While Democrats continue to win popular national elections and earn more votes in most swing states, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the party to attain anything close to the comfortable majorities that it enjoyed just a decade ago.
There are manifold compounding factors that have led to this precarious grip on power, including the Senate’s inherent bias towards sparsely populated states, the way liberals tend to cluster around cities and nearby suburbs, the voter suppression schemes of Republican-controlled state governments, and ongoing culture wars that have created a polarization unprecedented in the modern era. Throw in bad trade deals, unfulfilled promises, conservative media brainwashing, racial resentment, and structural disadvantages and you begin to see how complicated the situation has become.
The solution, however, is simple: Democrats have to start winning elections in rural constituencies again, where they’ve been increasingly wiped out over the last four campaign cycles. The folks at Rural Organizing are in the process of mapping out a plan to do just that.
On Friday, the organization released a report based on interviews with 70 candidates, organizers, and civic leaders working on progressive races and issue campaigns in rural districts. Their top-level findings suggest three main issues and takeaways:
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Electoral campaigns are hamstrung by a lack of
permanent rural civic infrastructure.
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Local issue campaigns in off-years are the best way to build that
infrastructure.
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In order to leverage new rural civic infrastructure, candidates must incorporate those local issues in their platforms, outreach, and messaging.
The whole thing is a fantastic read with some very actionable insight and advice. I spoke with Kellon Patey, the lead organizer at Rural Organizing, to dig a little bit deeper into the findings and how Democrats can turn the ship around outside the cities and suburbs.
Progressives Everywhere: There are a lot of great recommendations here and clearly a lot of work to do. But how much progress do you think has already been made in building up the recommended rural infrastructure between 2016 and now? How much progress do you think has been made over the last two years?
Patey: I think that between 2016 and 2020, several states demonstrated what works. As more people are starting to realize, the organizing in Georgia, Arizona did not slow down during “off years,” and in each of those states leaders and organizations chose to fight for margins in rural communities, especially by doing authentic power-building in rural communities of color. To that list, I would also add North Carolina, which though it didn’t flip, saw huge improvements in rural margins in Western rural counties.
Additionally, I think progressives can’t overlook the fact that Nebraska (+7.20%, 2016-2020) and Kansas (+6.29%, 2016-2020), rural states that were not priorities, improved dramatically in their turnout for a Democratic president. In all of these examples, we see strategic investments made in empowering local leaders and rural turnout strategies that are deferential to those who know the communities the best.
The improvements since 2016 have come from grassroots organizers and local leaders. Between 2018 and 2020, progressive leadership was more willing to listen and invest at the local level. Democrats made promises of tangible change for struggling rural communities in the interest of getting Trump out of office. Now that Democrats are in control, we’ll see if Democratic leadership will lean into rural issues or if our priorities will just keep getting stuck in committee.
The document mentions creating issue campaigns (which we’ve seen do well on ballot initiatives). Other than non-extractive jobs, which issues did respondents think were most salient for rural voters and activists? Which got the most enthusiasm?
I'd be oversimplifying the work of rural organizing if I said that the answer didn't vary from community to community. At RuralOrganizing.org, we often remind others (and ourselves) that if you've been to one rural community, you've been to one rural community. That being said, expanding broadband access rose to the top of issue priorities, as did cracking corporate control over local communities.
Example campaigns could be a community broadband initiative, shifting business recruitment investments from extractive chains to local businesses, legalizing weed, or diverting funding from swollen police forces toward job training, addiction recovery services. Other issue campaigns that came up in our interviews were initiatives to provide undocumented residents with access to driver’s licenses. For further reading, The Institute for Local Self Reliance has a toolkit about breaking corporate control locally that we recommend checking out.
The recommendation to bombard local media with press releases because they need content is really interesting. How much of a difference, even just anecdotally, did people say that made?
One of the interviewees who reported that strategy working described it as “insisting they cover my campaign.” Those who employed that local media strategy described how it helped them connect with voters they may not have otherwise reached. One of the local candidates shared that voters would reach out to her after reading her op-eds in the local paper. Two other interviewees from statewide races shared how press releases and deliberate media outreach translated to local media coverage of campaign events. With local media covering their events, campaigns were able to distinguish themselves from their opponents and “do-nothing democrats” who came before. Local media is the most trusted media source by rural voters—not the most consumed—but the one that rural voters think gets it right.
You mention in the report that a large number of candidates in West Virginia came together to form a coalition called West Virginia Can’t Wait. How did they fair? And do you recommend its slate approach?
I think that your average DC political consultant would look at WVCW and say “That failed. Your gubernatorial candidate lost the primary, wasn’t that the primary objective?” Though it is true that Stephen Smith lost the Democratic primary by nine thousand votes, candidates in the WVCW movement won more than 40 primary elections. 11 of those candidates went on to win local and state general elections and are currently furthering the New Deal for WV from their new posts. Spectators should be reminded that all they’ve read so far was Chapter One, and I bet WVCW leadership would title it something like “Cracking the Dam” or “Laying the Track.”
If I had to distill down what I feel like I saw in this slate approach, I’d say that it was a triumph of organizing rural communities at scale. In just two years, this strategy built a new network of officials, communicators, organizers, and volunteers who are independent of the corporations, national parties, and unions who are used to driving the political agenda. Without taking a cent of corporate money, WVCW out-fundraised all other primary campaigns from either party. Instead of paid ads, they chose to make a down payment on a third option for disillusioned West Virginians looking for a new political home.
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