On the occasion of Jimmy Carter's death, looking back at his truly rural attachments

On the occasion of his death, I'm re-upping here every mention of former President Jimmy Carter from Legal Ruralism.  I'll start however, by noting the comments of a Georgia Public Radio journalist on NPR shortly after Carter's death was announced.  The journalist contrasted Carter's rural Georgia upbringing with his progressive record on race rights--as if being progressive on race is not what you'd expect from a rural resident.  (I've looked for the direct quote, but I cannot find it). 

Here are some highlights, beginning with a few excerpts from Kai Bird's biography of Carter, The Outlier.  

Jimmy’s father, James Earl Carter Sr., had a tenth-grade education before dropping out to join the army. In 1903, when Earl was only 10 years old, his father, William Archibald Carter, was shot dead during a violent brawl with a business rival. They had been arguing over who was the rightful owner of a desk. Earl was certainly not country “white trash”—but neither was he part of the southern plantation aristocracy. By the late 1920’s, he made more than a comfortable living growing peanuts, corn, and cotton and drawing “rents” from his Black tenants. He managed to expand his farm acreage even during the boll weevil blight of the 1920’s, which wiped out many cotton farmers.

Jimmy Carter was apparently a fan of William Faulkner.  Here's a salient passage from page 20 of the Bird biography:   

More than most white southerners, the rural folk of South Georgia had defied assimilation and loyalty clung to their native culture as a matter of principle. They had their own vernacular and distinctive accent. And they had their own religion, and unvarnished, evangelical southern Protestantism that affirmed the supremacy of the white race in society and patriarchy at home.

Two generations had passed since the Civil War, but that conflagration continued to define their collective identity. “The past is never dead. It's not even past”—so says Gavin Stevens, a character in Faulkner's novel Requiem for a Nun.  Curtis Wilkie, a celebrated journalist from Mississippi who later covered the Carter administration, wrote in his memoirs, “We deliberately set ourselves apart from the rest of America during the Civil War and continue, to this day, to live as spiritual citizens of a nation that existed for only four years in another century.” The South had lost the Civil War but most if not all white southerners unashamedly celebrated what they revered as the “Lost Cause”. On the eve of the Civil War, Georgia was the South's leading slave state with some 462,000 slaves, or nearly 45% of the population. It was also the last southern state to rejoin the union, in July 1870. It was all about slavery. The South was preoccupied with a history heavily laden with questions about guilt, evil, and sin. History mattered to these Georgians.

There are more passages from Bird's book that use the words "rural," "country," "redneck," and such.  You can search for those words on the Kindle edition to learn more.  

Here's another post about Bird's writings on Carter, this on the occasion of Carter going into hospice nearly two years ago.  In it, I also discuss a NYT story by Rick Rojas which focuses on what Carter meant to Plains, Georgia:  In short, lots of tourists and thus economic development.  The excerpt leads, however, with what Plains was to Carter:   

The appeal of Plains, Mr. Carter has said, was its promise of the kind of humble, small-town existence he desired after the presidency. 

* * *  

As much as Mr. Carter wanted a semblance of a regular life, the result of his living in Plains turned it into no ordinary town. The signs marking town limits boast that Plains is home to the 39th president. The farm where he was raised just outside of town is a National Park. His modest house is surrounded by black security fencing and guard posts.

Other small towns in this part of Georgia, linked together in a constellation of country roads, have withered or have streets lined with fast-food joints and convenience stores. The center of Plains has a cafe and a row of gift shops that bustle with tourists.

Without Mr. Carter, “you wouldn’t have the downtown atmosphere that you have,” said Jeff Clements, an owner of the Buffalo Peanut Company, a commercial peanut sheller and seed treater that owns what was once the Carter family’s warehouse.

And here's a 2018 post about Carter, "the uncelebrity president."  This post includes data on the racial makeup of Sumter County, home of Plains.  It's majority Black, with about 6% Latino/a.  

And this post is based on a 2015 column by Nicholas Kristof.  In it, I query if Jimmy Carter can be rehabilitated without also rehabilitating the rural South. Note that I asked this question before the rise of Donald Trump, along with the crediting (or blaming) of rural America for that phenomenon.  

The reference to Carter in this 2023 post is less central; the post is more about responses to his policies--and from California, no less.  The next few posts are about Carter's historical significance, including in relation to presidential primaries.  

Rural-ish outreach by California Governor?

Mark Barabak in the Los Angeles Times today writes under the headline, "Newsom is acting more like a governor should. Will that boost his White House prospects?"  Here are the introductory blurbs, which both highlight "rural"of a sort:  

• Ever since the election, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made a concentrated effort to show up and deliver policies for red California.
• The move, as Democrats seek to rebuild their depleted rural support, can’t hurt if the governor decides to run for president in 2028.

And here's more, which reflects what I've been thinking about Newsom's latest moves:

Things changed after Nov. 5, following Donald Trump’s triumph and California’s notable shift toward the center-right on election day. Suddenly, Newsom started appearing in places such as Bakersfield, Redding and Colusa, among the ruddiest parts of red California.

It’s something the governor should have done a long time ago, rather than strutting and preening on the national stage. There are millions of Californians — politically outnumbered, geographically far-flung — who have long felt derided or ignored by Sacramento.

* * * 

And if he’s interested in really, truly running for president in 2028 — when the Democratic contest looks to be a wide-open affair — it’s not a bad place to start.

Barabak continues: 

In promotional materials, the governor’s office describes the program as a “bottom-up strategy for creating good-paying jobs and regional economic development.” The plan follows lengthy consultation with locals in 13 parts of the state and aims to streamline programs and spur economic growth through a series of tailor-made initiatives.

The unveiling in the red reaches of California was no accident.

With Trump’s victory, Democrats have begun to reckon ever more seriously with their diminished standing among union members and working-class voters and the party’s catastrophic collapse — decades in the making — across rural America. There’s a new urgency “to solve problems and meet people where they are,” as David McCuan, a Sonoma State political science professor and longtime student of state politics, put it.

In other words, if building bridges is in order, why not start with a bridge across the rural-urban divide.  Indeed, when this Barabak column came across my news feed this morning, it dovetailed with this blog post I'd already begun to write with a similar theme:  Newsom going rural--or at last, ruralish. Below is part of that draft:  

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently traveled to Redding, California to announce a new "career passport" initiative.  Here's coverage from the Los Angeles Times.

Initiatives to expand college and career education have drawn bipartisan support. State Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick (R-Grass Valley) appeared with Newsom on Monday, expressing excitement for more opportunities for youth in her rural community — some areas so remote that the nearest Costco is a three-hour drive away, she said.

Here's a compelling--but not surprising--data point from the new plan: 

California has one of the largest economic divides in the nation...with the top 10% of California earners making an average of $300,000 annually compared with the bottom 10% at $29,000 annually.

And here's a further quote from the plan: 

The economic divide underscores the imperative for a more coherent career education infrastructure. Degree attainment cannot be the only pathway to stable, well-paid work. Even though individuals with bachelor’s degrees earn significantly more over their lifetimes than those without, degrees are not a panacea, particularly in the absence of practical experience and social capital.

Prior to his visit to Redding, Newsom visited Fresno.  Admittedly, it's one of the state's largest cities, but it's also associated with conservative politics and rural California, to the extent that rural is equated with agricultural in the Golden State.  

