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.

Kentucky sheriff shoots, kills judge in rural courthouse

 Here's an excerpt from the New York Times coverage of these sensational events: 

The sheriff of a rural eastern Kentucky county walked into a courthouse on Thursday afternoon and shot and killed a district judge in his chambers after an argument, the police said.

Mickey Stines, 43, the sheriff in Letcher County, turned himself in after shooting Judge Kevin Mullins and was charged with first-degree murder, Trooper Matt Gayheart of the Kentucky State Police said at a news conference on Thursday evening.

The shooting happened at about 2:55 p.m. inside the Letcher County Courthouse in Whitesburg, a city in southeastern Kentucky.

The sheriff was taken to a local jail and had been cooperative with investigators, Trooper Gayheart said.

“This community is small in nature, and we’re all shook,” the trooper said.

* * *

The news stunned the residents of Letcher County, which is about 110 miles southeast of Lexington and is home to about 21,500 people.

Whitesburg, incidentally, is home to the Center for Rural Affairs, which publishes the Daily Yonder.  It suffered severe flooding in 2022.  

Recent coverage of the rural vote in North Carolina and Georgia

Police Department of Roxboro, North Carolina
Person County
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2023

With both of these states in play in the 2024 Presidential Election, media outlets have been paying attention to the rural vote.  In this post, I'll just highlight a few of the stories. 

Hannah Knowles and Yasmeen Abutaleb reported for the Washington Post on September 12, under the headline, "Harris Puts Pressure on Trump in an Elusive Battleground:  North Carolina."  Here's an excerpt: 

Harris has raised Democratic hopes of winning North Carolina, a populous battleground that has been just beyond their grasp since Barack Obama briefly turned it blue in 2008. The elusive prize represents the party’s best chance of winning a state Biden couldn’t in 2020, and the race here is a dead heat about eight weeks before Election Day.

* * *

Democrats have long believed the state’s rapidly growing population and demographics — including a significant number of Black voters and millennial voters — put it firmly in play. Yet roughly 40 percent of the state lives in rural areas, which tend to be conservative strongholds that have helped the GOP stay on top.

* * * 

“It is a more small-town, rural state than Georgia is,” [Amy] Walter [of Cook Political Report] said. Cities quickly give way to red territory. Harris needs to “post better numbers in the suburbs right outside of Charlotte or right outside of the research triangle, and that’s the challenge,” Walter said.

The story mentions nonmetro Robeson County, home to the Lumbee Tribe.  

Here's Sarah Kallis today, "The State of the Presidential Race in Rural Georgia," on NPR.   Here are some excerpts from Kallis' conversation with NPR host Mary Louise Kelly:  

KALLIS: So I'm standing on a park in Rutledge, Ga., and it's a pretty small park in the middle of town. And I can see a gazebo, a metal swing set and a slide near me. There's also a rooster walking around the park that you might have heard earlier and you might hear again on this call.

KELLY: (Laughter) OK, good.

KALLIS: And so on my drive here from Atlanta, I passed miles of cotton fields. Rutledge is a very small town. It's only about 871 people. And I can see several small businesses, like a restaurant, a hardware store and a dentist, near the park. But most of the other storefronts are vacant. Rutledge is near a planned Rivian electric vehicle plant that promised to bring in thousands of jobs, but construction has been paused indefinitely. And I've spoken to a lot of people here who said that small new businesses often struggle to make it.

KELLY: I hear the rooster there. And I also hear you telling me that residents are worried about local business. They are worried about the local economy.

* * *

KALLIS: Right. So rural counties outside of the major cities in Atlanta tend to vote Republican pretty consistently. But some counties, like Liberty County, which is in southeast Georgia, sort of near Savannah, have pretty large pockets of Black voters, and they tend to lean Democratic. Liberty County ended up voting for Biden in 2020. Overall, rural voters in Georgia voted mostly for Trump in 2020, but both the Harris and the Trump campaigns have opened field offices in these rural areas to try to connect with voters there.

