The looming red wave: How a crowded Democratic field might hand California’s governorship to a Republican

California gubernatorial candidate debate Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in San Francisco.Photo Credit: Laure Andrillon/AP

When I was little, my parents always voted blue. When the ballot offered one Democrat versus one Republican, it was an easy pick between the two. I always viewed California as an impenetrable fortress of blue politics. With our heavily populated progressive cities, it seemed practically impossible for a Republican to win a gubernatorial election. As the June 2 primary approaches, however, an overcrowded field of Democrats vying for the office is threatening to turn that assumption completely upside down.

According to recent polling by UC Berkeley IGS Poll (sponsored by The Los Angeles Times), conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco are leading the gubernatorial race as of March 18. Hilton captures roughly 17% of the vote, while Bianco is close behind at 16%, leaving prominent Democrats like Eric Swalwell and Katie Porter trailing them in the low teens. You can follow the latest polling updates on The New York Times. Because California utilizes a top-two primary system where candidates are listed on the same ballot regardless of party, the sheer abundance of Democratic candidates is severely fracturing the liberal vote.

The California Democratic Party is actively panicking about the very real possibility of a general election without a single Democrat on the ballot. On March 3, party chair Rusty Hicks issued an open letter pleading with unviable candidates to assess their paths to victory and suspend their campaigns:

If in the unlikely event a Democrat failed to proceed to the General Election for Governor, there could be the potential for depressed Democratic turnout in California in November. The result would present a real risk to winning the congressional seats required and imperil Democrats' chances to retake the House.

Despite these dire warnings, all eight Democratic hopefuls have stubbornly refused to step aside. Meanwhile, the conservative surge is being heavily fueled by voters in California’s rural and inland regions, who are expressing deep dissatisfaction with the state’s current trajectory. A recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California revealed that 54% of Californians believe the state is headed in the wrong direction. Their views are driven largely by anxiety over the cost of living and inflation.

Candidates like Bianco are successfully capitalizing on this widespread frustration. Polling data shows the Republican sheriff is absolutely dominating the race in rural, historically red areas like the Inland Empire and the North Coast/Sierras. While Democratic candidates fight each other for urban votes in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, Republican candidates are unifying the rural base.

Despite needing to split the conservative vote evenly to advance to the general election, Republican candidates Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are not cooperating and are instead aggressively attacking one another to consolidate their base. Both candidates are utilizing similar platform strategies centered on heavy deregulation, reversing prison closures, boosting oil production, and slashing taxes.

A critical element of both their campaign strategies is courting voters in California's rural, agricultural, and inland regions where conservative momentum is currently the strongest. For instance, both men recently campaigned directly to these demographics by participating in a gubernatorial forum at Fresno State hosted by Western Growers. Bianco, the current Riverside County Sheriff, has been particularly successful at rallying these rural and inland voters by leaning heavily into his outsider status and harshly criticizing the environmental regulations that many inland residents blame for the high cost of living.

While the media fixates on the fractured Democratic field, they are completely ignoring the socialist candidates running in this election, including Ramsey Robinson of the Peace and Freedom Party and Butch Ware. It is frustrating that candidates who are actually running on working-class platforms receive absolutely no press coverage and are shut out of major platforms, like the highly criticized (and ultimately canceled) gubernatorial debate co-sponsored by USC and the Los Angeles TV station KABC.

Comparison to the last Governor Race

2019 California Governor Election Results. Credit: The New York Times

While outgoing Governor Gavin Newsom practically coasted through his past elections, the 2026 primary is shaping up to be an entirely different beast. In his 2018 race, Newsom secured a landslide victory against Republican John Cox, winning by a massive 24 percentage points (the worst defeat for a GOP gubernatorial candidate in California since 1950). Newsom enjoyed such, unified party backing that his races were defined by inevitability, a stark contrast to the absolute chaos and uncertainty of this year's crowded primary. Today, the Democratic field is severely fractured among eight established candidates who stubbornly refuse to drop out, creating a messy, unpredictable contest heavily focused on intra-party squabbling. Unlike Newsom's clear march to the governor position, this current division is threatening to split the liberal vote so thinly that two Republicans could actually advance from the top-two primary, potentially shutting Democrats out of the November general election entirely.

My Final Thoughts 

It is wild to think that in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one, we might see two Republicans facing off for governor this November. This situation highlights a massive disconnect between urban liberals and the rural conservatives who are successfully mobilizing behind their preferred candidates. If the Democratic party cannot figure out how to consolidate their base and appeal to the varying wants and needs of all Californians, they will only have themselves to blame for handing over the governor's office.

The SAVE Act and rural America

Point Arena, California 
© Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (“SAVE Act”) has returned to Congress and sits before the Senate after passing the House.This bill would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by requiring every eligible voter to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote or updating a registration.

