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CAN TIM WALZ HELP THE DEMOCRATS WIN BACK RURAL AMERICA?  
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Roger Kerson
August 8, 2024
Barn Raiser
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_ Rural Democrats insist the party can’t afford to bypass their
communities, which account for 15-to-20% of the U.S. electorate, or
some 25 to 30 million voters. Donald Trump won a whopping 59% of the
vote in rural areas in 2016, and even more in 2020. _

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks before President Joe Biden at Dutch
Creek Farms, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023, in Northfield, Minn., Photo:
Abbie Parr/AP // Barn Raiser

 

I'm not talking about, you know, behind the Walmart,” said Jennifer
Garner, describing her visits to rural communities on behalf of Save
the Children, the global charity that supports families in need.
“I’m talking about the town behind the town behind the town,
[folks] who can get to Walmart with a group of people maybe once a
month because that’s how often they can afford gas.”

Garner, the veteran actress who most recently appeared in this
summer’s Hollywood blockbuster _Deadpool vs. Wolverine_, grew up in
Charleston, West Virginia. In previous campaigns, she’s raised funds
for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This year, she brought her star
power to an August 6 “Rural Americans for Harris” Zoom call.

The two-hour online session, which drew over 2,000 participants and
raised some $20,000, did not have the high profile of other affinity
groups that have emerged in recent weeks to back Kamala Harris as the
Democratic nominee for president. Initiatives like “Win with Black
Women,” “Black Men for Harris,” “White Women Answer the
Call” and “White Dudes for Harris” have attracted hundreds of
thousands of supporters and added millions
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campaign coffers.

But rural Democrats insist the party can’t afford to bypass their
communities, which account for 15-to-20% of the U.S. electorate, or
some 25 to 30 million voters. According to data from the Pew Research
Center
[[link removed]],
Donald Trump won a whopping 59% of the vote in rural areas in 2016,
and he did even better in 2020 with 65%. Joe Biden won in 2020 by
flipping the script in the suburbs. Trump narrowly defeated Hillary
Clinton among suburban voters in 2016; Biden won them by an 11-point
margin in 2020.

Opportunity knocks

Still, there are rich opportunities outside of cities and suburbs say
leaders like Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and
one of the organizers of the “Rural Americans” call. Her husband
is a cattle rancher and she’s delighted with the choice of Tim Walz;
he grew up in rural Nebraska and taught high school in Mankato, a
small city in Minnesota. But Democrats first have to break what she
calls “the cycle of mutual neglect.”

“We neglect to invest in rural America,” says Kleeb. “So [rural
Americans] don’t hear our message, they don’t see our faces, they
don’t know our platform. So they don’t vote for us—so we don’t
invest in rural America.”

Walz was scheduled to headline Tuesday’s event but was named as
Harris’s running mate that same day and made his first public
appearance as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee with Harris at
a rally in Philadelphia. In his stead was Peggy Flanagan,
Minnesota’s Lieutenant Governor, a member of the White Earth Band of
Ojibwe, who could take over for Walz as the state’s governor if he
is elected in November.

During the Zoom session, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and
chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who is retiring this year,
pointed to her party’s record of accomplishments for rural America.
She ticked off increased broadband access, funds to support rural
hospitals and nursing homes, and “the largest investment in rural
electricity since the New Deal,” to back renewable energy projects.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to an email query from _Barn
Raiser_ for information about Republican priorities for rural
America. The GOP platform
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approved at the party’s July convention, includes “Protect
American Workers and Farmers from Unfair Trade” as a chapter
heading—but the bullet points beneath make no mention of either
farmers or rural communities.

Voting for values

By itself, a list of policy priorities or legislative accomplishments
is not likely to move the needle for rural voters, says Dan Shea,
professor of government at Colby College in Maine. He is the
co-author, with fellow Colby faculty member Nicholas Jacobs, of _The
Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America_.
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book is based on a 200-question survey completed by more than 10,000
rural residents, the largest and most detailed research ever conducted
among this population.

Rural residents, he says, are looking for empathy from political
leaders, and a sense of shared values. “A common assumption,” Shea
says, “is that rural communities are withering away, a wasteland of
alienation. We find the opposite: Rural Americans are proud of their
communities. They are connected and they want to stay in the
community.”

Rural communities, he says, are typically more economically integrated
than suburbs or cities, with well-to-do families living nearby those
who are less well off, often attending the same schools and churches.
As a result, although rural residents have a strong belief in hard
work and self-reliance, they are also highly attuned to how well—or
how badly—their community is doing as a whole.

Over the past decades, rural families have suffered severe economic
shocks, first from the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, then from
manufacturing job loss connected to the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and unrestricted imports from China. As more family
farms disappeared, rural factory jobs became an important source of
income—until they weren’t.

“In many communities,” Shea observes, “there was just one
factory, and it defined the identity of the town.” When that plant
closed “NAFTA ghost towns” were left behind.

