Rural voters in Wisconsin protect abortion rights: Democrats should take note

Last week, on April 4, progressive Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, thereby creating the high court's first liberal majority in 15 years. Protasiewicz won out over her conservative opponent Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, in the contest to replace retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. Notably, the race became the highest profile and most expensive judicial election on record in the United States, with campaign spending totaling over $45 million.

While the campaign was hotly contested, in the end, Protasiewicz defeated Kelly by more than 10 points in what represented a significant shift towards the Democratic party by Wisconsin voters. Perhaps the most interesting voting pattern that emerged during this election was that the statewide voting trends were bolstered by a pivot on the part of rural voters towards the democratic candidate. While Protasiewicz did ultimately lose the rural vote, the 45% of the rural vote that she was able to accumulate constitutes a significant 5-point gain for Democrats with this demographic when compared to the 2020 presidential and 2022 Senate elections. 

The headway Protasiewicz was able to make with rural voters might come as a surprise to some, given that the existence of a widening urban-rural divide with regards to Americans' political ideologies and partisan affiliations has come into sharp focus in recent years. Specifically, over the past few decades, urban voters have increasingly leaned democratic and rural voters have overwhelmingly supported republican candidates (previous posts on America's urban-rural divide here, here, and here). Moreover, Wisconsin is no outlier from these trends; like elsewhere throughout the nation, Democrats in Wisconsin have struggled to pick up votes in the countryside and in small towns (another posts on the rural vote in Wisconsin here). This is particularly evident in the rural western and northern portions of the state, where Democrats continued to watch their voting bloc erode through the 2022 election cycle. In fact, less than a year ago a post on this blog discussed multiple news reports forecasting bad news for Democrats in rural Wisconsin, highlighting how they have gone largely unsupported by the Democratic national party.

So, what changed? One predominant theory is the United States Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (recently discussed on this blog here and here). Dobbs is the Supreme Court case that reversed Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, stating that the constitution does not confer a right to abortion.  

Since Dobbs, there has been an emerging national trend by which support for abortion rights has appeared to translate into electoral gains for Democrats. In August 2022, Kansas voters shocked much of the nation by rejecting an amendment to their state constitution attempting to decoding abortion rights. Strikingly, the high-turnout, pro-abortion outcome represented a 30-point deviation away from the support former president Donald Trump garnered in 2020, with the most significant and surprising departures from Republican partisan loyalty coming from small cities and rural areas (more on the Kansas abortion referendum here). Considering these results, one possible takeaway is that rural voters, at least in Kansas and where abortion is concerned, are not completely behind every aspect of the leading Republican agenda. 

It is likely that similar forces were at play in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last week. Abortion rose to the fore of debate surrounding the election as, post-Dobbs, it was almost guaranteed that access to abortion in the state would hinge on whether it was progressives or conservatives that would secure a narrow majority on the state's supreme court. Wisconsin's current governing law on the matter is a 1849 statute criminalizing abortion in virtually all cases, with a singular exception carved out for situation in which it would be necessary to save the pregnant person's life. 

Adopting a slightly controversial strategy, Protasiewicz openly campaigned on the issue of abortion, not only publicly announcing her personal pro-choice beliefs and collecting endorsements from pro-choice groups, such as EMILY's List, but also running ads painting Kelly as a staunch pro-lifer who would surely uphold the state's 1849 abortion ban. Kelly, on the other hand, feigned impartiality, but accrued endorsements from the state's top three anti-abortion groups, including Wisconsin Right to Life, and was perceived as very likely to act in accordance with his well-documented pro-life stances.

While it is difficult to assert an exact or singular cause, the theory that Protasiewicz's pro-choice position contributed to her victory is supported by a recent Marquette University Law School Poll indicating that a majority of Wisconsin citizens support abortion in most or all cases. That said, the election was also undoubtedly influenced by the other hot-button issues spotlighted during the campaign, including gerrymandering (Wisconsin's district maps are considered among the most undemocratic in the country) and election administration (Wisconsin is a perennial swing state in which the most recent presidential election results in favor of Joe Biden were upheld by the state supreme court by a margin of only one vote).    

Regardless of the exact mechanics of the outcome of Wisconsin's Supreme Court election, Democrats should take note and stop writing off rural voters as a lost cause. In conjunction with the referendum in Kansas and other rural Democratic success stories, such as the rise of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Protasiewicz's gains in rural Wisconsin suggest that rural counties might be much more politically contestable than many believe. It is even possible that inroads with rural America could be the key to Democratic success in 2024... but only if the party begins investing sufficient time and money into rural communities, constituents, and candidates. 

More conflation of the rural-urban divide with the racial divide--and more divisive language about what constitutes the "real" America

The headline in the New York Times Upshot feature is "Are Rural Voters the 'Real' Voters?  Wisconsin Republicans Seem to Think So."  I worry that it is one more feature from the progressive media, no doubt well intentioned, that drives a further wedge between rural and urban people.  The story does this primarily by conflating whiteness with rurality, by suggesting that rural interests (broadly defined) are synonymous with white interests and therefore necessarily racist.

Here's the background:  Since Tony Evers beat Scott Walker in the Wisconsin governor's race last month, the Wisconsin legislature has moved to limit the governor's power.  Make no mistake:  I see this as a huge problem and, as many media outlets have labeled it, anti-democratic (with a small "d").  Here's what the Republican Speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse said after the 2018 election in which Evers defeated Walker:

If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, [Republicans] would have a clear majority.  We would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature.

Now this is obviously a silly thing to say because Madison and Milwaukee are, in fact, part of Wisconsin, and the votes of people there count for just as much as those in rural places, which I understand are often called "outstate" in the Wisconsin context.

Here's how Emily Badger responds to this current controversy in her Upshot story for the New York Times:

In much of Wisconsin, “Madison and Milwaukee” are code words (to some, dog whistles) for the parts of the state that are nonwhite, elite, different: The cities are where people don’t have to work hard with their hands, because they’re collecting welfare or public-sector paychecks. 

The debate over whether Trump voters, and by extension Scott Walker voters, were motivated by racism v. economic woes has been dominant theme of news reporting and opinion pieces since the 2016 Presidential Election.  I have a file folder inches thick collecting stories debating the issue, and the vast majority conclude "racism."  Most liberal elites seem to have concluded that rural voters, as well as working-class white voters, are motivated more by racism than by economic woes.  Indeed, I've seem some pretty dramatic expressions of that, such as a Tweet by Amy Siskind stating that the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, 2017, proves that support for Trump was racially motivated, "Jobs my ass," she wrote. "The truth is marching in Charlottesville." I thought this was a problematic thing to say because it conflated all Trump voters with those marching in Charlottesville, thus rendering all who voted for Trump white nationalists.  It was also a problem because it dismissed the economic distress that many Trump voters are in fact facing.

