Why small is still beautiful
Tripp Narup ran for and lost a state senate seat in red, red Iowa. As a Democrat. Because the last time he’d voted in Iowa’s 9th district there was no one for him to vote for. Narup tells Salon’s Kirk Swearingen that only 17% of voters are registered Democrats in that southwest Iowa district. He tells Salon:
After losing spectacularly for the Senate, I have now started a PAC to raise money to support (as yet undetermined) candidates to run for four [state] House seats and one open Senate seat. The plan is to raise $2,000 per candidate as an enticement to get someone to step up and run. Any additional money will be used to run ads pointing out the many sins of our current state senators representatives. Now this may strike you as small potatoes (these are farming districts, after all), but my whole campaign cost less than $6,000 and I paid for a third of it. “Big campaign money” around here is $10,000 or so. (In farm terms, that’s about 7 cows.) Compared to big-city politics, this is quaint and kind of endearing.
Swearingen quotes filmmaker Michael Moore on living blue in a red district:
One of the lessons I learned over the years is that there are always more of us than you realize. A lot of people just give up or they go into hiding or they say “I don’t care about politics” or “I just live in a Republican area and there’s nothing I can do.” So, I know you’re thinking, “Oh, Mike, Mike, you don’t understand, I live here. I’m in Oklahoma, I’m in Arkansas.” Yeah, OK. Well, you know, it’s not exactly how we think this is in this country, because we are the majority. The majority of Americans agree with us on the issues, from the climate catastrophe to minimum wage to paid leave to health care. Go down the whole damned list. The majority of Americans are with us.
That can be hard to see in a region awash in Trump signs. Being a loudmouth doesn’t make you a majority, though. For Democrats in rural America, hiding your light under a barrel simply reinforces the loudmouth’s belief that his unchallenged views are the majority’s.
Narup ran against someone from his church, from the same choir. With no rancor, it seems. Imagine. Reasonable people can still disagree. But when the disagreeable go unchallenged, it reinforces their sense of rightness and entitlement.
Swearingen adds:
Reasonable people who believe in the basic tenets of democracy and who, as Michael Moore observes, share the opinions of a large majority of their fellow Americans, should step up and run for office. Even in the most hopeless circumstances, even in places where Democrats won’t win this election or the next one or the one after that. No more ceding ground and conceding defeat in advance. It’s time to win back, little by little, the places that have been lost.
Democrats have ceded rural America to the right for far too long. Reversing that will take some doing. And some courage. And a few thousand dollars.
Politico reports that the Biden campaign in 2024 has plans to contest North Carolina, “home to the second largest rural population in the U.S. behind Texas.” If so, they’ll pour resources into the state, primarily into the metro areas where the biggest, easier-to-turn-out blocks of blue votes may be found. But without shaving GOP margins in those rural areas, Biden may still struggle to win the state. Even if Democrats broaden their margins in suburban areas:
Key to the Biden campaign’s strategy in North Carolina, Democrats also point to party leaders in the state like Cooper and Anderson Clayton, the state’s 25-year-old Democratic Party chair, surrogates they say can gin up enthusiasm among young voters in the state.
Clayton, who took over the state party earlier this year, is already traveling across the state to energize young people, and plans to tap into the hundreds of thousands of voters enrolled in North Carolina colleges and universities this fall. She’s also leaning into year-round organizing, working to reengage with rural voters and to make sure no Republicans run uncontested in the state.
Full disclosure: Clayton is a friend.
Clayton is pushing Democrats to contest more state House and Senate seats as well as municipal offices up for grabs this fall. Races like the one Narup ran and lost in Iowa. The strategy is to win, of course. But barring that, to show the flag, to give rural Democrats a sense that the Trump signs are more loudmouth bluster than voting strength.
The top of the ticket is not where the action is. Those “small potatoes” races build a foundation for winning the larger ones down the road.
As Tim Miller spotlighted, reflexive contrarianism drives Republicans today, not upholding American ideals. “In the modern GOP, owning the libs is what sells,” writes Kelly Garrity about culture war merchandise:
“What they’re selling is very telling because it speaks to a certain audience,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “You’re not convincing anybody with a bobblehead … but what you do want is you want your most perfect support groups to feel engaged with the campaign, to feel a part of it, and to kind of show their support.”
The point of encouraging Democrats to contest local races, even unwinnable ones, is to give Democrats something to rally around more substantive than red hats. Leaders like Clayton mean to give Republicans a wake-up call: No more wins by forfeit. Plus to build a launching pad for Democrats to take back the majority in the state legislature.
We’ve been waiting so long.
Somehow, someday
We need just one victory and we’re on our way
We’re prayin’ for it all day and fightin’ for it all night
Give us just one victory, it will be all right