WSJ speculates on rural bits of Illinois and California seceding from cities

Joe Barrett writes under the headline, "The Rural Areas Pushing for Divorce From Democratic Cities."  The subhead is, "Across Illinois and California, more red counties that feel steamrolled by blue-led governments are trying to split off."  

 Here's an excerpt: 

A burgeoning breakup movement is gaining momentum across Illinois, California and other states where vast swaths of red, rural counties are dominated by a few blue cities. More residents are pushing to break off and form new states. Or as a group called New Illinois State—which has declared itself independent from actual Illinois and last weekend passed the first draft of a new constitution—puts it: “Leave Illinois Without Moving.”

* * *

73% of voters in predominantly rural Iroquois County...on Election Day backed the idea of forming a new state with every Illinois county except Cook, home to Chicago and more than 40% of the state’s population. The nonbinding resolution also passed in six other counties, bringing the total to 33 of Illinois’s 102 counties.

“There’s a lot of people in Chicago, and I think that they make a lot of decisions that affect people downstate,” said Gioja, who doesn’t expect a New Illinois soon. “It’s just sending a message that, ‘Hey, you know, there’s people that would like to be part of the conversation, and often aren’t.’ ”

This reminds me of the disgruntlement that rural voters have expressed about not having their views heard in both state and federal government.  Kathy Cramer wrote about this in the context of Wisconsin in 2016, and others have since written about it, if only to ridicule it.  (See various columns by, among other, Paul Krugman in the NYTimes).

As a related matter, here's a story from The Guardian this weekend analyzing why eight California counties shifted from Biden (2020) to Trump (2024).   Needless to say, these are some of the counties that would like to secede from California--or have urban cities in the Golden State secede.  There are lots of prior stories here on the blog about secession, including those about the would-be State of Jefferson.  

Jared Golden is second rural-ish Democrat to hold on to a congressional seat amidst red wave

 Here's the New York Times coverage written by Maya C. Miller.   Salient excerpts follow:  

Mr. Golden’s narrow victory in his largely white, rural and working-class district — one of five Democratic-held districts that Donald J. Trump won in 2020 — was a bright spot for Democrats and will help ensure that the Republicans’ House majority in the next Congress remains exceedingly narrow.

Mr. Golden toiled throughout the campaign to distance himself from other Democrats, declining to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or even say whether he would vote for her. Instead, with the hope of defying political gravity and overcoming party polarization, the congressman emphasized a hyperlocal and nonpartisan message aimed at working-class people of all political stripes. He campaigned as a potential governing partner with Mr. Trump, saying he could work with whomever won the White House.

For House Republicans, Mr. Theriault’s loss underlined Mr. Golden’s status as one of the Democrats’ most battle-tested members. A native of Fort Kent, a town on the northernmost border of the state, Mr. Theriault, 30, portrayed himself as a “true Mainer” — his typical outfit includes jeans, a baseball cap and a puffer vest over a button-down shirt — and small-business owner who was approachable.

* * * 

After a mass shooting last year in his hometown of Lewiston, Mr. Golden — one of the few Democrats in Congress who has routinely broken with his party to oppose gun control measures — changed course and endorsed an assault weapons ban. He lost the backing of the National Rifle Association, and Mr. Theriault argued that Mr. Golden’s change of heart on guns showed that he was out of step with his district.

On Gluesenkamp Perez's re-election: Times calls her a "red-district conquerer"

Annie Karni writes under the headline "A Red-District Conqueror Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror."  An excerpt follows:  

For two years, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from a rural, red district in Washington State, has been criticizing her party for being too dismissive of working-class voters.

That message appears to have helped Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, long considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the House, defy the odds in this week’s election. Even with President-elect Donald J. Trump at the top of the ticket and winning her district for the third cycle in a row, she appears on track to beat the same candidate she faced two years ago, the far-right Republican and former Green Beret Joe Kent, by a larger margin.

* * * 

Preliminary results showed her outrunning Vice President Kamala Harris by seven percentage points in two of the reddest counties in her district, including the rural timber county of Wahkiakum.

Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, who owns an auto shop now run by her husband, has angered progressives for sometimes crossing party lines, like when she voted with Republicans to repealPresident Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative. She argued that it didn’t do much for her district, where most people don’t have college degrees.

What follows are some quotes form Guesenkamp Perez: 

The fundamental mistake people make is condescension. A lot of elected officials get calloused to the ways that they’re disrespecting people.

* * * 

People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.

