John,
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Virginia’s election, it’s that ceding rural America to Republicans will be a catastrophe for Democrats.
According to the NY Times, Republicans won 70% of the vote in four small counties in Virginia back in 2008, but in 2021, Republicans surpassed 70% of the vote in 45 counties.
It wasn’t just Virginia where Republicans gained ground -- they also saw a huge turnout surge in New Jersey, where the incumbent Democrat barely beat the Republican challenger. In 2020, Biden won New Jersey by 16 points.
This is not good news for Democrats, John.
As someone who ran for Congress in a district with 70,000 more Republicans than Democrats and got within 3 percent of beating my Republican opponent, I know that showing up is important.
If you don’t show up and get your message out -- you will lose and you will lose big. But we’re going to need to do more than just show up, we need to build the infrastructure in rural communities and recruit rural messengers to get our message out.
We just finished up our first-ever strategy session on Saturday. We brought together more than 40 rural organizing groups and countless activists to address the elephant in the room: how do we get our message out in rural America?
We’re not waiting for the Democratic party, we’re getting organized now. Chip in $5 and support our work to move the needle in rural counties in Senate battleground states in 2022.
If we do the groundwork in rural America, we can win hearts and minds and get out the vote. And that’s exactly what we aim to do. More soon!
Standing Tall for All
J.D. Scholten
Paid for by RuralVote.org PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee.