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.

On National Farmers Market Week (Part II): Vail, Colorado

Well, we're now well past National Farmers Market week, but I'm going to post here about a market I visited last week in Vail, Colorado during that week.  What Vail calls a farmer's market is as much about fast food booths, crafts, and a wide range of goods as it is about produce.  Many of the shops along the primary streets set up tables and booths outside their bricks-and-mortar operations.  Here's what it looked like (all photos are (c) Lisa R Pruitt 2024):   

Peaches in season

Another Tim Walz profile, this one in the uber-urban LA Times

Hailey Branson-Potts of the Los Angeles Times reports on her recent trip to Tim Walz's two Nebraska home towns: Valentine (population 2,737) and Butte (population 326).  Here are some rural-focused excerpts: 

During the 2022 midterm elections, 69% of rural voters cast ballots for Republicans, compared with 29% supporting Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. Among urban voters, 68% supported Democrats and 30% backed Republicans.

Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska Omaha, said he does not see places like Nebraska suddenly going blue.

“What we’re seeing in the polls right now is there’s a little bit of movement toward Harris, but people made hard decisions and they made them a long time ago,” he said.

Still, there is palpable excitement among rural Democratic organizers, who say they have long been overlooked by their national party.

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said in an email that Harris “has absolutely expanded the map beyond swing states with Tim Walz” and that “we do not have to hand him a briefing book on rural issues, because he has lived our experiences.”

Among Democrats’ many identity-based Zoom fundraising calls that have raised millions — including “White Dudes for Harris” — was an event last week called “Rural Folks for Harris.” It drew about 6,000 listeners across 48 states and raised $22,000.

In Valentine, there were no visible yard signs for Harris or Trump this week. At the Cherry County Rodeo, people donned cowboy hats, not MAGA caps.

The story appeared on the front page of the paper, above the fold, on Friday, August 16, 2024.  

Connecting rural and small-town youth with higher education

Images are from STARS Network website

I recently learned of the STARS Network, that is the Small Town and Rural Students Network--when my own alma mater, the University of Arkansas, became one of its 32 members.  Here's how the organization describes itself: 

The STARS College Network, which partners with top colleges to ensure that students from rural and small-town America have the information and support they need to enroll and graduate from the college or university of their choice, is doubling its membership to include 32 of the nation’s most prominent institutions.

In its inaugural year, the STARS College Network opened doors to higher education for more than a quarter-million students. The expansion this summer will add flagship state schools, historically Black colleges, Ivy League universities, and other selective institutions, spreading STARS’ reach to more regions across the nation.

Support

In support of the STARS expansion, the Trott Family Philanthropies, which catalyzed the creation of STARS with an initial $20 million gift in 2023, will be investing more than $150 million over 10 years in programs that prepare, recruit and support rural students. Adding the financial aid provided directly by the STARS institutions to students, expanding support from philanthropies and non-profits and new funding from governmental agencies, an estimated $7.4 billion will be spent in support of STARS’ mission over the next decade. This extraordinary growth follows a year in which STARS outreach connected with 1.6 million people, including students, families, educators, administrators, foundations, legislators, companies and other organizations. STARS institutions directly engaged with more than 700,000 students, and more than 288,000 students joined the STARS network.

Partnerships

STARS schools directly engage with the rootEd Alliance, a public-private partnership that helps rural students define and plan their futures, whether that means a college degree, work-based learning, or military service, with the goal of putting them on a path to career success and economic stability. By placing dedicated college and career advisors in 195 schools across Missouri, Texas and Idaho, rootEd has served 42,000 students to date, and collaborates with STARS to provide specialized support and training for rootEd advisors throughout the year. rootEd Alliance, launched in 2018, is made possible by a group of philanthropists convened by Trott Family Philanthropies.

