The Democrats finally figured out what I've been saying for over a year now: in order to win rural voters, you have to stop falling for the culture war rope-a-dope and go directly to the Biden infrastructure bill programs that are designed specifically to help rural folks and help them directly with those programs.
The Biden administration is rolling out a new initiative to help rural communities, as Democrats work to halt an erosion of support for the party in rural America.
The new effort, led by the Agriculture Department, will deploy federal staffers next month to rural areas in five states. They'll will help communities there take advantages of federal resources, including funds from the infrastructure law and the covid relief package that President Biden signed early in his presidency.
Several of the places where staffers will be deployed are also expected to be battlegrounds in the midterm elections this fall, including Arizona and Georgia — where Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) are facing tough reelection fights — and districts represented by Reps. Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.), Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) and Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.).
The administration plans to expand the initiative this summer to Puerto Rico and five more states, including Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, all of which are home to top-tier Senate races.
The White House says political considerations had nothing to do with deciding where to start the program, which the administration eventually hopes to expand to all 50 states.
“We overlaid counties of persistent poverty with the distressed community index and the CDC's social vulnerability index,” a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “And those three indices created, in essence, a bullseye.”
The administration included “qualitative factors” and aimed for geographic diversity when choosing the second set of communities, the official added.
Show the people what good you can provide for them and their communities. Whocoodanode?
Chloe Maxmin, a Democratic state senator in Maine who won in rural, Republican-leaning districts in 2018 and 2020, said she didn’t think her constituents especially care about bickering in Washington. Instead, they’re troubled by a sense that the Democratic Party doesn’t value them.
“Rural voters are not listened to,” said Maxmin, who wrote a forthcoming book with her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, on wooing back rural voters. “They’re not heard. Their voices are not integrated into the Democratic Party. And so why should they listen to us?”
What advice does she have for Democrats trying to win in rural areas this fall?
Knock on as many doors as they can, she said.
“I can't even tell you how many times I've showed up at a house and just the simple fact that I drove down someone's dirt driveway, knocked on their door, left my cell phone number — it's just that basic act of showing up wins votes,” she said.
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