Democrats who want rural voters to switch sides need to 'show up' and fight for rural communities

Democrats need to fight harder than Republicans on
issues that impact rural Americans. (Rural Strategies photo)

Building trust with rural Americans by fighting hard for the issues rural voters care about is what Democrats need to do now, reports Mara Liasson of NPR.

While Democrats losing rural voters is not news, what Democrats should do about it is. Liasson explains, "Pollster Celinda Lake, originally from rural Montana, says she's watched as the Republican advantage with rural voters grew from a relatively narrow five-point advantage in 2000 to a whopping 25-point edge for Trump with rural voters in 2024."

Lake recently "conducted a poll of 600 likely general election voters from rural areas in battleground states," Liasson reports. "And what these voters had to say about Democrats is damning."

One polled voter said Democrats were "out of touch with middle America," according to Liasson. Another said Democrats were "lost in space. All they want to do is spend money and give stuff away."

Lake told Liasson, "The Democratic brand is in terrible shape in rural America." Lake pointed out that while most rural voters skew Republican, they are currently very dissatisfied with the economy, and that offers Democrats a window of opportunity.

"Her takeaway from the poll is that Democrats should be running to keep rural hospitals open and insulin prices down," Liasson reports. "In other words, Democrats don't have to change their positions to win rural voters. They just have to fight harder for what they already believe in."

Dee Davis, the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, the group that commissioned the poll, said that Democrats that go all in on rural issues can fight for the same concerns that more urban populations worry about. Liasson adds, "After all, college-educated urban voters also care about healthcare, gas prices and jobs. The strategy Davis thinks Democrats should adopt is not rocket science."

Davis told Liasson, "You got to show up. You got to talk to people. You might not win the first time out, but you got to be there and compete."

Disagreement, diversity and a look that 'reflects the face of America better' give the Midwest political power

Candidates from the Midwest 'often bring a kind of approachable, average-American feel to a national ticket.' (Wikipedia and Election press photo)

What makes the nation's upper Midwest different is what makes it an election-year game-changer. "While many other parts of the country have sorted into neat red and blue columns, the big upper Midwestern states continue to sit on the dividing line between the two parties," reports Gerald F. Seib of The Wall Street Journal. "The upper Midwest reflects the face of America better than any other region of the country. . . . And it is populous enough to be decisive in the Electoral College, making it political ground zero."

Midwestern balance and diversity have made some of its regions political "power brokers," Seib explains. "In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, the Midwest overall was the most evenly balanced region of the country, with the two parties essentially tied there in both the presidential race and preferences for control of Congress. . . .The region is much more complicated, demographically and economically than is often assumed."

Politicians who've found success in Midwestern elections have always had to walk a keen tightrope between urban and rural needs while facing a gamut of diversity among other constituents. "At a time when the political split between urban and rural areas has become one of the starkest in the nation, [Midwestern] leaders have to be able to bridge that difficult divide," Seib reports. Candidates who "have successfully navigated the complexity of a big Midwestern state are well prepared to do the same nationally."

On the campaign trail, a Midwestern running mate can make a presidential pairing feel more down-to-earth for voters. Seib writes, "Candidates from the Midwest often bring a kind of approachable, average-American feel to a national ticket. . . . 'They look like and sound like a lot of America,' says Democratic pollster John Anzalone. In this year’s race, that means Vance and Walz nicely offset Trump the New Yorker and Harris of San Francisco."

Metric Media 'pink slime' news sent to Ohio voters backed losing effort to make abortion-rights measure harder to pass

Front page of the Buckeye Reporter's 'inaugural print edition'
(Photo by George Shillcock via X and NiemanLab)

Ohio voters rejected the Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would have required a 60 percent vote to pass future amendments and tightened petition requirements for getting them on the ballot. The proposal, which lost by about 57 to 43 percent Tuesday, was intended make an abortion-rights measure on the November ballot more difficult to pass.

