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.