And here's another NPR story, from a few days ago, on rural voters in Georgia. Steven Fowler reports for Georgia Public Radio under the headline, "Once again, the presidential race is looming large in Georgia."  Some excerpts follow: 

FOWLER:  But an underrated piece of the puzzle was Biden losing by less in many rural parts of the state, particularly the Black Belt in South Georgia.

So last week I drove about 2 1/2 hours south of Atlanta to a little town called Cordele, where local Democrats say they can't restock yard signs fast enough. And they were setting up tables and chairs for a debate watch party that drew dozens of people from several nearby counties.

ISAAC OWENS: I would like to think that Joe Biden won because of the city of Cordele and those votes.

FOWLER: Isaac Owens is a local pastor and city commissioner in Cordele, known as the watermelon capital of the world, and home to about half of the 20,000 people that live in Crisp County. He says that, a lot of times, candidates overlook rural communities.

OWENS: Because, oh, that's small. That's insignificant. But what happens when a group of small, a group of insignificant come together? They're no longer small and insignificant. They make a powerful thing.

FOWLER: Trump won about 65% of the vote in Crisp County the last two presidential election cycles. And Biden barely won the precinct that encompasses Cordele. So many eyebrows were raised when Democrats opened a campaign headquarters there, one of many offices they set up in places where there aren't a lot of voters, let alone ones that seem like they might vote for a Democrat.

Watch this space for more coverage of the rural vote, including out of southern states that are becoming swing states.

"Stop with the rural-bashing on campuses"

Here's the lede from the essay (op-ed) I published today, co-authored with Emelie Peine, in Inside Higher Ed: 

“My parents actively taught me to hate rural people because they all vote for Trump—so why should we care about them?”

This comment came from a San Francisco Bay Area student in a fall 2022 class one of us, Emelie, taught on rural communities at the University of Puget Sound.

In a course on law and rural livelihoods the other of us, Lisa, taught at the University of California, Davis, the few students who hail from rural areas have noted their peers’ lack of empathy for rural folks—for folks like them.

Kami Steffenauer, then a sophomore at Georgetown University, wrote poignantly in The Georgetown Voice last fall about the shame she felt when a professor called her a “country bumpkin” during a class discussion.

Many rural students can relate to Steffenauer’s experience; we often hear this kind of casual bashing of rural areas and people from our students and colleagues. So it’s no surprise that some conservatives are railing against university elites who fail to appreciate rural folks or, worse still, lump them all into one big, toxic basket of deplorables. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance—who often represents himself as standing up for rural folks—has gone so far as to describe universities as “hostile institutions.”

Sadly, conservatives are not entirely wrong. As we embark on another fall semester that coincides with a contentious presidential election in which rural-urban dynamics—and tensions—are attracting attention, we have a responsibility as educators to challenge antirural bias. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that our institutions are places where rural students and faculty know that they, too, belong.

Sad not to have heard the word "rural" uttered in the debate tonight

That is all.  

I believe this is the last time we heard rural folks or rural interests mentioned in a presidential debate, by Pete Buttigieg in 2019.  

On rural families valuing care by kith and kin

When I first starte studying rural sociology 15 years ago, I was focused on gender issues, including families.  I was interested--but not surprised--to learn that rural families tended to rely on "kith and kin" for childcare and other shared services.  That's part of what accounted for their attachment to place--the need to be near kith and kin.  

So it was interesting today to see this op-ed in the Washington Post about the need for government to support financially relatives and friend networks who provide child care.  Interestingly, this comes up in relation to Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance suggesting turning to grandparents to provide childcare.  As the author of the essay, Elliot Haspel, writes, Vance's comment "launched a thousand mockeries."  Haspel, of the family policy think tank, Capita, argues that's a missed opportunity.  Here's a key excerpt from his essay as it relates to rural families--and what I assumed might be a dated notion, but apparently is not:  

[A]ll the clap backs [against Vance's comments] miss an important point: A comprehensive child-care policy should absolutely include kin caregivers, and those caregivers need public support.

In the child-care sector, grandparents are grouped into what are known as family, friends or neighbor caregivers, or FFNs. There are about 5 million FFN caregivers in the United States who provide regular, recurring child care — not just the occasional babysitting. They play a critical role in family well-being and children’s early learning and development.

