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.

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.

Still more on the rural vote as Tammy Baldwin courts dairy farmers, from WSJ

Katy Stech Ferek reports in today's Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Democrat Woos Dairy Farmers to Keep Crucial Senate Seat."  The subhead is "Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin hits country roads and agricultural fairs, seeking to win over rural Trump supporters once more."  Here is the lede: 

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.—Sen. Tammy Baldwin had an unusual talent during her last election: convincing rural supporters of Republican Donald Trump that they should vote for her, too.

This November, Senate Democrats need Baldwin to do it again.

Wisconsin is a prime battleground to determine the next president, but Democrats also need a win in the Badger State to keep control of the Senate. Baldwin’s campaign for a third term against the wealthy banker Eric Hovde, who says the Democrat is an out-of-touch career politician, has sent her down country roads in sparsely populated counties that cut through farmland and curve around lakes.

“I might not have met every farmer, but I think I found over time that word gets out,” said Baldwin, 62 years old, after a long day of campaigning outside Leinenkugel’s brewery in Chippewa Falls. Voters might be frustrated with gridlock, she said, “But to know somebody’s out there fighting for them, it’s a big deal.”

And here's a further quote: 

Supporters have said Baldwin connects to some conservative voters by focusing on economic issues, such as the cap on the out-of-pocket cost for insulin at $35 a month. On the campaign trail, she talks about leading 2018 legislation requiring federal water infrastructure projects to use American-made steel products, a requirement signed into law by Trump. She has secured mental-health resources for farmers and is trying to get federal money to test private wells for contamination into the next farm bill.

* * * 

Baldwin avoided Biden during his campaign visits to Wisconsin earlier this year. But in an indication that Democrats see Harris differently, Baldwin joined the vice president at her first presidential campaign rally, held at a high school outside Milwaukee.

This is from 60-year-old dairy farmer Randy Roecker of Loganville, population 300, in Sauk County, just west of Madison: 

[Roecker] said he usually supports conservative candidates but will vote for Baldwin, in part because of the mental-health resources she secured. He said he supports her fight to keep the label “milk” off nondairy beverages made of almonds, oats and other alternatives.

Roecker said: 

Tammy is the only Democrat that I really have trusted.  I think she cares. That’s truly what it is.… These other ones just want to get elected and hold their power.

And here's the word from Baldwin's Republican opponent, Eric Hovde, a real estate magnate who has lent his campaign $13 million and who lives part time at a home in Laguna Beach, California:  

“It’s the No. 1 issue. No question about it,” he said of inflation, adding that, if elected, he would focus on fixing the economy and stopping the flow of fentanyl into rural communities. He said his support in rural areas is evident by the lawn signs on display. But, he acknowledged, “There is a percentage of voters we have to close the gap on.”

And the media can't get enough of Walz' links to rurality

Here are excerpts from a few recent stories about Walz' rural roots.  These excerpts are from from Matt Flegenheimer's story in the New York Times, "The Small-Town Nebraska Tim Walz Put Behind Him, but Never Fully Left":  

Within a few years, Mr. Walz’s father, a well-liked school administrator, got sick, then sicker. When he was gone, Mr. Walz’s mother found work where she could, and the family subsisted on Social Security survivor benefits.  

By then, Mr. Walz had joined the National Guard, two days after his 17th birthday. He has said he took his oath of enlistment from a lieutenant with a farm nearby, standing in the middle of a cornfield.

As Mr. Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor, prepares this week to introduce himself to the nation from the party convention in Chicago, he and those close to him have positioned his rural Nebraska upbringing as essential to his self-conception, a skeleton key to understanding the man he became and the values he came to embrace.

His experiences in this period formed the core of his future political identity — unpretentious, neighborly, a little mischievous — even as he seemed determined, ultimately, to see what life might look like somewhere else.

Though Mr. Walz still speaks nostalgically of his time back home, he has remained tethered to the place mostly through those who stayed.

His mother still lives in Butte, Neb., a village of fewer than 300 people, where the lettering above the old high school reads simply, “High School,” and Mr. Walz’s cousins recounted his exploits from their regular perch at the corner bar, Corner Bar.

And here's a more recent Washington Post story by Abbie Cheeseman about how how Walz' old congressional district is divided across the rural-urban axis. I like the nuance in this story, which doesn't treat the whole congressional district as rural--like most stories have. Here are some key excerpts, beginning with the lede:

The political divide in the congressional district Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz once represented is now so stark that it’s hard to imagine one person representing the whole area. In this expanse of southern Minnesota, a few small, sleepy cities stand their ground in a sea of rural red that stretches from the South Dakota border to the bluffs above the Mississippi River. 

Democrats have expressed hope that putting Walz, a Midwesterner who grew up working summers on a Nebraska farm, on their ticket will help them win over rural voters. But a close look at Walz’s former district — a prime example of how America’s huge urban-rural cultural divide shapes the nation’s politics — shows just how difficult that task will be.

In the 18 years since Walz made the life-changing career change from high school teacher to politician, Minnesota has grown more liberal as a state, but the district that gave him his start has lost almost all of the blue precincts that once dotted its farmlands. The cities in the 1st Congressional District have grown, but in the expansive rural heartland (pigs outnumber residents of the district seven times over, according to 2022 census data), populations have decreased and the people remaining have grown more conservative.

Tales of Walz’s days as a teacher and high school football coach trip off the tongues of almost everyone in Mankato, the college town where he and his family lived, but mentions of Walz were widely met with a roll of the eyes this month at the Nicollet County Fair. Mankatoans feel energy and pride for their governor, but at the fair just 20 minutes outside town, some people were more excited by the prospect that if Walz becomes vice president, he might finally leave the state.

Mankato, with a population of 45,000 spread among three adjacent counties, is micropolitan--the upper end of metropolitan counties.  So, the story suggests that places the size of Mankato--typically thought of as rural--are more like larger cities in their political leanings.  It is probably significant, too, that Mankato is a college town, home of Minnesota State University.  

Democrats should turn focus on courts into rallying cry for rural Access to Justice

Over the last few years, the Democratic Party has focused (at least in rhetoric) on highlighting inequities in our justice system. From highlighting biases on the Supreme Court (and some even proposing expanding the court) to bringing attention to inequities in our criminal justice system (and including reform efforts in the party platform), the Democrats have positioned themselves as the party fighting for a more equitable justice system.

But yet, something is conspicuous in its absence - a mention of rural Access to Justice. 

The rural lawyer shortage has been well documented in this space and the subject of much scholarly inquiry.  At a base level, the statistics are striking 14% of Americans live in rural spaces but yet only 2% of lawyers practice there. There have been isolated efforts to address the issue but there is a lack of a sustained national effort to address the issue. There's no shortage of local stories about the problem (see here, here, and here). Some states are actively addressing the issue. However, it is largely ignored by both major national parties, even as the issue of inequities in the courtroom is becoming more mainstream. 

Rural communities are home to some of the embedded inequality in the United States. I've written extensively about the history of corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina, where I grew up. You can find a couple of those pieces here and here. This issue is compounded when the local media does not do its job in exposing local corruption and instead serves to advance the agenda of those in power. Spatial isolation serves to only obscure these issues and make it difficult to create the political will necessary to address them.

I've been in rural courtrooms and seen people show up without counsel. In such cases, people lost their homes, failed to receive adequate protections against domestic violence, or received inequitable treatment in divorce and custody proceedings. In the criminal sphere, many rural public defender's offices are contending with shortages that result in lawyers having huge caseloads, making it impossible for the individual defendants to receive the best defense possible. People's lives are being irreparably harmed by this on-going crisis. 

We cannot say that we have achieved equity in our legal system without addressing the rural lawyer shortage. If the Democratic Party is serious about addressing inequities in our court system, they must bring awareness and advocate for solutions to the rural lawyer shortage. 

Harris-Walz visit rural-ish and exurban Georgia

The Democrats' failure to cultivate the rural vote is an issue that's attracted a lot of attention in recent years, including here on Legal Ruralism.  So it was interesting to see the Harris-Walz campaign prioritize a two-day bus tour in Georgia--a tour that got outside the Atlanta metro area.  Here's some coverage from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein: 

When Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign announced a two-day swing through Georgia this week, Democrats outside metro Atlanta got a taste of something their GOP counterparts have long enjoyed: attention.