The bill would require individuals to appear in person at an election and present approved documentation even for routine updates. These updates can include address changes, name changes, or party affiliation adjustments. Each federal election cycle, approximately 80 million people either register to vote for the first time or update their voter registration information. This bill would impose new logistical hurdles on all of them. Acceptable documentation would include a valid U.S. passport, a certified birth certificate paired with a photo ID, or a naturalization certificate. If a person’s legal name does not match their birth certificate, they must also provide additional legal documents to prove the change.

Supporters of the bill, including many Republican lawmakers, argue that stricter verification requirements will prevent non-citizen voting. Arguing that Joe Biden’s “reckless open-border policies” necessitate this bill because without it we can’t be sure that Americans are the only ones voting in federal elections.

What does the White House have to say about the SAVE Act? The official White House website refers to it as a “common sense, bipartisan bill,” emphasizing that all it “simply” requires is a valid ID to register to vote in a federal election, proof of citizenship, and no mail-in ballots. The website then goes on to list other countries that enforce stricter voter identification laws.

The SAVE Act is not new. Last year it passed the House but failed to advance in the Senate due to nationwide public opposition. It was reintroduced this January. Critics, previously and this time, argue that the SAVE Act solves nothing. Numerous studies and audits have shown that non-citizen voting occurs at extremely low rates. In fact, many view this bill as a way for Republicans to hammer Trump’s narrative of widespread election fraud.

Additionally, the act will determinately impact rural America, which particularly relies on mail-in and online methods for voter registration. Rural Americans already face long travel distances and fewer government service offices. A Center for American Progress analysis found that in some cases rural Americans would need to drive hours to an election office in order to meet the requirements of the act. The maps below highlight two examples. In two rural counties, Catron County, New Mexico, and Harney County, Oregon, residents must travel four hours or more round trip to reach their local election office. In states like Alaska, the burden will be even more pronounced. Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski is one of the only Republicans to oppose the bill, arguing that it will disenfranchise thousands of Alaskans and their ability to vote as a large majority of Alaskan voter registration is done online. 

Credit: Center for American Progress, 2025

Furthermore, while the act imposes no direct fee to vote it requires Americans to provide documentation that can only be obtained by paying a fee. Obtaining documentation that requires payment will discourage low-income rural residents from even participating. Under this act, rural voters will face longer travel time, higher costs, and fewer alternatives. These barriers will not just inconvenience voters but will prevent participation in the voting process.

Bridging the dirtroad divide: Progressive politics in rural America

A sign in Plumas County in 2013. © Lisa Pruitt

Rural America votes Republican. This statement has been true since the 1990s, when a sharp rural-urban political divide emerged. In fact, it's been a frequent discussion on this blog; read more here, here and here. Donald Trump won 93 percent of rural counties in 2024, which clearly demonstrates how strong this divide has become. Rural America hasn't always been such a Republican stronghold, however, and some rural progressive thinkers are devising ways to return rural places to their more left-leaning days. 

How did it get like this?

In the 1930s, rural progressivism was at its peak. The Great Depression and a farm crisis in the 1920s had left rural America completely sidelined. Franklin Delano Roosevelt noticed this unrest and centered his initial campaign around the issues affecting lower and middle-income Americans, rural and urban. He planned a "rural renaissance," focused on rural electrification and raising crop prices. This was incredibly popular, and rural voters, who had previously voted Republican, largely backed Democrats for the next 40 years.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, rural and urban America voted in relative sync. Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler explored this trend in their 2023 article Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020. Their research shows that until the 1990s, rural Americans were barely more likely to support a Republican candidate than their urban counterparts. Now, the partisan gap between rural and urban voters ranges from a 21-point difference in the Midwest to a 14-point difference in the Northeast. 

What changed? 1992-2004 were marked by political and economic upheaval in the United States as urban areas prospered and rural areas suffered from divestment and shrinking job markets. No longer feeling seen by the Democratic Party, rural voters defected to the GOP in droves. Brown and Mettler contend that the divide from 2008 to 2020 was primarily driven by nationalist sentiment. They point to anti-Black rhetoric during Barack Obama's campaign and presidency, and the lack of higher education, led rural voters to identify themselves in opposition to "urban" ideals. 

These trends have led to the highly partisan United States we have today, a hyper-divided United States, where the majority of rural America is Trump country. It should be noted, however, that rural voters aren't all happy with their representation either. A March 2020 poll revealed that 87% of non-metro voters feel like the government does not represent people like them. 

So, what now?

When Democrats lost the popular vote in 2004, they initiated a major party platform shift. Steve Inskeep of NPR writes in 2024 that, during that time, the party focused on shoring up both rural and urban voters and turning red districts into purple ones. Inskeep points out that the trend has reversed over the last decade, with Republicans succeeding in turning purple districts red.

Some progressive thinkers and leaders have noticed this trend and want to reverse it. They believe that rural Americans might still return to their more progressive roots; they just need to hear the right messaging. 