In the days before the referendum on Issue 1, many Ohio voters received a newsprint publication called the Buckeye Reporter, which until then had been a partisan information site. The print edition had a Chicago return address and was mailed from Dallas, reports Laura Hazard Owen of NiemanLab, who classifies it as "pink slime," the term for ultra-processed meat filler that has come to describe partisan information masquerading as journalism.

The county-by-county vote showed a significant rural-
urban divide. (NPR map, adapted by The Rural Blog)

The publisher, Metric Media, is a publisher that sometimes turns to print campaigns near elections, Owen reports. It is "overseen by Brian Timpone, a TV reporter turned internet entrepreneur who has sought to capitalize on the decline of local news organizations for nearly two decades," The New York Times reported three years ago. Priyanjana Bengani of Columbia Journalism Review, who has done in-depth reporting on Metric Media, "told The Associated Press that 'Metric Media has printed similar mailers ahead of other recent high-stakes elections, such as a referendum on abortion last year in Kansas'," Owen reports.

Cleveland.com described the mailer as "A motley combination of content. Most of it consists of positive articles about Issue 1 . . . while unsubtly describing the measure's opponents as communists and allies of the LGBTQ community. It also includes calendar listings of unremarkable community events," which were an apparent effort to make it look more like a local newspaper.

Perceived Washington indifference towards rural South fuels support for Trump and Sanders

Trump in Radford, Va., Monday (Roanoke
Times photo by Stephanie Klein-Davis)

Discourse in the rural South over a downturn in local economies and a perceived notion that Washington politicians don't care about the region "is driving the insurgent candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and has turned the 2016 election upside down," Mason Adams reports for Politico. "The right blames illegal immigrants, President Barack Obama and congressional leadership that hasn’t fought Obama hard enough. The left blames big banks, the rich and a Republican Congress that only obstructs."

Adams, a former reporter for The Roanoke Times, writes: "The American South is about to put its stamp on the 2016 campaign—a stamp that could all but end the presidential primary race." Voters today in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia "will decide two-thirds of the day’s vote for both Democrats and Republicans, definitively framing the campaign and perhaps ending it."

Residents in the rural South are "haunted by empty factories and warehouses that symbolize the once-dominant businesses that have long since departed for more profitable locales," Adams writes. "Economic instability has left those who haven’t fled to the metro areas feeling anxious and unrepresented. The resulting frustration has propelled politicians who have harnessed that angst into outsider campaigns by attacking those at fault." (Huffington Post map: States voting today)

"Everyone wants to overhaul, if not dismantle, political and economic systems that they see as rigged against them," Adams writes. "Around the South, longtime employers where generations of families could be assured of steady work have sloughed off jobs, shuttered their factories and shifted operations overseas. In its place is what’s known as the 'gig economy,' where workers must reinvent themselves several times within a lifetime. The chaotic—and unequal economic—transition continues to create anxiety, frustration and fear across rural communities. The anger is not just over lost jobs, but the indifference of Washington in watching them go."

Adams uses southwest Virginia as his object example. John Bassett III, subject of former Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy's book Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town, told Adams, “Politically, I don’t care whether you’re on the right over there, or if you’re on the left, all the way over to Bernie Sanders, I think you’ll find not only anger, you’ll find frustration. We have a whole segment of our population that has been forgotten. They have been left behind.” The book, based on Bassett's experiences in Galax, Va., is reportedly in production to be a mini-series on HBO produced by Tom Hanks.

Koch brothers take pro-business cause to county election in Wisconsin's iron range, get off base

Next week's County Board of Supervisors election in Iron County, Wisconsin (Wikipedia map) doesn't seem like something that would be of much interest to anyone other than the county's 6,000 residents. But the wealth of iron ore in the area has led Americans for Prosperity, a group run by billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch, to attack on seven candidates that they deem “radical anti-mining” environmentalists, Steven Verburg reports for the Wisconsin State Journal.