Hakeem Jeffries mentions farmers (!) in comments announcing deal to fund the government

A bi-partisan deal to finance the federal government was finally agreed late today.  In his announcement of the deal, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York City (NY-8) mentioned--of all groups-- farmers.  Here's the quote:

House Democrats have successfully funded the government at levels requested by President Biden in order to meet the needs of the American people in terms of their health, safety and economic well-being. House Democrats have successfully fought for families, farmers, first responders and the future of working-class- Americans. House Democrats have successfully fought for $100 billion in disaster assistance in order to make sure that those everyday Americans whose lives have been turned upside down in terms of hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events can get the assistance that they need to address the problems they’ve been confronting. House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the land.

He then asserts that Democrats' rejection of a GOP proposal to suspend the debt ceiling would undermine Republican efforts to cut Social Security, Medicare, and nutritional assistance programs.  Thus, the reason Jeffries mentions families and the working class is clear.  Presumably Jeffries mentions first-responders in relation to the disaster assistance funds.  

But why does Jeffries name farmers in particular?   Probably because the government-funding deal included $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers and extended the farm bill, which expired in September, 2024, till September 2025. 

In any event, it's nice to hear the uber-urban Jeffries mention farmers--to call them out as if they matter--even as he is (in the accompanying photo) flanked by his urban deputies Katherine Clark, the Democratic House Whip from greater Boston, and Pete Aguilar, Democratic Caucus Chair from Greater San Bernardino, California.  

On whether Trump's policies will hurt rural America and ultimately cost him rural support

Ronald Brownstein wrote yesterday in The Atlantic under the headline, "Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters."  Of course, it's conceivable that the journalist is wrong--that Trump won't be bad for rural people and places.  That said, Brownstein does bring the receipts regarding specific policies on trade (as relates to agriculture), immigration, health care, and education.  Here's the key paragraph in that regard: 

Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertakewhat he frequently has called “the largest domestic deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants “in American history.” Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand “school choice” by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

Brownstein later unpacks and provides more information on each of these issues.  In addition, He provides data on how Trump's support from rural voters has grown with each of the three times he ran for president:  

Trump’s vote share in the nonmetro areas exceeded even his commanding 66 percent there against Joe Biden in 2020 and 67 percent against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump’s advantage in the small metros outstripped his margin over Biden and equaled his advantage over Clinton.

The story also includes data on other geographies, including small metropolitan areas [here citing The Daily Yonder]:  

In the second most-rural grouping, small metropolitan areas, Trump won 60 percent of the vote compared with Vice President Kamala Harris’s 40 percent. In the top most-rural category, nonmetropolitan areas, Trump beat Harris even more resoundingly, by 69 percent to 31 percent.

Arkansas bureaucrat (essentially) calls state's rural residents "white trash"

In early November, the State of Arkansas announced the purchase of 815 acres in rural Franklin County where the Department of Corrections intends to build a 3000-bed prison.  The state government did not consult with people in the region about the decision when the land was being purchased and the project planned.  My understanding is that they announced it after the land deal was done.  

Since then, local opposition has arisen, most prominently from an organization called the Franklin County and River Valley Coalition (Franklin County straddles the Arkansas River).  That organization's Freedom of Information Act requests surfaced offensive emails from Jonathan Duran, Deputy Director of the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems office, a division of the Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services.  Some prior coverage of the controversy is here and here. 

Below are some excerpts from today's coverage of the matter in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, beginning with more back story on the emails:  Duran  emailed his boss a "'white trash' clip from the satirical animated TV show "South Park..

With the subject line "Franklin County town hall meeting," the first email from Duran states: "Do you think a possible townhall meeting in Franklin County about the proposed state prison might go a little like this?"

Below that in the email is a link to YouTube to a segment from "South Park" titled "They Took Our Jobs!"

* * * 

One of the characters is labeled "pissed off white trash redneck conservative." The cartoon characters in the clip repeatedly chant, "They took our jobs!"

Below the link Duran provided in the Oct. 31 email to Johnson [his boss], Duran typed: "They took our land!"

Yesterday, the River Valley coalition released a second email from Duran.  It says, "Do y'all feel like spy plane pilots now?" A smiling face emoji with a wink is inserted at that point.   "Is that an outhouse or an old refrigerator to the right of the house in the drone pic?" 

The coalition commented: 

His email was intended to mock and belittle the hardworking, law-abiding citizens Duran serves, undermining the integrity of public service in Arkansas. Such a comparison is a gross disrespect to the people he represents.

The coalition is calling for Duran to be terminated because what he said "disrespects rural Arkansas."  Their statement read: 

A simple apology or reassignment will not suffice. Duran's behavior demands more decisive action: the complete removal of Jonathan Duran from his position.  We call on Governor Sarah Sanders to take immediate action to uphold the values of professionalism, respect, and fairness within Arkansas' leadership.

The coalition's attorney declared,"The people of Franklin County and the River Valley deserve public servants who treat them with dignity and respect."  I could not agree more.  

I looked up Mr. Duran, and I see he proudly claims his status as a native of Arkansas, and with a degree from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, he may be from rural Arkansas himself.   That makes it even more disappointing, in some ways, that he's now the city boy ridiculing his country cousins. 

It will be interesting to see where all of this goes--both the prison siting and the State of Arkansas bureaucrat ridiculing rural folks--given Governor Sanders' popularity with rural voters--at least up until now.   

Here is a link to the Arkansas Times coverage of these events, including information on the land purchase being concealed until it was a done deal.  And here is Arkansas Democrat-Gazette coverage from on December 12, revealing that most of the locations the state considered were in Western Arkansas--and several were metropolitan by some measure, including a number in greater Fort Smith, on the Oklahoma state line.  Here's the "short list"; note that the Alma sites are in Crawford County, which has a population of just over 60,000, but is part of the Fort Smith metropolitan area:  

* Alma -- ball field;

* Alma -- train tracks;
* Alma -- south of ball field;
* Clarksville [Johnson County];
* Fort Smith -- end of airport/industrial park;
* Fort Smith -- Stephens;
* Fort Smith -- Treece;
* Greenwood -- Holland Farm 2;
* Huntington -- Holland Farm;
* Mansfield;
* Menifee -- ruled out due to water availability;
* Mulberry; and
* Rudy

The story also notes the search criteria for a site:  

* Minimum of 250-300 contiguous acres, relatively flat and not in a floodplain;
* Not within 60 miles of an existing state Department of Corrections facility (to avoid workforce cannibalization);
* Available regional workforce based on commute times;
* Availability of primary infrastructure (water, electric, feasibility of wastewater treatment, etc.); and
* Proximity to emergency services and medical facilities.

The document states that the Franklin County site "meets or exceeds our search criteria."  However, "[a]ccording to the site assessment, research and the whittling down of an initial 25,000 'candidate parcels', 6000 were within "[two] miles of a U.S. or Interstate Highway."  The Franklin County site ultimately chosen is 22 miles from the nearest Interstate, which is I-40, via the city of Ozark. 

Location, Location, Location Revisited: More Needs to be Done

For this post, I am going to revisit a post I made seven years ago in which I discussed the role that law schools can play in alleviating the rural lawyer shortage. While academia has made some progress, namely in the establishment of rural legal clinics, it has not tackled the problem in a way that could lead to meaningful change. 

