And the winner, by a head, is Alaska Native Democrat Mary Peltola

Peltola beat former Vice Presidential candidate (2008) and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin 51.5% to 48.5% in Alaska's ranked-choice voting on Tuesday.  Politico reports here, the New York Times here, and NPR here.  The Washington Post offers this analysis, focusing not on Peltola's win but on Sarah Palin's loss.  The Associated Press story by Becky Bohrer, picked up by the Los Angeles Times, featured this tidbit: 

Peltola, a former state lawmaker who most recently worked for a commission whose goal is to rebuild salmon resources on the Kuskokwim River, cast herself as a “regular” Alaskan. “I’m not a millionaire. I’m not an international celebrity,” she said.

It also mentioned that August 31, the day the election was called for Peltola, was her 49th birthday.  And 49 is also the number of years her predecessor, Representative Don Young (R), served in the seat before he died in March of this year.  Read more about Young and the Alaska political vibe generally here.

Meanwhile, I've been getting a kick out of Peltola's recent Tweets, including many that reference fish and the state's fishing industry.  This is perhaps not a surprise given her work for a commission to rebuild salmon resources in her home region, but it's a huge difference from the invocation of national politics that we see in so many races.  Peltola seems very focused on the local, on Alaska--what makes it special, what its residents need, and what she'll do for them.  And with that commitment comes a great deal of focus on fishing... 

This next screenshot plays on a trend (or is it a meme?) today to use one word to sum up what one does or cares about.  Amtrak, for example, said "trains," and President Joe Biden said, "democracy." Mary Peltola said "salmon"  😀

Peltola will now vie in November to retain this seat, beyond the completion of Don Young's term.  As of  this evening, she had raised more than $500,000 from across the country to finance her general election campaign.  

Prior Legal Ruralism posts about Peltola are here and here. 

Postscript:  Here are two most screenshots from Sunday, Sept. 4: 

Fish!  Fish and more fish.  I'm gonna' look now for some data on the centrality of fishing to Alaska's economy.  It must be big!  and Mary Peltola knows it.  Indeed, wondering how it compares to the centrality of the salmon to the Yurok tribe in far northern California, on the Klamath River.  

On the panhandle's key role in the Texas gubernatorial race

The Houston Chronicle reports today on the importance of the ruby red Texas panhandle in the state's race for governor.   Jeremy Wallace of the Austin Bureau leads with lots of atmospherics from Beto O'Rouke's 49-day Drive for Texas, but the headline is an ominous one for incumbent Greg Abbott, "How the biggest Republican stronghold in Texas could cost Gov. Abbott his job."  Here's the lede:  

Beto O'Rourke invited them into the shade on a searing 100-degree summer day.

He gave them cold water.

And then, they gave him hell.

Greatly outnumbering his own supporters at Blodgett Park just miles from the Oklahoma border, protesters wearing Trump shirts and holding homemade signs quickly overwhelmed the El Paso Democrat's plans for a rally and charm offensive with shouts about their guns, their oil-based economy and the freedom to raise their cattle.

As they surrounded him, O'Rourke declared his support for the 2nd Amendment and his loyalty to the gas-burning pickup he just drove to the furthest reaches of the Texas Panhandle. As for beef, he testified to having "just ate a hamburger for dinner last night."

The rally never really got off the ground.

Instead, O'Rourke was stuck knocking down more incoming questions from the opposition than from his own small contingent of supporters in Spearman, a town of 3,100 people who voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in 2020.

"We wanted to send him a message. He's not welcome here," said Gyene Spivey, the Republican Party chairwoman for Hansford County. "I wish he'd just go back down the road to El Paso."

The exchange in the vast flatlands of the High Plains is more important to the future of the governor's race than at first glance. Voter registration data and recent election results show the campaign just might come down to places like Spearman and other sparsely populated towns in the Texas Panhandle and the plains to the south.

The story includes a cool map showing just how red the panhandle is.  Don't miss it.  

Among other posts about Beto O'Rourke's rural-focused campaign are the ones here and here.  

Mary Peltola digging in for (rural) Alaska

NPR reported yesterday afternoon on her campaign and, implicitly or explicitly, its Alaska Native and rural orientation.  Here's an excerpt: 

Alaskans will learn tomorrow whether they've elected former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin to the U.S. House. They voted in an August 16 special election to fill the state's lone House seat for a partial term. The initial results have Palin trailing a little-known Democrat, Mary Peltola. If she wins, Peltola would be the first Alaska Native ever elected to Congress. Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin reports from Peltola's hometown of Bethel.