One program seeking to mend the divide is the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative. Founded by Anthony Flaccavento, a farmer and former U.S. Congress candidate from Abingdon, Virginia, their goal is to help America think differently, talk differently, and act differently. They reach out to urban political leaders and ask them to consider how to meet the needs of rural communities. 

Their website primarily focuses on convincing left-leaning leaders of the problems in rural areas and how they can help solve them. Their guide cites political scientists and legacy media to explain why rural voters don't take progressives very seriously. There is little in the way of talking points, but it provides plenty of resources for someone just beginning to consider rural issues.

Similarly, Dirtroad Organizing forms yearly cohorts of rural candidates and staffers. They "provide in-depth, personal, community-oriented, long-term support to ensure vitality, stability, and integrity in rural organizing." They focus on free training and supporting progressive rural candidates and staffers. The organization was founded by Chloe Maxmin, former Maine State Representative and State Senator, and Canyon Woodward, her campaign advisor.

More than 40 graduates of this program have been on the ballot, and some are making real headway in their elected positions. For example, Sarah Keyeski, a Wisconsin State Senator, has sponsored over a dozen bills in her first year in office. Several bills relate to healthcare access, an issue that deeply affects rural populations.

Whether either of these programs will create meaningful change in 2026 and beyond remains to be seen. It's clear, however, that many liberal and progressive thinkers haven't completely written off rural America as Trump-land. Platforms focused on economic resilience and healthcare access can reach rural voters and help them feel seen. Candidates from rural areas can lead their communities in ways that represent their unique needs and backgrounds. Ultimately, it seems Democrats have turned their attention back to rural areas and look to level the playing field this cycle. 

Will Trump's immigration policies hurt the farmers who supported him?

Photo Credit: Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local (2025)

In the 2024 election, Trump had the most support from rural America, winning 93% of rural counties. Rural Americans have been supporting Trump since his first election in 2016 due to his pro-gun policies, tax cuts, and direct agricultural support. However, these supporters now face economic hardship, healthcare cuts, and agricultural harm with the new initiatives by the 2024 Trump administration. Additionally, the immigration enforcement by the Trump administration has led to ICE raids across farmlands, which has been detrimental to farmers. With mass deportation of immigrant laborers, the agricultural business has been suffering because many immigrants come to the U.S. and are hired as farmers.

Read more blog posts about Trump’s support from rural Americans and effects of that support during 2016 here, here, and here.

Figure Credit: Pew Research Center (2025)

While immigrants do not make up an exceedingly large portion of the rural population, they do play an important role in the rural workforce, especially in the healthcare, agriculture, construction, and service industries. Additionally, rural areas need migration to prevent their populations from dying out, and many rural areas rely on immigrants – not only to keep the local economy afloat, but also to have stability in their populations. In this post, I will be focusing only on agricultural workers, but I want to flag that immigrants come to America for all types of opportunities, Immigrants are not only farmers or farmworkers.

Figure Credit: KFF; Authors: Drishti Pillai and Samantha Artiga (2025)

Pew Data research also shows that in general undocumented immigrants make up 5% of the US workforce and 53% of hired labor on farms. Agriculture seems to be the industry most reliant on undocumented workers. Farm owners have suggested that the only people showing up for employment on these farms tend to be immigrants. Farm owners do not care whether the workers are properly documented or not because they need people who are willing to work. To be frank, undocumented workers are being exploited because of the fear of being “caught.” Undocumented workers will take a lower wage, no healthcare and social security in order to have any work available to them. They take jobs that don't pay them enough to have a sustainable family lifestyle, just for the sake of having a job. And farm owners would hire them because of that very reason, paired with the fact the immigrant workers are willing to do the manual labor. And the reality is American citizens do not want to be farmers nor farm laborers anymore.

Interestingly, many farmers voted for Trump, knowing that the immigration policies could potentially affect their employees. Many farm owners rely heavily on immigrants. Now, undocumented farm workers are afraid to show up to work, in fear of being caught by ICE and getting deported. There has also been an increase in self-deportations as well due to the fearmongering by the Trump administration, and undocumented immigrants not wanting to take the risk of being detained by ICE and potentially getting criminally charged (which would hurt any potential for becoming naturalized down the line). The agricultural economy depends on immigrants to help harvest the crops and send produce out to stores. The immigration policies and raids, while heavily affecting agriculture, is (in reality) affecting all Americans’ lives. The inhumane treatment of immigrants by ICE needs to be discussed, maybe then people will be more empathetic to what is happening by this administration. People are risking their lives to come work in the states, people who take the lower pay wages, and we need to protect those people.

If rural American farmers were more aware of how these policies could have affected them, perhaps would they not have voted for Trump in 2024? That seems to be mostly untrue. While a few rural farmers may be regretting their vote, most are staying loyal to Trump saying that they think “tariffs eventually will make [them] great again.” Only some farmers have recognized that Trump’s immigration policies are hurting the American agricultural business. What will happen if Trump continues to ignore that rural America is dependent on migrant settlement and labor?