"At stake is a 15-member County Board that could make monetary and other demands of Gogebic Taconite, which is already deep into a sometimes combative state permitting process over its proposal for a huge iron mine that promises jobs while inspiring worries about environmental degradation," Verburg writes.

 Iron ore deposit in red; proposed mine site circled

But the attack has caused confusion, especially since the letter sent to 1,000 homes labels some candidates openly in favor of mining as "radical," Verburg writes. One said the mailer, which reads “Call these anti-mine radicals and tell them to stand up for you and your local jobs, not radical environmental policies,” listed his neighbor's phone number instead of his.

Candidate Karl Krall was labeled as "radical" in letters, but he "said he is a strong proponent of the mine, and he is puzzled and angry about being described as a job-killing radical on the material sent to his friends, neighbors and potential voters in the district where he is a candidate," Verburg writes. Krall told Verburg, “I couldn’t believe that someone who is pro-mine and for this wouldn’t do the research on the people they are sliming in the mailing. Is that the kind of people we want supporting the mine if that’s the kind sloppy research they did? Everybody in the town except me got the flyer saying I’m an anti-mine radicalist. It’s a joke." (Read more)

Female hopeful upset in Navajo presidential vote

On Monday we reported the Navajo Nation appeared poised to elect its first woman president, but New Mexico state Sen. Lynda Lovejoy couldn't ride the campaign momentum to victory in Tuesday's election. "Based on results of the Aug. 3 primary, plus the fact that she was the first woman to reach the general election for president, the buzz was all around the candidacy of Lynda Lovejoy," Bill Donovan of the Navajo Times reports. In the end, current Navajo Vice President Ben Shelly won by over 3,000 votes -- 33,692 to 30,357 -- according to unofficial election results, Donovan writes. (Times photo by Donovan Quintero: Leila Help-Tulley, Earl Tulley, John Lovejoy and Lynda Lovejoy.)

Former Arizona state Sen. Ben Henderson said "the election hinged on one issue - tradition, referring to creation stories of a time in the distant past when Navajo women went to live on the other side of a river," Donovan writes. There the women tried to make a go of it but "in the end the women had no place to go so they had to ask for help from the men," Henderson said. "At that time, the women promised that they would never try to go ahead of the men again." Henderson said that traditional view was bestowed by tribe elders on their children and grandchildren. "People are listening to the medicine men and the traditionalists," he told Donovan. (Read more)

"In the last weeks of campaigning, both Mr. Shelly and his running mate, the tribal council delegate Rex Lee Jim, were among the officials ensnared in a criminal investigation by the Navajo Department of Justice over misuse of tribal discretionary funds," Mireya Navarro of The New York Times reports. Lovejoy, who is asking for a recount, downplayed the role of gender during the campaign. "It’s not written anywhere that a woman can’t be at the helm of the nation," she told The New York Times during the campaign. "I don’t think about it myself. Gender is not an issue to me." (Read more)

Navajo Nation could elect first woman president on Tuesday

While most of the country will be focused on the balance of power in Congress resulting from Tuesday's elections, the Navajo Nation is poised to complete its own significant election. "The 300,000-member nation will hold its presidential election tomorrow in what front-runner and New Mexico state Sen. Lynda Lovejoy, right, calls a turning point for Navajo history: She has a good chance of becoming the group's first woman president," Amanda Peterka of Environment & Energy Daily reports. "And her running mate, Earl Tulley, would be one of the most outspoken environmentalists elected to the vice presidency."

"We're getting more and more excited," Lovejoy told E&E Daily. "We have a lot of support. People are just looking forward to a new leader for the Navajo Nation -- a brand new leader, new ideas, a fresh face, just a fresh government." Lovejoy, who lost in her bid for president four years ago, downplayed the role that gender has played in the campaign. "That's not really why I'm running. I happen to have the kind of leadership skills, I believe, in my abilities and in my leadership quality," she said. "I just happen to be a female." Still, Cate Stetson, a New Mexico American Indian law attorney, called Lovejoy's success stunning.