Meanwhile, this international publication on rural students' access to higher education came across my radar screen, "Access of rural youth to higher education: An international perspective," published in Journal of Infrastructure, Policy and Development 2024, 8(8), 5528.  The authors are Álvaro Andrés Rivera Sepúlveda, Omar Cabrales Salazar, and Lizeth Natalia Saboyá Acosta.  Here's the abstract: 

This is a review of empirical studies with the objective of analyzing the theoretical-practical discussions that have been raised internationally to deepen the understanding of the access of rural youth to higher education as an object of study. For this purpose, a narrative review was designed, considering scientific articles published in three different languages and concerning studies conducted in 21 different countries in all regions of the world. The results reveal three discussions: a) the strong interest that higher education has regained in the life expectations of rural young people and their families, especially as a means of social advancement; b) the inequalities that most affect the access of rural youth to higher education are the lack of academic offerings in rural areas and the discontinuities that occur around rural socio-cultural capital; c) since the inequalities experienced by rural youth are diverse, actions to promote greater democratization cannot be limited to implementing systems of grants and scholarships. It is concluded that the major project consists of creating a differentiated higher education model that, in terms of location, academic offerings, recognition of knowledge, and articulation with the environment, allows rural youth to experience their professional training not as an inevitable process of acculturation, but as a continuation of their socio-cultural capital and their territorial yearnings.

Literary Rualism (Part XLVIII): Barbara Kingsolver's introduction to Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold Shack, near Baraboo, Sauk County, WI
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

A few weeks ago, on a field trip from the Rural Sociological Society's Annual Meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, I visited Aldo Leopold's shack in Sauk County, Wisconsin.  This is where Leopold's book, A Sand County Almanac, is set. Leopold wanted land in one of the sand counties, so designated, because the soil had become so degraded by how it had been farmed.   What I want to do here is highlight some bits from the new introduction by Barbara Kingsolver:  

After a reverent passage on wild places, [Leopold] concludes: “It is here that we seek—and still find—our meat from God.” The use of “meat” and “God” in a metaphor for deep satisfaction might irk some modern environmentalists, but the words will find purchase in the hearts of rural readers who are weary of being maligned for their loyalties to meat and God. Weary, also, of urban land-saviors who look to nature for spiritual balm or recreation, and presume a moral high ground over the folks who literally owe their survival to the land. People who hunt and fish to help stock their freezers are astute naturalists, of necessity, and most farmers are well aware that the fields and forests they steward are home not just to crops but to bluebirds and foxes, spring wildflowers and winter wrens. It’s hard to endure ham-fisted judgments against livestock slaughter and crop-spraying from people who have no fields to shepherd or weeds to fight. 

We listen and take our truths—all of us—from people we trust, who know us and have our interests at heart. This is a built-in bias of the human psyche, and the crux of the fix we’re in as we stand in nations divided against themselves. As long as we live in entirely separate worlds, without comprehension of the others’ language or daily grinds, the door between us is sealed. Not a word will pass from one side to the other. 

I’m unusually preoccupied with this deadlock, as an environmentalist who is also a country girl, raised in rural Kentucky, living now on a farm in the Appalachian Mountains. I love this landscape and my neighbors, but I can tell you that it has never been harder to be a rural person in America. Employment is scarce, schools are under-resourced, doctors and other crucial services are overstretched or nonexistent. The main streets of our little towns are rows of shuttered local businesses, all bankrupted by internet sales and box stores. Farm incomes have bottomed out, and just about every economic mover, from industrial employers to airline hubs to professional baseball leagues, have pulled out of the nation’s less-populous regions to concentrate their benefits in cities. Out here in the heartlands we’re still raising kids and crops to feed a nation’s appetites for food and labor, but we’re feeling pretty lonely about it. And invisible. Some 40 percent of Americans live in places that aren’t cities, but we show up virtually nowhere in American TV shows, movies, or major journalism. These are made in cities, by city people. If rural folk appear in mainstream culture, it’s generally in a voyeuristic hit-and-run piece on addiction and poverty, or a degrading caricature intended as entertainment. 

Imagine, then, the novelty of reading A Sand County Almanac, a rural man’s earnest, exultant accounting of his life in the country. He’s not singing his praises to some untouched parcel of pricey wilderness real estate; it’s just a worn-out little farm. Most of its native glory was driven out by previous owners who overcropped its topsoil down to naked sand, then abandoned it with debts to the bank. (xv-xvii)

And I love this next excerpt for its explicit reference to socioeconomic class: 

A written voice is an artifice, of course, even in nonfiction. It occurred to me to wonder whether this book’s class-crossing accessibility was a conscious, crafted choice. A look into his archives reveals a more complicated Aldo Leopold than the cheerful fellow who greets us from his “sand farm.” As an outdoorsy Iowa boy, he shipped off to the newly created forestry school at Yale, then wrote wistful letters home describing the nearby woods where he sought refuge from the classroom. And as early as that, he sounded less like a duck hunter than a sophisticated naturalist. From there, a forestry career took him to a wild and woolly West (in 1909, Arizona was not yet a state) where he climbed mountains on foot and horseback, carrying a sidearm as protection against bears and wolves. He assessed oaks and pines for the board-feet of lumber they contained, and he gradually came to see the forest behind the trees, with unprecedented clarity. Rising through the ranks of the U.S. Forest Service, he developed a comprehensive land-management program for the Grand Canyon and other important wilderness areas, and he applied his remarkable insights on predator-prey interactions to new theories of game and fish management. Eventually he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin as its first professor of wildlife management, to spend the rest of his life as a conservationist, educator, and founding father of modern environmental ethics and the science of ecology. It is remarkably to his credit that Leopold compressed this master class for all time into readable prose that glows with ease and optimism. He knew that compromises between humans and our habitat would never be simple. (pp. xviii-xix). 

The outhouse, so well designed that Leopold 
called it the Parthenon.

Then there's this about the character of rural folks and their relationship to urban folks: 

His gift was to wear his rural roots and humility on his sleeve, and respect the full range of his audience, wherever they lived—a knack that we modern environmentalists have largely lost. He knew how to talk to the good ol’ boys. 

In the heat of modern culture wars, a voice like this could risk getting canceled. Readers quick to judge might just see guns and camo. Some of his language might mark him as old-school, a product of the same era as the cabal of elderly men who now impose mine-and-drill politics on many nations—that is, the time when the earth’s resources seemed in endless supply. Like those men, Leopold was well-churched in the notion of earth-as-property. But unlike them, he found his way to a nuanced idea of the planet as an autonomous collection of lives. He managed to be more inclusive than the best of us.  (p. xix).  

 * * * 

For the urban reader, I hope you will let down your guard with this man as he sits on his rock in the stream, waiting for his trout to rise. If you take him for a redneck, listen anyway, because he’s wiser than most any two of us put together. He may help you see past the frustrating divides that plague the awfullest failure of our day, as we try to reconcile human subsistence with the needs of our damaged biological home. If you’ve lost all hope of finding a common language for that conversation, you might well find it here. (p xx) 

It's a fitting introduction for a classic and a staple of the conservation movement.  The book was first published in 1949, a year after Leopold died helping fight a wildfire near his shack--a shack which, by the way, had been the chicken coop for he farm's prior owner.  That owner had gotten so frustrated with trying to cultivate the land, that he burned his house down before selling the property. 

On Walz' old congressional distirct in south central Minnesota

Jess Bidgood writes in her column in the New York Times today about Tim Walz' former congressional district and how its politics shifted in the years since he was elected to represent it in 2006.  Here are some excerpts:   

Walz beat an incumbent by nearly six percentage points to flip the district in 2006 and won it again by nearly 30 percentage points two years later. But as the rise of Trump drove more rural Republicans to the polls to vote for him, Walz hung on by less than one percentage point in 2016. Over the years, he and the First District seemed to draw apart from each other; he lost the district, which has been slightly redrawn over the years, when he ran for re-election in 2022.

“Greater Minnesota turned a darker red in more recent years,” said Amy Koch, a former State Senate majority leader and a Republican. “We’ve become so geographically dug in now.”
Disillusioned voters

The district had been held by a Republican for 12 years when Walz, a high school teacher in Mankato, first won the district in 2006. The growth of the city of Rochester, formerly a Republican stronghold that is home to the Mayo Clinic, helped give him a shot there amid the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the president then, said Blois Olson, a Minnesota political analyst.

Doug Schultz, an 81-year-old former dairy farmer who was catching up with a friend near the petting zoo at the Nicollet County Fair, said he remembered meeting Walz during that campaign at a parade in nearby New Ulm.

“Wherever he saw a crowd, he stopped and he gave us a sermon, and the parade kept on going — I don’t think he ever finished the parade,” Schultz, a longtime Republican, said.

It didn’t win him Schultz’s vote — but Walz did win over Mike Anderson, a farmer from Windom, Minn., which was part of the First District at the time. I spoke with Anderson at Farmfest, where he told me he has since become deeply disillusioned with Walz. Walz took liberal votes as a congressman, but as governor he has signed numerous bills that many voters in this conservative region believe tugged the state too far left.

“He’s very liberal. His spending is beyond control,” said Anderson, pointing to Walz’s support for stricter emissions standards and electric vehicles.

Collecting some of the best coverage of Tim Walz' rurality

First, the day after Harris selected Walz, Sarah Smarsh published this in the New York Times, "The Demcrats Have Needed Someone Like Walz for Decades."  I'm featuring some key excerpts below:  

What a relief...to see emerge on the national stage the Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, who embodies the earnest, humane, rural people who shaped me and the prairie populism that shaped the progressive foundations of the Great Plains.

* * * 

With due respect to political statistics, which convey real and important trends, the rural white working class is not a monolith. Among them remains a large and consequential minority of sensible people who even in their vulnerable economic state remain unmoved by charlatans blaming immigrants while amassing corporate wealth.

In recent decades, the Democratic Party has made little direct appeal to them, such that Mr. Walz’s rural background seems downright transgressive on the top ticket. As evidence, some (often coastal) pundits now struggle to find a word for a vice-presidential pick raised in small-town Nebraska beyond “folksy,” since their language about his place of origin has for so long reflected geographic and class biases. “Trump country.” “One of the square states in the middle.”

* * * 

[F]or all the loud racism, homophobia and jingoism of today’s Republican Party — which indeed has dominated elections outside metropolitan areas — the real rural America is diverse, full of immigrants, people of color, gay and transgender people and native peoples, and even straight white folks who happily work and live alongside them.

Then there's this, from Hailey Branson-Potts in the Los Angeles Times: 

Walz has deep rural roots, which could prove a counterpoint to Vance, whose political ascent began with his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicles his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.

Harris cited Walz’s rural bona fides as one of the deciding factors in choosing him as her running mate.

“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle-class families run deep,” Harris said in a statement. “It’s personal.”

Often appearing in public in T-shirts and ball caps, Walz brings an amiable, Midwestern-dad sensibility to the ticket.

Walz, 60, was born in rural Nebraska and went to high school in the tiny town of Butte, where he graduated among a class of 25 students. He told the New York Times that the class included 12 cousins, so “finding someone to date was kind of a problem.”

After his father died of cancer when Walz was 19, his family relied on Social Security survivor benefit checks to make ends meet, according to the Harris campaign. He used his GI Bill benefits to help pay for college.

In 1989, Walz graduated from Chadron State College in Nebraska with a bachelor’s degree in social science education.

Dionne Searcy, a New York Times reporter who grew up in rural Nebraska, filed this fact-packed story a few days ago, "From Walz, a Rosier View of a Midwestern Upbringing.  As the headline suggests, it features something of a contrast with J.D. Vance as a product of rural America:  

The Midwestern back stories presented by the two major-party vice-presidential candidates are strikingly different. One is a grim tableau of addiction and poverty in the once-thriving industrial Midwest, as recollected by the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Another is a glowing portrait of rural America offered by Mr. Walz...

* * * 

In many ways, the difference in how each candidate is employing his identity is part of the fun-house-mirror state of U.S. politics. Mr. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, has labeled Mr. Walz, a graduate of tiny Chadron State College in Nebraska, an elite. Camouflage merchandise signaling support for hunting and guns — once chiefly the domain of Republican campaigns — is now peddled by the Harris team, too.