In any event, Badger's story continues:

That stereotype updates a very old idea in American politics, one pervading Wisconsin’s bitter Statehouse fights today and increasingly those in other states: Urban voters are an exception. If you discount them, you get a truer picture of the politics — and the will of voters — in a state. 

I don't think I agree with Badger on the point that urban voters are being framed as the exception.  I think rural voters are struggling to be heard at all, to have their concerns taken seriously.  Republicans may leverage that concern into an anti-urban message, and that anti-urban message will resonate with many rural voters because they don't feel they are getting their fair share of the commonweal or that they are getting the government support they need.   In short, I'm not convinced that rural voters are hearing the dog whistle or, perhaps more precisely, if they are that it is disconnected from their own sense of not having gotten a fair shake in recent decades.  Plus, I've often observed a feedback loop between economic concerns and racism; I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. The more excluded and neglected rural and white working-class voters feel, the more likely they are to resent people they feel are getting more from the government than they are.  Many of those people are going to be urban, and some of them are going to be non-white.  Recall Arlie Hochschild's metaphor of the white man waiting in line for his turn, for economic opportunity and economic stability, only to see (or at least perceive) others cutting in line ahead of him.  Those "others" include women, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and--in the context of Louisiana--the brown pelican, which was protected by environmental laws. 

Badger's column continues: 

Thomas Jefferson believed as much — “the mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government,” he wrote, “as sores do to the strength of the human body.” 

Wisconsin Republicans amplified that idea this week, arguing that the legislature is the more representative branch of government, and then voting to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor. The legislature speaks for the people in all corners of the state, they seemed to be saying, and statewide offices like governor merely reflect the will of those urban mobs.

For more on the rural-urban divide--and rural Wisconsin as "outstate"--see Kathy Cramer's book, The Politics of Resentment, which I blogged about here.  I don't recall Cramer, who did extensive field work for her book by holding focus groups all over the state, calling out the racial divide that Badger's piece would have us believe lies along the rural-urban axis.  But my memory might fail me on this point.  Another example of conflating rurality with whiteness in the midwest is here.

It's also worth noting that Sarah Palin surfaced the "rural America is the real America" argument back in 2008.  Remember Joe Six Pack?  Palin was to represent Main Street while Obama, the uber urban cosmopolite, represented Wall Street.  (Read more here on how the culture wars got construed as straddling the rural-urban divide during that election cycle.) That was just about 10 years ago, yet the extent to which we are now assuming all rural voters are white--and racist--has shifted dramatically in the course of a decade.

Cross-posted to Working Class Whites and the Law.  Another recent post about the conflation of rurality with whiteness is here.

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.

How Democrats can win Wisconsin, with barely a mention of the rural

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair, Ben Wikler, was Ezra Klein's guest last week, and the podcast was published under the headline, "This is How Democrats Win in Wisconsin."  The subhead was "Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, discusses whether Kamala Harris can appeal to voters in the swing state."  In short, Wikler is all in on Wisconsinites embracing Harris, though I did not find myself convinced by his comments.  I didn't hear much evidence or analysis, mostly only broad assertions of Harris' appeal in the Forward State.  

Most striking to me in his comments was the inattention to rural voters.  Below are the only two quotes in which Wikler (or Klein) use the word "rural." 

You know, wherever you go in Wisconsin — and Wisconsin is small towns. It is factory towns or water tower towns as they’re called. It has bigger cities, no huge cities. Milwaukee is well under a million people. It has a ton of rural areas.

* * *

And [Kamala Harris] connects with voters in rural areas, in small towns, in suburbs, in cities. She listens to people. They can tell that she likes them. She has this record. And if you listen to her stump speech, there’s a lot about how she stands up to the big drug companies. She stood up to the insurance companies. She wrote the law that allows people to get on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.

The first mention is just descriptive of Wisconsin's geographic demography, stating the obvious, that it has both small towns and cities!!  The second mention is similar but it asserts, with no support, that Harris is connecting with voters in all of these various sizes of population clusters.  I'm not seeing any effort on the part of the Harris campaign to connect with rural voters on rural issues, and Wikler isn't suggesting that she is doing anything rural specific.  So, really?  

Compare this Ezra Klein interview to this post from last month, which takes Wisconsin's rural voters very seriously as key to the state's electoral outcomes this fall.  Other posts about the Democratic Party's efforts (or lack thereof) in Wisconsin are here.  

Indeed, compare this to Kathy Cramer's book on rural resentment.  

Also, I happen to have been in Wisconsin last week, including in rural areas surrounding Madison, but mostly in Madison.  I saw neither Trump signs nor Biden signs in either place, but perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention.  

Former Montana Governor Steve Bullock on vying for the rural vote--and the snarky metropolitan response

Bullock's essay appears in today's New York Times under the headline, "I Was the Governor of Montana. My Fellow Democrats, You Need to Get Out of the City More."  Here's an excerpt: 

The core problem is a familiar one — Democrats are out of touch with the needs of the ordinary voter. In 2021, voters watched Congress debate for months the cost of an infrastructure bill while holding a social spending bill hostage. Both measures contain policies that address the challenges Americans across the country face. Yet to anyone outside the Beltway, the infighting and procedural brinkmanship haven’t done a lick to meet their needs at a moment of health challenges, inflation and economic struggles. You had Democrats fighting Democrats, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and desperately needed progress was delayed. It’s no wonder rural voters think Democrats are not focused on helping them.

* * *  

Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month. And the most insulting thing is being told what your self-interest should be.

* * *  

We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.

For me, that meant talking about Obamacare not as an entitlement, but as a way to save rural hospitals and keep local communities and small businesses afloat. It meant talking about expanding apprenticeships, not just lowering the costs of college.

I didn't think the essay was very controversial, but many reader comments suggest that Bullock was being anti-urban.  For example, he is taken to mean that only rural voters are "ordinary" voters, which may be a fair interpretation of what he wrote.  Still, I don't think it's what Bullock meant.  Given that implication, he is taken to task by various urban dwelling readers in ways that have become common on my Twitter feed and in conversations in my coastal elite world:  Who says rural folks--read as a dog whistle for white folks--are more "ordinary" or, God forbid, more American than urban and suburban voters, often code for voters of color.  One "Times Pick" reader, Patrick from Dallas, wrote:  

Maybe the rural voter needs to live in the city for a year or two.  Maybe the "ordinary voter" is a [sic] urban dweller.  I have personally gotten pretty tired of the "real" America narrative--it's as if the rest of us are fake Americans.  