"It's a really interesting society with women having a lot of responsibility in the family and in the community, and yet, of course, there's so many of them -- the men -- well, they get like men and think that that's the way it should be because it's always been," Stetson told Peterka. Lovejoy's opponent Ben Shelly, who declined an interview request from E&E Daily, recently plead not guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy and theft after allegations he used discretionary funds to benefit his family. The Navajo Nation also faces a major change in the structure of the Navajo Tribal Council, which will drop from 88 members to 24 on Jan. 11. (Read more, subscription required)

New York Congressional race could be referendum on fracking

A Congressional race in upstate New York could end up being the first public referendum on hydraulic fracturing and shale-gas drilling. Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey "has been an outspoken critic of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale and an advocate of federal regulation of fracturing," Mike Soraghan of Environment & Energy Daily reports for The New York Times. "His opponent, Republican George Phillips, thinks state regulation is best and supports 'aggressive' development once regulators sign off." Phillips says that support is the key to his late surge in the polls.

"It's a huge factor," Phillips campaign spokesman Jazz Shaw told Soraghan. "The No. 1 issue is jobs. But this is probably the No. 2 issue." Hinchey's campaign disputes the prominence of the issue for voters but notes Phillips' support of the industry has led to crucial financial support in the final weeks before the election. "The natural gas issue is important among certain constituencies," Hinchey spokesman Mike Morosi told Soraghan. "But the natural gas industry is funding advertising against Congressman Hinchey based on his position on drilling."

The "527" group American Crossroads has injected $300,000 into the race, funding anti-Hinchey ads, Soraghan writes. "One of the major backers of the group is Texas natural gas magnate Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Chief Oil and Gas, a driller in the Marcellus Shale in neighboring Pennsylvania, where drilling is allowed." Hinchey, a senior-member of the Appropriations Committee, is a nine-term incumbent in the district that winds along the state's eastern border with Pennsylvania north to Ithaca. Hinchey has won by wide margins in the past.

Both candidates have tried to add nuance to their drilling positions. "Phillips wants to move forward 'aggressively' but only after state regulators say it is safe," Soraghan writes. "Hinchey has said he wants to 'make sure that this frack drilling does not occur in New York' but clarifies that such a moratorium could be lifted after a comprehensive study of drilling's effects on health and the environment." (Read more)

Alaska newspapers endorse incumbent Sen. Murkowski as write-in candidate

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's write-in candidacy for re-election hasn't stopped newspapers around the state from endorsing her in the upcoming election. "The Anchorage Daily News, the Juneau Empire and Alaska Newspapers Inc., which publishes six weeklies, tout Murkowski's seniority in their endorsements," of the incumbent senator, who holds a leadership position on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Katie Howell of Environment & Energy Daily reports. Murkowski lost the Republican primary in August to tea party favorite Joe Miller, but following the loss she announced a write-in bid to retain her seat, drawing criticism from Republican leadership. (Lisa Murkowski, Photo by Erik Hill/Anchorage Daily News)

"Alaskans need someone who has a grasp of the large issues that will allow the state to advance without missing the fact that we need to move forward together -- tiny villages and all," the Alaska Newspapers Inc. editorial board writes. "Murkowski's experience -- and Alaskans' experience with her leadership -- shows she's the right candidate for the job." Alaska Newspapers owns The Arctic Sounder, The Bristol Bay Times, The Cordova Times, The Dutch Harbor Fisherman, The Seward Phoenix LOG and The Tundra Drums. The Anchorage Daily News touts Murkowski's ability to work across political aisles in its endorsement, writing, "The last thing we need, as Alaskans or Americans, is more extreme partisanship in Washington, D.C."