Even prior to the collapse of rural manufacturing, beginning with
Ronald Reagan’s sweeping victory in 1980, the prairie populists who
could once win over the heartland electorate began to lose steam.
Democratic senators like Idaho’s Frank Church, Iowa’s John Culver
and South Dakota’s George McGovern lost their seats, and rural
voters are now “overwhelmingly conservative.”

His students are shocked, says Shea, when he tells them that probably
the most liberal Democratic presidential nominee ever—McGovern—was
from South Dakota.

“My best guess,” he says, “is that the worry and anxiety that
all Americans have about the future is dramatically heightened in
rural parts. Rural Americans are anxious for something different.”
He’s not surprised to see the Harris-Walz ticket focused on a
forward-looking message. “It’s by design they’re saying,
‘We’re not going back.’ ”

Neighbor-to-neighbor

Several speakers on the “Rural Americans for Harris” Zoom event
warmly remembered time-tested values of mutual support that are still
a source of strength for rural communities. Jennifer Garner recalled
how her mother, a schoolteacher, was often not around when she came
home from school.

“I would go right down the street to Marge,” she said, “and I
would know that she would have a key for me. And Mrs. Moore would have
a snack for me, and I knew I was taken care of in my community.”

Trae Crowder, a comedian from Celina, Tennessee, and co-author
of _The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the
Dark,”_
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what happened after the death of his father 10 years ago. “I had two
babies, and I was living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “After
the funeral is over, I go back to the office to check how am I going
make these payments. And the guy goes, ‘Oh you don’t owe us
anything. Everybody in town chipped in … so it’s covered.’ ”

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat who represents northern New
Mexico in Congress, talked about the irrigation
channels—acequias—that are vital to farmers in her district. The
acequias “make sure that the snow that falls on the mountains in the
winter can flow down to nourish our fields in the summer.”

Shared ownership of a vital resource, she explained, is a unique
feature of this centuries-old system. “The farmers each own a little
share of the water,” she said, “and we protect and take care of
those ditches together because without them we would not survive.”

“The acequias are older than America,” said Fernandez, “but
there is something American about them, that shared belief and
commitment to something that’s bigger than each of us.”

Tough losses, tough fights ahead

Several speakers acknowledged that running for office as a Democrat in
rural communities—and in states with a significant rural
population—isn’t easy.

Brandon Presley, who is the cousin of Elvis Presley, nearly pulled off
an upset during a run for Mississippi governor in 2023, winning 47% of
the vote. Mandela Barnes lost a U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin in 2022
by just 26,000 votes. Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina
Democratic Party, pointed out that Biden lost North Carolina by 74,000
votes—“42 votes for every precinct in every county in the state of
North Carolina.”

Rural Democrats are also focused on the need to run candidates in as
many races as possible. One goal is to erase GOP supermajorities in
all-red state legislatures, which allows the party to write its most
extreme policy planks into law. And in swing states, said Ezra Levin,
a co-founder of the pro-democracy activist group Indivisible, down
ballot races can make a big difference.

“I know some of you are thinking, hey Ezra I’m in the heart of
Trump country we can’t elect a dog catcher,” he said. “That
might be true. You might not be able to elect a dog catcher. But you
sure as hell can run a dog catcher; you sure as hell can get votes out
for that dog catcher, and get votes out for the state rep, state
senator, U.S. rep, city council person.”

“You can get votes out for those candidates. They might win, they
might not win. But regardless they’re going to get votes out for
themselves and the top of the ticket for Harris for Walz, for
Democrats running statewide. We need those votes.”

“When I ran [for state legislator] in 2022, 40% of the seats in
Missouri were uncontested,” says Jess Piper, a teacher with a large
social media following, and currently chair of Blue Missouri.
“Because of all the work we’ve been doing, 18% of the seats are
going uncontested. So we are making progress.”

“I was running in a district that hadn’t elected a Democrat in 32
years,” Piper said. “Because I was raising money, that Republican
had to stay in his district. I forced him to talk about abortion bans
and the fact that we don’t have shoulders on our roads and that 30
percent of the schools in Missouri are on a four-day week. I forced
him to talk about that when he was wanting to talk about Hunter
Biden’s laptop.”

“The road to democracy,” Piper said, “is going right through
rural America.”

_[ROGER KERSON is a Michigan-based writer and media strategist for
labor unions, environmental groups and nonprofit organizations.]_

_Your independent source for rural and small town news._

_Barn Raiser [[link removed]] connects local and
national perspectives through a network of writers and contributors
who live in and care about rural and small town communities. By giving
voice to shared concerns, and by reporting on local organizing
strategies, Barn Raiser [[link removed]] will leaven
the commons with local connections._

* rural voters
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* Farm voters
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* 2024 Elections
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* Donald Trump
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* Kamala Harris
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* Tim Walz
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* GOP
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* MAGA
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* Democratic Party
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* midwest
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* Rural America
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* farm crisis
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* Farmers
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* Black Farmers
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* Jennifer Garner
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