From yard signs, to abortion, to MAGA Republicans, on this episode of RuralTalk, Matt Hildreth and Joe Sudbay discuss the 2023 Election results and their impact on rural races heading into 2024.
Here’s a written transcript of our conversation.
Matt
Hey Joe, thanks for taking a couple of minutes to talk through the election results.
Joe
Oh, Matt, you know, I love this. I love this. And I love it, especially when we’ve had a good night. And yesterday was a good night for progressives around the country.
Matt
Yeah. So, you know, we’ve been working together for a long time and we’ve watched a lot of election returns over the years. What do you think is different about this set of returns?
Joe
Well, I think one of the things is these kind of these elections and odd years, you know, I always say there’s no such thing as an off year election. Every election matters, but they’ve often tended to have lower turnout, not as much attention. And it’s one of the reasons why, for example, in Virginia, up until 2017, Republicans controlled that House of Delegates by a margin of 66 to 34. Like, that’s a two to one margin in 100 seat.
body. And 2017 changed a lot and it was the election of Donald Trump. It got people focused. That was the year we worked very closely on the Virginia elections because Ed Gillespie made attacks on immigrants a centerpiece of his campaign. It didn’t work. He lost badly. And then Democrats came literally within one vote. There was a tie vote in one of the House of Delegates races, but it ended up 51-49.
And I will tell you that yesterday in Virginia, Democrats took control of the House of Delegates again. They’re at 51 right now. There’s a race or two that are undecided in the Senate. They’ve got control. And these races were so important and it wasn’t a governor’s race at the top of the ticket. The candidates had to go out and do the work. The current governor, Glenn Youngkin, wanted to make this a referendum on himself. And on his attempt…
to find a new way for Republicans to talk about abortion bans by offering an abortion ban that he said wasn’t an abortion ban. Didn’t work. And it was quite a night in Virginia, really exciting. And the other thing, you know, remember, Youngkin wanted to launch his presidential campaign. There were rumors circulating from billionaires that this was the week he was going to do it because they expected him to take control. He gets a lot of…
love from billionaires. It gets a lot of love from the media too, which is really weird. So, but that was a big night. The other race, and I know you and Rural Organizing did so much work in is Ohio. And this is another issue that is so different. What happened on issue one, a major win in Ohio for abortion rights. And Matt, you know, this is an issue. You have talked about it. And I really want to hear some of your thoughts on it.
Joe
For a long time, in kind of progressive politics writ large, I’ve worked on LGBT issues for a long time. I worked on the gun issue and people would say, you can’t talk about these issues. You can’t talk about these issues. Well, people wanna talk about issues and particularly the abortion issue. When you take rights away from people, they notice. And like I said, in Ohio, I mean, in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin was actually trying to take rights away by imposing an abortion ban on
People in the state but Ohio man that was that is a massive win in what has become a red state It’s like about almost 57% The results in Ohio are gonna be better than the abortion referendum in Michigan are very close to it last November I thought it was quite stunning. What about you?
Matt
Yeah, as somebody that lived in Columbus right down the street from the stadium, I can tell you that anybody in Ohio would be thrilled to beat Michigan at anything. So I’m sure you’ll be watching those numbers closely. You know, for me, it’s almost hard to remember what conventional political wisdom was before Donald Trump, right? Like there was this idea that one year would be good for the Democrats, one year would be good for the Republicans.
Joe
Hahaha.
Matt
People would make progress on one issue and then lose on another issue. But Republicans have been losing a lot lately. They have not had a good election year since 2016. Even in 2016, they lost the popular vote for president and Trump won the electoral college by…
what, 77,000 votes across three Midwest states. And I just, it’s almost been hard for me to get my head around what conventional wisdom is anymore. I mean, there was a, for those that were doing work prior to Trump and even, I guess, prior to Obama, like, it just seems like the world, the political world today is almost unrecognizable. And for me, the number one example of that is
abortion. I mean, I can’t tell you, I mean, I’ve known you for a long time. So I told you back, you, you followed the, the progress over the years, probably closer than anybody. But it was like when, when I started role organizing.org back in 2012, I mean, it was like, do not talk about abortion, do not talk about gay marriage, do not talk about immigration. And it’s just been fascinating to watch.