* *.*

His rural persona makes him likable to a broader audience, even one that may not vote for him, said former Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska. For instance, Boyd County, Neb., the home of Mr. Walz’s high school alma mater, voted 87 percent for Mr. Trump and is likely to vote similarly this year, Mr. Kerrey said. But in a politically divided nation, likability is important, he added.

* * * 

Mr. Walz adopts the country boy stereotype, waxing in speeches about his love for football and mountain oysters, or deep-fried bull’s testicles, a dish served in some parts of Nebraska and other rural areas.

Another terrific story is this by Guy Trebay from today's New York Times Style section about the sartorial signals Walz is sending: 

A Nebraska native with a gun license and workwear in his closet, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota is, of course, now also the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States. Whether in a blocky sports jacket and tie or a T-shirt and Red Wing boots, Mr. Walz brings to the Democratic ticket a kind of down-home lack of fuss that is seldom seen anymore in politics.

* * * 

To a large extent, his look distinguishes him from the triple-pleat trousers favored by Beltway dinosaurs or the stretchy Suitsupply uniforms preferred by many male young guns in the nation’s capital. Even among his competitors in the race for the vice-presidential nomination — Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona and a former astronaut — there were more regulation navy suits to be seen than chore coats. And that may be no coincidence.

* * * 

Relatable in appearance, the 60-year-old candidate has often dressed for news conferences in T-shirts or ball caps that would not be out of place on the checkout line at Hy-Vee.

* * * 

“You almost have to go back to Michael Dukakis to find someone like Walz,” Mr. Egan said. “He doesn’t own a house. He has no stocks. He gets a teacher’s pension. Compared to a lot of folks on the political scene, that’s pretty basic, if that’s what we mean by authentic.” 

Don't miss the rest of this story, which features a lot of rich rural-ish detail, sartorial and otherwise.

Rural-ish Minnesota Governor Tim Walz gets the nod as Harris' VP nominee

The New York Times ran this story last night about why Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  I'll just highlight the rural-related bits here, beginning with a direct quote from Walz: 

In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn’t make the same choice for ourselves.  There’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.

That's something he also mentioned in his Ezra Klein interview last week.  The New York Times continues:  

[Walz] saved his harshest words for Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, whose background he sarcastically compared with his own.

The story quotes Walz: 

Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires and then wrote a best-seller trashing that community.

Walz added that he couldn’t wait to debate Vance “if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

That last line was a cheeky reference to a false online rumor that could open Walz up to criticism at a moment when the Harris campaign is working hard to fight disinformation.

The story says this about Harris' introduction of Walz at their first joint rally, in Philadelphia on August 6:  

Harris ... describ[ed] a man who had a small-town upbringing in Nebraska before becoming a high school teacher and a football coach who turned a winless team into state champions. Then, his students encouraged him to run for office. It’s a remarkable tale that could be a “Friday Night Lights” plot, and the crowd loved it. 

* * * 

Harris described him as a hunter, a gun owner and the best marksman in Congress. And she sought to use him as evidence for a campaign she says is intended to reach Americans in red and blue states alike — although Republicans are already working overtime to depict him as too liberal for much of the country.

Here is the Los Angeles Times coverage of the Walz selection, noting his rural roots. 

Governor Tim Walz does "rural" and "folksy" on the Ezra Klein podcast

Here are some excerpts from Ezra Klein's interview with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, published Friday, August 2, 2024.  Walz, who grew up in rural Nebraska, served for decades in the national guard and as a high school teacher, is a contender to be Kamala Harris' VP/running mate.  In this interview, his rural bonafides come through loud and clear. I'll lead with this excerpt, which makes a critical point that I've been making since Trump's 2016 victory:  it's one thing to criticize Trump himself, and it's another to cast aspersions on his supporters:

Ezra Klein:  I want to get at this distinction you’re making, between Trump or Vance and the crowds. Because one of the most dangerous emotions that Democrats sometimes let slip — the negative side of, I think, the liberal personality — can be a kind of contempt, a kind of smugness. This is why Hillary Clinton’s comment on deplorables was so damaging. How do you police that boundary?

