indiana.  Dan Balz reports on state party chair Mike Schmuhl's efforts:   

Indiana has 92 counties, and local organizations are the backbone of the party structure. Schmuhl said that as in many other Republican-trending states, the county Democratic parties “have just been completely decimated. They’re up against the ropes.”

When former Vermont governor Howard Dean was Democratic National Committee chair more than a decade ago, he promoted the idea of a 50-state campaign. His argument was that party building should not be limited to the relative handful of states that decide presidential elections. For Democrats to be competitive up and down the ballot, they needed to be visible constantly and compete everywhere.

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What these now solidly red Northern states have in common is that they have predominantly White and generally older populations. Geographically, they are heavily rural or populated with small cities outside a few urban enclaves. Culture war issues and the cleavages they have produced add to the challenges for Democrats trying to make their way back to competitiveness.

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Any turnaround for Democrats must include the revitalization of the Democratic Party at the local level, a task complicated by the image of a national party that cares less about rural and small-town voters. Schmuhl says one priority is simply to be visible. “You’ve got to start to communicate with people, to offer them a choice,” he said, “and so I think showing up is first and foremost.”

He cited his experiences working for [former presidential candidate, now Secretary of Transportation] Buttigieg and [former U.S. Senator] Donnelly. “They both had a central focus in their approach to politics, which is, you go everywhere,” he said. “If you’re invited to something, you try to show up and talk to anybody. You take the tough questions. You just show up here.”

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This year, the political winds are blowing against the Democrats, even in places that are less red than Indiana. Next year, Indiana will have local elections, and he expects Democrats to perform better in those contests.