Other readers looked right past Bullock's admonition not to tell rural voters "what their self-interest should be" and said things like Edward B. Blau of Wisconsin about people who 

vote against their own self interests because of racial grievances, xenophobia, misogyny and being evangelicals.  

Lots of readers mentioned these supposed beliefs and attitudes of rural voters, including "skeptonomist" from Tennessee, who also hinted at the theme of rural folks not knowing what was in their best interests.  

The problem is that Republicans appeal to racism, racial xenophobia, and the secular power of religion, thwarting any material progress.  The tribal instincts thus aroused cause many people to ignore their material needs and even the danger to their own lives from covid.  

A few readers suggest that Bullock must not know what he's talking about because he lost his own bid in 2020 for the Senate seat held by Republican Steve Daines, an election cycle in which Republicans swept the Montana state constitutional offices.  (For what it's worth, I still don't understand how this happened, given Bullock's popularity and track record in Montana, but I suspect Bullock was hurt by the steps he took late in his second term as governor to contain the pandemic).

But the primary gripe among the readers' comments, I think, is that rural voters are undeserving of Democrats' attention or government investments or really even any good thing, e.g., infrastructure investments, because they already have disproportionate power--by design--in the Senate and Electoral College.  Here's Patrick from Dallas again:  

Rural voters are over-represented in Congress and State Legislatures, they receive a disproportionate amount of Federal dollars; they have a disproportionate impact in the Senate and Presidential elections. 

This is an old argument that has become more urgent--far more urgent--in recent years, as a growing number of U.S. presidential candidates have won the popular vote but not Electoral College.  And that disproportionate rural or red state power has urban folks--especially progressive urban ones--furious not just at the Constitution and these historic structures, but at rural voters themselves.  I find that unhelpful, as if rural folks should be punished for the power that they wield--at least when they don't exercise that power in ways that urban voters approve.

In short, the pitting of rural interests against urban interests is unhelpful and, ultimately, counter-productive.  Instead of seeing rural and urban as complementary (rural folks provide food, fiber and so forth ... urban folks provide a lot of other important stuff...), they are seen as combatants in a zero-sum game which, admittedly, the Electoral College and Senate are.  Still, it is surely not a constructive way to approach a constituency the Democrats need if they are to govern at local and state levels, let alone at the federal level.     

In a sense, Bullock was saying, "here's what Democrats need to do to win the rural vote," and many readers--a majority of those who commented--responded with "f*&$ the rural vote."  They don't care what they can do to win rural voters because they don't like and are resentful of rural voters.  They remind me of law students who fight the hypothetical instead of working with the facts they're given.  I'm not saying folks shouldn't be trying to change or eliminate the electoral college, but for now, it's a reality and complaining about it and rural voters isn't going to garner rural votes.  Meanwhile, they're shooting the messenger.  

These readers seem willing to cut their noses off to spite their faces--to keep losing elections--if that is the consequence of clinging to a principle.  And that principle seems to be that it's distasteful to reach out to these (presumptively) bigoted and small-minded voters who don't deserve their solicitude.  

It makes me hope that folks responding to Bullock's essay--like many folks who are universally hateful to rural people and places in my Twitter feed and in my professional world--are not representative of those who are making decisions on behalf of Democrats at all levels of the party's organization.  

Advice from another Montana politician, U.S Senator Jon Tester, on how to cultivate the rural vote is here. You'll find lots of other posts about the rural vote here (nearly 400 posts in 14 years!) 

Post script:  Bullock appeared in this episode of Hacks on Tap in mid December, 2021.  The reason he offered there for his big loss to Steve Daines:  He was unable to counter the Democrats toxic brand in rural America because the pandemic stopped him from showing up to counter that narrative.  

An earlier post about Bullock, when he was a presidential candidate, is here.  

In Wisconsin, Democrats aren't neglecting rural voters. It may be making a difference

The Washington Post reported a few days ago under the headline, "In Wisconsin, Biden tries to hold on to White voters without degrees." As if often the case in reporting and in our national imaginary, the white working class (here, those without college degrees) gets conflated with rurality.  This article discusses both.  Bottom line:  the Wisconsin Democratic Party is not neglecting rural America--and has set up offices in many nonmetropolitan counties, but Joe Biden is still focusing his attention on urban areas.  

Here are the excerpts with the word "rural" in them: 

Wisconsin Democrats attribute part of Biden’s relative strength with White voters without degrees to a rural progressive tradition that has faded but not disappeared — and part of it to tenacious organizing, including in rural areas where many of those voters live.

* * * *

Biden’s campaign is relying on an existing base of volunteers who know how to reach voters who might be willing to back him. Local Democrats send out 1,000 to 1,400 handwritten postcards each election to reach voters in rural areas whose doors are hard to knock on, Sandy Rindy said.

* * * *

Biden’s strategy: Out-organize Trump

Biden’s strategy for winning Wisconsin is built around state Democrats’ year-round, volunteer-run door-knocking operation. Most of Biden’s campaign offices are in counties Trump won in 2020 but where Biden outperformed given the underlying demographics.

Biden lost rural Lafayette County, where he has an office in tiny Darlington, by 14 points in 2020. But he ran 19 percent stronger there than one would expect based on the share of its population that is White and does not have a bachelor’s degree, according to a Post analysis.

“When you’ve got a Democratic Party office in a small town, it’s much easier to get people engaged,” said Tanya Bjork, a senior adviser to Biden’s campaign in Wisconsin who has worked on the past four presidential campaigns there. “And getting more people engaged means more doors and more phone calls and more conversations.”

Biden has campaigned in only one county Trump won in Wisconsin, and some Democrats grouse that they would like to see more of him in rural areas.

“Tammy Baldwin wins, but she works the state,” said John Waelti, a retired economist who writes a column for the Monroe Times. “She always has hard hats and farmers in her photos. When Biden and [Vice President] Harris come, it’s Milwaukee and Madison.”

Most of Biden’s 11 trips to Wisconsin since taking office have been to Milwaukee or Madison, although he’s traveled twice to Superior, a city of about 26,000 in northern Wisconsin where the infrastructure law he signed is funding the rebuilding of the John A. Blatnik Bridge. 

“It’ll be up to their campaign to bring [accomplishments like the infrastructure law] from the macro level of visionary policy to benefit generations to come to the micro level,” she said. “What did it do in Green County?”

Baldwin said she has encouraged Biden to campaign across the state.

Rural resentment over neglect (perceived or real) was a theme first associated with Wisconsin after the 2016 election.  It was described in Kathy Cramer's book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. 

You'll find lots of related content here on the blog under the labels rural politics (446 posts) and rural vote (571 posts).  