Governor Tim Walz:  This is where I take offense to JD Vance and “Hillbilly Elegy.” Those are my people. I come from a town of 400 — 24 kids in a class, 12 cousins, farming, those types of things. And I know they’re not weird. I know they’re not Donald Trump.

The thing is, we have to get them away from what he’s trying to sell because that’s not who they are. Just picture in your mind Donald Trump coming home after a day of work and picking up a Frisbee and throwing it. And his dog catches it, and the dog runs over, and he gives him a good belly rub because he’s a good boy. That’s what I do. And that’s what those rallygoers do. That is exactly who they are, and they’re going through the same things all of our families are.

He’s captured some of this. And fear is scary. I mean, the world is changing. We’re seeing, you know, conflict in the Middle East. We saw a global pandemic, which he did nothing to fix but seized upon.

And I think it’s kind of breaking that spell again of saying, “Look, he’s not offering you anything.” And then we dang sure better be ready to offer something.

Klein:  Have you ever read “Hillbilly Elegy”?

Walz:  I did, years ago.

Klein:  I read it years ago, and I’ve been rereading it this week. I remember not thinking all that much of it then, but it feels like he’s predicting himself now. One of the big points early in the book is, he says: This is a story about people in a hard situation responding to it — and I’m paraphrasing — in the worst possible way. With anger, with resentment, with scapegoating of others without personal responsibility. A liberal would never talk about people and the places he’s from like that.

Walz:  No, that’s why I take offense to it. Look, societal changes, you’re going to see a migration of population patterns. But you’re also going to see those that accelerated that, those that took advantage of that, those like Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are telling you, “We need to do school vouchers.” How are you going to get a private school in a town of 400? That’s not where the private school is going to be. The private school is going to be where it already is, giving tax breaks to the wealthiest.

The two things that are core to small communities: school and hospital. So I don’t know the irony or the masterful design of this. It’s guys just like him telling you that these people are just angry, bitter. That’s not who we are. That’s not who they are.

But I’ll tell you what. There are concerns. Economies have shifted. Young people leave those communities. My community felt thriving when I was there — two grocery stores, a couple of bars downtown and all that. Now it’s empty main streets. That vision of “Hillbilly Elegy” was true. But he doesn’t tell you the story why. And the bitterness, the cultural bitterness, whatever, that’s just not true. They’re just looking for “What are things to rejuvenate us? How do we get back?”

And I think about this: A town that small had services like that and had a public school with a government teacher that inspired me to be sitting where I’m at today. Those are real stories in small towns.

These guys, they talk about how evil the public schools are. For many of us, public schools were everything. That was our path. That’s the great American contribution. 

Klein: You say there’s not a cultural bitterness, but there is a cultural frustration with the Democrats. If you looked at where people who didn’t go to college voted, they used to vote for Democrats. Now Democrats win college-educated voters nationally and lose non-college-educated voters. Those numbers are particularly stark among white voters. What do you make of that?

I think some of it is the alignment of economics. We’ve seen a migration to tech jobs, health care jobs in the cities. And then the cultural pieces — firearms start to get into that. You have long traditions that felt like they were being crushed.

We have got to figure out and see if we’re to some of the blame that we haven’t made the message clear enough. We haven’t delivered on those promises that people wanted to see.

* * * 

Klein:  Let me ask you about political geography. There’s a sense of, particularly, the Midwest as “That’s where people are normal. Then they get weirder on the coast.” You’re a former Army guy, right? You’re a former football coach. You’ve got real good Midwestern dad vibes. And so you can talk about the weirdness of Trump and Vance in a way that I think a lot of Democrats would not feel they could and also in a way that they’re like, “Oh, right, maybe we’re not the weird ones.”

Walz:  But I always think this is a very unhealthy dimension of our politics, a sense that there are sort of “real” Americans here, not “real” Americans there, beyond the coast. I’m curious how you think about this, both from the perspective of what it’s allowed you to say — maybe that would not have landed coming from others — and also just, like, what you do about it.