Research commissioned by the philanthropic collaborative Home Grown has shown that FFNs are disproportionately preferred by rural families, families of color and families whose parents work nontraditional schedules such as night shifts. The study found that parents who rely on FFNs such as grandparents appreciate how they “offer flexible, culturally responsive, affordable care that feels like home.”

* * * 

[M]any families that want to tap grandparents, aunts, uncles or dear family friends cannot. Even if they want to help, many would-be caregivers need an income. Vance himself, in an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” last month, nodded toward the idea of paying grandparents. FFNs are technically eligible to receive public money through state subsidy programs, which are supported by grants from the federal Child Care Development Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services. About one-fifth of children served by California’s program and two-thirds of Hawaii’s are cared for by an FFN. But eligibility is limited, the application process is arduous and reimbursement rates can be as low at $15 per day.

The story mentions Oklahoma's Kith.care, an initiative launched during the pandemic that allowed certain essential workers to designate an FFN caregiver, such as a grandparent, for payment from the state.  It closes with the assertion that "Public policy can absolutely bolster FFN caregiving."  

Plus, bolstering FFN caregiving would help rural families not only because it is culturally appropriate and may be more convenient, but because of the extreme shortage of child care providers in rural areas.  

A flex from China's rural women

The top story on the New York Times website right now--at least for us on the Pacific coast--is about rural Chinese women. The headline is, "In Rural China, ‘Sisterhoods’ Demand Justice, and Cash."  Vivian Wang reports; here is the lede:  

The women came from different villages, converging outside the local Rural Affairs Bureau shortly after 10 a.m. One had taken the morning off from her job selling rice rolls. Another was a tour operator. Yet another was a recent retiree.

The group, nine in all, double-checked their paperwork, then strode in. In a dimly lit office, they cornered three officials and demanded to know why they had been excluded from government payouts, worth tens of thousands of dollars, that were supposed to go to each villager.

“I had these rights at birth. Why did I suddenly lose them?” one woman asked.

That was the question uniting these women in Guangdong Province, in southern China. They were joining a growing number of rural women, all across the country, who are finding each other to confront a longstanding custom of denying them land rights — all because of whom they had married.

In much of rural China, if a woman marries someone from outside her village, she becomes a “married-out woman.” To the village, she is no longer a member, even if she continues to live there.

That means the village assembly — a decision-making body technically open to all adults, but usually dominated by men — can deny her village-sponsored benefits such as health insurance, as well as money that is awarded to residents when the government takes over their land. (A man remains eligible no matter whom he marries.)

Now, women are fighting back, in a rare bright spot for women’s rights and civil society. They are filing lawsuits and petitioning officials, energized by the conviction that they should be treated more fairly, and by the government’s increasing recognition of their rights.

In doing so, they are challenging centuries of tradition that have defined women as appendages to men: their fathers before marriage, their husbands after. That view has persisted even as the country has rapidly modernized, and women have gone to school and sometimes even become their families’ breadwinners.

They are also exposing a gap between the ruling Communist Party’s words and its actions. Many courts, which are controlled by the party, refuse to take on the women’s lawsuits.

This reminds me of the case of Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (U.S. Supreme Court 1979).  This excerpt from the case digest should explain the comparison based on a loss of rights for women who married outside their tribe:  

Respondents, a female member of the Santa Clara Pueblo and her daughter, brought this action for declaratory and injunctive relief against petitioners, the Pueblo and its Governor, alleging that a Pueblo ordinance that denies tribal membership to the children of female members who marry outside the tribe, but not to similarly situated children of men of that tribe, violates Title I of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (ICRA), 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1303, which, in relevant part, provides that "[n]o Indian tribe in exercising powers of self-government shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws." 25 U.S.C. § 1302(8). The ICRA's only express remedial provision, 25 U.S.C. § 1303, extends the writ of habeas corpus to any person, in a federal court, "to test the legality of his detention by order of an Indian tribe." The District Court held that jurisdiction was conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 1343(4) and 25 U.S.C. § 1302(8), apparently concluding that the substantive provisions of Title I impliedly authorized civil actions for declaratory and injunctive relief, and also that the tribe was not immune from such a suit. Subsequently, the court found for petitioners on the merits. The Court of Appeals, while agreeing on the jurisdictional issue, reversed on the merits.