LIZ RUSKIN, BYLINE: Mary Peltola can't wait to get on the river. The wind and rain have let up. The tide is favorable. She's throwing things into her open aluminum boat - buckets, an anchor, waterproof gloves.

MARY PELTOLA: Everybody has a float coat?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: If by float coat you mean life jacket.

PELTOLA: Yeah.

RUSKIN: Bethel is a town of 6,000 on the Kuskokwim Delta, upriver from the Bering Sea. Most people here are Indigenous - Yup'ik, like Peltola. She's pulled salmon from this river since she was a child. But for this fishing trip, she has a camera crew with her because, whatever the outcome of the special election, Peltola will also be on the ballot in November. She needs footage of her fishing for TV ads. It's cumbersome.

* * *

RUSKIN: There's a more serious problem with this fishing trip - there are no fish. It's a tragedy beyond words for this region. Protecting salmon is a major campaign theme.

RUSKIN: Mary Peltola is 48. She's the daughter of a Yup'ik mom and a dad from Nebraska who went north to teach school. As she drives her skiff through the braided Kuskokwim, she points out the bank where her great grandparents lived and, on the other side, where her mother was born.

PELTOLA: Yeah, this is kind of the center of my universe just because my uncles taught me exactly where to put the net to get certain kinds of fish.

* * * 

RUSKIN: At age 24, Peltola ran for State House and beat an incumbent. She stayed in office a decade, overlapping with then-Governor Sarah Palin. They bonded in the state capital as two pregnant moms in office. Palin didn't respond to interview requests. She vilifies Democrats in general, but recently called Peltola a sweetheart. Peltola isn't badmouthing Palin either.

PELTOLA: Oh, yeah.

RUSKIN: Oh, I've seen the photos.

PELTOLA: Yeah, no. Yeah, I think she's great.

RUSKIN: In the legislature, Peltola was known for uncommon kindness.

ANDREW HALCRO: She was never bitter. She was never angry. She was never partisan.

RUSKIN: Andrew Halcro and Peltola were freshman legislators in 1999. The Anchorage Republican ignited fury with a speech that he now regrets, saying bush residents were like children who don't learn to tie their laces because the state keeps sending Velcro shoes. A lot of Alaskans wrote Halcro off as a racist. But within hours, he says, Peltola was at his office door asking if she could offer a different perspective on the rural energy subsidy he derided. Halcro became an ally.

HALCRO: I think with Mary Peltola, you should never, ever misconstrue kindness for somebody who's not going to stand up for what she believes in.

RUSKIN: Peltola says yelling isn't productive - and not her style.

PELTOLA: The region where I'm from - there is a big premium on being respectful, on not using inflammatory language or harsh tones.

RUSKIN: Peltola says she once diffused an urban Republican legislator just by pointing out that he, decades her senior, had a longer tenure in Alaska than she did. They got on well after that. To her, that's effective politics.

An earlier post about Peltola's race is here.   And lots of posts about Alaska, including Bethel, are here.  

Reporting from Demstock ("all things Democrat") in rural Pennsylvania

Here's an excerpt from the story by Jon Moss of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, dateline Frenchcreek Township, population 1,412 in Venango County, population 54,984.

Paul Woodburne and his fellow rural Democrats sometimes feel disconnected from their political party while living in deeply Republican areas, worrying about nabbed signs and lost friendships.

That’s why Mr. Woodburne and hundreds of others from across rural northwest Pennsylvania camped out at the Venango County Fairgrounds this weekend for Demstock — an annual convention of sorts billing itself as “all things Democrat.”

“If you’re isolated, you don’t realize what power you have,” said Mr. Woodburne, who leads the Clarion County Democrats. “We’re marginal, but sometimes the margins are what drive the elections.”

* * *

A trio of women strummed ukuleles outside the main hall, playing Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin,'” as attendees ranging from State House candidates to the state party chairman, State Sen. Sharif Street of Philadelphia, chatted up attendees.

* * *

Mr. Woodburne said a key takeaway from the event was that rural Democrats aren’t alone and together can flex their electoral muscle.

“They know and we know our votes are very important,” he said.

