As Biden picks people for rural policy positions, some say he needs an overseer for rural issues, and for good politics

The Biden administration "is facing growing pressure to appoint a rural envoy within the White House to oversee a national strategy to uplift rural communities facing severe health and economic challenges," Liz Crampton reports for Politico. "Members of Congress and advocates are making the case that the problems plaguing rural regions exacerbated by the pandemic run so deep that a coordinated federal response is critical."

The center of attention for the moment is the Department of Agriculture, where longtime Biden friend Tom Vilsack will return as secretary, the job he held for eight years under Barack Obama. Vilsack gave his first interview as secretary-designee to Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times in his home state of Iowa, and listed eight areas "that need significant work or even historic work: Covid-19 relief, equity and inclusion, climate and regenerative agriculture, rural economic development, nutrition security and assistance, open and competitive market, USDA employee morale, and Forest Service management in an era of climate-driven wildfires."

Justin Maxson

The administration has already signaled that the Rural Development branch of USDA will be run differently, by picking to run it Justin Maxson, who has been executive director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., and before that head of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (now the Mountain Association) in Berea. Ky. Under Maxson, the Babcock foundation ran a large rural grant program for Vilsack late in the Obama administration.

"The Rural Development branch of USDA has long been neglected by both Republican and Democratic administrations, as it’s been consistently underfunded and understaffed," Crampton writes.

Perhaps even more important appointments are Katharine Ferguson as Vilsack's chief of staff and Stefanie Feldman as a senior adviser to Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Ferguson is associate director of the Aspen Institute's Community Strategies Group and director of the Council of State Governments' Regional and Rural Development Initiatives, and Feldman was policy director for Biden's campaign, deputy director of domestic and economic policy for him as vice president, and is a board member of the Center for Rural Strategies, where she was a college intern. She is a native of Georgia.

Democrats see rural action as essential for both policy and politics. “There has got to be definitive investments that are innovative or this administration will have no future in a rural vote,” said Charles Fluharty, founder of the Rural Policy Research Institute, which studies demographic trends and policy impacts on rural communities.

“I certainly think there has to be a big emphasis on developing rural America,” former Kentucky governor Steve Beshear told Crampton. “It has to come from the White House.” He added, “It is past time that the rural areas of this country be targeted for not only economic development, but for health care, for broadband access, for all of the things that will lift this whole country up.”

Crampton writes, "Democratic lawmakers say that embarking on a rural strategy is an immediate way for President Joe Biden to draw a contrast with former President Donald Trump, whose leadership they argue failed rural Americans, most clearly with the pandemic that has disproportionately impacted rural areas. Biden's platform lays out many ambitious goals for rural regions, such as having the agriculture industry play a key part in fighting climate change, which his advisers believe translates into paying farmers for improving the environment as well as generating more "green" jobs.

Rural journalist thanks urban member of Congress for helping save his newspaper and caring about rural America

Rep. Ro Khanna

A member of Congress from the San Francisco area, who identifies as a "progressive capitalist," has a message and a helping hand for rural America and its newspapers.

The story of Rep. Ro Khanna and rural Iowa was told in a story by Doug Burns of the Carroll Times Herald in the Iowa Newspaper Association Bulletin in May. Burns says it's still up to date.

Burns reports he and Khanna met in December 2018, at a gathering to recognize Accenture’s development of a software-development branch in Jefferson, the seat of Greene County: "Khanna knows many rural Americans, sweeps of folks in the countryside of Iowa, are angry over real and perceived losses to their ways of life. Recent elections, as Khanna is well aware, have seen that discontent manifest in anti-immigrant language or votes and vitriol hurled against political figures tied to the urban elite. Should rural Iowans feel this angry, is it earned and real, and if so, where should it be directed?"

Khanna told Burns, “Well, they should feel angry because the governing elite of this country have let them down. We have had a digital revolution that began in the 1990s and accelerated now. You have had concentration of economic success in places like my district, Silicon Valley, or Boston or Austin, and you have had a large part of the country left out. And their talent has been left out.”

Burns quotes Khanna from a Vanity Fair magazine story in February: “Donald Trump’s whole message is ‘I’m going to bring your jobs back. I’m going to bring your pay back. I’m going to bring your dignity back. You’ve been left out.’ . . . Our message has to be that we are going to bring more jobs, more possibilities, more opportunity to communities left out than they’ve ever had before. No person should be forced to leave their hometown to get a good-paying job. A community’s biggest export shouldn’t be their kids. So we’re going to rebuild and revitalize these communities to bring them the opportunities of the technology revolution. And people get that. They intuitively get that the economy is changing; they intuitively get that just bashing up on China or bashing up on immigrants isn’t going to ultimately provide more economic opportunity for their kids.”

Douglas Burns

Then Burns quotes himself in the story by Abigail Tracy: “The future of the country is riding on this, [not] rural America and urban America preaching back and forth at each other about whether you should use gendered pronouns or how many guns you should be able to own. Those are arguments that are going to continue to divide. What we’re doing is literally potentially preventing a civil war, because this wealth inequality just can’t stand and it just won’t stay up. We can’t have only a select number of winners in a select number of places where people are just sort of succeeding by geographic accident like that. That’s just not going to hold the country together. This isn’t a charitable arm of big tech. This makes sense for big tech, too, because there’s a lot of talent here.”

After their meeting, "Khanna visited Carroll twice, and he connected our newspaper with Silicon Valley innovators," Burns reports. "Khanna inspired us to launch a digital marketing company, Mercury Boost, to capture revenue beyond our web and print ads. He put us, and our friends at the neighboring, Denison-based Spanish-language La Prensa, in the room with key people from tech companies — most notably the Facebook Journalism Project. . . . Combined, the Carroll Times Herald and La Prensa received a $75,000 grant to pursue more digital subscriptions and to construct the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, a non-profit organization involving Carroll, Jefferson, Denison, Storm Lake and Harlan. . . . Facebook awarded the Times Herald and La Prensa an additional $85,000 in grant money to keep our newspapers alive and churning out vital public-health stories during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s a $160,000 lift from Facebook to La Prensa and The Times Herald, with $35,000 for La Prensa and the remaining funds being used to boost Carroll digital subscriptions and create the non-profit organization that will support multiple western Iowa newspapers."

Burns concludes, "Our newspapers were only in the room with the Facebook opportunity because Congressman Ro Khanna made me believe rural Iowa belonged there, right along with brand-name urban communications giants. He’s bringing this same rural-in-the-rooms-where-it-happens advocacy to other industries, from tech to biomanufacturing. It’s often said in the halls of Capitol Hill that there are Washington friends, and there are friends. Ro Khanna is both to this newspaper. Our newspaper is alive to cover Ro’s fight for rural America, and indeed America itself, and for that, we are both humbled and inspired."