"Current polls show her running neck and neck with Miller, while Democrat Scott McAdams trails," Howell writes. "Still, because of the complicated nature of write-in campaigns, it is difficult to know whether that support in the polls will translate into real votes on Election Day." The Daily News notes the decision to run as a write-in candidate "was not the easy choice for her," adding, "she is running where she truly lives -- near the political center -- and where she has rediscovered that most Alaskans and Americans live." (Read more, subscription required)

Murkowski's chances may hinge in part on a superior court judge's ruling, expected Wednesday, as to whether the state Division of Election can provide a list of write-in candidates to voters who request it. "The Democratic and Republican state parties argued Monday afternoon for a temporary restraining order to stop" the division of election from providing the information, Joshua Saul of the Alaska Dispatch reports. "The crux of the argument between the two sides hinges on the definition of  'information,'" Saul writes. "A Division of Election regulation states that 'Information regarding a write-in candidate may not be discussed, exhibited, or provided at the polling place.'" Margaret Paton-Walsh, the assistant attorney general representing the Division of Election said, "Alaskans who want to vote for a write-in candidate should be given all the assistance they require. The list is the most neutral way we can provide that information." (Read more)

Democrats face uphill battle in rural Midwest; voters mistakenly think stimulus did no good

Democrats are facing a tough row to hoe in the rural Midwest as the economy languishes and their party leader's approval ratings in the region drop. "According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last month 55 percent of Midwesterners disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing, six percentage points higher than the rest of the U.S.," Douglas Belkin reports for the Journal, noting more broadly, "66 percent of rural Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, five points more than U.S. voters as a whole." Rural voters have trended Republican for a decade or more.

Democratic House incumbents in the Midwest, including Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill in Indiana, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in South Dakota, Debbie Halvorson in Illinois, Leonard Boswell in Iowa, John Boccieri in Ohio and Ike Skelton in Missouri are facing the anti-Democrat fervor. Even in North Dakota, where an oil boom has kept the unemployment rate at a nation-low 3.7 percent, Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy trails Republican challenger Rick Berg by 3 points after winning by 24 in 2008.

A Pew Research Center survey finds that a smaller percentage of rural and suburban Americans than those in urban areas say they have lost ground during the recession. Despite a Congressional Budget Office study that found unemployment would have been 0.7 to 1.8 points lower without the economic stimulus package, polls show most voters don't think it did any good, and pro-Republican ads are saying likewise, so Democrats face an uphill battle defending their spending record. "I'm disgusted with the entire party," Cliff Wehrman, a 58-year-old North Dakotan who said he no longer supports Pomeroy even after voting for him in 2008, told Belkin. "Who do they think is going to pay for all this?" (Read more) FactCheck.org analyzes the impact of the stimulus.

Coal could be deciding factor in U.S. Senate race in Kentucky

It's no secret that coal is playing a large role in political campaigns across central Appalachia, and in Kentucky the issue may end up deciding whether Democrat Jack Conway or Republican Rand Paul wins the state's contested U.S. Senate seat. "In Western Kentucky, one concern is that cap and trade would cause higher rates for electricity produced by burning coal, hurting two large aluminum smelters that employ 1,500 people and support thousands more jobs," Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. "In Eastern Kentucky, where coal is an economic linchpin, companies and many miners fear tougher environmental regulation will cripple surface mining."

Bell County Judge-Executive Albey Brock predicts coal will be the deciding factor in who wins the eastern counties. "On Election Day, when they go vote, how (Conway and Paul) stand on coal is how these counties are going to go," Brock, a Republican, told Estep. Among the issues is the candidates' stance on cap-and-trade, which both say they oppose. Paul rejected cap-and-trade early on, and claims Conway originally supported the proposal before changing his mind, which the Conway campaign denies.