Democratic state Sen. Derek Mallow of Savannah called the bus tour “monumental.” Former state Rep. Calvin Smyre of Columbus called it a “big deal.” And Melissa Clink, a veteran liberal activist in the exurbs, declared herself “overjoyed.”

“Winning Georgia means understanding Georgia is much larger than just Atlanta,” she said. “It includes our rural areas as well as our larger cities outside the perimeter who are anxious for attention.”

For Republican presidential contenders, visits outside metro Atlanta are the norm. Former President Donald Trump regularly holds rallies at airports, racetracks and fairgrounds in places like Commerce, Dalton, Perry, Rome and Valdosta.

But Harris’ partially-disclosed campaign itinerary, which officials said includes stops with running-mate Tim Walz in South Georgia before a Thursday rally in Savannah, deviates from long-standing strategy.

Democratic White House candidates are far more likely to stick to the friendly confines of metro Atlanta, a vast left-leaning area that makes up more than half Georgia’s population. No Democrat can carry Georgia’s 16 electoral votes without blowing out the competition in the deep-blue bastions of Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.

* * *

In fact, the last time a Democratic nominee spent significant time campaigning in South Georgia was in 1992, when Bill Clinton led a 10-bus caravan from Columbus to Valdosta with stops in Albany, Tifton and tiny Parrot. Aides dubbed it “Bubbas for Bill.”

More coverage of the Georgia bus tour is here and here.  The latter story, from the New York Times, even uses the word "rural" in the headline: Harris and Walz Point Their Campaign Bus to Rural Georgia.  Here's the lede from that story, which also uses the word "rural" many times: 

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, seeking to build Democrats’ momentum in the Sun Belt, will campaign on Wednesday in the rural counties of southeast Georgia before holding a rally on Thursday in Savannah.

Democrats outside the party’s Metro Atlanta engine have long complained that focusing on the capital city, where a majority of Democratic voters in the state live, ignores pockets of supporters in less populous areas. Organizers have emphasized the particular need to engage voters in rural South Georgia and the state’s mountainous northern regions — both heavily conservative parts of the state that will still require high turnout from Black and moderate white voters to keep Democrats competitive.

A visit from the presidential ticket, some rural Democrats say, shows that top party leaders heeded their calls.

“A little does a lot in rural areas,” said Melissa Clink, the former chair of the Democratic Party in Forsyth County, north of the Atlanta suburbs. “If we can get some face time with, especially, the top of the ticket, then not only does that help donors open up their wallets to fund get-out-the-vote operations on the ground but it also inspires more people to do more work because they feel seen.”

Marilynne Robinson ponders the role of U.S. war losses in relation to resentful voters and the rise of Trump

Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson published this piece in the New York Review of Books earlier this summer (publication date shows July 18, 2024, but it appeared online weeks before that--certainly well before Biden decided not to seek a second term).  I'm revisiting the piece now because I think it's really important--really insightful-- in relation to this election season.  The headline is an opaque "Agreeing to Our Harm."  The subhead is a telling "We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters and threatens Biden’s chances this fall."  In it, Robinson links working-class discontent to the fact that what we might think of as left-behind communities (and she does use that term) are the ones that have supplied most of the soldiers who've been killed in the Iraq and Afghan engagements in the past few decades. And, of course, those left-behind communities providing many soldiers are often rural.  Here are some salient excerpts from the essay: 

[T]here is a baffled cynicism abroad in the country, a sense that we will and must fail at everything except adding wealth to wealth and influencing other countries to their harm. We have the war in Gaza to remind us how suddenly horror can descend on a region, how a provocation can unleash utter disaster, and how the contending pathologies of a few men can destroy lives by the scores of thousands.

A profound alienation has set in, regularly expressed on both sides in contempt—contempt for Trumpists and those who vote with them on one side, and on the other side Trump and his allies’ contemptuous rejection of the entire project we have called America. In contemporary parlance this rejection is called conservatism.