I'll close with a quote from a Wisconsin dairy farmer:

“We built an economy that relies on people, but we have a public policy that demonizes them” - Hans Breitenmoser discussing immigrant agricultural workers and Trump’s policies

Loving is radical: Rural America and political empathy

After winning the Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album the first thing Bad Bunny said was, “ICE out.” He then continued his acceptance speech with a simple but powerful call for love over hate, saying “we need to be different…we don’t hate them, we love our people.”

This call for loving more than we hate “the other side” stood out to me as what has been missing from the “rural versus urban” debate that consumes politics in the United States. As a self-described “liberal coastal elite,” if you had spoken to me after the 2016 election (when I was only 16) and again after the 2024 election, I would have told you, quite honestly, how much I hated the “other side.” At that time, the “other side” wasn’t limited to Trump or the political systems that enabled him to become president a second time. I meant anyone who voted for him and I was far from alone in that feeling.

“Rural bashing,” as described by Kaceylee Klein and Lisa R. Pruitt, refers to a phenomenon of “harsh criticism - even disdain...” towards rural voters or often all people living in so-called “red states.” While Klein and Pruitt detail that this is not a new phenomenon, they note that it has intensified in the Trump era. Importantly, this bashing isn’t limited to politicians or media, there are a multitude of examples of everyday people unable to feel empathy for those suffering in rural areas because “they voted for this.”

This bashing is further exacerbated by the tendency to equate “rural” with “white." In fact many who support liberal politics fall into the trap of believing that rural white people are the problem. While it is true that rural America votes predominantly Republican, as seen is the 2024 presidential election in which Trump won 93 percent of rural counties, believing rural America doesn’t deserve to benefit from any “liberal” policies or social systems is an uniquely unempathetic belief. As a condition of democracy, many believe that red voters should be held accountable for their actions, or in this case their votes, especially if and when those votes lead to unfavorable outcomes.

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025.  

To be clear, I am not saying we need to have empathy for ICE, Trump, or the political and economic systems that have allowed racist, homophobic, sexist rhetoric to flourish. These systems deserve to be challenged, and when necessary dismantled. But when does hate for these systems turn into hatred for the people living within them?

Increasingly, politicians are beginning to realize that writing off rural Americans is not effective or sustainable. As Hannah Thomas has previously discussed on the blog, politicians like Bernie Sanders have been working actively to rally rural American voters rather than dismiss them. Even Hillary Clinton, in her The Atlantic opinion piece titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” reflects on her own struggle to feel empathy for people whom she passionately disagrees with. Although the piece, published just last week, may feel like too little, too late, it nonetheless underscores why the rhetoric of active politicians toward rural Americans must change.

If we are serious about creating political change, we must shift our strategies. Active politicians, media, and everyday liberals alike must take note of what is driving us. If the driving force is hate for the “other side” in the form of rural Americans, we will continue to live in a divided America.

NYT feature on the consequences of California redistricting on rural northstate

Kellen Browning reports for the New York Times under the headline, "They Wanted a Conservative State. They Might Get a Democratic Representative Instead."  The story is a richly textured look at how the residents of far northern California feel about the November passage of Proposition 50, which adopted new congressional districts that will temporarily override the decisions of the state's independent redistricting.  As I've written about previously here, here, here and here, this means residents of the current District 1, an inland district stretching from Butte County, about 80 miles north of Sacramento, all the way to the Oregon state line, are likely to be represented by a Democrat after the 2026 midterm elections.  This is because parts of current District 1 will be combined with a strip of coastal wine country stretching down into Marin County, just north of San Francisco.   The current 1st District is shown in lavender in the map below.  Much of it will be subsumed into a new 2d District, outlined by the dotted orange line. 

Source: We Draw the Lines California, California Legislature
Credits: Jeremia Kimelman, CalMatters

Excerpts from Browning's story follow.  Some highlight rural-urban difference and others highlight the feelings of rural voters in California' north state.  

For decades, residents in the rural north have longed for a political earthquake that would cleave their region out of California and allow them to create their own fabled “State of Jefferson” with conservatives in Southern Oregon. They have increasingly felt underappreciated and misunderstood by the liberal Democrats who run California and dominate the congressional delegation — who, in their telling, siphon away their water and prioritize environmental regulations that undercut farmers’ livelihoods.

Now, they not only lack a conservative State of Jefferson, but their entire region is also likely to lose its Republican congressman and have him replaced by a Democrat after next year’s midterm elections. 

“People in the cities don’t have a clue what it takes to survive out here,” said Terry Williams, a 75-year-old rice and walnut farmer who moved to Richvale in 1974. “I don’t think people that were born and raised in the cities can represent us to the same extent.”