* * *

“Providing organizational spaces in which folks – who are in the minority within their own counties, but having had shared experiences and shared values and visions – can sort of find each other and network across those spaces has been really important,” said "Laura Putnam, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied grass roots politics]. “Demstock is an example and sort of an outcome of that.”

Ms. Putnam added that Democrats must campaign in all parts of the state to win, and sees the current candidates not repeating what she described as mistakes made in previous election years. She said some party strategists had made a “false diagnosis” by solely focusing on voters in big cities and their surrounding suburbs, while Republicans racked up ever-larger vote margins in rural areas.

The website for Demstock is here.  Needless to say, I think the decision to associate with rural Pennsylvania was brilliant.  A description from the Demstock website follows: 

Simply put, Demstock is like your local county fair except it is all things Democrat! Camp out for the weekend with Democrats from across Pennsylvania, enjoy an evening bonfire with your congressional candidates, throw a few rounds of cornhole, and then check out The Big Dipper through a telescope once the stars come out. Have breakfast with some hard-working Democratic County Commissioners, then, drink a locally sourced craft brew while you meet with advocates from groups on the front lines fighting for the issues we care about the most. Snap a picture in our photo booth and share it, (maybe use #Demstock too) listen to some live music from a local musician, and try to win a basket at our silent auction. Browse the Demorabilia from campaigns past which have been carefully curated by PA’s most dedicated collectors. Take a selfie with Senator Casey, eat dinner with your new Democratic friends, and hear remarks from Pennsylvania’s most respected lawmakers. Demstock is the biggest rural Democratic festival in the country and you don’t want to miss it!

Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about a million voters, but that margin is down sharply in recent decades.  Some of my writing about Democrats in Pennsylvania (especially John Fetterman) is here and here.  

A week at a rural food delivery site

A few weeks ago, I spent several days in Crescent City, California (population 6,673) as part of a service project with an organization called Sierra Service Project.  

My assignment (and that of the Sacramento youth I was working with) was to help paint the exterior of the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods, which is centrally located in the small, coastal city.  

The school district truck arrived at about 9:45 each morning to 
drop off several coolers full of bagged, single-serve meals

When we arrived late morning on Tuesday August 9, the building was thrumming with activity, mostly thanks to it being a summer food distribution center.  Cars were pulling up, kids or parents jumping out, and coming to collect individual bags of food--typically some milk, an apple or some apple sauce, some source of protein like a PBJ sandwich or a slider-size sandwich with ham and cheese.  

That morning, I watched as a pair of kids showed up on foot asking, "can we have ten?"  Another, hopping out of his parent's car asked, "Do you have six?"  No one was turned away, and all, including adults who came to the table, were given as many as they requested.  Indeed, we were there on the last day of the summer meal program, August 12, when the man delivering the lunches (apparently prepared by the school district and delivered in a school district truck) instructed the women doing the distribution, "we don't want any of these back."  So they gave two lunches for every one anyone requested.  On prior days, extras were put in the refrigerator at the center so they could be handed out to late comers or on subsequent days if the supply of about 100-120 a day ran short.  

The whole operation was very positive. Indeed, everything going on the Resources Center was positive, and I hope to write another post about the facilities and services, including a food pantry, at a later date.  For now, I'm just going to include this photo of new backpacks the center was preparing to distribute the next week. 

Meanwhile, I was reminded of my time hanging out at the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods this past week when I saw this NBC story out of Missouri about that state's decision not to allow "grab and go" delivery of the summer lunches. Instead, the state requires students to sit at the distribution center to eat the meals.  Missouri is the only state to make this decision.  In the past few years, "non-congregate feeding" had been allowed because of the pandemic.  

According to Sarah Walker, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services’ bureau chief of community food and nutrition assistance, "making sure to-go meals were going to the right place was another concern."

It’s very difficult to maintain program integrity when the program is not operating under normal circumstances. If the children aren’t there, you can’t always guarantee those kids are the ones getting the meals — as opposed to sitting on-site eating, you can assure that it’s the child themselves getting the meal.

Vehicles coming and going
from the Resource Center
to collect free grab-and-go lunches

And here's some information from the story on the impact that Missouri decision has had across the state, including in rural-ish places like Neosho (population 12,590)and Nevada (population 8,212):

At the Tri-State Family YMCA in Neosho, staff distributed about 9,800 meals a week last summer. That fell to just over 300 a week, a 97% drop, without the waiver extension, CEO Benjamin Coffey said.