* * * 

More than 4,400 American military personnel died in the Iraq War. Say their average age was twenty-five and their life expectancy was seventy-five years. Then our civilization was deprived of some 220,000 years of productive life—soldiers are healthy and competent people in the vast majority of cases. I am not speaking here of economic loss—our tendency to bring this measure to bear on virtually everything is a disheartening and destructive habit. I am speaking of everything they might have done to enjoy and enhance life, charming us, dazzling us, simply sustaining us in the course of finding occupations and rearing families. The death toll among Iraqis was vastly higher, and a calculation of the cost to civilization of the kind I have made here would be proportionately more unfathomable.

But my subject is the rage and rejection that have emerged in America, threatening to displace politics, therefore democracy, and to supplant them with a figure whose rage and resentment excite an extreme loyalty, and disloyalty, a sort of black mass of patriotism, a business of inverted words and symbols where the idea of the sacred is turned against itself. I will suggest that one great reason for this rage is a gross maldistribution of the burdens and consequences of our wars. If I am right that this inequity has some part in the anger that has inflamed our public life, in order to vindicate democracy we must acknowledge it and try to put it right.

It is taken to be true that the Trump phenomenon reflects the feeling in a large part of the population that they are “left behind.” This view is obviously too smug to deserve the acceptance it enjoys. Why does this movement have no vision of a future, beyond the incarceration of whomever Trump chooses to vilify? Why have its members proposed no reforms to narrow the economic divide? Why is there no response to the ambitious investments President Biden has made, designed to stimulate the economies of struggling areas? A “populism” whose lieutenants have an impressive number of Yale Law degrees and whose idol is a Manhattan moneyman is not to be understood as a flaring up of aggrieved self-interest. 

* * * 

I will suggest that, in the very fact of making no sense, the movement has enormous meaning. Something has enraged a great manyAmericans, and a democracy worthy of the name should make a serious effort to understand what it is. The pocketbook metric we apply to everything is not sufficiently respectful to be of use.

When I calculated the loss of lives America suffered in the Iraq War, I might have implied that this immense loss was suffered by us all, and in a sense it was. But in a deeper sense it fell disproportionately on a part of the population described in other contexts as men without college degrees, men without higher education or training. And their families, and their communities. They accepted the inducements the military offers and were caught up in a war of frivolous choice. Many of them killed and died. Like the rest of us, on religious and other grounds they can be assumed to be deeply reluctant to take human lives. Their own deaths, without need or purpose, would be profoundly bitter for everyone who loved them.  These fine young people entrusted their lives to authority they assumed would not make casual use of them, and when all was said and done, no one was prosecuted.

It is true that these men without college degrees often vote for Republicans. The Presidents Bush are seen in retrospect as exemplars of political civility, and perhaps they would be a little embarrassed by the crude thing their party has become. It is hard to imagine a purer example of privilege than father-son presidencies. Still, the Tea Party found a home for its “populism” there and opened the way for the kind of postpolitical disruptiveness now so strongly associated with the Republicans. Among their masses there is a disillusionment verging on nihilism that experiences itself as patriotic. 

* * * 

And now we all talk about an elite, elitism. It is a meaningful issue, despite and because of the general pointlessness of the rhetoric that surrounds it. Billionaires and their offspring can be excused from this disfavored category if they are conspicuously crass or ignorant. Insofar as the potent term is securely linked to any group, it is associated with the highly educated and their institutions and with people whose politics are liberal. There is nothing more American, historically, than education. 

* * * 

If elitism is a thing that is deplored in academe itself, this looks like a fig leaf on the foolish and discreditable rise in the cost of higher education. This hostility to the universities traces back to the social polarization that associated them with privilege and immunity rather than with the humane value of learning for its own sake. Because of the system of student deferments, universities became associated with draft dodging. To the degree that they had ever conferred social advantage, this was compounded by the immunity they offered from the stark claim the government was making on the lives of the population as a whole. They were largely and appropriately centers of resistance to the war, an opposition that could not entirely mitigate the appearance, or the reality, that some lives were being treated as having more value than others. The struggles for minority rights and women’s rights should have taught us that an inequity is also an insult, and that a sting can persist long after a law has been repealed.

* * *  

A population more likely to provide troops for the military would have a livelier awareness of the fact that they are deployed all over the world, in places that are or at any time might become very dangerous. This might yield a different definition of globalism. On the other side, that regrettable gift for forgetting is a factor, forgetfulness of the weight of this burden.  

