CHICAGO — Democrats should focus on financial issues to win back rural voters, speakers including Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said Tuesday at a Rural Council meeting as part of the Democratic National Convention.
Beshear urged the group of rural Democrats to reject social issues and left-right ideological alignment. Most voters, he said, are not concerned about political labels but about jobs, health care, transportation, school quality and safety.
Beshear and other speakers said Republicans, who hold majorities in rural counties and states, have failed to deliver on these issues.
“With Republicans pushing the envelope on every issue, now is the time to run and govern on the issues that matter most,” he said. “And when we do that, we’re not moving a state or the entire country to the right or left. We’re moving it forward for every single American.”
The event, one of dozens of official events for party delegates and candidates held a few miles from the national program broadcast from the United Center, was permeated by the notion that rural campaigning is not Democrats’ strongest suit. There were also suggestions that rural issues may be outside the mainstream of an increasingly urbanized Democratic Party.
“I think we are the bravest Democrats in America,” said former Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.
But speakers also expressed hope that the party could reverse a decades-long trend of losses in rural areas, including in November’s presidential election, largely thanks to the nomination of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential candidate.
Several speakers said Walz has a unique ability to reach rural voters.
“I challenge Republicans to say we are the elite party,” Heitkamp said. “I challenge them to say we don’t know and we don’t have people in our party who care about rural America. I challenge them to say we are not rural.”
Beshear acknowledged that he had been considered as Harris’s vice presidential running mate and said he was grateful for that.
“I am proud that a governor from rural America ran in this vice presidential election,” he said.
However, he called Walz a “great governor” who would “make a great vice president.”
The speakers called on the Democrats not to give up on rural areas as hopeless, but to compete in every election.
“We need to continue to organize and invest in Republican states and rural America,” said Caroline Gleich, a U.S. Senate candidate from Utah. “Because we can and will win.”
Not served by the Republicans
Despite their dominance in rural elections, Republicans have disappointed voters there, Beshear, Heitkamp and other speakers said.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are delaying passage of a novel farm bill that is passed every five years and provides subsidies and education programs for agriculture, Heitkamp said. A bloc of far-right Freedom Caucus members would never vote for the farm bill because of its high price tag, even though it is critical for rural communities, she said.
Former President Donald Trump started trade wars that hurt U.S. farmers’ ability to export and botched the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, said U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Xochitl Torres Small.
Torres Small won a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives in 2018.
“I was elected in the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency,” she said. “In the middle of trade wars that were costing farmers money, in the middle of rural hospitals fearing they would have to close their doors because Donald Trump took too long to recognize the COVID crisis.”
Alternative democratic messages
The message of the event was clear: overtly partisan messages could alienate rural voters, who often do not have sturdy political views.
And implicitly, there was an assumption that the Democrats’ national shift to the left on social issues this century might distract from messages that might be more attractive to rural voters.
Beshear, a popular Democrat who twice won gubernatorial elections in a red state, began his speech by calling himself a “proud pro-choice governor” and a “proud pro-diversity governor” before describing his bipartisan appeal.
“We run as proud Democrats – and folks, aren’t we proud Democrats?” Beshear said, drawing applause from the crowd. “But once we take those hats off, we serve every single American.”
“This is our chance, yes, to be proud Democrats, but to show everyone in this country, Republican, independent, Democrat or otherwise, that there is room for them in this election campaign,” he said. “That there is room for them with us.”
And Heitkamp appeared somewhat unfamiliar with the topic when conveying his support for LGBTQ rights, stumbling over the phrase “LGTBQ+ neighbors.”
Speaking to reporters after his remarks, Beshear said Harris and her agenda represented the people who attended the meeting.
“Kamala Harris represents working people,” he said, praising her recently released economic plan. “The plans I see are plans that will work for everyone.”
Warm welcome for Gwen Walz
Walz’s wife, Minnesota First Lady Gwen Walz, attended the event unannounced.
She was warmly welcomed by the crowd as she talked about her childhood in a tiny town and meeting her husband when they both worked as teachers at a public school.
And she told a story that was meant to represent small-town values.
As a high school English teacher, she tutored a star player on the football team coached by Tim Walz. The student, who had once been a problem in the classroom, continued tutoring and eventually graduated.
“Tim Walz and I see education and people making a difference, one at a time, making waves,” she said. “We cannot underestimate the power of seeing and recognizing individuals.”
