Is Trump Fever breaking?
Politico on Friday announced that the Harris-Walz campaign has hired my friend Matt Hildreth of progressive Rural Organizing dot org as the campaign’s National Rural Outreach Director. Hildreth’s group announced it formally in a tweet shortly thereafter.
Hiring Hildreth, whose grassroots organization is already knocking doors for Harris and Democratic candidates across the country this fall, signals the campaign is looking to seriously expand a resource-intensive ground game to reach rural voters who could swing the election.
The Harris-Walz team doesn’t expect the ticket to flip many rural counties. But some of Harris’ top advisers have argued that simply losing by slightly fewer percentage points in these areas could help carry her and down-ballot Democrats to victory. In recent memos, the campaign has argued “the key to decreasing margins in rural areas is to show up and compete everywhere — which is exactly what we’re doing across the country.”
Exactly right. That’s how Democrat Heath Shuler ousted eight-term, NC-11 Republican Rep. Charles Taylor in 2006. It’s easier and more economically efficient for statewide Democratic candidates to perform voter outreach where they can find “their” voters in bulk (in the cities).
The flaw in that strategy is in states (and districts) where red-county voters outnumber and outvote Democrat-leaning voters in urban, blue islands. Under the right conditions, it is possible for Democrats to eke out U.S. Senate wins in Georgia where half the voting population lives in Atlanta metro. But a third or so of Georgia’s rural counties had no functional Democratic committees the last time I looked. It’s hard to win where you don’t show up to play. Shortchanging rural counties can leave Democrats winning statewide races but losing local contests and facing Republican-dominated state legislatures.
Local organizers also note that the party has a solid opportunity to gain support in some rural communities, especially in pockets of Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona with younger voters and voters of color. The Biden-Harris administration and Democrats have poured billions in federal investments into rural communities, with Biden just this week touting new funding in a largely rural swing district in southwest Wisconsin.
At the end of her Friday interview with N.C. Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton, CNN’s Dana Bash invited her back to discuss efforts to bridge the rural-urban divide in North Carolina. One of Hildreth’s people e-introduced Clayton to me over three years ago, before she became the youngest state chair in the country and a media star. Clayton hails from rural Person County and has vowed her party will no longer neglect Democrats’ country cousins.
So for rural readers wherever you are who need a little bucking up, veteran North Carolina Democratic operative Thomas Mills’ road trip last weekend presents some hopeful contrasts with 2020:
This weekend, I took a drive through a rural Brunswick County precinct where Trump won by 50 points in 2020. I toured Varnumtown, Supply and two RV parks. Four years ago, virtually every yard sported a Trump sign and Trump flags proudly waved above dozens of motor homes in a muscular show of support. This year, I saw very few Trump yard signs and even fewer Trump flags. The difference is stark.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that almost every one of the people living in those houses would vote for Trump if they make it to the polls. I’m just not sure as many will get to the voting booth this year. The obvious enthusiasm of 2020 is gone. I drove one stretch of winding road past dozens of houses for more than five miles and one sad, outdated Trump-Pence sign was the only evidence of support for the former president. It feels like the fever has broken.
Mills offers statistics that may favor Democrats in N.C. this year. But what he’s seen here may have echoes in rural counties in your state. Hildreth will be working on it where you live. Clayton is on it here in N.C.