Still more on the rural vote as Tammy Baldwin courts dairy farmers, from WSJ

Katy Stech Ferek reports in today's Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Democrat Woos Dairy Farmers to Keep Crucial Senate Seat."  The subhead is "Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin hits country roads and agricultural fairs, seeking to win over rural Trump supporters once more."  Here is the lede: 

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.—Sen. Tammy Baldwin had an unusual talent during her last election: convincing rural supporters of Republican Donald Trump that they should vote for her, too.

This November, Senate Democrats need Baldwin to do it again.

Wisconsin is a prime battleground to determine the next president, but Democrats also need a win in the Badger State to keep control of the Senate. Baldwin’s campaign for a third term against the wealthy banker Eric Hovde, who says the Democrat is an out-of-touch career politician, has sent her down country roads in sparsely populated counties that cut through farmland and curve around lakes.

“I might not have met every farmer, but I think I found over time that word gets out,” said Baldwin, 62 years old, after a long day of campaigning outside Leinenkugel’s brewery in Chippewa Falls. Voters might be frustrated with gridlock, she said, “But to know somebody’s out there fighting for them, it’s a big deal.”

And here's a further quote: 

Supporters have said Baldwin connects to some conservative voters by focusing on economic issues, such as the cap on the out-of-pocket cost for insulin at $35 a month. On the campaign trail, she talks about leading 2018 legislation requiring federal water infrastructure projects to use American-made steel products, a requirement signed into law by Trump. She has secured mental-health resources for farmers and is trying to get federal money to test private wells for contamination into the next farm bill.

* * * 

Baldwin avoided Biden during his campaign visits to Wisconsin earlier this year. But in an indication that Democrats see Harris differently, Baldwin joined the vice president at her first presidential campaign rally, held at a high school outside Milwaukee.

This is from 60-year-old dairy farmer Randy Roecker of Loganville, population 300, in Sauk County, just west of Madison: 

[Roecker] said he usually supports conservative candidates but will vote for Baldwin, in part because of the mental-health resources she secured. He said he supports her fight to keep the label “milk” off nondairy beverages made of almonds, oats and other alternatives.

Roecker said: 

Tammy is the only Democrat that I really have trusted.  I think she cares. That’s truly what it is.… These other ones just want to get elected and hold their power.

And here's the word from Baldwin's Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, a real estate magnate who has lent his campaign $13 million and who lives part time at a home in Laguna Beach, California:  

“It’s the No. 1 issue. No question about it,” he said of inflation, adding that, if elected, he would focus on fixing the economy and stopping the flow of fentanyl into rural communities. He said his support in rural areas is evident by the lawn signs on display. But, he acknowledged, “There is a percentage of voters we have to close the gap on.”

And the media can't get enough of Walz' links to rurality

Here are excerpts from a few recent stories about Walz' rural roots.  These excerpts are from from Matt Flegenheimer's story in the New York Times, "The Small-Town Nebraska Tim Walz Put Behind Him, but Never Fully Left":  

Within a few years, Mr. Walz’s father, a well-liked school administrator, got sick, then sicker. When he was gone, Mr. Walz’s mother found work where she could, and the family subsisted on Social Security survivor benefits.  

By then, Mr. Walz had joined the National Guard, two days after his 17th birthday. He has said he took his oath of enlistment from a lieutenant with a farm nearby, standing in the middle of a cornfield.

As Mr. Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor, prepares this week to introduce himself to the nation from the party convention in Chicago, he and those close to him have positioned his rural Nebraska upbringing as essential to his self-conception, a skeleton key to understanding the man he became and the values he came to embrace.

His experiences in this period formed the core of his future political identity — unpretentious, neighborly, a little mischievous — even as he seemed determined, ultimately, to see what life might look like somewhere else.