Many of the underlying statistics from seven years ago are still true. Data from the Occupational Employment Statistics within the Bureau of Labor Statistics still bears out that the rural lawyer shortage is practically universal around the country. As it was in 2017, Southwestern Montana is an exception. There is one additional exception, the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. As with last time, I am measuring the shortage by location quotient, which provides a good approximation of an area's employment in a given sector compared to the national average. The Location Quotient controls for population so you can do a direct comparison between rural and urban employment. 

While the media has spoken a lot about people migrating to rural communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, this migration has not been even. An analysis from The Daily Yonder suggests that rural communities whose economies depend on recreation saw the greatest increase from this migration. While rural America continues to grow after the pandemic, a further analysis from The Daily Yonder shows that between 2023-2024, population growth was concentrated in rural counties that border metropolitan areas. Neither of these developments are particularly helpful to the vast majority of rural counties. 

One huge difference that I have seen in the last decade that I have been writing about this issue is an increase in general awareness. Some states are actually offering incentives to practice in rural spaces and law schools are increasingly offering rural practice clinics or similar such opportunities. A report to the Maine Legislature in January 2024 quantified the impact of the University of Maine's Rural Practice Clinic in Fort Kent, in the remote northern part of the state. These opportunities are important and do help tremendously. However, the students are only there for a portion of their law school experience, often as little as a semester. The jury is still out as to whether or not these types of programs actually increase the number of lawyers who opt to live and work in rural spaces. 

I have long advocated for the establishment of law schools in rural communities so students can spend three years immersed in a rural space, learn what it means to be part of a rural community, and have more time to extern in the small practices and/or local governments that dot the rural landscape. 

The Current Landscape

In the past seven years, there has not been a single rural law school established. However, there also hasn't been a rural law school closure. So, we have kind of been stuck with the status quo over the past few years. By my count, there are 11 ABA Accredited law schools located outside of metropolitan areas, though some of these are in larger college towns: 

• Appalachian School of Law (Grundy, VA)
• Ohio Northern University (Ada, OH)
• Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA)
• Penn State Dickinson Law (Carlisle, PA)
• University of Idaho (Moscow, ID)
• University of Mississippi (Oxford, MS) 
• University of New Hampshire (Concord, NH)
• University of South Dakota (Vermillion, SD)
• University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY)
• Vermont Law and Graduate School (South Royalton, VT)
• Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA)

There are 198 fully accredited ABA law schools so roughly 5% are located outside of metropolitan areas. There are some law schools in areas that might be considered more remote - Cornell University in Ithaca, New York is a good example. Students at those schools would have more opportunities to be exposed to small town practice than a student in a major metropolitan area. However, these areas are still metropolitan areas and job centers in their own right. 

Exposure, Exposure, Exposure

I still believe many of my original points from 2017 - there is no better way to expose students to the issues facing rural communities than prolonged exposure. Becoming immersed in a community for multiple years is the best way to understand its problems. As I said then, even if a student does not remain in the rural community after law school, they still leave with a greater understanding of the challenges that the legal profession faces in those spaces. They can become advocates for actually addressing the problem. 

Law Schools Are Needed in Rural Spaces

If you've been online long enough, you have read the line that we have too many law schools. I'm not sure I agree, and my reasons are the same that they were seven years ago. We have too many law schools in metropolitan areas and too few law schools in small towns and rural communities. We need more law schools in small towns and rural communities. 

What should this look like? A scan of the schools listed above shows a potential solution. Only two of the schools, Vermont and Appalachian, are private standalone schools without a parent university. And both have experienced financial issues within the last decade. In response, Vermont Law decided to reinvent itself by offering master's degrees in areas such as public policy and becoming a "law and graduate school." As I did seven years ago, I believe that schools like Appalachian and Vermont play a key role in the solving the rural lawyer shortage. 

But there is stability in the backing of a major university system, and I believe that the path forward is for state university systems to leverage their resources and state backing to put law schools on their rural campuses. This would provide a financial shelter that a standalone school would not have, and it would provide stability for the students who opt to attend these schools.

I'll use my home state of North Carolina as an example of how this could look. North Carolina has one of the most expansive university systems in the country with every public university being considered a part of the University of North Carolina system. In total, there are 17 campuses with four located outside of metropolitan area: 

• Appalachian State University (in Boone)
• Elizabeth City State University 
• University of North Carolina at Pembroke
• Western Carolina University (in Cullowhee)

The idea of establishing a new graduate school on one (or more) of these campuses would not be without recent precedent. Just this year, UNC Pembroke established a Doctor of Optometry program in order to alleviate the rural medical provider shortage.

A law school on any of these campuses would address the access to justice issue in a historically impoverished portion of the state. Appalachian and Western Carolina serve Appalachia while Elizabeth City State and UNC Pembroke serve Eastern North Carolina. A law school on a small rural campus also allows for specialization in rural lawyering. Unlike a law school on a flagship state university campus, it won't necessarily attract students who are looking for urban opportunities. A smaller, most focused school should yield the best results for both the students and local community. 

The Raging Current 

But it would be naive to assume that establishing a new rural institution isn't swimming against an already roaring current. 

There is an epidemic of closures and mergers of small rural institutions over the last several years. In 2023, the Hechinger Report estimates that at least a dozen rural, non-profit institutions had closed or announced plans to close since 2020.  In Vermont (a majority rural state with one small metro area), there have been five non-profit college closures since 2019. Keeping a small rural school afloat is becoming a gargantuan task. 

But the closures and mergers aren't just limited to private schools. Public universities are also closing and merging. You can look at Vermont to see a spate of mergers that ultimately involved four public colleges becoming one. In 2018, publicly funded Lyndon State University merged with Johnson State University to form Northern Vermont University. In 2023, two more rural colleges, Castleton State University and Vermont Technical College merged with Northern Vermont University to form Vermont State University.

Even the schools that are staying open are cutting majors and ultimately opportunities. Dr. Pruitt posted about this issue a couple of weeks ago. Her post linked to a story that discussed the struggles of a student at Delta State University, a public university in rural Mississippi, who saw her planned major cut. The story discussed majors being cut at rural public universities in places as far flung as New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Alaska, and Arkansas.

Rural education is in trouble and convincing lawmakers to invest further is going to be a challenge. I did provide an example above of a rural public university investing in graduate education so it's not impossible.

Conclusion

To successfully solve the rural lawyer shortage, it is essential that lawmakers realize the value of investing in a public rural law school. These schools not making money should not be seen as detriment but rather a key investment. 

A public rural law school would ensure that students are exposed to rural issues for all three years of their education, and a small public rural law school provides an opportunity to further specialize in small town practice and attract students who are interested in (or at least open to) the idea of small-town practice. 

Frisch reflects on his losses in Colorado's 3d Congressional district

Adam Frisch is the former Aspen City Council Member who nearly unseated Lauren Bobert in 2022.  In 2024, he lost to a more boring Republican by 5 points.   Here, Frish reflects to Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post on what he learned from all the 77,000 miles he drove across 27 counties talking to voters.  A quote focusing on Frisch's reflections follows: 

[To Frisch], the story of this election can be told in the people he met. Farmers and ranchers. Small towns in southern Colorado with predominantly Latino populations — some newly arrived and some who have been there for nine generations.

One person who stands out in his memory, he told me, was an electrician in northwestern Colorado, the hub of the state’s natural gas industry. The man, who was in his mid-60s, was working at a hotel, making about $18 an hour — a drastic cut from the $62 an hour he had been earning in the gas fields, where employment has been declining in part because of government-driven efforts to transition to clean energy.