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

Courting the rural vote, from Wisconsin to Tennessee

Democrats outreach to rural areas--or lack thereof--is something that keeps popping up in the media I consume and on my Twitter time line, so I thought I'd assemble a post featuring these. 

Let me lead with some local/state vignettes.  Out of Tennessee, the headline was "Tennessee Democrats plan to reach out to rural voters," but the dateline was urban Nashville.  Here's an excerpt:  

The chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, Hendrell Remus, says he admits the party needs to do a better job connecting with rural voters, especially now that state Republicans have carved up Nashville into three congressional districts, all incorporating several rural, conservative-leaning counties.

"Democrats for a long time have been disorganized, we hadn't made the type of investments we needed to make across the state," Hendrell said.

* * *

"It's about making sure that people understand that despite our differences, there's a whole lot more that we have in common," Remus said.

But on Wednesday, the Tennessee Democratic Party hosted a livestream, with Aftyn Behn, a campaign director from RuralOrganizing.org, talking about how to get votes in rural counties for Democratic congressional candidates.

"Myself, who lives in East Nashville, can now organize with folks in Cookeville to oust [Republican Congressman] John Rose who's a P.O.S.," said Behn.

"What kind of unity and trust does a phrase like that build?" NewsChannel 5 asked Remus.

"I think that language is kind of hot, it's inflammatory, but at the end of the day, there's probably folks, in rural areas who probably feel the same way," Remus said. "If you look at the conditions that some of these people have been left in after repeatedly electing some of these folks representing rural areas, and whose lives really truly haven't gotten better."  (emphasis mine)

I wonder if Remus is right, that folks in rural areas really are mad at the Republicans they've elected.  I think about this frequently in relation to Arkansas, where not a single member of the state's 6-member congressional delegation voted in favor of the infrastructure bill, which will do so much to boost the state's economy in the short run and keep it moving in the long run.  Still, I'm not sure folks regret voting Republican.  A poll released yesterday said that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is running 10 points ahead of an unnamed Democratic opponent in the coming gubernatorial race.  Yet Sanders never talks about Arkansas, and is not even out campaigning at this point, in sharp contrast to her likely Democratic opponent, Chris Jones. 

Remus says the focus will be on Democrats who live in the rural counties connecting one-on-one with people they know, on issues like rural hospitals that have closed down across the state, and other issues that conservatives tend to gravitate toward.

"If you're a gun owner, we're going to protect your Second Amendment, but we want to make sure you're not having to pawn your gun around the holidays to put a meal on the table for your family," Remus said.

Another story was out of Wisconsin, appearing first in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and a few days later in Madison.com, "Democratic U.S. Senate candidates want more rural votes. Can they get them?"  Here's an excerpt:

Last month, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski released a plan for rural Wisconsin, a region home to a significant portion of the state’s Republican voters.

“As Senator,” Godlewski said in a statement about her rural policies, including boosting broadband and health care access, “I will listen, I will engage, and I will ensure that Washington politicians finally start hearing Wisconsin’s rural voices.”

She’s not the first to make such a claim.

Last year, U.S. Senate candidate and Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson kicked off the “Full Nelson Tour,” visiting each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties over six weeks. In his tour announcement, he pledged to fight for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage while listening to what rural voters needed from him.

U.S. Senate candidates Lt. Gov Mandela Barnes and Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry, whose policy proposals have thus far been less focused on rural initiatives, still have voiced support for increased internet access, improved health care and support for family farms.

Meanwhile, Senator Jon Tester, D of Montana, was interviewed on the Axe Files, and part of that interview as featured on The Hill.  Here's an excerpt, which is really nothing new in terms of messaging from Tester:  

The three-term Montana senator knocked his party for what he called a lack of outreach to rural voters, telling veteran political strategist David Axelrod in an interview that Democrats will be relegated to the minority unless they start courting voters in Middle America.

“I honestly don't think the Democratic Party can be a majority party unless we start appealing to middle America a lot more,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s “Axe Files” podcast released on Thursday. “I'm talking about the area between the two mountain ranges, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. And if we're able to do that, I think it will provide success.”

* * *

In his interview with Axelrod, Tester said that the party’s brand was “toxic” in rural America and blamed national Democrats for failing to talk to voters in “places we’re not wanted.”

“It's toxic. The national Democratic brand in, I think in rural America generally, is toxic, and it's because, quite frankly, we don't show up,” he said. “I'm talking about national Democrats. We're not willing to go places we're not wanted and answer questions.”

As a related matter, don't miss my review of Tester's book, Grounded: A Senator's Lessons on Winning Back Rural America, on the Daily Yonder, from January 2021. 

A woman running to be chair of Texas' Democratic Party, Kim Olson, was featured in a story by a Texas television station.  She's a prior candidate for U.S. Congress and for Texas Commissioner of Agriculture.  She's focusing on some of the supports rural folks need from government:  

If Democrats are to win their first statewide office in nearly three decades, winning the rural vote will be critical. And Olson says the party must focus on rural education, health care and economic opportunities.

She points specifically to the large number of rural hospitals closing since 2010, according to the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH).

“Twenty-six hospitals have closed across rural Texas. Why? Because we didn’t want to expand Medicaid or Medicare,” said Olson. “That means people drive for hours to get to a hospital. And that’s why rural counties die is because young families won’t move there unless they have access to good education, health care and decent jobs.”

Here's another part of the story that doesn't mention "rural," but hints at it:  

"It’s my belief that if you really want to win at the statewide, you have to have strong foundations for these candidates that run statewide to stand on and build their campaigns. And that comes at the local level,” Olson said on this week’s Inside Texas Politics.

Olson says two of the keys for the party to win statewide office is to ensure strong county parties at that local level to help motivate Democratic voters and better messaging that resonates with regular folks.

I get a lot of the news about attention to the rural vote (or lack thereof) from Matt Barron, whose Twitter handle is @Mr Rural.  Here's one screen shot I took this week, featuring Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman's campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat.  Here, Fetterman is campaigning in McKean County, in the rural north central part of the Keystone State--and the photo shows him doing so in February, in shorts! 

Finally, today, the New York Times brought us this about Iowa's Cindy Axne, the sole Democrat in Iowa's congressional delegation.  Here are some rural-related excerpts from that story: 

Holding a blue seat in a red-tinged place like Iowa’s Third Congressional District takes discipline. It takes a relentless focus on the folks back home, which is why you won’t see Cindy Axne yukking it up on “Morning Joe” or rubbing elbows with Jake Tapper on CNN. It takes doing who-knows-how-many hits on rural radio stations that might reach just a few hundred people at a time.