Though Mr. Walz still speaks nostalgically of his time back home, he has remained tethered to the place mostly through those who stayed.

His mother still lives in Butte, Neb., a village of fewer than 300 people, where the lettering above the old high school reads simply, “High School,” and Mr. Walz’s cousins recounted his exploits from their regular perch at the corner bar, Corner Bar.

And here's a more recent Washington Post story by Abbie Cheeseman about how how Walz' old congressional district is divided across the rural-urban axis. I like the nuance in this story, which doesn't treat the whole congressional district as rural--like most stories have. Here are some key excerpts, beginning with the lede:

The political divide in the congressional district Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz once represented is now so stark that it’s hard to imagine one person representing the whole area. In this expanse of southern Minnesota, a few small, sleepy cities stand their ground in a sea of rural red that stretches from the South Dakota border to the bluffs above the Mississippi River. 

Democrats have expressed hope that putting Walz, a Midwesterner who grew up working summers on a Nebraska farm, on their ticket will help them win over rural voters. But a close look at Walz’s former district — a prime example of how America’s huge urban-rural cultural divide shapes the nation’s politics — shows just how difficult that task will be.

In the 18 years since Walz made the life-changing career change from high school teacher to politician, Minnesota has grown more liberal as a state, but the district that gave him his start has lost almost all of the blue precincts that once dotted its farmlands. The cities in the 1st Congressional District have grown, but in the expansive rural heartland (pigs outnumber residents of the district seven times over, according to 2022 census data), populations have decreased and the people remaining have grown more conservative.

Tales of Walz’s days as a teacher and high school football coach trip off the tongues of almost everyone in Mankato, the college town where he and his family lived, but mentions of Walz were widely met with a roll of the eyes this month at the Nicollet County Fair. Mankatoans feel energy and pride for their governor, but at the fair just 20 minutes outside town, some people were more excited by the prospect that if Walz becomes vice president, he might finally leave the state.

Mankato, with a population of 45,000 spread among three adjacent counties, is micropolitan--the upper end of metropolitan counties.  So, the story suggests that places the size of Mankato--typically thought of as rural--are more like larger cities in their political leanings.  It is probably significant, too, that Mankato is a college town, home of Minnesota State University.  

Democrats should turn focus on courts into rallying cry for rural Access to Justice

Over the last few years, the Democratic Party has focused (at least in rhetoric) on highlighting inequities in our justice system. From highlighting biases on the Supreme Court (and some even proposing expanding the court) to bringing attention to inequities in our criminal justice system (and including reform efforts in the party platform), the Democrats have positioned themselves as the party fighting for a more equitable justice system.

But yet, something is conspicuous in its absence - a mention of rural Access to Justice. 

The rural lawyer shortage has been well documented in this space and the subject of much scholarly inquiry.  At a base level, the statistics are striking 14% of Americans live in rural spaces but yet only 2% of lawyers practice there. There have been isolated efforts to address the issue but there is a lack of a sustained national effort to address the issue. There's no shortage of local stories about the problem (see here, here, and here). Some states are actively addressing the issue. However, it is largely ignored by both major national parties, even as the issue of inequities in the courtroom is becoming more mainstream. 

Rural communities are home to some of the embedded inequality in the United States. I've written extensively about the history of corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina, where I grew up. You can find a couple of those pieces here and here. This issue is compounded when the local media does not do its job in exposing local corruption and instead serves to advance the agenda of those in power. Spatial isolation serves to only obscure these issues and make it difficult to create the political will necessary to address them.

I've been in rural courtrooms and seen people show up without counsel. In such cases, people lost their homes, failed to receive adequate protections against domestic violence, or received inequitable treatment in divorce and custody proceedings. In the criminal sphere, many rural public defender's offices are contending with shortages that result in lawyers having huge caseloads, making it impossible for the individual defendants to receive the best defense possible. People's lives are being irreparably harmed by this on-going crisis. 

We cannot say that we have achieved equity in our legal system without addressing the rural lawyer shortage. If the Democratic Party is serious about addressing inequities in our court system, they must bring awareness and advocate for solutions to the rural lawyer shortage.