But it was not just the financial hit that bothered him, Frisch said. He also resented what he felt was liberal animosity toward the very nature of his work in the fossil fuel industry.

Of voters like him, “I get asked all the time … ‘Why did they keep on voting against their interests?’ And what I think people mean is ‘Why do non-college-educated, working-class people, why did they vote for people that don’t have their economic back?’” Frisch said. “And I’m like, ‘As important as pocketbook issues are, pride and dignity will trump pocketbook issues all day long.’”

The story also includes some data on the history of Democratic losses in rural counties. Bottom line: it's been worsening over the decades.

Some rural voters resist school choice, prioritizing rural schools

Boone County, Iowa, October 19, 2024
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

The Wall Street Journal reported this week under the headline "Trump’s School-Choice Agenda Hits 

Pushback From Red-State Voters."  The gist of it is that some voters in "red states"--often thought of as synonymous with rurality--voted against school choice measures even as they supported Trump and his agenda, which includes "school choice."  Here's an excerpt from Matt Barnum's story: 

President-elect Donald Trump has made school choice a core tenet of his plan to remake education—but it isn’t clear his voters are on board.

Trump has indicated that he supports public funding of private schools and other options outside traditional school districts. “We will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want,” Trump said in a campaign video. “It’s called school choice.”

Yet school-choice ballot measures lost in three states in the November election, including in two that went strongly for Trump, Kentucky and Nebraska. The results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a “woke” agenda in public education but still like their own children’s local schools. 

To school-choice supporters—which include some parents, Republican politicians and conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation—subsidizing private or other options outside traditional school districts gives parents more say in their children’s education. Teachers unions, Democrats and some public-school parents say that giving families money to go elsewhere drains needed resources from public schools.

About a dozen prior posts linking so-called school choice to the well-being of rural schools--written over the course of more than a decade, are here.  

Rural colleges cutting corners--and cutting majors

The Washington Post reports today from Cleveland, Mississippi, population 11,199, under the headline, "

Rural students’ options shrink as colleges slash majors

Many of the comparatively few universities that serve rural students are eliminating large numbers of programs and majors, blaming plummeting enrollment and resulting financial crises. Nationwide, college enrollment has declined by 2 million students , or 10 percent, in the 10 years ending in 2022, hitting rural schools particularly hard. An increasing number of rural private, nonprofit colleges are not only cutting majors, but closing altogether.

“We are asking rural folks to accept a set of options that folks in cities and suburbs would never accept,” said Andrew Koricich, a professor of higher education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “It’s almost like, ‘Well, this is what you get to learn, and this is how you get to learn it. And if you don’t like it, you can move.’ ”

For many rural students, there are already few places to go. About 13 million people live in higher education “deserts,” the American Council on Education estimates, mostly in the Midwest and Great Plains, where the nearest university is beyond a reasonable commute away.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen private, nonprofit universities and colleges that were in rural areas or served large proportions of rural students have closed since 2020, data show.

On America's deadliest occupation: logging

The New York Times reported a few days ago from southwestern Oregon, with a fair bit of attention to the fact that places where timber jobs are most important are also typically rural.  Here are some excerpts from the story by Kurtis Lee:

About 100 of every 100,000 logging workers die from work injuries, compared with four per 100,000 for all workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There is a mix of physical factors — heavy equipment and, of course, the massive trees,” said Marissa Baker, a professor of occupational health at the University of Washington who has researched the logging industry. “Couple that with steep terrain and unforgiving weather and the rural aspect of the work, and it leads to great danger.”

I wonder if Baker is suggesting that the "rural aspect" of the work contributes to its deadliness because of the distance from health care.  

Here's another quote that notes the rural context: 

In the most rural stretches of Oregon, where swaths have been scarred by the clear-cutting of trees, many workers decide the risk is worth it. Most loggers here earn around $29 an hour. And average timber industry wages are 17 percent higher than local private-sector wages, according to a recent report from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.

In 1990, 11,000 Oregonians worked in the logging industry, including those who take down trees and drive trucks--a figure that had dropped to 4,400 by 2024, according to federal data.  

Now, the local economy of Coos Bay, for example, relies mainly on tourism.

Understanding rural access to justice requires understanding historical economic injustice

Understanding rural access to justice issues in the rural South can be a bit complicated. As I outlined back in February, many places in the rural South have withstood the complete collapse of democracy in their communities. For the first half of the twentieth century, communities of color in these states had to reckon with a world where every lever of power, including the media, was captured by white supremacist interests. The people affected were denied access to anything that could have reasonably built wealth, their ability to own property was restricted, and they were limited in what educational or economic opportunities they could pursue. The scars of this past can be seen in high poverty rates and other statistics of despair across the region. Understanding this history is important to understanding the difficulties accessing justice in these communities and why it's important to fight for it. 

As with my last post, I am going to focus on my home, Eastern North Carolina. And I am not just going to look at my home county, I am going to look at the broader region. North Carolina has 11 counties that exist in a state of "persistent poverty"

Persistent Poverty Counties in North Carolina
Source: North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management

(as defined by the federal government) and all of them are rural counties in the eastern part of the state. Eastern North Carolina is also home to large Black and Indigenous populations. In fact, as of the 2020 Census, North Carolina has the highest concentration of Indigenous people east of the Mississippi River. 

Eastern North Carolina was the economic and political powerhouse in the state's early history. From the American Revolution until the 1910 Census, Wilmington was almost consistently the state's largest city. The only exception was the 1820 Census, where it was temporarily replaced by fellow Eastern North Carolina city (and the state's first capital), New Bern. This growth was fueled by agriculture and the shipment of goods out of ports along the coast. With economic success came political power. One of the leading perpetrators of the Wilmington coup in 1898 and one of the leading architects of what would become Jim Crow in North Carolina, Furnifold Simmons was from New Bern. Simmons was rewarded for his efforts in ushering in white supremacist rule with a United States Senate seat, from which he ran a political machine that almost single handedly selected the state's elected leadership. Simmons served in the Senate from 1901 - 1931 and is still the longest-serving United States Senator in the state's history. 

Poverty rates in North Carolina
Source: National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. 

The region's economic and political prosperity was enjoyed only by a select few. A lot of people in Eastern North Carolina have long existed in deep, multigenerational poverty. For the first half of the twentieth century, Jim Crow and white supremacy reigned supreme in North Carolina. Blacks and Indigenous people were systemically excluded from many economic and educational opportunities and were often forced to work as underpaid farm labor. These decisions by the political leaders of Eastern North Carolina have had disastrous long-term impacts on the region. The decline of agriculture in the state was most acutely felt in Eastern North Carolina and its importance to the state's economy has long been supplanted by emergence of the banking industry in Charlotte and the education and tech industries in the Raleigh-Durham area. Because of poverty and spatial isolation, many people in the region are still denied access to economic and educational opportunities. The legacy of Jim Crow lives on. 

This history shapes what access to justice means and what it looks like in Eastern North Carolina. The economic subjugation of entire groups of people impacts their access to institutions of power.

Trump's share of the rural vote bumped up in 2024

According to the NPR Politics podcast today, Trump's share of the rural vote increased from 61% in 2020 to 64% in 2024.   

Of course, Trump's electoral successes have been associated with his ability to attract rural voters.  That said, until I saw (well, actually heard) this data point, I have been somewhat relieved to see that Trump's significant inroads with many sectors of voters, e.g., urban voters, young men, Latino/as, had taken some of the heat off rural voters. 