Cross-posted to Working-Class Whites and the Law. 

How and why Democrats are failing to attract rural voters: Is it the economy, stupid?

A couple of recent items in the New York Times showcase--wisely in my opinion--how the Democrats, in spite of an entertaining convention, are failing to attract rural voters.  Both of these pieces touch on a range of issues, e.g., climate change, civil rights, etc., but seem to come back to the focus of these voters on pocket book issues and the related belief of many that Trump is better on and for the economy.  I'm glad to see these stories because I've been saying for weeks, 

The first story is a huge feature out of Wilson, North Carolina, population 50,000, 40 miles east of Raleigh It is part of the Rocky Mount-Wilson-Roanoke Rapids Metro Area, but characterized as rural by the New York Times, with the headline, "Meet the Rural Voters Who Could Swing North Carolina's Election."  The lede and a few other excerpts follow:  

The most rural of the battleground states this year is North Carolina. About 3.4 million people, or roughly a third of the state’s population, reside in a rural area, more than in any other state besides Texas.

Democrats have seen their support slip in rural areas, ceding ground to Republicans. As such, rural voters in North Carolina could determine which way the state goes on Election Day, as Democrats hope to curb their losses in these communities and Republicans seek to solidify their grip.

But in interviews with more than 30 people in Wilson County, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, where backcountry roads weave in and out of tobacco fields, many residents told us that they felt both parties often overlooked their concerns, about high prices, underfunded schools and rapid growth from the state capital that is stretching into town.

* * *

Voters in Wilson described feeling alienated and worn down by the emphasis on race and identity in politics. 

And that comment reminds me of this very urban NYT story a few weeks ago in which low-income Black voters were quoted as saying they wanted less identity politics and more on what Harris would do to to help them.  

Folks in Wilson are also concerned about the social and economic consequences of rural gentrification.

Downtown Wilson was a sleepy scene decades ago. Now, it has a park decorated with oversize whirligigs, full bars on weekends and, by 2026, a new $63 million stadium that will be the home of the Carolina Mudcats, a Minor League Baseball team.

All of that development, though, has increased concerns over inflation and rising housing costs. Residents bemoaned the prices of fertilizer, electricity bills and chitlins, or sizzled pork intestines. For many people in Wilson, the math just doesn’t add up.

* * * 

Despite their differing opinions, many Wilson residents said they valued getting along with their neighbors, in part because there was no political bubble to hide in.

The story's closing quote, from a 46-year-old white woman, also echoes that theme: 

I just want my community to be OK.

And that reminded me of key finding of Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea's 2023 book, The Rural Voter:  that rural folks have a strong sense of linked fate with and to others in their community. 

The second NYT item is an essay titled, The Politics of a Hard Day's Work for Lobstermen in a Changing Climate.  Scott Elsworth, a historian, writes from Stonington, Maine, population 1056, where he spent time this summer with lobstermen.  

For young workers like Mr. Amaro and Mr. Leach and millions of other Americans like them who are busting their humps week in and week out trying to get ahead, the price of gas, groceries and housing is perhaps the most important factor in determining their vote. Not abortion, not Gaza, not the war in Ukraine. As long as the perception that Mr. Trump will do a better job with the economy remains unchallenged, the Democrats will pay a price at the polls, perhaps a dear one.

“I care a lot about nature,” Mr. Amaro said, “but also I think about my future and how I can take care of my family, and what would benefit me, in the long term, financially. And it kind of sucks to think like that.”

Though he has regularly voted Republican, Mr. Black is far from MAGA. Like many Maine Republicans, at least historically, he is fiscally conservative and no fan of big government. He believes in climate change, isn’t worried about immigration and considers the former president to be something you won’t hear Jessica Fletcher say in reruns of “Murder, She Wrote.” But it is likely, at this point, that he’ll cast his vote for Mr. Trump. “I like Trump’s decisions on stuff that he did,” Mr. Black told me. His two sternmen are, at this point, inclined to do the same, citing the rise in gas prices and the high cost of housing.