And I don’t think voters shifted. I think it was just bad advice back then. And it’s even more so the case now. I mean, Republicans are getting everything they wanted in the Trump era, and it’s costing them elections everywhere. And I think with rural voters specifically, you know, the fact is rural voters do support Trump at higher rates. They do oppose abortion rights at higher rates. But
That’s not what we’re looking at. We’re looking at what actually moves the remaining voters that have not made up their minds yet. And when you look at what moves those voters, they’re overwhelmingly under 45. They’re younger people. They’re millennials, right? Now millennials are in their 40s. They’re Gen Z, which Gen Z is approaching their 30s. And you’re talking about issues that fundamentally are about improving their quality of life. Well…
Matt
decreasing their cost of living. And I think that’s something that we’ve been really interested to watch even on the debate between talking about abortion or economics and all these other things. It’s like, it’s not just about jobs, it’s about what is actually bringing down people’s expenses, what’s actually improving their life, and what decisions they actually get to make. And I think that that’s where we’re seeing on abortion specifically that those are the issues that are actually moving people that are movable.
You know, the boomers have already made up their minds. They’re not changing. Like, you know, Gen X is pretty locked in. Um, but there’s this whole cohort of voters out there that are geographically more conservative, but generationally more progressive. And I think that’s what we’ve been focusing on. And when you come at it from that lens, it’s just, it’s just, there’s no doubt about it, abortion is the top issue that we should be talking about. That’s what’s moving voters. And especially when Republicans like Mike Johnson have really weird views.
Joe
Yeah.
Matt
that come from like the 1800s on, you know, issues like abortion. It just seems like that that’s going to be an issue going into 2024.
Joe
It absolutely is. I mean, look, Donald Trump has touted the fact that he got rid of Roe v. Wade. And he is very proud of that, and he owns it because in that world that matters. And it’s one thing I’ve been thinking about that. You mentioned conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is kind of a group think.
I think there’s this kind of DC conventional wisdom that sets in among the media, like for example, Love, Yonkin, and who last year were telling us, oh, abortion’s not going to be a major issue, right? There was a consensus in the DC conventional wisdom crowd that it wasn’t going to matter. Now, I never believed that because, look, I…
Actually, one of the things I do, I work at Sirius XM Progress, I talk to, I have a show called State of the States, I talk to state legislative candidates. And to a person, they were telling me when they were knocking doors, and they knocked doors, which is different. They’re not seeing the world filtered through focus groups or polling or anything like that. They’re actually talking to people. They actually heard over and over and over.
over and over about the abortion issue. It started with Emily Randall running in Washington State. You were actually canvassing with her the day after the Dab’s decision leaked, and I heard it over and over. And this year I heard the same thing in Virginia that when they were knocking doors. And look, you and I are both married to actual researchers who will tell us, you know, there’s a difference between, you know, research and anecdotes. And I was like, yeah, okay. But when you hear it consistently for a long time,
you know that something has changed. And I want to, that brings us to Kentucky because, I mean, last year there was a referendum in Kentucky, an abortion ban that was defeated by about 52 and a half percent. The governor of Kentucky, a Democrat, if he was following the old playbook, would never have talked about abortion. If he was talking, you know, the old kind of conventional wisdom, don’t talk about these issues, especially in a red state like Kentucky.
Joe
He talked about it every single day. He challenged his Republican opponent, Daniel Cameron on the issue. Cameron couldn’t come up with an answer and the governor, Andy Beshear, never backed down. He won in 2019 by 0.4%. Now he’s won, I think the margin’s gonna end up being over 5%. That’s a big win in that state and especially by someone who waited. And he also, the other thing he did is,
He vetoed some anti-trans bills. Again, these are the kind of things that, you know, consultants in DC would be pulling their hair out saying, avoid this, avoid this, avoid this. But this is real people’s lives and it impacts people. And, you know, look, there are some people who are never going to, a lot of people don’t care about those issues and they just think it’s kind of creepy and mean that Republicans obsess about.
Matt
Mm-hmm. And I think that’s one of the things that we’ve been really stressing at ruleorganizing.org is, you know, the old playbook is not working. And I think that we’ve seen that now on abortion in so many different states. I think that the idea that the old playbook isn’t working is pretty widely accepted now. But I do think there’s still a lot of debate about what is the new playbook. Now, our polling now, maybe I’m biased, because it was our polling, our polling pretty much predicted what we would see.
in Kansas, in Montana, in Ohio, and all of these other states where you put abortion on the ballot. Our polling, that same polling also shows issues even like gun control, right? Like rural voters are more likely to support the rhetoric around Second Amendment, but rural voters also want to see at around 50% the assault rifle ban.
They also want to, you know, rural voters are concerned about the rise of violent white supremacists. Like, when you look at where the rural voters are at, the support for the progressive platform is still 15, maybe 20 percents running ahead of the Democratic candidates. So I think that for me, abortion is just like the first piece of that validation. And I think my hope is that we are able to show.