For convenience sake, here's some 2017 analysis of rural voters' support for Trump in 2016.  

WSJ speculates on rural bits of Illinois and California seceding from cities

Joe Barrett writes under the headline, "The Rural Areas Pushing for Divorce From Democratic Cities."  The subhead is, "Across Illinois and California, more red counties that feel steamrolled by blue-led governments are trying to split off."  

 Here's an excerpt: 

A burgeoning breakup movement is gaining momentum across Illinois, California and other states where vast swaths of red, rural counties are dominated by a few blue cities. More residents are pushing to break off and form new states. Or as a group called New Illinois State—which has declared itself independent from actual Illinois and last weekend passed the first draft of a new constitution—puts it: “Leave Illinois Without Moving.”

* * *

73% of voters in predominantly rural Iroquois County...on Election Day backed the idea of forming a new state with every Illinois county except Cook, home to Chicago and more than 40% of the state’s population. The nonbinding resolution also passed in six other counties, bringing the total to 33 of Illinois’s 102 counties.

“There’s a lot of people in Chicago, and I think that they make a lot of decisions that affect people downstate,” said Gioja, who doesn’t expect a New Illinois soon. “It’s just sending a message that, ‘Hey, you know, there’s people that would like to be part of the conversation, and often aren’t.’ ”

This reminds me of the disgruntlement that rural voters have expressed about not having their views heard in both state and federal government.  Kathy Cramer wrote about this in the context of Wisconsin in 2016, and others have since written about it, if only to ridicule it.  (See various columns by, among other, Paul Krugman in the NYTimes).

As a related matter, here's a story from The Guardian this weekend analyzing why eight California counties shifted from Biden (2020) to Trump (2024), and here's an LA Times story about Inyo County, which shifted to Biden by just 14 votes in 2020.   Needless to say, Inyo and many of these other counties aer the ones where lots of folks would like to secede from California--or have urban cities in the Golden State peel off and go their own way.  There are lots of prior stories on the blog about secession, including those about the would-be State of Jefferson.  

Jared Golden is second rural-ish Democrat to hold on to a congressional seat amidst red wave

 Here's the New York Times coverage written by Maya C. Miller.   Salient excerpts follow:  

Mr. Golden’s narrow victory in his largely white, rural and working-class district — one of five Democratic-held districts that Donald J. Trump won in 2020 — was a bright spot for Democrats and will help ensure that the Republicans’ House majority in the next Congress remains exceedingly narrow.

Mr. Golden toiled throughout the campaign to distance himself from other Democrats, declining to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or even say whether he would vote for her. Instead, with the hope of defying political gravity and overcoming party polarization, the congressman emphasized a hyperlocal and nonpartisan message aimed at working-class people of all political stripes. He campaigned as a potential governing partner with Mr. Trump, saying he could work with whomever won the White House.

For House Republicans, Mr. Theriault’s loss underlined Mr. Golden’s status as one of the Democrats’ most battle-tested members. A native of Fort Kent, a town on the northernmost border of the state, Mr. Theriault, 30, portrayed himself as a “true Mainer” — his typical outfit includes jeans, a baseball cap and a puffer vest over a button-down shirt — and small-business owner who was approachable.

* * * 

After a mass shooting last year in his hometown of Lewiston, Mr. Golden — one of the few Democrats in Congress who has routinely broken with his party to oppose gun control measures — changed course and endorsed an assault weapons ban. He lost the backing of the National Rifle Association, and Mr. Theriault argued that Mr. Golden’s change of heart on guns showed that he was out of step with his district.

On Gluesenkamp Perez's re-election: Times calls her a "red-district conquerer"

Annie Karni writes under the headline "A Red-District Conqueror Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror."  An excerpt follows:  

For two years, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from a rural, red district in Washington State, has been criticizing her party for being too dismissive of working-class voters.

That message appears to have helped Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, long considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the House, defy the odds in this week’s election. Even with President-elect Donald J. Trump at the top of the ticket and winning her district for the third cycle in a row, she appears on track to beat the same candidate she faced two years ago, the far-right Republican and former Green Beret Joe Kent, by a larger margin.

* * * 

Preliminary results showed her outrunning Vice President Kamala Harris by seven percentage points in two of the reddest counties in her district, including the rural timber county of Wahkiakum.

Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, who owns an auto shop now run by her husband, has angered progressives for sometimes crossing party lines, like when she voted with Republicans to repealPresident Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative. She argued that it didn’t do much for her district, where most people don’t have college degrees.

What follows are some quotes form Guesenkamp Perez: 

The fundamental mistake people make is condescension. A lot of elected officials get calloused to the ways that they’re disrespecting people.

* * * 

People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.

Addressing the rural lawyer shortage has never been more important

If you're like me, you're probably still pouring data and trying to make sense of the results of Tuesday's Presidential election. You're also probably wondering what comes next and how we can be prepared for the next Trump Administration. How can we ensure that the most vulnerable populations are prepared to weather the next four years? How can we ensure that they have access to justice? For the last decade, I have written and studied the rural lawyer shortage. I have been excited to see the issue gain more attention over the last few years, and I am hopeful that this momentum can carry forward into the next Administration. 

Because our most vulnerable populations are going to need it. 

It is a commonly cited statistic that rural America is home to 20% of the country's people and 2% of its lawyers. As I wrote in this space five years ago, many rural spaces are also home to deeply embedded poverty and violent crime. As I also noted, the media tends to ignore the actual problems facing rural communities, so these issues are not given much attention. Indeed, I'm sure the mainstream media will pick up on increased Trump support in rural spaces, which will only serve to increase the anti-rural rhetoric that is endemic in our mainstream discourse. But the low-income and vulnerable populations in these spaces deserve a voice and a defense against what is to come. 

At a base level, the Trump Administration promised mass deportations, and a hallmark promise of his first campaign was "The Wall," a 2,000-mile-long border wall along the United States-Mexico border. Mass deportations are going to affect many rural communities around the country. And it won't just be limited to undocumented immigrants. President-elect Trump has also indicated an interest in deporting legal immigrants. Immigrant communities across the country are at risk. Immigrants in rural communities are especially vulnerable because of the paucity of available counsel. There needs to be lawyers in those spaces to make sure targeted immigrants have access to the resources to fight these mass deportation efforts. 

Further, if President-elect Trump attempts to fulfill his promise to build "The Wall," many rural communities (including sovereign Tribal nations) will find themselves disrupted by these efforts. Many landowners may even be subject to the Trump Administration's attempts to use eminent domain to acquire their land. Tribal Nations may also find themselves again battling the Trump Administration over the Wall on their sovereign land. These disputes will require lawyers to fight back. 

It is also important to note that the first Trump Administration also waged war against civil legal aid funding. As I have written before, this is part of a broader Republican effort that dates back to Ronald Reagan's time as California's governor. Like his predecessors, Trump proposed eliminating the Legal Services Corporation, which provides civil legal aid funding to organizations around the country. The Legal Services Corporation has long recognized their role in filling the justice gap in rural communities (their 2018 budget request even cited my research into the matter). Luckily, we were able to avoid the worst during the last Trump Administration, but nothing is promised going forward. 

