I'm Rural. I Vote Against My Self-Interest

It's not what you think and it's definitely not what you've heard...

I voted in the August Primary and I voted against myself. I pulled a Democratic ballot to vote for our first woman Governor, and in the process, I didn’t vote in the State Representative race. Or the Sheriff’s race. Or Circuit Judge. Or County Commissioner. Or Collector. Or Public Administrator. Or Coroner. Or Surveyor.

I made a decision to vote for Democrats in the primary, and I was left out of voting for every county office and for my State Representative.

I am a rural Missouri Democrat, and more often than not, I pull a Republican ballot in primary elections. I know many rural progressives in other states who register as Republicans to vote in the primary.

So many of us couldn’t vote in our self-interest if we wanted to. We vote in Republican primaries because Republicans run unopposed. I usually pull a Republican ballot in primaries, because if I can’t vote for a Democrat, at least I can vote for the least extreme Republican.

When you hear pundits and writers and bloggers tell you that rural folks vote against their self-interest, I hope you remember this post.

I read a tweet from a person I follow and I was fairly horrified. It read:

Rural America, you didn’t get left behind — you’ve chosen not to keep up. Your resentment toward politicians you don’t like or people who look different from you is nothing but scapegoating. Turn off Fox News and join the rest of us in electing people who’ll help you succeed.

We’ve chosen not to keep up? The reason I can’t vote for county and state offices is because I have resentment against people who don’t look like me? If we just turn off Fox News, you can help us elect people who will help us succeed even if there is no one on our ballot?

I responded to the tweet without attacking the author because it is so out of character for this person. I read through the comments, which were brutal in their agreement on rural folks, and then I found the origin of the tweet. This person had read the book '“White Rural Rage” by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman and had made some judgments about rural folks and our communities. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed that this book has evoked caricatures about the racist and short-sided and uneducated hillbilly folk living in places like me.

Not cool.

I am going to admit something right now: I haven’t finished the book, but I have read nearly a dozen articles on it and I’ve read the studies the authors used to come to their conclusions and I’ve watched the interviews given by the writers. I am a constant reader, and I read pieces I don’t agree with, but I can’t bring myself to listen to more than a chapter or two before I want to throw my AirPods against the wall.

This book definitely turned me into a white, raging rural person.

And, while there are aspects of the book that are absolutely true about rural spaces — they tend to be more religious and more homogeneous and more culturally similar and have more gun owners — these spaces aren’t all bigoted or racist or uneducated. These spaces also aren’t all white.

Rural Americans have a reason to be angry, even if it is misplaced. Our communities are shrinking and shriveling and being razed building by building. Our schools are gutted and Big Ag has replaced the family farm. Our children move away for college and don’t return, because what’s left? Four-day-school weeks and no childcare.

The young folks struggle because the jobs have left, downtown has disappeared with Walmart and Dollar General, and you need $22K an acre to buy ground.

When I was teaching, I occasionally had a student say they were going to farm for a living when they graduated. My response was always the same, “Is your dad a farmer?” because I know if not, there’s practically no way to secure the money you’d need to farm for a living. At this point, you need generational wealth in the form of hundreds of acres and machines to get started.

Have you thought about HVAC or the building trades as a backup plan, kiddo?

Yes, many rural Americans are angry but it’s not because we hate the LGBTQ community or Black folks. It’s because our towns and spaces have been sold off for parts.

From “100 Days in Appalachia by Skylar Baker-Jordan:

…the book pissed me off with its reductionist caricature of white rural voters. Schaller and Waldman gesture towards the material complaints of rural folks, white or not: a lack of investment in infrastructure; diminishing if not completely diminished access to health care; a righteous anger at their local economies being decimated in the name of free trade; a not-misplaced suspicion that people in cities and suburbs unfairly stereotype them; and a more misplaced, but still understandable, fear that the culture around them is changing too rapidly.

Here is something else people get wrong: yes, the Democratic Party left rural America but so did the Republican Party. The Republicans are still able to organize by churches, though, and are still getting their message out through several pulpits. Sometimes it’s the in-your-face politicking that is clearly barred by IRS tax code, but mostly it’s coded messages about “pro-life” policies.

Republican messages are very alive and well in rural spaces and the right-wing politicians don’t even need to campaign with some of the churches doing the heavy lifting.

I don’t like presenting a problem without presenting a solution and here it is: we need to oppose every single race on every single ticket in every single state.

A conversation you can have at a door: “Yes, your Republican State Rep claims to hold similar values as you but he’s also defunding your kid’s school and doesn’t care that our roads are crumbling or that the hospital is about to close. He may be a Republican but he’s doing nothing for our district. Look at his record and policies and then take a look at the Democrat opposing him.”

Present facts to folks at the door. Make it local. Bring it back to the County Courthouse and the State House.

Therein lies another problem: getting candidates to run in races that won’t flip in one or even two cycles without funding them. We have to play the long game. It means that we will be donating to races and nominees who we know won’t flip a seat in a cycle and that flips all conventional logic on its head.

Only support “flippable” or competitive races, right?

If funding only flippable races and districts worked, Missouri would be deep blue. It’s not. We don’t have even one Democrat elected statewide. We have to shift our thinking on what we consider a win.

A win is running. A win is deep canvassing. A win is opposing extremism. A win is knowing a Democratic message is being shared on the ground with rural voters who may not hear one by any other means.

Rural wins on the ballot will come, but the work comes first. Do the work in front of you.

It’s going to take a lot of work to recruit candidates and prep them for races and fund them to push out their message, but rural folks are used to getting by with less. When we run in rural spaces, we give rural Americans a choice. We give them an alternative message to the hate they hear when sucked into information silos.

I know it’s frustrating to think that folks vote against their self-interest, but remember my story. We can take states like Missouri back by supporting rural nominees in districts that look impossible.

I once read something about missing 100% of the shots you don’t take…that’s the mindset.

When we run, we win…eventually. And that’s worth it.

~Jess

*P.S. I wouldn’t ask anyone to do the work I’m not willing to do myself. I ran for office in a rural space and I am the Executive Director of Blue Missouri — a crowdfunding organization that funds Democrats in the toughest and reddest districts in the state. I was just on the phone last Friday giving away 170K to 43 down-ballot nominees. Because of our members, no Missouri Dem has less than $6500. We invest in rural spaces. We are doing the work!