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

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

 Here's an excerpt: 

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

* * *

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

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

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

As a related matter, here's a story from The Guardian this weekend analyzing why eight California counties shifted from Biden (2020) to Trump (2024).   Needless to say, these are some of the counties that would like to secede from California--or have urban cities in the Golden State secede.  There are lots of prior stories here on the blog about secession, including those about the would-be State of Jefferson.  

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

What follows are some quotes form Guesenkamp Perez: 

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

* * * 

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

Addressing the rural lawyer shortage has never been more important

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

Because our most vulnerable populations are going to need it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rural conspiracy theories and the mechanics of the 2024 election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rural Latina/o vote in New Mexico

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

Further Atencio quotes follow: 

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

* * * 

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

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

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

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

Pennsylvania as battleground state, geographically and otherwise

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker 1 (Astead Herndon)

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

Speaker 2

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

Speaker 3

They don’t. I’m peanuts to them.

Speaker 4

I don’t think they really relate.

Speaker 5

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

Speaker 6

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

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

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

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

* * *  

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

* * * 

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

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

* * * 

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

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

* * * 

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

* * * 

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

* * * 

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

* * * 

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

Looking forward to seeing what happens in Wisconsin next month.  

California law aims to slow maternity ward closures

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

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

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

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

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

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