Here's a quote from Gene Lifur, a 52-year-old from Orland, population 8,2998, which claims to be the "Queen Bee Capital" of North America for its role in raising the pollinators:  

There was definitely a feeling of throwing up your hands.  You’re going to lose a lot of the interest for voting in the North State.

Another resident, DaNell Millerburg, 62, who manages the Richvale Cafe, "said the idea of her small town being represented by someone from the Bay Area was 'scary.' ...'They want to save the opossums and the beavers and the snakes.  But it’s not good for the farmers, because those animals dig holes in their ditches.'"

Browning meet many of those he interviewed at the cafe, "a nonprofit kept afloat by locals, who wanted to ensure that the area’s solitary farmers had a place to meet."  Richvale, population 234, is the home of current District 1 Congressperson Doug LaMalfa who asserted, "I understand people here far better than a Bay Area interloper."

Rural residents, Mr. LaMalfa said, grew crops enjoyed by California’s cities but were scorned by those living in cities. He said that Democrats were passing expensive pollution regulations, tearing down crucial dams in the name of protecting salmon populations and introducing wolf packs that attacked their herds. Proposition 50 was the latest affront.

“Their voice is being silenced on how they feel about the issues here, because Newsom and the three-to-one ratio of Democrats wanted to see if they could steal five seats,” Mr. LaMalfa said of the governor and state lawmakers.

* * *

“I’m furious,” [LaMalfa] added, “because I’ve had my people kidnapped from me.”

* * *

The Democrats running against Mr. LaMalfa agreed that rural Californians have been neglected by many in their party. But they also argued that Republicans like Mr. LaMalfa have hurt farmers and agrarian communities with their policies.

Those Democrats include Mike McGuire of Geyserville, in Sonoma County, who until recently was president pro tem of the California Senate, and Audrey Denney, who grew up on a coastal cattle farm but has lived and worked for 20 years in Chico, a college town in the same county (Butte) as Richvale.  Denney has already run twice, unsuccessfully, against LaMalfa.  McGuire's California Senate district stretches from Sonoma County all the way to the Oregon state line, but hugs the coast, a more progressive region.  I have observed over the years that he takes the needs of his region's very rural reaches very seriously.  Read about that here and here.  Denney will presumably vie to represent the new 1st District, and McGuire will seek to represent the new 2d District.  

I'll close with this quote from another resident, Chris Culp, 62, a retired Navy officer, who Browning found at the Last Stand Bar and Grill:  

Somebody from Santa Rosa, Oakland, they’re not going to understand, and honestly I don’t think they’re going to take the time to get educated about what’s going on up here.  We’ve got different needs than the people in the dense cities and the coast.

Other posts highlighting the different needs of rural and urban California and long-standing agitation related to the would-be State of Jefferson are here.   

New Hampshire (once again) tries to restrict student voting (Part IV): documents, documents, and more documents

This is Part IV in my look at New Hampshire's history of attempting to disenfranchise college student voters. For Part I, which provides essential background information, please click here. You may read Part II here. You may read Part III here. 

"A resident or inhabitant or both of this state and of any city, town, or other political subdivision of this state shall be a person who is domiciled or has a place of abode or both in this state and in any city, town, or other political subdivision of this state, and who has, through all of his or her actions, demonstrated a current intent to designate that place of abode as his or her principal place of physical presence [for the indefinite future] to the exclusion of all others."

                                                                                                - New Hampshire House Bill 1264

In July 2018, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu signed a bill into law that amended the state's definition of "resident" for the purposes of voting. Despite a federal court clarifying that students could vote in the state and compromises being reached to make that happen, there were still some who felt that students were simply not welcome at the ballot box. On this day, those interests won. 

Prior to this change, an intent to remain in the state "indefinitely" was sufficient to be considered a resident for voting purposes. In practice, this shift in definition would effectively force out of state college students to get New Hampshire driver's licenses and register their vehicles in the state. Since these things cost money, these new requirements essentially amounted to a poll tax. Just as they had in 1971 and 1972, the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union came out against the legislation and filed a lawsuit to stop it from going into effect. 

Widespread Opposition 

The bill had passed despite widespread opposition and warnings that it would disenfranchise college students. In fact, the original venue for the bill's July hearing before the Senate Election Law and Internal Affairs Committee was insufficient to hold the people who had turned up to oppose the bill. College students, facing disenfranchisement, showed up to show their opposition.

Many opponents zoomed in on the removal of intent to remain "indefinitely" from the state's election laws. While a federal court later ruled it was unnecessary, even the most ardent opponents of student voting in 1972 agreed that a statement of intent to remain indefinitely was sufficient. This legislation upended a status quo that had essentially persisted for the last 45 years.

SB 3 and the Turn Toward Enforcement

As a voter suppression effort, HB 1264 did not stand alone. It built directly on Senate Bill 3 signed into law the previous year. SB 3 altered the mechanics of voter registration by requiring voters who registered without documentation to complete detailed affidavits and submit proof of residency either at the polls or through post-election follow-up. Those who failed to provide documentation in a timely manner faced civil penalties and the possibility of criminal prosecution.