As I have noted previously, many legal aid organizations react to budget shortfalls by closing rural offices. This will result in rural residents being able to access help with securing protective orders against abusive spouses, keeping their homes and fighting back against negligent landlords, securing counsel in contested divorce and custody cases, and a litany of other areas where legal aid attorneys play a crucial role. The elimination of the Legal Services Corporation as a key funder will almost certainly be catastrophic for rural access to justice. 

This is just a sampling of why it is especially critical right now to fight for access to justice in rural spaces. We must continue raising awareness of these issues and fight for solutions. 

Rural conspiracy theories and the mechanics of the 2024 election

I'm just going to collect some of the salient stories here.

First (most recently), from the Washington Post, "Rural Arizona shows how Trump allies could try to thwart election certification." Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports from Cochise County, Arizona.  Here's a paragraph:  

After the 2022 midterm election, two county leaders on a three-member board refused to accept the outcome in a timely matter, citing concerns about voting equipment that were rooted in false theories and real problems in the Phoenix area, 200 miles north. One of the leaders eventually relented, after a judge intervened, and joined the Democratic member to sign off on the results. But the standoff pushed the state past its certification deadline, triggered a legal battle and criminal prosecutions, and set off fears that local leaders around the nation would try the same strategy after November’s presidential election, should former president Donald Trump again lose.

Here's Jim Ruttenberg's report for the New York Times Magazine under the headline, "What to Know about the Looming Election Certification Crisis."  

The false narrative of a stolen election that inspired hundreds of Americans to storm the U.S. Capitol in 2021 is now fueling a far more sophisticated movement, one that involves local and state election boards across the country.

What was once the Stop the Steal movement is now the “voter integrity” movement. Its aim is to persuade the people who are responsible for certifying local elections of the false notions that widespread fraud is a threat to democracy and that they have the authority and legal duty to do something about it: Deny certification of their local elections.

 Here is Ruttenberg discussing the Nevada slice of his reporting on The Daily podcast.  

And here is some Los Angeles Times reporting on election shenanigans from far northern California.  

The rural Latina/o vote in New Mexico

Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times did a road-trip through the American Southwest to talk to Latino/a voters.  His dispatch from New Mexico was published under the headline, "Trump or Harris?  For these New Mexico farmers, the more pressing question is survival."   Here are some key excerpts, leading with the perceptive framing:  

Agriculture is an underrated barometer of where a region and its people are heading, since it intersects with so many essential issues: the economy, climate change, immigration.

This quote from a 42-year-old Latina, Michele Atencio who, with her husband, makes a living from growing and selling peppers, is telling.  When asked about the upcoming presidential election, Arellano reports, she grew uncharacteristically quiet before commenting:  

I don’t want to be mean, but we need immigration control.  There are a lot of Venezuelans coming in. They come and they get housing and they get food stamps. And you, who have worked here all your life? You don’t get that. We pay taxes and they get all the benefits.

* * * 

Local farmers have offered jobs to the new migrants, Atencio said, “but they don’t like that work. I don’t get it. They need help. But there’s frustration growing here.”

Further Atencio quotes follow: 

I’m not against them. I get why they come here. But my dad and your dad, they crossed the river. They took years to better themselves. 

* * * 

Whoever’s next [as U.S. president], they need to put better border control.  I’m not the only one who thinks that.

Arellano next stopped at Rosales Produce, in Escondido, where he chatted with 68-year-old Linda Rosales, whose family works 500 acres, 60 of them devoted to chiles.  Rosales commented on the shortage of workers to harvest her crops: 

"There’s no one here to work for us. Nobody has done nothing,” to make it easier to legally hire workers, Rosales said, speaking about both the Trump and Biden administrations. “Trump finished the border wall or whatever. Biden did, too. And you get to see who picks. No one.”

The need for immigrant workers is also the key theme of this NYT Magazine story out of Idaho's dairyland.  

Pennsylvania as battleground state, geographically and otherwise

 Here's a quote from the New York Times story (by Shane Goldmacher) in today's paper, "Inside the Battle for America's Most Consequential Battleground State."

What makes Pennsylvania so compelling — and confounding — for both parties is the state’s unusual mix of demographic and geographic forces.

It is home to urban centers such as Philadelphia with a large population of Black voters whom Democrats must mobilize. It has fast-growing, highly educated and mostly white suburbs where Republicans have been bleeding support in the Trump years. There are struggling industrial towns where Mr. Trump needs to maximize his vote, and smaller cities booming with Latino immigrants where Ms. Harris aims to make gains. And there is a significant, albeit shrinking, rural population. White voters without college degrees, who make up Mr. Trump’s base, still account for roughly half the vote.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also has a feature today on the state's rural voters. 

New York Times "The Run-up" turns to how the U.S. presidential candidates are vying for rural voters

Here's the beginning of today's episode of The Run-Up, the NYTimes podcast, titled "JD Vance, Tim Walz and the Fight for Rural America."   Note that host Astead Herndon is the first speaker, and the other speakers quoted are voters Herndon interviewed in Minnesota.  

Speaker 1 (Astead Herndon)

How do you think candidates talk about rural issues and rural communities?

Speaker 2

How do candidates talk about rural communities? I think it’s generally an afterthought.

Speaker 3

They don’t. I’m peanuts to them.

Speaker 4

I don’t think they really relate.

Speaker 5

They know what counties, what states, what it takes to win. They care more about the electoral college than they do about us.

Speaker 6

I think cities win elections. I don’t think we mean anything. Do we?

These are poignant and telling quotes about how rural voters think they are viewed in relation to national politics.  (In fact, I think their perceptions are accurate).       

The podcast also features a lengthy interview with Nick Jacobs, co-author of The Rural Voter.   Here are some quotes from Jacobs:  

In terms of their partisanship, ruralness and a rural identity is becoming nationalized. And part of that nationalization is that wherever in that vast swath of rural America you are, the likelihood has been, year over year for about the last 40 years, you are increasingly drawn to Republican candidates, particularly at the top of the ticket.

* * *  

Rural voters made up a larger share of Donald Trump’s 2020 coalition than Black voters did for Democrats, than the youth did for Democrats. They are almost as important to Republicans, or rural voters were almost as important to Donald Trump’s win in 2016 and his coalition in 2020 as union voters were to Democrats.

* * * 

We find three characteristics of that identity that are more important than others. One, it’s a different way of thinking about the economy than we often think about. It’s much less individualistic, deep concerns about the well-being of my community. There are parts of this rural identity that are inseparable from attitudes towards government. To be rural is to feel that government has treated rural communities in a particular way, in a negative way. So there is a grievance that is a part of that identity.

At the same time, there’s enormous cultural pride in being rural. Despite all the talk we hear about rural poverty and as important as rural poverty is, when we ask people would you leave rural America, they say no. Because it’s a part of themselves, and they love living in rural America.

* * * 

I can tell you when you go into many parts of rural America, they know a five-letter policy. And it’s NAFTA. They know who signed NAFTA, and they have a very clear understanding. Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it’s right. But they have a very clear narrative of how NAFTA affected their community.

And it’s not only that they lost. Not only was it their community that lost their mill that shut down. And in some of these communities, it is the single mill. It is the single factory. It was done to their detriment and to somebody else’s benefit.

* * * 

Yeah. When you’re talking about a group of people who do not feel heard, that they lack influence, that their perspective is not respected or not included when it comes to government decision making, some of that resistance is, of course, driven by core values, a principle belief in limited government. But some of that resistance is also driven by the belief that when government comes in to fix your problems, it’s going to make things worse.