That you know what, it’s not the progressive issues that are costing Democrats votes in rural America. It’s this lack of visibility. And that’s something that we’ve been pushing really, really hard is it really isn’t about this issue or that issue or this talking point or that talking point. You know, the PDF, this PDF for that PDF, it’s really about who is in these communities and who is standing up and saying, I am fighting for, I am fighting for us, right? Like it’s not about coming into rural communities. And.
listening to rural voters. It’s about saying there are millions of rural Democrats. There are millions of Democrats living in rural America. Those people need to be resourced to be the brand ambassadors for the Democratic Party. And people vote because of the group they want to belong to. It’s about identity. It’s not just about ideology. And the fact is that right now people just aren’t seeing Democrats in their communities. And that’s something that we’re going to be working on a lot going into 2024 is…
Matt
elevating that democratic visibility, showing people they don’t have to choose between being a small town or rural American and the Democratic Party that there are millions of people out there that are doing it. And I think that leading with those local folks first is a much better strategy than coming up with all these different talking points. The messenger always matters more than the message.
Joe
Yeah, I think that’s really important and you’ve seen it. And, you know, look, I’m fascinated by the yard sign program that rural organizing launched in Ohio, both for issue one, when they were trying, Republicans were trying to increase the threshold to pass this amendment, which got defeated badly in August. And then again, this year, and, you know, again, it’s one of these things where people will roll their eyes and say yard signs don’t vote.
Some of the same people who say that are the same people who will tell you to change the image on your Facebook or change your Twitter background to have some image. Yard signs don’t vote, but people who put yard signs on their front yards vote and guess what happens? Their neighbors see it and they talk and it happens that way.
And it’s just a visible manifestation that yes, indeed, we exist in these communities and it shows others. And talk a little bit about that, because I think this is just one of those, again, overlooked kind of simple, basic political tools that we got away from as people delved into, let’s just do analytics.
Matt
Yeah. And one thing that I’ve said a lot lately is that the Democratic Party has outsourced their campaigns, especially in rural America, to consultants instead of constituents. And the fact is, is that when you talk to people living in these communities who are wanting to engage their friends and neighbors on politics and you say, what do you need? The number one thing they say is yard signs. And like you said, political consultants, especially over the last couple decades, laughed at that and said, oh, that’s…
That’s unsophisticated. We need to do micro targeting and we need to do the next, you know, big app. And we need to do this next big data push. And I think all of that stuff does matter. I don’t want to downplay it, but the fact is, is that at the end of the day, we know that all politics is local and in small towns and rural communities, politics is personal and people need the tools. From.
organizations like ours to reach their friends and neighbors. We’re not, as an organization, the best group to talk to their friends and neighbors. They’re the best group to talk to their friends and neighbors. And so we do see that yard science can move the needle by two percentage points when they’re put in people’s yards. That’s what our research shows. That’s what other research has shown. There was a time when people said, oh, two points, that’s nothing. That’s completely ineffective. Well, it’s about as effective as mailers. And also look at all the races that
especially in rural communities have been run, have come down to two percentage points or fewer. I think yard signs do move the needle a little bit, but what we’re finding more than anything is that the yard signs are empowering an entirely new generation and group of volunteers. In Ohio, we went out and we placed about 11,000 signs over the last four or five months.
And that’s great. We’re excited about the ArtsScience, but what we’re most excited about is that recruited about 1100 new volunteers across the state. And for an organization like ours to have 11,000 signs placed with about 1100 volunteers, that really creates a whole new potential as we go into 2024 with the shared Brown race in Ohio. And, you know, we’ll be looking at doing this in other battleground states as well through our super PAC. So that’s kind of the next step here is how do we take the lessons learned for Ohio and roll it out?
Matt
on the National Battleground States.
Joe
And it’s one of the things you often say is you want to show Democrats and Progressives how to, you say, lose less, I say, close the margins in some of these communities because every one of these votes matters, especially when you’re statewide and you look at how close some of these elections are. You mentioned the presidential race in 2016. And look, we’re still counting votes in Virginia.
Matt
Okay.
Joe
Kimberly Pope Adams is down by about 170 votes right now. There’s a good chance she could pull it out. And House District 82, which is in Petersburg and Dinwidely, I got to talk to her. She calls it a rural district. She calls her, you know, and so that kind of outreach matters. And especially as you get down to these state legislative races, it really, really matters. And a few hundred more votes can make the difference between who controls your state.
legislature as we’re seeing in Virginia. So, Matt, I could talk about this stuff all day. I know we’ll be talking a lot more about it. But man, this was just, it was a good night. And I know you’ve learned a lot from it. I hope a lot of others can see some of the lessons that you’re pulling from it too.
Matt
Absolutely. I think this is a great boost for our momentum as we head into 2024. So we’ll be talking to you soon.
Joe
Thanks so much.