SB 3 did not explicitly target college students, but its effects fell most heavily on them. Students, who are more likely to register close to Election Day and less likely to have New Hampshire-specific documentation on hand were transformed from presumed eligible voters into legal risks. Civil rights groups warned that SB 3 converted routine voter registration into an act that could trigger investigation by the Secretary of State or referral to the Attorney General.

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, along with other voting-rights advocates, sued to block SB 3’s enforcement. In October 2018, just weeks before the midterm election, a state court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law’s new registration forms and enforcement provisions from being used. The court concluded that SB 3 imposed unreasonable burdens on the right to vote and risked confusion and disenfranchisement at polling places.

That injunction foreshadowed SB 3’s eventual demise. In 2021, the New Hampshire Supreme Court struck the law down in its entirety, holding that it violated the state constitution by placing disproportionate burdens on eligible voters without evidence of a meaningful fraud problem.

HB 1264, by contrast, survived judicial scrutiny. Because it altered definitions rather than election-day procedures, it was treated by courts as a permissible legislative clarification rather than an immediate burden on voting. The result was an uneven legal landscape: SB 3, which enforced residency claims at the polls, was enjoined and invalidated; HB 1264, which raised the cost and risk of making those claims in the first place, endured. 

After the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a favorable advisory opinion regarding HB 1264, the lawsuits that sought to overturn it were withdrawn. It still stands to this day. The residency requirements imposed by HB 1264 survived, but the documentation requirements imposed by SB 3 did not. A college student registering to vote today may prove their identity and residency using documents provided by their college, satisfying the requirements of HB 1264.

Both laws were passed under the familiar banner of “preventing fraud.” In reality, they reflected a sustained effort to narrow the electorate by making student participation more expensive, more confusing, and more legally fraught.

The Broader Effort

Taken together, these measures represented the culmination of a long-running partisan effort to suppress the political power of those who live in New Hampshire but are not considered permanent enough to be trusted with a ballot. College students are undeniably present in the state for most of the year, and many will never return to their so-called “home” communities after graduation. Forcing them to vote in those communities compels them to participate in elections where the consequences of public policy may never touch them, while silencing them where those consequences most certainly will.

Part V, which will come next year, will examine the most recent updates.

Congress (finally) renews Secure Rural Schools Act, through 2027

Congress voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Secure Rural Schools Act.  Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times coverage, by Hailey Branson-Potts, which leads with a bit historical perspective on rural schools lobbying efforts for the funding over the past few years:  

In February 2023, Jaime Green, the superintendent of a tiny school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, D.C., with an urgent appeal.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools like his in forested counties, was about to lapse, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing significant chunks of their budgets. The law had originated 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvesting on public lands.

Green, whose Trinity Alps Unified School District serves about 650 students in the struggling logging town of Weaverville, bounded through Capitol Hill with a small group of Northern California educators, pleading with anyone who would listen: Please renew the program.

They were assured, over and over, that it had bipartisan support, wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things and almost certainly would be renewed.

But because Congress could not agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a lapse in funding — for the Secure Rural Schools Act to be revived, at least temporarily.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to extend the program through 2027 and to provide retroactive payments to districts that lost funding while it was lapsed.

The vote was 399 to 5, with all nay votes cast by Republicans. The bill, approved unanimously by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.

“We’ve got Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” Green said. “We stayed positive. The option to quit was, what, layoffs and kids not getting educated? We kept telling them the same story, and they kept listening.”

Green, who until that 2023 trip had never traveled east of Texas, wound up flying to Washington 14 times. He was in the House audience Tuesday as the bill was passed.

In an interview Tuesday, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a vast swath of Northern California and helped lead the push for reauthorization, said Congress never should have let the program lapse in the first place.

I don't agree with LaMalfa on many issues, but on this one he is absolutely correct.  

The five congresspersons who voted against the Act were: 

• Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
• Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)
• Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC)

Here is an Ed Source story about the passage of the law, and here's an Oregon Public Broadcasting story focused on the significance of this funding to many counties in the Pacific Northwest.  CalMatters covered it here.  An announcement by New Mexico Congressman Gabe Vasquez, who says it means $9 million for his state's rural schools, is here. 

Finally, here is a February 2023 post based on Branson-Potts' previous story about California rural school administrators lobbying in Washington, D.C., for the Secure Rural Schools Act.   The term used there for the pittance represented by this spending--at least from the perspective of all federal spending: "budget dust."  

Democrats say they'll do more to attract rural voters

Ashley Lopez reported for NPR a few days ago on Democrats' plan to vie from aggressively for rural voters.  Here's an excerpt about the "8 figure investment" the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is making in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, an investment that will include "a full-time staffer who will be focused on 'strategic rural engagement across the country.'"  This is the first time the DCCC has had a program dedicated specifically to rural voter engagement. 

