Reviving the Rural Democrat

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Often overlooked by Democrats as a lost cause, many rural areas in Pennsylvania haven't received liberal campaign attention in decades, further widening the divide and exacerbating hyper-partisanship in politics, a trend seen both locally and nationally.

"Iused to be a Democrat, but they don't care about us anymore."

E-Jay Fyke knows this mantra well. The longtime Erie Democratic operative has heard it countless times from area rural voters. Surprisingly, the liberal Fyke agrees with them. To be clear, he thinks Democrats offer better policies for rural Pennsylvanians but he sighs and admits, "We ignored the rural voter. We concentrated too much on Philly and Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party only cares about Philly and Pittsburgh."

For generations, rural western Pennsylvania comprised the backbone of the state's Democratic Party. Even during the Reagan era, the region voted Democrat at the state and national level. Mirroring the region, Erie County also went Democratic in seven consecutive presidential races, from 1988 to 2012. But starting in the '90s, the state party shifted its focus to vote-rich Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the quiet part out loud, "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia." This strategy worked for Pennsylvania Democrats — until it didn't.

In 2016, Donald Trump took rural western Pennsylvania by historic margins. Mitt Romney, for example, won Mercer and Lawrence counties in 2012 but Obama kept the tallies within single digits. In 2016 and 2020 Trump won at least 60 percent of the vote in both. The Republican duplicated this effort throughout the region, including a narrow win in Erie County. These rural landslides provided Trump with the margins to overcome his urban deficit and win the state by a scant 44,000 votes.

Erie County and rural western Pennsylvania are merely a microcosm of the national scene. The rural vote is where MAGA predominates. Donald Trump took 65 percent of the rural vote in 2020, up from 62 percent in 2016. Among rural whites, the Republican took an eye-popping 71 percent of the vote in 2020, a 9 point improvement over 2016. Only one in five Americans live in rural environs and small towns, but the GOP's monopoly automatically puts more than two dozen states with significant rural populations out of reach.

The rural-urban political divide is a byproduct of political neglect alongside economic and cultural fissures. Democrats rule the cities where three-quarters of the nation's economic activity and wealth resides. Middle class knowledge workers, who comprise the Democrats' donor and activist base, are befuddled by Trump's "American carnage" rhetoric. But rural Americans, who subsist on the crumbs of our information economy, understand it. Drive through almost any small western Pennsylvania town: shuttered storefronts, dilapidated homes, and crumbling infrastructure abound. The signs of economic despair are palpable.

But the rural-urban divide is not purely a product of economic decline. Anthony Flaccavento is a labor activist and farmer in southwestern Virginia. He has run for Congress twice as a Democrat. Today, he runs the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, which is dedicated to healing polarization. Flaccavento told me the rural-urban divide starts from a cultural fissure wherein rural people "believe Democrats just don't like them." His neighbors and friends are "damn proud and they feel preached to and demeaned. Liberals, in their experience, don't respect working people or believe the educated think they might have something to learn from you. They are utterly and wholly aware of this."

Blue cities and red countryside define our hyper-partisan politics. We see this polarization most obviously at the presidential level. Every cycle, the White House is decided by a handful of states. Beyond the presidency, the Constitution's rural tilt offers two senators for every state, which today results in a deadlocked 50-50 Senate. At the state level, rural voters give Republicans nearly double the number of state legislative chambers that Democrats possess. These bodies, in turn, draw legislative maps inflating rural America's power in the House, which, like the Senate, is also stalemated.

Matt Barron, who specializes in rural Democratic races as the principal at MLB Research Associates, told me, "Polarization is a byproduct of Democrats. They don't even try to compete in rural America." And Pennsylvania is a near-perfect embodiment of this polarization. A swing state at the national level, Democrats, fueled by the urban vote, control the governor's mansion and statehouse by the slimmest of margins, a one-vote "majority." Republicans, propelled by rural ballots, hold the senate. Cue the dysfunction and voter despair.

The rural-urban divide is the seedbed of the nation's political polarization. But if rural America fuels Trumpism, it also offers an antidote to it. Adam Kirsch, a Midwest-based Democratic political consultant, told me even a 5-percent bump with rural voters would constitute "a game changer." Control of Congress would not shift every two years. Biden's 2020 popular vote victory could have been a crushing Electoral College landslide. Trumpism would likely be buried in the rubble. Those are the stakes — and the possibilities.

Eva Posner does not put much faith in the party pooh-bahs seizing the possibilities. The Democratic political consultant and president of Evinco Strategies told me, "If the Democratic Party gave a shit, they would fund parties and campaigns from the bottom up." But in Erie County and across the nation, a bevy of local and state Democrats and officials are trying to do just that.

Winning a majority of the rural vote is not their aim. Their formula for victory is to combine the city vote with reduced margins of defeat in rural regions. In Erie, Jim Wertz has led the way. Elected Erie County Democratic Party chair in 2018, Wertz realized "there were lots of rural Democrats who were left behind." Setting up satellite locations throughout the county, he aimed to put every Erie County Democrat within a 15-minute drive of a brick-and-mortar site. His downtown Union City satellite location was a gamble. But he soon realized its worth. Days after it opened, he received a call from an area dairy farmer who exclaimed, "Hot damn, we have not seen Democrats here in 25 years!"

Wertz recalled a party gathering at the Union City headquarters where an elderly woman encountered an unexpected crowd of fellow Democrats. She exclaimed, "Who are all these people?" Adam Kirsch told me such episodes are typical for rural Democrats. The party's woes are rooted in a "presence problem" that results in a "doom loop." Democrats quit organizing and campaigning. The party's brand in rural America becomes "non-existent." Rural Democrats, like the woman in Union City, feel that they are the only liberals in town.

Wertz's organizing proved vital. Even as Trump increased his 2020 vote in Erie County by 6,800 over 2016, Biden earned over 10,000 more ballots than Clinton's 2016 tally. The lion's share of these votes came in the city and suburbs, but cutting the margins in rural Erie County proved crucial in Biden's narrow 1,424 vote victory. Two years later, John Fetterman earned plaudits for his "Every County, Every Vote" strategy. Campaigning heavily in rural, small town Pennsylvania, Fetterman improved on Biden's 2020 percentages in 60 of the state's 67 counties.

Unlike past Democrats, Fetterman won on the strength of his rural, small-town vote. Wertz credits the senator but also claims, with some reason, "the Fetterman campaign of 2022 followed the Erie Democratic mold." Wertz believes his rural-urban strategy will boost him to victory in his state senate contest against Dan Laughlin.

But Wertz and Fetterman are not alone. Candidates ranging from Sara Taber in North Carolina to Destiny Wells in Indiana, Sara Klee-Hood in California to Ty Pinkins in Mississippi and Dan Quick in Nebraska, are rebuilding the party in rural regions from the ground-up. They are joined by state party executives, such as North Carolina's 25-year-old Anderson Clayton and Missouri's Jess Piper, and even political action committees, such as the Texas 134 PAC. Their efforts are aimed at more than one election. They see political races as a chance to rebuild a grassroots Democratic Party in rural America beyond 2024.

E-Jay Fyke is optimistic. He believes, "It is one hundred percent possible to overcome this. But this is done one conversation at a time." Politics is nothing more than talking to people. And an authentic groundswell of Democrats are doing just that.

Jeff Bloodworth is a professor of American political history at Gannon University. You can follow him on Twitter/X @jhueybloodworth or reach him at bloodwor003@gannon.edu