A Tough Row to Hoe
Funding rural races and spaces...
Listen, if you think it’s tough being a rural Democrat, let me tell you about my day job…
I am the Executive Director for Blue Missouri. My entire lot in life is to ask grassroots donors to fund candidates who often lose their races for Missouri State House or State Senate in their first cycle running for office.
I am a glutton for punishment at times, but this is not sadism. I am not participating in self-flagellation.
The question I am often posed: why are you not raising money for “flippable” races?
Because almost no one funds races to build the Democratic bench. Because almost no one funds races in rural America.
Because if only funding flippable races was a winning model, Missouri would be blue. We would be a Democratic bastion. Instead, only funding close races has destroyed the balance of power in Missouri. Following that model, Missouri hasn’t had a Democrat elected statewide since 2018.
Seven. Years. Ago.
We went from the bellwether state to one of the reddest states in the country…all by focusing on close races and walking away from tough races. Democrats focused on the two or three candidates each cycle. Democrats tried to flip a few races and unknowingly sacrificed the entire state.
Delivering signs to rural Atchison County, Missouri. October, 2022.
You may have already figured this about me, but I love an underdog. I adore a spitfire and I am a sucker for folks doing the heavy lifting. Especially in rural spaces.
And that’s what it’s like running in a red rural area — lots of heavy lifting. You’re asking to take a licking from your community and maybe even friends and family. You’ll upend your life — you may lose your job. You’ll have hate and discontent heaped upon your head.
And if you do it anyway?
I love you and I will fight for you with everything I have. I will always fight for rural America.
I met a kindred spirit two years ago. His name is Anthony Flaccavento and he runs an organization called RUBI. The Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.
When we spoke, I realized we were saying the same things. The policies and initiatives he had written long ago occurred to me as I ran for office. We saw the same thing — Democrats had ceded rural spaces and the Republicans were more than happy to step in to fill the void.
Anthony often speaks about a “Rural New Deal.” He talks about farmers and rural people and how not spending time or resources in rural America and in hollowed-out factory and farming and manufacturing districts has led us to this point.
In my opinion, much of this also has to do with not competing in every district. By letting races and entire swaths of my state and the country go uncontested, by not sending resources to rural and working-class areas, we doomed ourselves to another Trump presidency with a Republican House and Senate.
The Republicans even managed to capture SCOTUS with appointments from the first Trump term.
While thinking and writing this week, I remembered an email Anthony sent to me a while back…I went back and read it again today.
My god. He is on to something.
He’s starting at the top by asking the new DNC Chair, Ken Martin, to help take back the areas we let go decades back — the rural and working folks who feel alienated and left behind. Anthony and his rural crew, much like me, are calling for solutions.
*It’s important to note that we are calling for rural and working class Democrats to do the work in our own communities. These are our folks, and with help, we should be doing the work of calling them in.
We aren’t asking for sympathy. We are asking for solidarity and resources.
Anthony and almost a dozen others drafted a letter that went on to be signed by rural Democratic committees and chairs and activists across the country. Here it is:
Dear Ken,
Democrats spent over $4 billion on advertisements in the 2024 campaign cycle, outspending Republicans on the presidential race as well as both Senate and House races. Meanwhile, rural and factory town Democratic committees and candidates were starved for funds, as they have been for many years. Allocating a small percentage of those funds annually to long-term organizing and outreach in these communities would, we are confident, do far more to broaden our base of voters and win elections.
The signatories to this letter fight for rural and working-class people. Most of us hail from or reside in small towns and rural communities. Whether through local organizing and party building, developing concrete tools for policy and communications, or careful analysis of what works and what does not, our collective experience can help Democrats change course and rebuild our base.
We extend this invitation to you to work together in prioritizing and fixing the Democratic Party’s profound deficits with rural and working-class voters. We have an opportunity, right now, to change course and begin to win back millions of people now alienated from our party, including demoralized rank-and-file voters, donors and activists. Anything less than a major course correction will, we fear, lead to the loss of even more voters, including the women, minorities, youth, and working-class men who once comprised the party’s base.
In the attached addendum to this letter, we highlight what we believe to be the most important causes of our losing trend and propose seven promising steps most likely to reverse our decline in rural America. The DNC has profound influence and moral authority within the Democratic coalition. If the leadership of the DNC would passionately and forcefully call upon the complex network of large and small contributors and Democratic fundraising organizations to explicitly direct just 10% of their resources to rural and working-class districts and candidates, it could produce deeply significant and enduring long-term gains for the Democratic Party as a whole.
If Democrats had done this in 2024, we’d now have $400 million in organizing infrastructure to help mobilize and rebuild our base before the midterms.
We offer our partnership to you, committing our experience, tools and resources and on-the- ground networks to this essential mission and work.
Thank you.
Hell yeah.
Rural and working class Democrats are simply asking for the resources to do the work in our own communities. The same resources we spend in other communities — I don’t think it is inappropriate or unearned.
I always remind people: rural folks were some of the first progressives.
My grandparents and great-grandparents from rural Arkansas were FDR Democrats. And, just to prove that they weren’t Dixiecrats, they voted for Democrats all the way through Clinton. They were small farmers and small business owners and knew what good government could do for rural and working people.
I hate that they died before they could vote for Obama.
We can win back rural and working class folks…if we try. We need a coalition of rural and progressive and Democratic organizations from across the country to step up and do the work.
Share the resources.
We need the DNC to help fund the organizers already doing the work in rural and working-class communities.
~Jess
Edit: It looks like the link I originally posted won’t open, so I put the seven point addendum in the comments. Sorry in advance.
