More rural-urban contrast in the context of gerrymandering

I wrote about an example of extreme gerrymandering in Texas a few days ago, and now the New York Times has given us another one, this one out of North Carolina.  Columnist Frank Bruni writes from Clayton, population 24,887: 

For a tidy snapshot of our messy country, you could do worse than North Carolina’s newly redrawn 13th Congressional District, where suburb yields to exurb and fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes somehow hold their ground. I had to drive only 15 miles of it to see two versions of America — and to see them at war.

I began in Garner, on the edge of Raleigh, at the Full Bloom coffee shop. The barista had rainbow-colored hair. The menu advertised a vegan bagel sandwich and a “From the Hive” selection of drinks — an orange blossom latte, a lavender blossom latte — made with local honey.

Garner is in Wake County, a Democratic stronghold, and I headed south and crossed into Johnston County, a Republican one. I passed lyrically named residential developments (Annandale, Avery Meadows) that had just gone up or were about to rise. I spotted the C3 megachurch (“real hope for real people in a real world”). And then, just beyond it, I saw the signs, a little thicket of them, positioned proudly in front of someone’s house in the town of Clayton.

“Wake Up People.” “Trump Robbed.” The complaints went on in that dyspeptic vein, and above them fluttered several flags, including one each for two saviors: Jesus Christ and Donald Trump.

But there was also something else, a retort scrawled in white spray paint across the busy two-lane road. “I Love Joe Biden,” it said. To make that declaration, its authors must have taken great pains, working very late at night or very early in the morning. Otherwise, they’d be roadkill.

Bruni reveals in the piece that he moved to North Carolina recently, from Manhattan.  He also mentions that he attended UNC as a college student.  He writes:  

A year after moving here from the People’s Republic of the Upper West Side, I realize that I didn’t so much turn my back on New York City as turn my gaze toward a broader, truer portrait of America right now.

I guess by broader, truer portrait, he's not saying North Carolina is "real" or "ordinary" America--something that seems always to get the backs of city folks up.  Instead, I think Bruni is saying the conflict and contrast is broader and truer--and I suppose more evident--once you're outside New York City.