I started hearing this in 2006 and 2008, where people in the cities don’t know who we are — “We’re real American.”

When Klein asked Walz his theory of Trump's appeal to people, Walz admitted he was somewhat flummoxed.  Here's part of his response:  

These aren’t stupid people. These are smart people. But there’s a frustration of: Why aren’t things working? Why are they so complex? So, I don’t know, I’m just theorizing on it.

But that district that I represented in 2016, I won that district six times. There’d been one other Democrat since 1890, but I won it in 2008 by 32 points. I sneak by in 2016. He wins by 17 points in that same district. They never see him. They knew me. I coached their kids. I was there. I delivered in Congress. I was a ranking member on the V.A. committee. Just six, eight years before, nearly 70 percent of them voted for me. I didn’t do any scandal or do anything to lose their support. But this guy came in and — even though I was of them or felt I was of them, that this was me, I was truly their representative — they identified with him. So I don’t know.

Walz' degrees are from Chadron State University in Nebraska and Minnesota State University Mankato.  According to his wikipedia page, he has also worked in agriculture and manufacturing.  

On National Farmers Market Week (Part I): Celebrating Croatian markets

Farmers Market on last Wednesday in May, just outside Korcula city walls

I was in Slovenia and Croatia in May and had the opportunity to visit many farmers markets.  Now, on National Farmers Market week in the United States, I'm going to focus on the Croatian markets, from Trogir and Split to Dubrovnik, including one island, Korcula, off the Dalmatian coast.   Of course, the larger markets were in the larger cities, including Split and Dubrovnik.    All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Green Market, Split 

Tomato Plants and Green Walnuts, Green Market, Split 
May 2024

Wednesday market, Korcula, Croatia

Homemade cheese and cured meats, Green Market, Split

Dubrovnik Farmers' Market, June 1, 2024
near "Walk of Shame" from Game of Thrones

Dubrovnik Farmers' Market, June 1, 2024

Traditional bread with chard, cured meats, Split

Snails, Green market, Split

Cherries and onions, Korcula 

When I asked the woman selling cherries in Korcula whether they were locally grown--because it didn't seen like cherry growing climate--she replied, "yes, the other side of the islnd."Here's a recent post about a farmers market in Madison, Wisconsin.

Pitting affordable housing against parking in a small California city

Ben Christopher reports for CalMatters from Eureka, California, population 45,000, under the headline, "Ballot battles, lawsuits and a ticked off millionaire: What’s behind Eureka’s parking lot war?"  Here's an excerpt that sets the stage:

Hugging the Humboldt County coast some 280 miles north of San Francisco and 150 miles west of Redding, Eureka is strapped for places to live. The county has more homeless people per capita than anywhere else in the state, with a disproportionate share living on the street — a problem that’s especially conspicuous in downtown Eureka. Like every California city and county, Eureka is also on the hook under state law to scrounge up space for new housing. The downtown economy could use a little goosing too.

The parking lot-to-affordable-housing plan was supposed to tackle all those problems at once. More housing. More foot traffic downtown. A satisfied California Housing and Community Development Department. Yes, the planned developments would leave the area with more people, more cars and fewer spaces to park, but that, city officials have said, is a worthwhile trade-off.

And this goes to the heart of the conflict: 

The parking lot wars on California’s Lost Coast are part of a statewide trend of voters taking their gripes with state housing mandates to the ballot. Over the last half decade, state lawmakers have passed dozens of new laws requiring local elected officials to plan for more housing, whether they want to or not.

When these conflicts wind up in court — and they often do — courts have generally sided with state agencies.

 
But in Eureka, the political stars are aligned a bit differently. This is not a wealthy suburb in which elected officials are vowing to resist what they see as overreaching state bureaucrats. Eureka city officials are on the same page as the state housing department in wanting to see more dense housing downtown, parking be damned. It’s the voters, this November, who will have the opportunity to slam on the brakes.

Additional posts about Eureka and Humboldt County are here.