Suzan DelBene, who chairs the DCCC and represents Washington's 1st Congressional District, said Democrats see an opportunity to engage rural voters as President Trump's economic agenda, particularly tariffs, becomes less popular.

She said rural voters see the "damage" being done by GOP policies that have led to "costs going up, health care being gutted," and Democrats can provide an alternative.

Here's a further quote from DelBene:

I think Republicans are turning their back. They've been actively hurting rural communities with the policies they've put in place. Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of rural Americans and farmers.

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When we look at the swing districts across the country, the districts that are going to determine the majority in the House of Representatives, we know that rural voters are key in those districts.

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According to the Pew Research Center, in last year's presidential election Trump won 69% of voters who describe their communities as rural, compared with just 29% for Kamala Harris.

Lopez spoke to Anthony Flaccavento, a former candidate for congress in southwest Virginia and founder of the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, who acknowledged how hard it'll be to win back Democrats:  

We focus on rural, but because there's so much overlap in why people have left the Democrats and why they have so much disillusionment, it's a lot of commonality between working-class folks in small towns and cities and rural people.  When you put those two together, rural voters and blue-collar, working-class voters, then you have the biggest voting bloc in the country.

I've written a lot on the blog about Democrats' neglect of rural voters, including here and here.  

On using localism to help save rural America

This is from Jeffrey Tyler Syck on Persuasion's Substack on Tuesday, Nov. 25, "Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America."  Syck, an assistant professor of politics at the University of Pikeville, in eastern Kentucky, frames his argument in relation to J.D. Vance's embrace of nationalism and his concomitant neglect of the local:  

The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole—they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation.

But [J.D.] Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.

The proof surrounds me every day in my native Central Appalachia. As a child, most local businesses in my neighborhood seemed to identify first and foremost with East Kentucky. Many bore names like “commonwealth insurance” or “mountain music.” Though people in the region were patriotic, the primary emotional attachment was regional and not national.

Yet since Vance—and MAGA more broadly—have encouraged a strong dose of nationalism in red states, this has changed. Now when I cruise down the highway I am greeted by “Patriot RV” or “American Laundry and Cleaners.” This is a subtle but telling shift.

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Champions of rural America must reject reactionary nationalist attempts to rewind the clock back to the 1950s. They need a totally new solution to rural malaise—one that combines the localism of the past with the values of the open society that will likely dominate the coming century. This is not an easy task; it asks us to combine two things that have not historically gone well together. Yet it is the only real hope for rural America.

How might it come about?

The first step is for government and civil society to rejuvenate local cultural institutions. For instance, in my native Eastern Kentucky we should work hard to make local newspapers a strong cultural force again. We should restore historical buildings and landscapes, beautifying cheap utilitarian constructions so that they fit with the vernacular culture, and preserve local environments. We should refurbish the folksy brick buildings native to this region, tearing down or renovating eyesores, and conserving the stunning Appalachian Mountains that are the physical home of my people. Perhaps most importantly, we should invest in local art, music, and culture. This could mean cultivating a serious appreciation for bluegrass music, Appalachian literature, and local history. Learning to appreciate the culture of one’s home is a guaranteed path to restoring a sense of purpose to the locality.

For more on "left-behind places" read this essay.  

New angles on rural library closure, with a story out of central Washington

Library in Kingtson, Arkansas 2013

Major media outlets have published several rural library stories --most of them about the closure of rural libraries--in the past few years.  (Read some of them here). This latest, from the New York Times, is a bit more complex than most.  Anna Griffin reports form Tieton, Washington, population 1389, in Yakima County.  The headline is "Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids, and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries."  Here's the lede: 

Cole Leinbach, a librarian in Tieton, Wash., population 1,610, watched intently as a 7-year-old girl hunkered down with a book in a corner of the town’s one-room library. Her brother, 4, had opened a board game searching for potential toys. Their mother talked quietly on her phone in Spanish.

“This is what libraries are supposed to be,” he said, “just a place a mom can go with her kids for an hour to hang out and get some kind of enriching entertainment.”

But the Tieton library, which occupies a few hundred square feet in a side room at the city hall, is closing next month, a casualty of rising costs in Yakima County, Wash., shrinking help from Washington, D.C., financing decisions made decades ago and significant demographic change.

“I’ve had people come express dismay,” said Mr. Leinbach, who at 26 has been a librarian for about a year and a half. “A library is in a lot of ways a kind of civic symbol, a demonstration of a community’s commitment to itself. So what does it mean if that goes away?”

* * * 

That is a question a growing number of communities, many of them in Republican states, will be facing soon. In March, President Trump issued an executive order dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which has provided around $270 million a year to public and academic libraries to help pay for services such as summer reading programs, broadband internet access, lending between libraries, staff training and access to national databases.

Don't miss the rest of the Tieton, Washington story here.  

