That's one of the takeaways from this latest profile of Marie Gleusenkamp Perez, the 34-year-old newly elected congresswoman for Washington's 3d congressional district. David Firestone of the New York Times editorial board writes:
Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez chose her guest for last month’s State of the Union address in order to make one of her favorite points. She invited Cory Torppa, who teaches construction and manufacturing at Kalama High School in her district in southwest Washington State, and also directs the school district’s career and technical education program. President Biden did briefly mention career training that night in his very long list of plans; still, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez wasn’t thrilled with the speech.
“I went back and looked at the transcript,” she said, “and he only said the word ‘rural’ once.”
It’s safe to say that Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was one of very few Democrats in the room listening for that word, but then she didn’t win her nail-biter of a race in a conservative district with a typical Democratic appeal. To court rural and working-class voters who had supported a Republican in the district since 2011, she had to speak to them in a way that her party’s left wing usually does not — to acknowledge their economic fears, their sense of being left out of the political conversation, their disdain for ideological posturing from both sides of the spectrum.
Prior posts about Gluesenkamp Perez are here. A recent NPR story about vocational education is here.
I've occasionally also tracked politicians' use of the word "rural," like here, from one of the 2020 Presidential debates (this one actually occurring in 2019).
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