* * * 

The guy [Trump] that has done the best in rural America in history makes no pretensions of being rural. He doesn’t pretend at all. ... In fact, he lays it on thick in the other direction. That’s a curious way in which rural identity politics manifests itself because we often think that the trick to identity politics is to out-identity the other person. He wasn’t rural. He didn’t pretend to be rural. He didn’t lean over to the kid at the rally and say, you catch a big one lately, son?

* * * 

So we see that trend in rural partisanship begin to take off for Republicans in 1980. It almost becomes a lost cause midway through the Obama administration. And by the time you get to 2016. And it’s in the aftermath of the 2016 election that we all start talking about the rural-urban divide, even though it had been percolating for nearly 30 years, that it almost seems like the Democrats not only have given up on rural areas, but almost seem to openly celebrate the fact that they do so poorly in rural areas. Hillary Clinton, in the aftermath of her loss, goes on a speaking tour and openly celebrates the fact that she won the places that were dynamic, moving ahead.

* * * 

I think there is a mentality that has made up its mind ... that these [rural] voters... cannot be won over. They’re irrational. They’re extremists. They’ve been radicalized. And, boy, that isn’t to deny that there isn’t the occasional rabble-rouser out here in the countryside, but to just write off one fifth of the electorate as irredeemable, I don’t know if there’s another segment of the electorate that we do that with, in all honesty, a legitimate segment of the electorate. And yet that seemed to be commonplace with thinking about rural voters.

I've similarly lamented that so many powerful, progressive institutions seems to have written off rural folks as irredeemable.  It's not a winning strategy for the Democrats.  

Here's more on Walz and Vance and their competing Midwestern rural narratives, this from National Public Radio, and this from A.O. Scott of the New York Times.  

On the Midwest in politics, by A.O. Scott, in the New York Times

A. O. Scott wrote in today's New York Times under the headline, "Will the Real Midwest Please Stand Up?:  The vice-presidential debate, pitting Senator JD Vance of Ohio against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, shines the spotlight on a complicated region."  Here's a quote that speaks to the implicit whiteness of "Midwest."  

Like “working class,” “Midwestern” too often assumes a default setting of whiteness, and papers over profound political divisions. The region has been a fertile breeding ground for leaders of every factional stripe. Robert M. La Follette, the tribune of early-20th-century progressivism, represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate, as did the anti-communist crusader Joseph McCarthy a generation later. In the decades between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Ohio alone, known as “the cradle of presidents,” sent seven of its sons to the White House, all of them Republicans.

* * * 

The Midwest is a curious region, often treated less as a distinct geographical or demographic zone than as a symbol, a synonym for the country as a whole. ... in the cultural imagination “Midwest” is code for the average, ordinary, normal, real America.

 

Collecting coverage of Wisconsin politics in the run up to Election 2024

First, here is the lede from Karen Tumulty's opinion piece in the Washington Post, "Why should Democrats show up in rural America? Ask Tammy Baldwin." The dateline is Richland Center, population 5,114.

When Sen. Tammy Baldwin kicked her reelection campaign into high gear last November with a “One Year to Win” tour of her state, the first place she headed was this agricultural town in south-central Wisconsin, where she cut the ribbon to open a new local Democratic headquarters.

Baldwin — whose seat is crucial to the Democrats’ narrow hopes of hanging on to control of the Senate — was back in that same spot on Saturday, this time with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro in tow to lend some national political star power.

But as the two of them spoke to a friendly crowd of several dozen people in front of the party headquarters, it was hard not to notice what dominated the front porch of the house across the street: an enormous sign for the Trump-Vance ticket.

“Elections in my state and here in Wisconsin often come down to a percentage point or less,” Shapiro told me. “You got to show up everywhere. You got to make sure that you’re meeting people where they are in communities like this that maybe historically haven’t voted your way.”

Conservative Richland County makes an excellent case for that strategy. Geologically, it is part of what is known as the Driftless Area, because it was not sculpted by the moving glaciers of the Ice Age.

Richland was one of 17 such Trump-to-Baldwin counties in the state, which suggests there are still some parts of the country where ticket-splitting has not gone entirely extinct.

I've written a bit in recent years about the strategy of showing up everywhere.  

Then, there's Baldwin's play on the outsider status of her opponent, Hovde: 

Baldwin rarely misses an opportunity to remind voters that a magazine honored her Republican challenger, Eric Hovde, as one of Orange County’s “most influential people” for three years in a row.

“Well, Wisconsin, we have a Green County. We have a Brown County. There’s no Orange County in Wisconsin,” Baldwin said.

And here's the New York Times Catie Edmondson reporting on Tammy Baldwin campaigning in central Wisconsin. The locations are Richland County and Dodgeville. Baldwin has brought along Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro who, the subheading tells us, "has a track record of appealing to voters in rural, conservative-leaning areas." An excerpt follows:

The two made campaign stops over the weekend here in south-central Wisconsin, in a pair of rural counties that reliably voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016 and 2020.

* * *

As Democrats have faced eroding support from working-class voters in rural areas, the party has begun to lean on messengers like Mr. Shapiro and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, now the vice-presidential nominee, who have proved their ability to appeal to voters in more conservative areas. A handout at the Democratic offices here for volunteers speaking with voters stressed that Mr. Walz is a “lifelong hunter and gun owner” and “believes in Midwest common sense, being a good neighbor and allegiance to the U.S. of America.”

The story takes up Baldwin's changed circumstances in that she is now facing an election in which Trump is also on the ballot.  Last time she was elected was 2018, when Trump was the sitting president. 

Here's a post from earlier this month based on a Wall Street Journal story suggesting that Baldwin has the touch with her state's rural voters.  

And here's another Wisconsin story, this one less focused on the 2024 Election and focused instead on small-town attitudes about immigration.  It's by Jose Del Real, and the dateline is Baraboo, population 12,566.  An excerpt follows: 

The refugees were headed to a city 150 miles away, but the public uproar over their imminent arrival quickly migrated across county lines, down the lush rural roads of south-central Wisconsin and here into the quiet town of Baraboo where Eleanor Vita had recently retired. She set out to research the matter herself, which was how, within the dull depths of government reports about resettlement, she found what she believed was proof of dishonesty about the cost of the program.

* * * 

Across the country, disagreements about immigration policy are still at the heart of politics eight years after Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, which was propelled by warnings about foreigners bringing drugs and violence into the United States. It was persuasive rhetoric that year for many in Wisconsin, a state once seen as a Democratic bulwark but which had come to swing between political parties on vanishingly thin vote margins.

The same was true of Sauk County, a rural area northwest of Madison, where 93 percent of residents are White, about 1 in 5 have college degrees and a growing number are over 65 years old. Like Wisconsin itself, Sauk County went twice for Barack Obama, then for Trump in 2016, then for Joe Biden in 2020. This is a swing county in a swing state.

Looking forward to seeing what happens in Wisconsin next month.  

California law aims to slow maternity ward closures

CalMatters reported today on a new California law aiming to slow the closure of hospital maternity wards.  Here's the lede for the story by Kristen Hwang, Ana B. Ibarra, and Erica Yee:  

In the face of rapidly disappearing maternity care, Gov. Gavin Newsom this weekend vetoed a bill that was meant to slow closures of labor wards but signed a law that will give communities more time to plan for the loss of that service.