Addressing the rural lawyer shortage has never been more important

If you're like me, you're probably still pouring data and trying to make sense of the results of Tuesday's Presidential election. You're also probably wondering what comes next and how we can be prepared for the next Trump Administration. How can we ensure that the most vulnerable populations are prepared to weather the next four years? How can we ensure that they have access to justice? For the last decade, I have written and studied the rural lawyer shortage. I have been excited to see the issue gain more attention over the last few years, and I am hopeful that this momentum can carry forward into the next Administration. 

Because our most vulnerable populations are going to need it. 

It is a commonly cited statistic that rural America is home to 20% of the country's people and 2% of its lawyers. As I wrote in this space five years ago, many rural spaces are also home to deeply embedded poverty and violent crime. As I also noted, the media tends to ignore the actual problems facing rural communities, so these issues are not given much attention. Indeed, I'm sure the mainstream media will pick up on increased Trump support in rural spaces, which will only serve to increase the anti-rural rhetoric that is endemic in our mainstream discourse. But the low-income and vulnerable populations in these spaces deserve a voice and a defense against what is to come. 

At a base level, the Trump Administration promised mass deportations, and a hallmark promise of his first campaign was "The Wall," a 2,000-mile-long border wall along the United States-Mexico border. Mass deportations are going to affect many rural communities around the country. And it won't just be limited to undocumented immigrants. President-elect Trump has also indicated an interest in deporting legal immigrants. Immigrant communities across the country are at risk. Immigrants in rural communities are especially vulnerable because of the paucity of available counsel. There needs to be lawyers in those spaces to make sure targeted immigrants have access to the resources to fight these mass deportation efforts. 

Further, if President-elect Trump attempts to fulfill his promise to build "The Wall," many rural communities (including sovereign Tribal nations) will find themselves disrupted by these efforts. Many landowners may even be subject to the Trump Administration's attempts to use eminent domain to acquire their land. Tribal Nations may also find themselves again battling the Trump Administration over the Wall on their sovereign land. These disputes will require lawyers to fight back. 

It is also important to note that the first Trump Administration also waged war against civil legal aid funding. As I have written before, this is part of a broader Republican effort that dates back to Ronald Reagan's time as California's governor. Like his predecessors, Trump proposed eliminating the Legal Services Corporation, which provides civil legal aid funding to organizations around the country. The Legal Services Corporation has long recognized their role in filling the justice gap in rural communities (their 2018 budget request even cited my research into the matter). Luckily, we were able to avoid the worst during the last Trump Administration, but nothing is promised going forward. 

As I have noted previously, many legal aid organizations react to budget shortfalls by closing rural offices. This will result in rural residents being able to access help with securing protective orders against abusive spouses, keeping their homes and fighting back against negligent landlords, securing counsel in contested divorce and custody cases, and a litany of other areas where legal aid attorneys play a crucial role. The elimination of the Legal Services Corporation as a key funder will almost certainly be catastrophic for rural access to justice. 

This is just a sampling of why it is especially critical right now to fight for access to justice in rural spaces. We must continue raising awareness of these issues and fight for solutions. 

Rural conspiracy theories and the mechanics of the 2024 election

I'm just going to collect some of the salient stories here.

First (most recently), from the Washington Post, "Rural Arizona shows how Trump allies could try to thwart election certification." Yvonne Wingett Sanchez reports from Cochise County, Arizona.  Here's a paragraph:  

After the 2022 midterm election, two county leaders on a three-member board refused to accept the outcome in a timely matter, citing concerns about voting equipment that were rooted in false theories and real problems in the Phoenix area, 200 miles north. One of the leaders eventually relented, after a judge intervened, and joined the Democratic member to sign off on the results. But the standoff pushed the state past its certification deadline, triggered a legal battle and criminal prosecutions, and set off fears that local leaders around the nation would try the same strategy after November’s presidential election, should former president Donald Trump again lose.

Here's Jim Ruttenberg's report for the New York Times Magazine under the headline, "What to Know about the Looming Election Certification Crisis."  

The false narrative of a stolen election that inspired hundreds of Americans to storm the U.S. Capitol in 2021 is now fueling a far more sophisticated movement, one that involves local and state election boards across the country.

What was once the Stop the Steal movement is now the “voter integrity” movement. Its aim is to persuade the people who are responsible for certifying local elections of the false notions that widespread fraud is a threat to democracy and that they have the authority and legal duty to do something about it: Deny certification of their local elections.

 Here is Ruttenberg discussing the Nevada slice of his reporting on The Daily podcast.  

And here is some Los Angeles Times reporting on election shenanigans from far northern California.