Finally, In These Times just posted this item from Joseph Bullington, "Republicans Will Weaponize Rural Suffering as Long as Democrats Ignore It."  Here's a key excerpt: 

But let us not confuse this giddiness [of the DNC] with evidence of a winning politics. What terrified me about the Republican National Convention terrifies me still: The Republicans are effectively wielding rural suffering as a political weapon, telling a potent story that — in classic fascist style — deflects the blame onto immigrants and other out-groups. Democrats could demolish these racist lies with a compelling story of their own — one that defuses the Right’s fascist messaging and shows how rural whites and immigrants (many of them in rural areas, of course) are actually being robbed and exploited by the very same profiteers, the same rigged economic system. Is this what the Democrats are doing? Of course not — that’s what makes it a bad dream.

In human form, this nightmare of mine has a name, and its JD Vance.

* * *

In his RNC speech, Vance spoke to the pain of small towns and rural areas ​“cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class,” places where ​“jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.” 

And that brings me to my own essay, "Mustering the political will to help left-behind places in a polarized USA."   

Postscript:  This opinion piece by Patrick Healy for the New York Times makes some of the same points made above and also echoes my concern that the Democrats seemed a little too self-congratulatory at their Convention--a little too inward looking, even tone deaf at times.  The audio version of this piece, available today on the NYTAudio app, is even better.  

More on Walz' attractiveness to rural voters

From Nicholas Jacobs article in The Conversation, discussed below

Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz gave his speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last night, and in doing so used some of his now standard rural and small-town lines--including how small-town folks mind their own damned business.   

Meanwhile, Nicholas Jacobs,  co-author of The Rural Voter, wrote in The Conversation about Walz' attractiveness--or lack thereof--to rural voters: 

Walz’s performance within his home state of Minnesota is a relevant bellwether for his national appeal among rural voters. Though Walz has deep rural roots, rural voters have not always supported him as much as his backstory might quickly suggest.

In six elections over the past eight years, populist candidates for major offices in upper Midwestern states have seen differing levels of success in rural parts of their districts or states. Using the vote share that each candidate received from majority-rural counties – counties where the rural population is more than 50% of the total – as a proxy for rural support both district- and statewide, Walz’s performance has decreased among rural voters since he last ran for reelection to Congress in 2016. It does not exceed the support other candidates in the Midwest received from similar rural-majority counties.

I calculated the percent of the population living in a census-defined rural bloc for Walz’s former congressional district and the state of Minnesota. I then calculated the percent of Walz’s vote share that came from rural-majority counties in each of his past three elections, one for Congress and the other two for governor.

Like other Democrats in districts across the nation, Walz struggled to win rural voters in his congressional district – Minnesota’s First District – and statewide. Neither of those are majority-rural constituencies, but even when just looking at the most rural areas, Walz never won a majority. In fact, his largest losses running for reelection as governor in 2022 were in rural communities. That year, Walz captured just 38% of the vote in rural-majority counties across Minnesota.

Some might see this as evidence that no Democrat could do well in rural America. If not the folksy Walz, then who, they might ask?

Just look next door.

In Walz’s own Midwest region, other Democrats have performed strongly among rural constituencies. U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota performed nearly as strong as their Republican opponents within the most rural parts of their electorate. Even Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer outperformed Walz’s rural numbers.

* * * 

A recent Washington Post poll on the two vice presidential nominees’ popularity shows that Walz has secured a marginal geographic advantage among voters across the U.S. In urban areas, about 20% of voters dislike Vance more than like him. Among rural respondents, just 14% of voters dislike Walz more than like him. Walz, however, is still less popular than popular among rural voters, while Vance is viewed favorably, on average.

But it is worth remembering that the most popular candidate to ever win rural America neither hails from a rural America nor pretends to. Donald Trump’s appeal lies not in his personal connection to rural life but in his ability to tap into the sentiments of rural discontent and align them with his broader political message. Trump has shown that the politics of rural identity do not easily translate to simple identity politics.

Jacobs opines that Walz' job is not just to present a "rural-friendly image."  

It’s addressing the deeper issues that motivate rural voters, such as economic insecurity, perceived cultural marginalization and distrust in government. Symbolic gestures – and camo hats – alone are not sufficient to sway their support.

You'll see more on Walz' attractiveness to rural voters in my prior post, based on a story in the LA Times, here.