"When asked whether Congress should do anything to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, Conway said the government needs to invest in technology that would allow coal to be burned more cleanly," Estep writes. "Paul said any discussion of whether the government should move to limit emissions should acknowledge that the nation’s skies already are much cleaner than 30 years ago." Conway told Estep he believed the science behind global warming was "fairly well established on that." Paul was less clear in his opinions on climate change, saying "I think anyone who makes an absolute conclusion is probably overstating their conclusion."

Paul's general platform of reducing government's role on many fronts includes a lessened role for the Environmental Protection Agency. Conway told Estep water-quality standards must be met and that the EPA has a role in policing coal, but the agency doesn’t need to "come in and legislate." Paul also said earlier reports that he was against any federal oversight of mine safety were wrong, but he generally favored local control over federal. (Read more)

Former Georgia governor looks to reverse 2002 mistake by focusing campaign on rural areas

The Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia is more or less abandoning metropolitan Atlanta to focus his campaign on rural areas. Former Gov. Roy Barnes, left, "has bet his campaign on rural Georgia — the one that turned its back on him in 2002 for his removal of the Confederate battle emblem from its place on the state flag," Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. That year, Barnes rarely campaigned outside the metro area and lost the governor's seat to Republican Sonny Perdue, who focused his campaign on 70 rural counties that had voted for Barnes. (AJC photo by Rich Addicks)

Barnes campaign manager Chris Carpenter acknowledged the similarities between Barnes' current campaign and that of Perdue, who is term-limited this time. "Roy Barnes told me about six months ago that if he wins this election he’ll have to win it south of Macon," Bobby Rowan, a former state senator and former member of the Public Service Commission, told Galloway. Rowan, who lives in Enigma, population about 870, said those who think the Republican have a stranglehold on rural Georgia are incorrect. "We frankly don’t care anymore," he told Galloway. "Partisan politics has passed us. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Roy Barnes could roll up a 60 to 70 percent win in our county."

"Margins of that size, reached in multiple rural counties, could offset balloting from the Republican-dominated counties of metro Atlanta," Galloway writes. "A heavy turnout for Barnes in rural Georgia would essentially crack the super-majority of white voters required for statewide GOP victories." Rowan says the economy has labeled the playing field for Barnes after the 2002 flag controversy. "This whole election, it ain’t about a $3 tag, it ain’t about a chicken in every pot," he told Galloway. "It’s about a job for every man that’ll work. That’s the issue." Former Secretary of State Karen Handel and former Congressman Nathan Deal are in a runoff election for the Republican nomination.

Galloway writes that Barnes will be so focused on campaigning in rural precincts that he won't even return to Atlanta for an August visit from President Obama. "Sounds like a convenient excuse or a strategy -- avoiding association with a president who is unpopular with white voters in the state," says Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Commuinity Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog. (Read more)

Christian Science Monitor's online 'Patchwork Nation' redraws campaign map

Since the 2000 presidential election, red-and-blue colored campaign maps have become a fixture of television and newspaper coverage. The Christian Science Monitor has created a unique online campaign map by adding a lot more color-coded categories and offering more nuanced information than simple party affiliation or recent polling trends. "Instead, the online feature divides the entire nation up by counties, offering descriptions of each as a 'community' based on income, economy, population, race, religion and some past voting trends," reports Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher. "The site then monitors which counties the top three candidates are visiting and offers data on which kinds of communities they are targeting."

Patchwork Nation is funded by a $250,000 grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and as part of that grant, the feature's information is available free to any news outlet. "You can take it and apply it to your state, your metro area and even your county," Dante Chinni, a former Project for Excellence in Journalism staffer who is running the Web map, told Strupp. "We hope this lets journalists in general use this data and lets the citizens on the street know more about it, too." (Read more)

The name comes from the title of a book by scholars James Gimpel and Jason Schknecht on the connections between geography and voting choices, reports Jennifer P. Brown of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville, one of the communities highlighted by the Monitor. Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor, provided much of the data used by the online feature. (Read more)