* * *

In 2019, when flooding devastated communities in her district along the Missouri River, Axne was everywhere: touring busted levees, lobbying for federal aid. It earned her some credit in the suburban areas around Council Bluffs and Indianola, helping her eke out that win in 2020.

Here's to chasing the rural vote! (You'll find lots of other content on this topic here on the blog, like this recent post and this one from early December).

Bridging the dirtroad divide: Progressive politics in rural America

A sign in Plumas County in 2013. © Lisa Pruitt

Rural America votes Republican. This statement has been true since the 1990s, when a sharp rural-urban political divide emerged. In fact, it's been a frequent discussion on this blog; read more here, here and here. Donald Trump won 93 percent of rural counties in 2024, which clearly demonstrates how strong this divide has become. Rural America hasn't always been such a Republican stronghold, however, and some rural progressive thinkers are devising ways to return rural places to their more left-leaning days. 

How did it get like this?

In the 1930s, rural progressivism was at its peak. The Great Depression and a farm crisis in the 1920s had left rural America completely sidelined. Franklin Delano Roosevelt noticed this unrest and centered his initial campaign around the issues affecting lower and middle-income Americans, rural and urban. He planned a "rural renaissance," focused on rural electrification and raising crop prices. This was incredibly popular, and rural voters, who had previously voted Republican, largely backed Democrats for the next 40 years.

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, rural and urban America voted in relative sync. Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler explored this trend in their 2023 article Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020. Their research shows that until the 1990s, rural Americans were barely more likely to support a Republican candidate than their urban counterparts. Now, the partisan gap between rural and urban voters ranges from a 21-point difference in the Midwest to a 14-point difference in the Northeast. 

What changed? 1992-2004 were marked by political and economic upheaval in the United States as urban areas prospered and rural areas suffered from divestment and shrinking job markets. No longer feeling seen by the Democratic Party, rural voters defected to the GOP in droves. Brown and Mettler contend that the divide from 2008 to 2020 was primarily driven by nationalist sentiment. They point to anti-Black rhetoric during Barack Obama's campaign and presidency, and the lack of higher education, led rural voters to identify themselves in opposition to "urban" ideals. 

These trends have led to the highly partisan United States we have today, a hyper-divided United States, where the majority of rural America is Trump country. It should be noted, however, that rural voters aren't all happy with their representation either. A March 2020 poll revealed that 87% of non-metro voters feel like the government does not represent people like them. 

So, what now?

When Democrats lost the popular vote in 2004, they initiated a major party platform shift. Steve Inskeep of NPR writes in 2024 that, during that time, the party focused on shoring up both rural and urban voters and turning red districts into purple ones. Inskeep points out that the trend has reversed over the last decade, with Republicans succeeding in turning purple districts red.

Some progressive thinkers and leaders have noticed this trend and want to reverse it. They believe that rural Americans might still return to their more progressive roots; they just need to hear the right messaging. 

One program seeking to mend the divide is the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative. Founded by Anthony Flaccavento, a farmer and former U.S. Congress candidate from Abingdon, Virginia, their goal is to help America think differently, talk differently, and act differently. They reach out to urban political leaders and ask them to consider how to meet the needs of rural communities. 

Their website primarily focuses on convincing left-leaning leaders of the problems in rural areas and how they can help solve them. Their guide cites political scientists and legacy media to explain why rural voters don't take progressives very seriously. There is little in the way of talking points, but it provides plenty of resources for someone just beginning to consider rural issues.

Similarly, Dirtroad Organizing forms yearly cohorts of rural candidates and staffers. They "provide in-depth, personal, community-oriented, long-term support to ensure vitality, stability, and integrity in rural organizing." They focus on free training and supporting progressive rural candidates and staffers. The organization was founded by Chloe Maxmin, former Maine State Representative and State Senator, and Canyon Woodward, her campaign advisor.

More than 40 graduates of this program have been on the ballot, and some are making real headway in their elected positions. For example, Sarah Keyeski, a Wisconsin State Senator, has sponsored over a dozen bills in her first year in office. Several bills relate to healthcare access, an issue that deeply affects rural populations.

Whether either of these programs will create meaningful change in 2026 and beyond remains to be seen. It's clear, however, that many liberal and progressive thinkers haven't completely written off rural America as Trump-land. Platforms focused on economic resilience and healthcare access can reach rural voters and help them feel seen. Candidates from rural areas can lead their communities in ways that represent their unique needs and backgrounds. Ultimately, it seems Democrats have turned their attention back to rural areas and look to level the playing field this cycle. 

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.  

More post-election commentary on the rural vote

The rural vote has garnered a surprising amount of attention since the November 9 election, but I'll highlight just a few recent essays and tweets in this post.  First, there is Robert Kuttner in The American Prospect writing under the headline, "The Rural Turnaround," which begins with some data:   

For decades, Democrats have been losing rural America by ever-worsening margins. If they could perform even 5 percent better in rural counties, the political landscape would be transformed. In the 2022 midterm, Democrats did increase their share of the rural vote in several states, and it’s worth exploring where and why.

After going over the "appalling" recent history, Kuttner gets to what I believe is the most interesting part of the piece: 

My doctoral student at Brandeis, Rachel Steele, has just completed a dissertation on Democrats and rural voters, which will be published as a book. With her permission, I’ll quote a couple of her important insights.

The most important is that Democrats have been losing the white working class, but place acts as an intensifier. If white working-class voters feel abandoned by the economy and disdained by liberal political elites, that is doubly true for working-class rural voters. Their communities as well as their livelihoods have been squandered, and they have had little evidence that Democrats cared. “Place itself has become political,” Steele writes. (emphasis mine)

As late as 2008, according to Steele’s tabulations, 139 rural white working-class counties voted Democratic. By 2016, that fell to six. In 2016, rural white working-class counties favored Trump by a margin of over 51 points. Much of the loss came in the Upper Midwest—Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota—where national elections and control of Congress are determined.

Steele’s extensive interviews with rural working-class voters also reveal a bitter paradox for Democrats. As good jobs have disappeared, people in communities that once took pride in their self-sufficiency express a broad sense that the work ethic has deteriorated along with the job loss. Instead of crediting Democrats for safety-net programs that save people from destitution, many rural working-class voters, who see their neighbors and their children on the dole, blame Democrats for eroding the work ethic.

IN 2022, THE BEST OF THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES resolved to reverse this syndrome. Just showing up turns out to be hugely important, as a sign of respect and commitment.

John Fetterman’s successful slogan and strategy was “Every County, Every Vote.” Fetterman improved upon Biden’s 2020 rural support by 2.4 percent. According to tabulations by the Daily Yonder, this swing, combined with higher rural turnout for Fetterman, resulted in a net rural gain over Biden of more than 110,000 votes.

