Over the weekend, USA Today published an article by Sarah D. Wire titled, Will Rural America give up on Trump? These small-town activists think so. Among the small-town activists the spoke to were Dom Holmes, Pennsylvania Organizer at RuralOrganizing:
Dom Holmes, 28, has learned something important in 10 years of organizing progressives in rural Pennsylvania: You can’t just show up when you need people to turn out to vote. You have to sit and listen to them.
In recent weeks, when he’s stopped to listen, he’s gotten an earful about the tax and spending bill the Republican-led Congress passed in July.
“Folks are especially worried about how that’s going to impact them at the local level,” he said. They’re particularly “outraged,” he said, about cuts to food stamps and Medicaid and the likely damage to rural hospitals. “Folks should be aware of what the impact ‒ immediate and not ‒ will be on them and they should know who brought that impact to their community; who brought it home to them.”
Rural Organizing’s Executive Director Matt Hildreth, who served as the National Rural Outreach Director for the Harris-Walz campaign, provided his thoughts:
[W]hile national Democrats have their own plans for wading into these communities, the locals say they know these places and their neighbors best. They aren’t sitting around, hoping a national group will swoop in.
“I’m a rural Democrat. We don’t really tend to wait around. There’s already just a ton of stuff happening,” said Matt Hildreth, Executive Director of RuralOrganizing.org. “The energy is already happening on the ground.”
And: There is a frustration growing in rural America and a willingness to be identified as a Democrat that they haven’t seen in years, several progressive and Democratic organizing groups told USA TODAY. Building relationships and setting the narrative now is key, they said.
“The frustration with Republicans is palpable,” Hildreth said. “Maybe we never get the MAGA voters ‒ we probably never will ‒ but there’s a ton of independents out there looking at this and just saying, ‘man, this isn’t what I voted for.’”
In addition, the article featured Lily Franklin, who is running for the Virginia House of Delegates in House District 41, “a largely rural district,” who told USAToday, “We’ve often tried to come up with a message that’s hyper-tested in a lab somewhere, but realistically people just want to be heard. That’s the secret sauce.”
This year, for the first time, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 districts on the ballot in November. This milestone was reached through the work of many organizations, including Rural GroundGame. This means a lot of rural voters will hear from Democratic candidates for the first time in many cycles. As, Dom, Matt and Lily noted, those are conversations that matter.
The mission of RuralOrganizing.org is to rebuild a rural America that is empowered, thriving, and equitable. Follow us on Twitter @RuralOrganizing.
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