Ro Khanna talks "Epstein class" in relation to rural and working-class unrest

David Leonhardt interviewed U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna on the NYT opinion podcast yesterday under the headline, "The Democrat Who Split MAGA Over the Epstein Files."  Khanna styles himself an economic populist, and he has paid a lot of attention recent years to spatial inequality and the ways in which rural and rural-ish communities have been hurt by U.S. trade policies of recent years.  That is, he takes seriously the woes of places often styled as "left behind," including rural ones.  (Here's a December 2022 post about Khanna's interest in rural America).  

In this interview with Leonhardt, Khanna talks about his collaboration with Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie to push for the release of the Epstein files.  The quotes below, all from Khanna, link rural and working class agitation that drew them to Trump to their discontent with the so-called "Epstein class."  

Khanna: I have been going on podcasts to argue for my economic patriotism agenda — an agenda that says we’ve got to focus on factory towns that have been hollowed out in rural communities. I was going and visiting these communities, and so I was on Theo Von’s podcast and I was on the “Flagrant” podcast and I was going to places like Johnstown, Pa., and going to places like Warren, Ohio. When I was there, the issue would come up about the “Epstein class” — that’s what they called it. They said, well, are you on the side of the forgotten Americans or on the side of the Epstein class?

I realized how much the abuse by rich and powerful men of young girls and the sense of a rape island that Epstein had set up for people embodied the corruption of government. And then many of them saw Donald Trump as fighting this corrupt government and standing up for forgotten Americans. And this was the symbol for the most disgusting abuse and corruption of our government. And so when the issue came up that Pam Bondi said that there was nothing to release, I knew that this was a betrayal of the core promise that Trump had made to MAGA voters.

I said, we should push for the release. And I put out some tweet initially and then we introduced a bill. Then Massie and I have worked together for years; we have a real friendship. He called me and he said: Well, why don’t we try to collaborate on this instead of just doing something partisan? And I think we can reshape the coalition.

In the process, I then met the survivors and when I met the survivors, then it became personal. I mean, these are women who are talking about being raped at the age of 14 and being told to recruit other junior high and high school students. I think I had the same experience that Marjorie Taylor Greene or Nancy Mace or Thomas Massie had — once you meet these survivors, I mean, it’s just one of the most horrific crimes in our country’s history.

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And once these files are released, people can judge for themselves the abusive conditions of those young girls. But one of the survivors really struck me and said, “Ro, I don’t remember what happened to me, and I want to see the files to understand the trauma I went through.” And for these survivors, some of them voted for Trump. It’s not personal. In fact, we’re having a press conference and one of the asks of the survivors will be to meet with Donald Trump to have these files released. But anyone who meets them realizes that, look, there were over a thousand victims. The idea that only two people would be doing this with a thousand victims just doesn’t make sense. I mean, it’s more than Epstein and Maxwell. It’s a symbol for the recklessness of an elite that could do things without impunity.

* * *

It gave me a sense of how deep it went. I didn’t really follow the details. Now, there is a whole island of people with a thousand-plus victims abused so that the scale of it, it resonated. And it occurred to me how many people view this as the central example of the corruption of their own government. And many of them had said — look, they thought that there were more Democrats than Republicans involved. I think that’s probably because of Trump’s messaging. And I don’t believe that to be the case, I think it’s widespread, but that was the sentiment. And so the emotional power of it is something that I grasped only because I was in these communities. I was on these podcasts and I was talking to people in the MAGA base.

* * *

And I would often say to people, after I go into these communities, when I was in Aliquippa or Johnstown, I said, if I was in one of those communities, I’d vote everyone out too. Why wouldn’t you? Those towns have been abandoned for 40 years and it’s not just the working class.

I think this is one of the places that Democrats make a mistake — it’s not just the person who’s making $13 an hour who should be making $15 or $17 or $20 an hour. It’s people who are doctors or who are lawyers or who are small-business owners who think their entire communities have been hollowed out. The pride is gone. Their jobs were shipped overseas. They see districts like mine that are succeeding. They think they built America and a governing class has abandoned them. And Trump evoked that sentiment and he said, I’m going to tear down this corrupt system. I would often say, well, what we need to do is build things up. But they said, well, your party is not even understanding what needs to be torn down.

The Epstein class often became Exhibit 1 in what they thought that the status quo had protected, and didn’t care enough about. So I think it’s deeper than just the economics. It was this sense that these people feel and felt they were losing their country.

* * *

I did not know, in full honesty, where the MAGA base would go because one of the things — having just been to so many small towns, rural communities, factory towns for the past nine years — that I think we don’t understand is the emotional connection that Trump built with these communities because he was one of the first people to say, you got shafted, you got screwed and I’m going to bring back your pride.

And so they give him a lot of latitude because they think he was the first to emotionally speak to their ambition and their pain and their hopes. But what started to happen is, as we built momentum for this, I started to see commentators first in the MAGA base say: “You know what? This is really important. This is core to what Trump ran on.”