The column also talks details of Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas.  Kuttner cites to his own September piece about the role of rural organizers, a topic I've also taken up on this blog and in my own writing about the Democrats' lackluster effort to win back the rural vote.  

Among the most creative approaches I’ve seen to recruit activists and voters on the ground, especially in rural areas, is a group called Movement Labs, founded in 2017. Movement Labs provides data, technology, and strategy to help grassroots voter mobilization, especially in red and purple states and rural counties that Democrats tend to write off. One of their marquee projects is called Rural Power Lab.

* * *  

Another key insight is that affinity for the Democratic Party may be depressed in many rural areas, but it is far from extinct, and can be rebuilt.

The Nation also published a piece this week on the rural vote.  It's titled "Democrats Must Do Better in Rural America."  Here's an excerpt from the piece by Anthony Flaccavento, Erica Etelson and Cody Lonning:  

Rural races are different from urban and suburban races; running competitively in them requires a different approach in both style and substance. Two-thirds of rural voters hold Democrats in low esteem and are profoundly antagonized by liberal elites who scorn the “rubes of flyover country.” Though Democrats’ rural deficit runs deep, it’s important to remember that as recently as 2008, Barack Obama garnered 43 percent of rural votes. And this cycle, John Fetterman’s consistent presence in rural places produced a two-and-a-half-point improvement over the 2020 presidential race—enough for him to win statewide in Pennsylvania.

“Can Democrats Succeed in Rural America?” describes more than a dozen strategies used by rural candidates and office holders, four of which we highlight here.

First, candidates must have local credibility. Whether through generational ties to the area or long-standing community involvement and problem solving, Democrats fare better when they have local roots and are fluent in the concerns and values of the people living there.

Second, candidates put local concerns and issues first, rather than trying to mobilize people around their own—or their party’s—policy agenda. ...[I]t means respecting voters enough to put their priorities at the center of the campaign. In so doing, candidates sometimes find meaningful ways to tackle state and national issues by drawing upon local experience, as when a candidate in rural Appalachia stood up for local businesses by fighting the outrageous subsidies used to recruit big box competitors.

Third, candidates and campaigns seek people where they are, rather than strictly following the advice to “go where the votes are.” Canvassing and phone-banking strategies typically focus on people who vote regularly and lean Democrat. By contrast, many of our study’s successful candidates reached out to people usually overlooked by campaigns.

Fourth, successful candidates listen more and talk less.

Another major piece, this one focusing on John Fetterman, appeared in the Washington Post's Plumline.  Here's the heart of Greg Sargent's column:

Fetterman’s victory might be uniquely instructive. He defeated a candidate, Mehmet Oz, who was conventionally stronger than those other Democrats’ opponents. 

* * *  

How this happened is illustrated by the [American Communities Project] data. Fetterman significantly reduced his opponent’s margins of victory — relative to Biden’s 2020 performance against Trump — in three types of counties where Trump has done extraordinarily well.

In the ACP’s taxonomy, those three county types are known as the Middle Suburbs, Working Class Country, and Rural Middle America.

The Middle Suburbs.  These types of suburban counties are Whiter and more working class than your typical inner-ring suburb, which tends to be more diverse, cosmopolitan and professional.

We often think of the suburbs as anti-Trump, but his large margins in Middle Suburbs across the country were key to his 2016 victory.

* * *

In Pennsylvania’s Middle Suburbs, Fetterman limited Oz’s margin of victory to 11 points, significantly down from the 15-point margin Trump racked up in 2020, according to ACP data provided to me.

* * * 

Working Class Country.  These counties are even Whiter than Middle Suburbs and tend to be rural and sparsely populated. They often have low college education rates.

In Pennsylvania’s Working Class Country counties, Fetterman shaved Oz’s margin of victory to 27 points, down from Trump’s 2020 margin of 36 points. Such counties include ones along the state’s northern border or in the southwest corner of the state, abutting West Virginia.

Rural Middle America.  These counties are also rural, but also tend to include a lot of small towns and smaller metro areas. They are somewhat less agriculture-dependent than Working Class Country.

In Pennsylvania’s Rural Middle America counties, Fetterman limited Oz’s gains to 31 points, down from Trump’s 37-point margin in 2020. As Chinni noted, nearly three dozen of these counties are spread throughout Pennsylvania’s vast heartland. 

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, long-time Speaker of the House, has indicated she will no longer seek to be part of the Democratic leadership.  This led to a few Tweets by Matt Barron, a political consultant whose Twitter handle is "Mr. Rural."  You can see these below.  The first is about the likely new house leadership, including Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, and Pete Aguilar of California.  

Matt Barron writes:  "So the new House Democratic Leadership will be from NY (45th most-rural state), MA (47th most-rural state) and CA (49th most-rural state).  Democrats really have become the party of the coasts."

The second Barron tweet is about Pelosi's failures:  "Great news.  This is the woman that disbanded the House Democratic Rural Working Group in 2011 and would not enable the creation of a Rural Desk at the DCCC.  Take Hoyer and Clyburn with ya."

 

Meanwhile, the 134 PAC in West Texas has been tweeting about future strategy for rural organizers, here and here:

The first says, "We aren't asking for resources from the central party as they have never provided any.  Our work is to raise the resources ourselves to do what the party does not or cannot do."

The second says:  "The priority for rural Democrats should be to forget about statewide and national elections and focus solely on building up our local organizations and communities."

Lastly, I'll just note that Adam Frisch (D), who ran against Lauren Boebert (R, incumbent) in mostly rural and exurban CO-03 (western and southern parts of the state), has conceded the race to Boebert.  He did so even though he lost by just about 500 votes and was entitled to a recount.  Indeed, NPR is reporting that the recount will go ahead regardless of Frish's concession--and that Frisch has already re-filed to run against Boebert again in 2024.

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

Postscript.  Here's a piece by George Goehl in Newsweek, and another about the rural vote by The National, from before the election.

The impact of resentment on how rural folks vote

Kal Munis and Nicholas Jacobs wrote for Monkeycage Blog for the Washington Post a few days ago under the headline, "Why Resentful Rural Americans Vote Republican."  

As the midterms approach, political observers are once again talking about the widening divide between urban and rural voters. Over the past 25 years, rural areas have increasingly voted Republican while cities have increasingly voted Democratic — a dividing line that has replaced the North/South divide as the nation’s biggest source of political friction. That divide will influence which party takes control of Congress in January.