Osage Prairie YMCA in Nevada, Missouri, went from serving 2,400 kids a week last summer to about 200 kids a week, a nearly 92% drop, CEO Jeffrey Snyder said. The drop in meals is even steeper, he said, because last summer, families received multiple grab-and-go meals at once.

These numbers likely reflect a lack of access to meals among families, not a lack of need, anti-hunger advocates say, warning that Missouri is a case study in what could happen for the rest of the country next summer.

The No Kid Hungry campaign estimates that before the pandemic, 6 out of 7 kids who may have needed summer meals were not getting them, said Lisa Davis, a senior vice president of the program at Share Our Strength, a nonprofit organization working to end hunger and poverty.

On a related note, here's a 2014 post about the creative means being used to feed rural Kentucky kids, given that they are scattered across the countryside.  And that reminds me that we saw a number of food distribution locations around Crescent City, including one at the middle school that was a relatively short distance from the Family Resource Center.  Bottom line:  no kid in Crescent City had to walk too far to get lunch this summer--and all could take them home to eat.  That's surely a good thing, though I suspect kids living in outlying areas of the county, like Gasquet, Klamath and Smith River, may not have had such easy access, though lunches were being distributed in those farther flung parts of Del Norte County, too. 

Is a power line from rural Wyoming to Los Angeles a prototype for transforming energy production and delivery in the West?

Sammy Roth writes for the Los Angeles Times as part of the "Repowering the West" series, "This power line could save California — and forever change the American West." Here, I'm highlighting just some parts of the story that feature the rural-urban conflict--or, one could say, the opportunity for rural-urban collaboration.  The focus of the story is a wind farm in rural Wyoming that will supply power to California, via a network of power lines through other parts of rural Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

More than 800 miles from Los Angeles — on ranchland littered with so much cow dung it’s hard not to step in it — the pastel-green hills are studded with wind giants. They dominate the scruffy sagebrush landscape, hundreds of them, framing the snow-streaked heights of Elk Mountain and casting dramatic shadows as gray clouds threaten to overtake a brilliant blue sky.

Before wind energy took off, there wasn’t much going on in this corner of Wyoming cattle country, says Laine Anderson, director of wind operations at PacifiCorp, the company owned by billionaire investor Warren Buffett that built these turbines.

* * * 

Wyoming’s half-million residents don’t need all that energy. California’s 40 million residents do. So Anschutz is getting ready to construct a 732-mile power line across Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Nevada, to ship electricity to the Golden State.

It’s an audacious plan — and a harbinger of what’s coming for communities across the West.

To see what the future might look like, Los Angeles Times journalists visited Anschutz’s sprawling wind farm construction site, then traveled the planned route of his electric line. We talked with the project’s fiercest supporters and harshest critics.

Along the way, we came to realize the West’s great cities have a choice. They can open themselves up to hard conversations with small-town residents, ranchers, Native American tribes and wildlife advocates, and do their best to find common ground. Or they can try to steamroll whoever gets in their way.

* * * 

Nobody would dare stick wind turbines or solar farms on the rims of the Grand Canyon, or on the floor of Yosemite Valley. National parks and wilderness are the West’s sacred spaces, protected by law and culture and an unmistakable aura of mystique.

Farms and ranchland are another story. To city slickers, they might seem like the perfect places to put renewable energy — sun-swept fields and windy plains degraded by pesticide use and overgrazing, practically crying out for a second economic life.

But there are two problems.

First, many rural Westerners see clean energy infrastructure as a threat to the lifestyles and mythologies they hold dear — at least in part because they associate it with Blue America and the Green New Deal. And second, plenty of farms and ranches are owned by wealthy investors — people with the time and money to fight renewable energy projects they don’t like.

NPR reports on how rural stores are surviving these days

Stephan Bisaha reports for NPR from Kewanee, Mississippi, on the Alabama state line in Lauderdale County, population 80,000.  Here's an excerpt: 

STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: The Simmons-Wright Company store in Kewanee, Miss., has two floors filled with baskets of cotton, cast-iron skillets and Mississippi-shaped magnets. And with inflation squeezing customer wallets, sales are down for nearly all of it.

* * * 

BISAHA: Even before dollar stores, there was Walmart, and many country stores had to shut down. Those that did survive have been the ones able to adapt with the times. Pickett expanded his restaurant business by delivering burgers to a truck line across the border in Alabama. But even the food side of Pickett's business is feeling the sting of this high inflation that we haven't seen in 40 years.