Here are the 11 categories and their representative communities, as well as some links to local newspapers in the smaller ones:

• Boom Towns: Eagle, Colo. (pop. 49,500)
  
• Eagle Valley Enterprise, a 3,400-circulation weekly
  
• Campus and Careers: Ann Arbor, Mich. (pop. 346,550)
  
• Emptying Nests: Clermont, Fla. (pop. 291,197)
  
• Evangelical Epicenters: Nixa, Mo. (pop. 70,823)
• Nixa News Enterprise, a 2,463-circulation weekly
  
• Immigration Nation: El Mirage, Ariz. (pop. 3,721,082)
  
• Industrial Metropolis: Philadelphia, Penn. (pop. 1,455,065)
  
• Military Bastions: Hopkinsville, Ky. (pop. 69,533)
• Kentucky New Era, a 10,300-circulation daily
  
• Minority Central: Baton Rouge, La. (pop. 410,665)
  
• Monied 'Burbs: Los Alamos, N.M. (pop. 18,783)
• Los Alamos Monitor, a 5,040-circulation daily
  
• Service Worker Centers: Lincoln City, Ore. (pop. 46,591)
• The New Guard, a 5,000-circulation weekly
  
• Tractor Country: Sioux Center, Iowa (pop. 32,317)
• Sioux Center News, a 2,000-circulation weekly (not online)

The site is useful, especially its tracker of candidate appearances and the varying speeches they give based on audience. And since it's meant to be used by all news outlets, by all means take a look. The Web site is www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation.

Ohio governor: Rural Appalachian voters could determine winner of state's Democratic primary

Rural residents in the hills of Appalachian Ohio have the same concerns as the rest of their mountain neighbors to the southeast — high unemployment, poverty, and the feeling that they often are forgotten by the urban parts of their state. Because of next week's Democratic presidential primary in Ohio, however, the region is getting attention, reports The Associated Press. (AP photo shows residents of Peebles, Ohio, discussing the election.) Former president Bill Clinton planned to spend today campaigning in the area for his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, while Sen. Barack Obama was sending his surrogates to campaign for him -- including David Wilhelm, an Appalachian Ohio native who managed Clinton's 1992 primary campaign.

"Although the region traditionally leans Republican, Democrats have made inroads in recent elections, giving the party hope that it can continue to pick up votes outside of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and other urban areas," AP reports. "Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who grew up grew in the Appalachian region, said voters there may determine the outcome of the state's Democratic primary."

Strickland, who supports Clinton, told AP her stances on health care and other working-class issues will help her win votes, as will her past work with the region. In recent weeks, Obama has shown he can draw support from the demographics of regions such as this one. "In the Wisconsin primary last week, exit polls showed Obama running evenly with Clinton among lower-income, lower-education whites and drawing heavy support from white men without college degrees," AP notes. (Read more)

Bill Clinton "started today's swing through the southern part of state in Chillicothe, where he told a rally at a branch campus of Ohio University that his wife is the only candidate who has policies to help working class families," reports AP's Matt Leingag. Clinton also spoke at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, on the Ohio-Kentucky border), and had stops planned for Athens and Lancaster.

"A Quinnipiac University poll showed Clinton with an 11 percentage point lead, down from 21 points in a poll released a week and a half ago," Leingag writes. "An Ohio Poll had Clinton leading 47-39, with an 18-percentage-point lead among women accounting for most of the difference." (Read more)

Wilhelm gave his first speech supporting Obama during an organizational campaign meeting in his hometown of Athens, reports reports Caitlin Zachry of The Post, the student newspaper of Ohio University. “I’m impressed by Barack Obama because of his rural development strategy,” he said at last week's meeting. “He has presented a philosophy that fits Southeast Ohio.” (Read more)

Bill Clinton was scheduled to appear at 2:45 p.m. at the Athens Community Centers, reports The Athens Messenger. "It's exciting," Susan Gwinn, chairwoman of the Athens County Democratic Party, told The Messenger. "I am glad we are getting so much attention. It shows the importance of Athens County to the Democratic Party." (Read more)