But why are rural and urban voters so sharply divided? Some scholars and pundits argue that it comes down to who lives where: that the disproportionately White, older, more religious, less affluent and less highly educated voters who live in rural areas are more likely to hold socially conservative views generally championed by Republicans. Meanwhile, urban areas are filled with younger, more racially diverse, more highly educated and more affluent people who hold the more socially liberal views generally championed by Democrats.

While all that matters, our new research shows that place itself also matters. Unlike Republican voters in suburbs and the cities, rural voters care about what we might call “geographic inequity” — the idea that rural areas receive less than their fair share from the government, are ignored by politicians, and are mocked and derided in popular culture. Without these beliefs, the urban-rural political divide would not be as vast as it is today.

* * * 

Anyone who has spent time studying rural communities knows that rural residents hold deep and pervasive grievances about how they’re viewed. That can be resentment about their unfair treatment by the government, dismissive comments from politicians, or media portrayals that either simplify country life and its problems or flat-out ignore “flyover country.” Much of the scholarship about these attitudes has focused on a relatively small number of communities in a handful of states, including Wisconsin and Louisiana. Our research has involved numerous national surveys — and we find that rural beliefs about geographic inequity, or what we and others call rural resentment, are widespread across the country.

* * * 

In November 2020, we found that large majorities of rural respondents to our survey reported feeling resentment across all three areas. Asked whether rural communities do not receive their fair share of government resources, 47 percent somewhat agreed and 33 percent strongly agreed. Asked if politicians pay too much attention to urban areas and not enough to rural areas, 42 percent somewhat agreed and 33 percent strongly agreed. And asked if urbanites look down on rural people, 40 percent somewhat agreed and 25 percent strongly agreed.

* * *

This analysis found that rural resentment stood out as strongly predicting the Republican votes. For example, in 2020, we found that voters harboring high levels of rural resentment were 35 percent less likely to say they would vote for the Democratic U.S. House candidates than non-resentful rural voters, all else equal.

Don't miss the whole essay, based on these scholars' recent publication in Political Research Quarterly.  This essay is a nice compliment to my piece a few days ago on rural bashing because this survey suggests that rural bashing really does impact how rural folks vote.  In other words, there's more at stake than hurt feelings.  

John Fetterman went full-on rural in the Pennsylvania primary

Lock Haven. Coudersport. Wellsboro. Towanda. Sunbury… A scenic road trip through north central Pennsylvania? A line for a Pennsylvania version of Johnny Cash’s 1996 hit, “I’ve been everywhere, man”?

This list of towns in the Keystone State’s so-called rural “T”—the vast area that lies between the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas, stretching north to the New York state line—could have been either.

In fact, this was U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman’s campaign itinerary on Saturday, May 7, just ten days before the Pennsylvania primary. This 245-mile, five-town circuit was part of his commitment to visit each of the state’s 67 counties, a very literal execution of his “every county, every vote” slogan.

(Source: John Fetterman’s Twitter)

And the strategy paid off. Fetterman won every Pennsylvania county to claim his party’s nomination, with 59% of the Democratic vote.

In doing so, Fetterman deposed opponents associated with the state’s urban centers, State Senator Malcolm Kenyatta, of Philadelphia and U.S. Congressman Conor Lamb of Pittsburgh. Not a bad showing for a boy from York who served for 13 years as mayor of Braddock, population 1,761 (albeit part of the Pittsburgh metro area), before he was elected Lt. Governor in 2018.

Extraordinary Rural Outreach

If you’ve never heard of the five Pennsylvania towns Fetterman visited that day in early May, you’re surely not alone. With populations between 3,000 and 10,000, they’re small enough that many folks in Philly or Pittsburgh would be hard-pressed to place them on a map.

And that seemed to be the point. Fetterman’s messaging wasn’t aimed at metro Pennsylvania. He was talking to rural Pennsylvanians, letting them know he sees them. He put his body—all 6 ft. 8 inches of it—where his mouth is and showed up to meet them in their community centers, VFW halls, and churches.

Fetterman thus swam against the tide: In recent years, most Democratic candidates for statewide office have left rural voters to the GOP, letting them slip away without a fight. New York Senator and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer admitted as much in 2016—specifically referencing Pennsylvania. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania,” Schumer said, “we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”

That strategy didn’t work out so well for the Democrats. Pennsylvania was one of three states (along with Michigan and Wisconsin) that handed the presidency to Donald Trump by a relative handful of votes. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by just 44,000 Pennsylvania votes (out of 6 million cast) in 2016 to claim the state’s 20 Electoral College delegates.

As it happens, that Trump margin over Clinton is about as many votes as were cast in both party primaries combined in the five counties Fetterman visited that Saturday in early May.

Rural votes, it turns out, do add up.

Truth is, Fetterman didn’t just show up in rural Pennsylvania. The rhetoric of his primary campaign regularly elevated rural people and their concerns. He talked frequently about reaching both red and blue voters—sprinkling red and blue dots generously throughout his tweets to illustrate the point.

In sharp contrast, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh got barely a mention in his Twitter feed this spring, which touted no appearance in either city in the run-up to the primary. When Fetterman did mention the population behemoths anchoring the eastern and western ends of the state, he used them as a foil to remind voters in overlooked places that they matter, too. “Don’t forget that a vote in Tioga County counts as much as one in Pittsburgh or Philly,” he declared at a stop in the nonmetro county of 41,000. It’s a line Fetterman rolled out frequently on the campaign trail, a fill-in-the-rural-county _____ schtick that delighted audiences in the hinterlands. “Right. Yes,” the crowds cheered in response.

It was almost as if Fetterman was taking urban dwellers for granted—leaving them to play second fiddle, for a change, to their rural compatriots.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis of Fetterman’s trajectory between his first state-wide race in 2016 (his first run for the U.S. Senate) and the recent 2022 primary shows, at the county level, how his popularity grew. Part of that growth was due to rising name recognition associated with being Lt. Governor. (A generally obscure office, being Lt. Governor in Pennsylvania means Fetterman’s photo, like that of the Governor, hangs framed in every rest stop, a not insignificant visual exposure). Fetterman’s rising popularity is also surely attributable to his leave-no-county-behind tack. Indeed, over those six years, his rise in support was steepest in the Republican stronghold of the “T.”

It’s surely significant, too, that Fetterman’s 67-county primary campaign tour was not his first visit to the state’s rural reaches. In fact, his inaugural circuit was in 2019 when, as newly minted Lt. Governor, he visited every county to conduct town hall meetings on the issue of cannabis legalization. As Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch expressed it, when Fetterman returned to ask for their votes, he was “shrouded in the purple haze of a political rock star.”

The Democrats’ Rural Problem

Fetterman’s extraordinary investment in the rural vote came amidst a national crisis for Democrats. A February survey showed that two out of three rural voters view the Democratic Party unfavorably.