PICKETT: Well, the beef and the meat has almost doubled in price. And we've gone up just a little bit. We hadn't gone up the percentage we need to go up. I know we're going to have to go up. We just don't want to run everybody off, regular customers.

BISAHA: Other country store owners say the same thing. They're raising prices as little as they can because they're based in poor communities that just can't afford it. Before, Pickett wouldn't mind throwing some extra fries into the meals. But now, to keep prices down, Pickett's team measures everything. Even the hamburger patties get weighed before cooking. Yet concern about a possible recession means long-term survival could require more drastic changes. One idea he's considering is leaning into the store's nostalgia and making the place an event venue.

PICKETT: Like a wedding on the weekend - if you let them rent the cotton gin for a photo shoot and have a wedding up there, it'd be 10,000 bucks, you know, or more.

BISAHA: Country-like nostalgia is already a big part of the business. The old nutcrackers and antique soda bottles might not sell, but they draw in customers like 75-year-old Lewis Hankins (ph). He made the short drive here from Alabama, and he can't stop playing show and tell with the rusted farm equipment he pulls from the shelves.

Other posts about country stores are here and here, and one touching on rural nostalgia linked to farm instruments and other old paraphernalia is here.   Also, don't forget there was a country store in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the subject of this post. 

Washington Post on Beto O'Rourke's forays into hostile, rural territory

The latest coverage of O'Rourke's effort to cultivate the rural vote in his run for Governor of Texas is by Jada Yuan in the Washington Post,"Beto O'Rourke's risky quest for votes in deep-red Texas."  Here are some excerpts, with a focus on issues barely touched on--or ignored altogether--in prior coverage:  

Could a victory for Beto lie not in liberal cities such as Austin or Houston but in spending these last precious three months of the campaign driving his Toyota Tundra to the least populous, most Republican parts of the state, mining for untapped votes?

“I mean, there’s a reason to do this,” Beto says in Spearman, sweating through his white button-down. Having been married for 17 years, Beto often says, he knows no two people agree on everything, but he’s hoping people around here might at least like his plans to repair Texas’s power grid or to pay teachers more.

If nothing else, maybe they’ll respect that he came.

“I understand that if we’re only interested in those who are already with us, we’ll never get there,” he says, “We’ll end up in the same place every Democrat has for the last 28 years.” That’s how long it’s been since Texas had a Democrat as governor, when Ann Richards held the job.

* * *

In these rural areas, Beto is essentially drilling for oil. “There are a lot of votes out there,” Beto says. “There are 7 million people who didn’t cast a ballot who were eligible in 2020.” There are the first-time voters and the Democrats who need an extra push to vote in the midterms and the people who don’t stick to party lines. “I would say they are persuadable,” he says.

* * *

And then there are the votes no political scientist could tell him how to find. In Dumas, a Panhandle city that’s 55 percent Hispanic, truck driver Pablo Campos tells Beto he woke up at 3:30 a.m. so he could complete half his work shift and have enough time to go to the town hall gathering during his break. There, Mary Jane Garcia, 47, a devout Catholic, stood up to talk about the “spontaneous abortion” that saved her life when she miscarried at 17, and how scared she is that her daughters might be denied that medical care.

Over in Quanah, a city of 2,272, Darby Sparkman, 23, was astounded to see 64 people at Beto’s town hall meeting, since she’s an election worker and “like 10 people vote Democrat.” Edith Aguirre, 26, was among the nearly 200 people who showed up in Bowie, a growing city of 5,534 in verdant North Texas, where the radio stations veer from country to worship to worship country. She was brought here as a child from Mexico so her father could work in the oil fields. She’s not a citizen and can’t vote but brought her sister, Ashley, who turns 18 this year. They wept while talking about how Ashley will be the first voter in her family.

* * *

If deeply conservative places like Spearman are his path to victory, though, it’s going to be a bumpy road.

Beto is holding his town hall gathering in a park. According to Beto’s press director, Chris Evans, the owner of the restaurant they originally booked called and explained that his staff might have signed off, but he was not okay with it.

By the time Beto arrives, people in MAGA and NRA hats, carrying “Pro-life” and “Build the Wall” signs or wearing “Team Jesus” T-shirts make up three-quarters of the 70-person crowd. Beto’s staff has invited them to join the town hall meeting in the shade.