At least 56 maternity wards have closed across California since 2012, according to CalMatters’ reporting. The closures have happened in both rural and urban areas, resulting in long drive times for patients and overwhelmed obstetrics departments in neighboring communities. At the same time, rates of maternal mortality and complications are increasing.

The new law, Senate Bill 1300, authored by Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, requires hospitals to notify county government 120 days before closing a labor and delivery or psychiatric unit. The notification would also include a public hearing.

The only other allusion to rurality is this mention of distance: 

Most of the state’s population lives within 30 minutes of a birthing hospital, but 12 counties do not have hospitals delivering babies.

Law that would ban some large farms in Sonoma County, California elicits strong opposition

"Noooooooo on J" sign on Bodega Avenue,
a few miles west of Petaluma

Signs opposing Proposition J are all over Sonoma County, in California's north Bay.  (All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024).  I first noticed them about a month ago in the western part of the county, which is home to many dairy and poultry farms.  Curious, I went to the "No on J" website, which asserts:   

Sonoma County Family Farmers are under attack. Measure J, proposed by an animal extremist group from Berkeley, aims to eliminate Sonoma County’s diverse animal agriculture production. If passed, Measure J would put multi-generational farming families out of business and as a result, the cost of dairy products, eggs, and poultry will increase significantly. Furthermore, Measure J will increase our greenhouse gas emissions since these products will have to be imported from other parts of our state, country or even other countries. Measure J will cost taxpayers millions, and have a half-billion cumulative impact to the Sonoma County economy.

The Organic Valley brand
is commonly seen in 
Sonoma County

"No on J" has a very professional website, with a video showing several generations of farmers from the same family.  

That website sent me, in turn, to this April 2024 story by Susanne Rust in the Los Angeles Times.  An excerpt from it provides additional background: 

[A]nimal rights activists say all is not right in this region known for its wine and farm-to-fork sensibilities. They say there are two dozen large, concentrated animal farming operations — which collectively house almost 3 million animals — befouling watersheds and torturing livestock and poultry in confined lots and cages.

And in an effort to stop it, they’ve collected more than 37,000 signatures from Sonoma County residents to put an end to it.

Coleman Valley Road,
between Bodega Bay 
and Occidental

The LA Times story includes these quotes from key pro-ag stakeholders, who essentially argue that the measure represents a slippery slope that will ultimately shutter many more farms, including those not currently falling within its mandate:

Sponsors of the ordinance aim “to get rid of animal agriculture all together, everywhere,” insisted Dayna Ghirardelli, the president of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau. She said the organizers of the petition are animal “extremists” and are using this legislation as a means to start the process of wiping out farms. “This is just the beginning.”

Then there's this from the president of the California Poultry Federation: 

This ballot initiative would eliminate family livestock farming that is so important in Sonoma County. There will be no eggs, chicken, dairy, cheese, lamb and other livestock from Sonoma County in your supermarkets if this initiative passes.

One of the standard "No on J" signs
seen around Sonoma County

The Press-Democrat, the local Sonoma County newspaper, has covered the matter quite thoroughly with several key stories.  This one from Sept. 19 features a helpful summary: 

Measure J would be the first county ordinance of its kind in the United States if passed in November. Both sides in the initiative see it as a steppingstone for future legislative efforts. (Berkeley, which has no large animal farms, is voting on a similar ban in November that would be largely symbolic.)

For farming representatives looking into the future, Measure J is an alarming political test — in a left-leaning county with a significant farm economy. Other areas with even larger farm sectors could be next, they say.

Standard "No on J" sign in Valley Ford, of the sort common in western Sonoma County

* * * 

Measure J would phase out larger farming operations known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, over three years, while requiring the county to provide a four-year retraining and employment assistance program for their workers.

Opponents say Measure J would ultimately kill off local dairy and poultry farms and create a wide ripple effect that would harm the economy, eliminate at the very least hundreds of jobs, and push up local food prices. They say the measure misrepresents how local dairy and poultry farmers go about their business and their impact on their animals and the environment.

* * * 

As outlined in the ballot measure, an “animal feeding operation,” or AFO, is a plot of land where animals are “stabled or confined and fed or maintained for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period, and crops, vegetation, forage growth or post-harvest residues are not sustained in the normal growing season over any portion” of the property.

Between Dillon Beach and Valley Ford, Sept. 2024

An AFO becomes a CAFO when it exceeds a certain size, depending on the type of animal — farms with more than 700 dairy cows, or 85,000 egg laying hens, or 125,000 chickens raised for meat. The Yes on Measure J campaign says there are 21 farms in Sonoma County that fit that definition.

A “medium-scale” farm also could fit the definition if it discharges manure directly into surface water, a practice not permitted in Sonoma County. ... [S]ince no medium-sized farms in the county have been documented discharging into surface water, Measure J would affect only the 21 largest dairies and poultry farms.

The county’s Economic Development Board, meanwhile, in an analysis for the Board of Supervisors, identified 11 facilities that exceed the large-scale CAFO threshold, and also included 49 medium-scale operations that could be affected. 

A homemade sign, just over
Sonoma County line, 
in Marin County, Hwy 1

Another Press-Democrat story from August 25 focuses on the those who got Proposition J on the ballot--purportedly Berkeley liberals.  Here's a quote from that story, which featured a Yes on J March in Petaluma, one of the cities in the southern part of the county, near the Marin County line.  Petaluma is associated with the poultry industry:  

Just over 100 people were gathered Saturday in Petaluma’s Penry Park, preparing to march 2.5 miles across the city in support of an upcoming November ballot measure that would ban certain large animal farming operations in Sonoma County.

There were signs that said “Honk if you love animals” and “protect our environment.” On a path was scrawled in chalk: “No más granjas industriales,” meaning “No more industrial farms.”

Before they got started, an organizer gave instructions that suggested how emotionally charged the battle over Measure J is becoming.

Valley Ford, along Hwy 1

The story quotes Paul Darwin Picklesimer of the Coalition to End Factory Farming, which sponsored the ballot measure.  

It's really important anytime anybody gives us hell today, they call us whatever names, homophobic slurs, all the kinds of things we've been hearing, just ignore them.... We're just here to deliver our positive message and do so nonviolently.  

Another story focuses on Sonoma County restaurateurs opposing Proposition J. An excerpt follows:  

Samantha Ramey is on a first-name basis with the nearby farmers who provide dairy, meat and vegetables to the three Sonoma County restaurants she owns and operates with her chef husband, Ryan. But like many other farm-to-table restaurateurs in the county, she worries that a ballot initiative aimed at curtailing large local livestock and poultry producers could devastate her businesses.

* * * 

Though Ramey works primarily with small farms and ranches, she said that closing 20 or more local dairies and poultry farms would only increase already skyrocketing prices for eggs, milk and meat that have forced restaurants to raise prices and turned away customers from dining out.

Ramey adds:  

It will have an economic ripple effect in Sonoma County because we all depend on each other. Local feed stores, farm-to-table restaurants, wineries, backyard and hobby farms will all be negatively affected.  

Along Hwy 1, near Valley Ford

Here's a story from CBS News out of San Francisco, on Sept. 18, 

Valley Ford:  The inflatable Halloween-style animals--
one a cow--had collapsed by the time I took this photo

You can read more of the Press-Democrat's excellent reporting on farming in Sonoma County here, in a story about how state environmental regulation forced closure of a large dairy that had been in business more than a century.  

And here's a recent New York Times feature on The Hidden Environmental Costs of Food.