If that document won't open, here are the points:
WHY WE’VE LOST RURAL AND FACTORY TOWN VOTERS
1. A forty-year bi-partisan embrace of neoliberal policies that have hurt rural and working-class people and hollowed out their communities, including: ● Favoring investors over workers in rulemaking and trade agreements ● Disinvesting from rural and manufacturing town economies
● Failing to enforce antitrust laws, while exacerbating corporate concentration with subsidies, propelling the destruction of thousands of independent businesses, banks, and farms
2. Steadily declining investment in rural and small-town party infrastructure, committees and candidates, based on a belief that such places are now unwinnable for Democrats. This has proven to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that has alienated not only the average rural voter, but local Democrats as well, many of whom feel unseen and unheard by state and national party leaders. (Scathing accounts of Democratic Party malpractice from local activists can be read here, here and here. We’ve heard dozens more testimonials along the same lines).
3. A short-term political strategy hyper-focused on “winnable races” at the expense of long-term investment in broadening the Party’s base. Driven increasingly by an elite donor and consultant class, this singular focus on winning the next election has simultaneously failed to deliver enduring Democratic majorities while driving more communities and more constituencies ever deeper into Republican hands. Democratic affiliation has slipped from 36% (in 1988) to 28% of Americans. Reclaiming even a third of those voters would turn the map blue for the long term.
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Invest in local and state parties
Democrats have ceded large swaths of the country, banking instead on mobilizing reliably blue urban and suburban strongholds. Decades of neglect have allowed local and state parties to wither and losses in red-leaning areas to mount. In the absence of a strong local Democratic presence, perceptions of Democrats are based on the Party’s national talking points and on the often out-of-touch, preachy, and polarizing rhetoric of the broader liberal-left media, social media, and NGOs. All too often, Party representatives in media focus on issues that either have no clear effect on daily life or are unpopular.
In 2022, Democrats left 51% of partisan down-ballot races uncontested. Potential candidates in red districts are discouraged by the anticipated lack of support from the Party. Yet, as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, CherPAC, and Contest Every Race have demonstrated, Democrats can win over Republican voters when they focus on issues of central concern to local residents and employ down-to-earth and/or populist rhetoric.
Year-round organizing and community-building are the antidotes to the toxicity of the Democratic brand. These activities require staff in the field as well as state-level coordinators, all of whom should be from the area, not from the Beltway.
Democrats spent more than $4 billion in advertisements in the 2024 campaign cycle. Allocating just 10% of those funds annually to long-term organizing and outreach in these communities would do far more to broaden our base of voters and win elections.
2. Scale effective rural organizing, including the “Community Works” model and others with strong potential for impact
Community Works enables local Democratic Party committees to both broaden their base and improve the perception of Democrats by undertaking regular, concrete, non political work to solve local problems, in partnership with civic groups, churches, non profits, and businesses.
Many other initiatives, at local as well as statewide levels have also had significant success in reaching rural and working-class communities. We recommend creation of an incubator fund to test early-stage ideas, and an accelerator fund to bring more developed efforts to scale.
3. Recruit working class and rural candidates and invest in their campaigns
Most Americans are working class, identify as working or middle-class and, as the Center for Working-Class Politics has found, prefer candidates who care about the same things they do, talk like they do, and have relatable life stories. Unlike race and gender, class is a cross-cutting identity for the vast majority of voters.
4. Apologize for NAFTA and other disastrous policies
Trump has owned this issue since 2016 and has peeled off a sizeable chunk of blue collar union members who were once reliable Democrats. The Democratic Party should formally apologize for the damage done by NAFTA and other trade deals, pledge long term investment in decimated factory towns, and commit to a pro-worker agenda.
5. Build an enduring majority across class, race and geography through a focus on universal economic populism
There are strong majorities in favor of many progressive economic policies that curtail the power of the wealthy elites and fight for everyday people. Such policies help forge common ground rather than splintering us according to our differences. Pledge to serve all Americans, especially those who are struggling, including but going beyond the sixteen interest groups currently lifted up by the Party.
This will require development of platforms with universal, cross-cutting appeal. The Rural New Deal is one such example. Developed and written by rural people, it provides both a substantive policy platform and a much-needed reminder for the Party that sound analysis and expertise exist beyond elite universities and outside of the Beltway. The Party simply needs to bring such folks to the table.
6. Restructure the party from the bottom up, moving spending from ads and Beltway consultants to year-round outreach and local strategies and messengers.
The actions of the Trump administration since January 20th have confirmed many Democrats’ worst fears about the threat he represents to our democracy. However, making that threat the central, most prominent 2024 electoral message left many working and middle class voters feeling unheard. The reliance on this strategy was born of a dependence upon a small group of media and messaging consultants who generally do not live in or understand rural and working-class communities. The guidance they often produce confuses and frustrates folks working in the field. We recommend shifting spending to long-term investment in effective grass-roots strategies, local organizers, and people who actually know how to talk to working folks.
Massive spending on ads has been a poor investment overall. We recommend abolishing the practice of consultants getting a share of ad buys and shifting a significant portion of these expenditures to the traditional and social media venues with strong rural or working-class audiences. To make messaging more effective, both rural and non college individuals should be part of every communications team as a safeguard against insularity and elitist talk. In addition, to minimize the problem of conflicting messaging guidance, consultants should be required to collaborate with each other with full transparency in pursuit of the best possible work product.
All of the above are better investments than expensive, polarizing TV ads. 7. Staff the Rural Council
Provide a full-time staff person for the DNC Rural Council to help coordinate, catalyze and support the critical work outlined in this document. Additionally, hire a full-time Rural Organizer, with extensive rural experience, to help lead a team of regional rural organizers in each of the six regions of the Association of State Democratic Committees.
How can we help get you to be a guest on Jon Stewart’s show? He recently did an in depth interview with Maria Ressa on 3/6/25 about her fight for democracy in the Philippines