As a related matter, don't miss Jon Mark Hogg's column in the San Angelo newspaper today, where he writes under the headline, "What we have lost in Texas politics":

Whether you like or vote for Beto O’Rourke or not, his campaign has sparked a political memory among the people of Texas. He reminds us of a time when candidates for Governor barnstormed into every nook and cranny of our state, spoke with and listened to anyone who wanted to talk about what they as persons were facing. There was a time that was expected of every candidate. That is something we have lost.

These are some of the issues, e.g., margins among rural voters, the way candidates used to show up, that I touched on in my recent Politico piece analyzing John Fetterman's quest for Pennsylvania's rural vote.  

California warns farmers and ranchers to stop diverting water as thousands of fish in Klamath River die

The Associated Press reports, dateline Happy Camp, California, population 905.  

California has warned a group of farmers and ranchers near the Oregon state line to stop diverting water from an area already wracked by extreme drought and a wildfire that killed tens of thousands of fish.

The State Water Resources Control Board issued a draft cease-and-desist order Friday to the Shasta Water Assn., warning it to stop taking water from the Shasta River watershed.

The association has 20 days to request a hearing or the order becomes final and could subject the organization to fines of up to $10,000 a day, according to the state water agency.

* * * 

Since last year, the state agency has curtailed water use in the watershed in order to keep water flowing in the Shasta River, a main tributary of the Klamath River and a nursery for a fragile and federally protected salmon species.

Prior posts about the Klamath River basin are here.  The pieces most closely related to today's news are these.   

An update on the proposed closure of prison in rural California

Hailey Branson-Potts brought us an update this weekend in the Los Angeles Times on the fate of a prison in Susanville, California, population 16,278, which was slated for closure more than a year ago.  The town of Susanville responded by suing to keep the prison open, arguing that they'd face economic devastation if they lose some 1000 prison jobs.  A Lassen County judge issued a temporary restraining order to stop the closure.  Here's an excerpt from Saturday's LA Times story: 

As the outside world debates the future of the prison, the men incarcerated there say their voices must be heard.

This summer, prisoners tried to file an amicus brief in support of the closure, detailing problems in the facility.

An amicus brief filed last year by Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents prison employees, argues that if the facility were to close, workers “risk losing their livelihoods and will be forced to upend their lives and families, decimating their community in the process.”

The lawsuit — with a mostly white town arguing that its survival depends on the incarceration of mostly Black and Latino men — has “this kind of gross, unseemly character,” said Shakeer Rahman, a Los Angeles-based attorney who represented inmates who signed the amicus brief.

“The court is deciding whether a form of bondage, a form of cruelty, is going to continue based on the personal financial benefits of the people around the prison,” Rahman said. “At every single turn, the judge and the city have silenced the voices of our clients in order to keep marching on in this decision making that treats them as a source of revenue.”

The inmates are not challenging their convictions, Rahman noted; they simply want to report dangerous conditions that justify the prison’s closure.

The case in rural Lassen County could foreshadow conflicts to come as California’s inmate population declines and other prisons are considered for closure.

Earlier posts about the proposed closure are here and here, and embedded in them are links to  earlier posts about Susanville, like the ones here and here.   Here's one about the threat of last summer's Dixie fire to the Susanville prisons. 

Another rural vote story, this one by The Economist, out of Maine

Here's the lede for the Lexington column, titled "Democrats are wrong to give up on rural America." 

Maine’s 1.3m citizens are divided into just two congressional districts. The first is small, since half of Mainers live along the coast around Portland, a fizzy entrepot of lobster-and-scallop mousse and vegan doughnuts. But the second district, which stretches north to Canada, is vast, as big as Ireland. Its forests of pine and birch are so thinly settled that it counts as the second-most-rural district in America. Its people are whiter, older and poorer than Americans in general. The district tells the story of how Democrats lost their appeal to rural and working-class Americans, and with it at times majorities in Congress to match the party’s consistent majorities in the national vote.

It also suggests how the Democrats might recover. Because whereas Donald Trump twice won the district easily in presidential elections, it has been represented in Congress for two terms by a Democrat, Jared Golden. Only seven Democrats represent districts won by Mr Trump, and none is more Trump-loving than Mr Golden’s, according to the Cook Political Report, a non-partisan newsletter.