According to a Meet the Press segment on the Democrats’ rural problem this spring, rural voters’ declining support for Democrats is a long-term trend that has only accelerated in recent years. Bill Clinton carried roughly half the nation’s rural counties (1,117) in 1996, but Barack Obama carried only 455 in 2008. Joe Biden won just 194 in 2020, a mere 17 percent of what Clinton garnered a few decades earlier.

Trump is one reason for the sharp recent decline in the Democrats’ rural fortunes. He tapped not only rural nostalgia but also rural anger over crummy job markets associated with the widening regional inequality that has left most nonmetropolitan areas struggling. Trump openly bashed urban phenomena, as when he linked inner cities to “American carnage.” Though progressives heard this as a racist dog whistle, it proved an odd salve on the deep rural wound of being unseen and underappreciated.

Of course, that rhetoric also aggravated polarization along the rural-urban axis, and some bad behavior predictably ensued. An Associated Press feature in February included vignettes of small-town Democrats removing bumper stickers and yard signs to avoid harassment by conservative neighbors.

Meanwhile, progressives have wrung their hands over what to do—if anything—to attract rural voters. The New York Times ran an essay in December by former Montana Governor Steve Bullock advising how to cultivate the rural vote, and Dirt Road Revival, a recent book by Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, was all the rage for a few weeks this spring. It was held out as a how-to manual for Democrats willing to vie actively for rural voters, but also critiqued as the work of a silver-spoon candidate in a district experiencing rural gentrification.

But not many candidates have recently done what Fetterman did in Pennsylvania. Few have actually pulled a Johnny Cash and “gone everywhere, man.” Fewer still have done what Fetterman did this spring, proving he wasn’t a flash in the rural pan by showing up a second time. (For the record, Beto O’Rourke deployed a similar strategy in 2018 when he visited all 254 Texas counties in his narrow loss to Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat, and he’s recently announced he’s doing it again in his bid for Governor. Meanwhile, Chris Jones, a political newcomer who is the Democratic nominee for Governor of Arkansas, is “walking a mile in your shoes” in each of the state’s 75 counties as he takes on Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
A Good Fit for Rural Pennsylvania?

Great as his investment in rural Pennsylvania has been, Fetterman faces the added challenge of endorsing especially progressive policies in places that tend conservative. His stances on abortion, unions, LGBTQ rights, and legalizing “dreamers” are all pretty far left—and articulated firmly and decisively. He recently declared health care “a right, NOT a privilege” in relation to the anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid.

Fetterman has called repeatedly for abolishing the filibuster to advance a progressive agenda, and he’s criticized his neighbor, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, for obstructing the Democratic agenda in Washington. The only issue on which Fetterman doesn’t align with the progressive playbook is fracking, which he supports. It is, after all, a staple of the Pennsylvania energy economy.

But Fetterman may have a not-so-secret weapon for appealing to rural voters, apparent policy mismatches notwithstanding: He’s a “dude” with an unconventional, anti-elite vibe. The Democratic establishment did not initially embrace him, endorsing other candidates in the primary, though they’ve since rallied around Fetterman.

More visibly, Fetterman has attracted national attention for his wardrobe choices, most recently hoodie and gym shorts on the campaign trail. (In his official Lt. Governor portrait—the one in the rest stops—Fetterman is wearing a gray button-up work shirt, no tie, and his trademark serious face, which borders on a scowl). He owns a single suit and, as of the primary debate, it didn’t fit well. Fetterman’s arms are tattooed, the Braddock zip code on one and the dates of shooting deaths in Braddock on the other. It was a spate of shooting deaths there—with victims including two of social worker Fetterman’s GED students—that led him to get involved in politics two decades ago.

In short, having played the everywhere card, Fetterman is now prioritizing the everyman card. And even some Republicans admit he wins the “someone-I’d-like-to-have-a-beer-with” contest. The question is: will Fetterman’s relatability be enough to bring conservative-leaning rural voters along with his progressive agenda?

 
A Shift in Focus for the General Election

Fetterman’s energetic engagement with rural Pennsylvania came to an end just a few days before the Pennsylvania primary in mid-May. Less than a week after traveling that 245-mile loop to visit those five small cities on May 7, Fetterman was hospitalized following a stroke. He is on the mend after getting a pacemaker, but barely back on the campaign trail. (The two July stops he publicized on his Twitter feed were both in the Philly metro—still in hoodie and gym shorts among the well-heeled crowd).

Meanwhile, Fetterman’s messaging has shifted as much as how he spends his time. The colored dots in his Twitter feed are more recently used to illustrate rhetoric about flipping the seat from red to blue (Republican Pat Toomey is retiring). Fetterman is now trolling his Republican opponent Mehmet Oz (television’s “Dr. Oz”) for only recently having moved to Pennsylvania, to his mother-in-law’s address, no less.

The Fetterman campaign engaged Snooki from the reality TV show “Jersey Shore” to chide Oz for leaving Jersey to “look for a new job,” and Stevie Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band to implore Oz to “come back to New Jersey where you belong.” Among Fetterman’s popular campaign merch is a bumper sticker that says, “Dr. Oz for NJ” and, in smaller print, “Fetterman for Pennsylvania.”

Fetterman is also attacking Oz’s wealth—noting he owns nine homes and is worth a reported $104 million. In contrast, Fetterman appears to live a modest life with his wife and three children in Braddock, in a building that used to be a car dealership. (After he was elected Lt. Governor, he forewent the mansion in Harrisburg, instead opening its swimming pool to locals). Fetterman’s tweets about inflation and corporate greed reference the cost of filling up his Dodge RAM pickup and buying groceries at Giant Eagle, a Pennsylvania grocery chain. He’s been tweeting a lot in recent weeks about “making sh*t in America” again. He’s also been writing guest editorials about inflation in small city newspapers like those in Johnstown and Erie.

It remains to be seen how Fetterman’s new focus will play in rural Pennsylvania, especially since a less energetic candidate isn’t likely to make a third circuit of the Keystone state. But it may not matter much with rural voters, given that Fetterman has probably already done what he can to woo them—just by showing up and demonstrating his respect for the forgotten places, the forgotten people.

The bigger wild card now is Fetterman’s health.

Meanwhile, one can only hope that other Democrats running for statewide office—among them Senatorial candidates like Tim Ryan in Ohio, Mike Franken in Iowa, Trudy Busch Valentine in Missouri, and Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin—are looking with envy at what Fetterman built in rural Pennsylvania and rethinking their own rural strategy.

Or maybe they’re finally asking if they even have one.

They might start with a listen to Johnny Cash’s traveling song.

Cross-posted to Daily Yonder.