Last week, the paper's managing editor, Monica Nieporte wrote: "For all their 'I feel your pain' speeches, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama really has any idea what the pain of the middle class or lower-income class feels like. Perhaps one day in the distant past they did, but certainly not now. Most of the people who rise to this level of success in our country leave behind the working class that they love to champion in their rhetoric." (Read more)

Rural voters are pivotal but feel 'invisible' politically, Denver Post reports

The last four presidential elections have hinged, in part, on rural voters, but those rural residents continue to feel lost on the political landscape, reports Karen E. Crummy of The Denver Post.

Voting patterns from the past few decades of presidential elections show that the way rural voters divide along party lines can predict the overall vote.When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and 1996, he grabbed almost 50 percent of rural votes, and George W. Bush took more than 60 percent in his 2000 and 2004 electoral victories.
"It shows that to win as a Republican, you need the lion's share of rural votes. For Democrats to win, you have to neutralize those voters," said Seth McKee, a University of South Florida professor who analyzed rural voters in presidential elections from 1992 to 2004.

Crummy writes, "Rural America remains conservative, with social issues in the forefront, but these voters are also consumed by economic concerns and the lack of job opportunities." She quotes Bess Isaacs, the 82-year-old owner of R.W. Isaacs Hardware in Torrington, Wyo.: "I've never voted a straight ballot. It doesn't take brains to vote across the board. . . . Right now I'm not impressed by either side."

Rich Campbell, a doctor in Torrington, told the Post, "You ask most of rural America, and they will say neither party has a vision or game plan for us. There is no respect for agriculture. No planning for our infrastructure. No understanding of the long distances people have to go to access medical care." (Read more)

Despite being an attractive bloc of swing voters, rural residents are overlooked often as a matter of logistics, Crummy reports. Rural voters are tougher to visit because they are scattered, and they account for about 5 percent of the donations to presidential candidates, according to a June 17 story in the Daily Yonder.

Rural giving to presidential candidates scarce, but mostly Democratic

Only five percent of contributions presidential candidates got in the first quarter of the year came from people who listed addresses in counties outside metropolitan areas, but "surprisingly, most of those donations have gone to Democrats," reports the Daily Yonder, a new rural news site with a political bent.

In the first quarter, 17 candidates raised $114.3 million. "Of this sum, only $6 million came from people living in rural communities," write geographer Tim Murphy and Daily Yonder co-editor Bill Bishop. "Democratic candidates took in 55 percent of the $6 million raised from rural residents in the first quarter of 2007; 45 percent of the total went to Republicans. The Democrats' lead in rural fundraising is the mirror opposite of the presidential vote outcomes of 2000 and in 2004; in both elections, Republican George W. Bush won nearly 60 percent of the rural vote, support that was crucial to his victory."

The leading rural money-raisers were former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, followed by former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Democrats. "Romney, who headed the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, raised just over $214,000 in the first reporting period of 2007 from Summit County, where many of the athletic events took place," the Daily Yonder reports. Romney's total rural cash in the quarter was just under $1.15 million, 5.47 percent of his $20.98 million total.

Edwards' figure was $1.07 million, 7.61 percent of his total. Richardsdon's $895,699 was 14.3 percent of his $6.246 million total. Richardson got "hefty contributions in the southeastern counties of his home state. Members of the oil and gas business have been active in raising money for Richardson in the area around Hobbs, Roswell and Carlsbad, according to New Mexico press reports." Richardson recently resigned from the board of Valero Energy, the nation's leading refiner.

The Daily Yonder says it will report the states and rural counties that gave the most to presidential candidates later this week. Fund-raising reports for the second quarter are due in mid-July, though most campaigns will give their total fund-raising numbers on or soon after July 1. (Read more)