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.  

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

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

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

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

The Organic Valley brand
is commonly seen in 
Sonoma County

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

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

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

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

Coleman Valley Road,
between Bodega Bay 
and Occidental

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

* * * 

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

Between Dillon Beach and Valley Ford, Sept. 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valley Ford, along Hwy 1

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

Ramey adds:  

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

Along Hwy 1, near Valley Ford

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

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

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

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

Kentucky sheriff shoots, kills judge in rural courthouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

Recent coverage of the rural vote in North Carolina and Georgia

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

* * * 

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

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

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

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

KELLY: (Laughter) OK, good.

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stop with the rural-bashing on campuses"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is all.  

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

On rural families valuing care by kith and kin

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

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

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

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

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

* * * 

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

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

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

A flex from China's rural women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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