California House is managed by its first rural speaker in decades, who faces big tests in holding Democrats together

California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas visits Paicines, a farmworker community where he lived as a child.
(Photo by Jason Armond, Los Angeles Times)

California has a vast rural landscape and is the nation's leading producer of agricultural products, but is one of the least rural states in population. Now the leadership of its main legislative chamber, where the membership is determined by population, is rural.

"Robert Rivas, the first Assembly speaker in decades from a rural area, aims to unite a party long dominated by big-city liberals" and "hopes small-town charm wields big political power," say the hedlines above a Los Angeles Times profile of Rivas by Laurel Rosenhall.

She writes, "Rivas is from San Benito County, a land of "golden hills, cow pastures and rows of grapevines [where] a sign inside the roadside Paicines General Store makes the point clear: 'Welcome to the country.' . . . Rivas grew up in farmworker housing on the fields east of the store. On Fridays, he recalls his grandfather driving the boys up the road to join the picket lines outside a supermarket during the United Farm Workers grape boycott. Rivas and his family still live nearby in suburban Hollister, where shopping centers crawl with a mix of gleaming sport utility vehicles and mud-spattered pickups."

To the west is Monterey, home of Leon Panetta, ex-secretary of defense, CIA director, White House chief of staff and congressman, who has long known Rivas and told Rosenhall, “For too long, it’s been basically Los Angeles and San Francisco that have determined political leadership. It’s really important for him to bring that [rural] perspective to Sacramento, which too often basically listens to the loudest voices, and not always the most important needs.”

San Benito County (Wikipedia map)

San Benito County has "a quirky reputation as the state's political bellwether," and Rivas ousted the previous speaker, Anthony Rendon of L.A. County, "by pulling together a coalition of Democrats who hail from districts both north and south, urban and rural, coastal and inland," Rosenhall reports. "His supporters included some of the Legislature’s most ardent progressives, as well as some of its most conservative Democrats." That reflects his support of liberal measures like a local ban on hydraulic fracturing as a county suprevisor, and his early support from "more moderate, business-aligned Democrats" and his brother's lobbying and "donor network largely made up of Silicon Valley venture capitalists that seeks to counter the sway that public employee unions have in California politics. . . . So far, Rivas has managed to navigate California’s varied political universes largely by playing nice. He emphasizes his role as a listener more than a speaker. He’s been cautious about laying out a political agenda. In a Capitol full of swagger, Rivas’ vibe is decidedly aw-shucks. . . . But as the Legislature heads into the chaotic final stretch of the 2023 session that ends Thursday, Rivas will be put to the test. Lawmakers must decide the fate of numerous controversial proposals" in a Legislature controlled by Democrats but riven by factions, Rosenhall notes. "Rivas used his small-town charm to build power. But will he be effective in steering a caucus dominated by big-city liberals?"

Rural regions will gain influence on Oregon's wildlife panel

These water-panel regions will be the basis for appointments.

In Oregon, a state with a strong rural-urban divide, rural areas will get a larger voice in wildlife policy now that members of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission will be appointed from watershed areas, not one each from congressional districts and the regions east and west of the Cascade Mountains, the state's main politcal divide.

Northwest Oregon, the state's main urbanized area, will still have control of the commission but won't be so dominant, reports Mateusz Perkowski of Capital Press: "Members will be chosen from among five river basins," but two basins "that include the populous Willamette Valley will each get two representatives, while the remaining three basins will each get one representative."

Oregon's six congressional districts

The much-amended bill passed the House unanimously and the Senate 23-2. "Tribes, farmers, ranchers and hunters claimed urban representatives disproportionately steer fish and wildlife policies, which should instead take into account expertise from across the state’s varied geography," Perkowski reports. The river basins will be those defined by the law for the state Water Resources Commission.

Lauren Poor, the Oregon Farm Bureau’s vice president of government and legal affairs, told Perkowski, “Consideration of how wildlife policies affect rural communities is something we feel has been lacking under the current commission structure.” If so, that won't change right away, since current commission members will be allowed to serve out their terms. But "giving southern and eastern Oregon greater influence on decisions, such as the looming update of the state’s wolf management plan . . . is a step in the right direction, she said."

Why U.S. rural policy matters: An essayist's response to readers, and thoughts on 'rural rage' and anti-rural rage

By Anthony F. Pipa
Brookings Institution

On Dec. 27, 2022, the New York Times published an essay I wrote calling for a renaissance in federal rural policy. My motivation for writing the article was borne from a frustration of the media’s obsession with rural politics—that is, who in rural America is voting for whom, and why—with little regard or attention to rural policy, or how federal, state, and local governments could do things differently to help rural places to thrive.

Federal policy has historically played an important role in helping rural places contribute to American economic and social life, but it is no longer fit for purpose. This is leaving rural places starved for investment as they navigate 21st century shifts in the economy and seek to become more vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable. The essay included a call for a national rural policy to help “put local assets to creative use, unleash entrepreneurial activity, share the benefits widely and retain the value locally.”

Tony Pipa

It resulted in almost 1,700 comments from readers and a flood of reactions in my inbox. “Don’t read the comments,” counseled colleagues, warning against the rabbit hole of negativity. Yet many comments surfaced thoughtful questions and gaps, and in the spirit of advancing a policy discourse, I offer responses to several of the themes that emerged:

1. “Ask rural places what they want.”

Some commenters read my call for a more active and effective federal role as a recommendation to overtake and usurp local agency and authority. To the contrary: Sustainable development frameworks are most successful when local people design, direct, own, and execute the solutions to the problems they are facing.

So I wholeheartedly agree with asking rural people, and ensuring that the federal government invests much more directly in local leaders and their innovation. But the federal government should also provide incentives or boundaries to ensure maximum public benefit in line with national policy priorities. This might mean incentivizing cleaner energy sources or ensuring that minority populations who have been politically marginalized in the past are included in the design or decision making of new development efforts, so the benefits are widely shared.

2. “What about the role of state and local governments?”

Several commenters rightly surfaced questions about the importance of state and local governments to the well-being of rural communities. State governments set the parameters of their local jurisdictions’ taxing and legal authorities, provide revenue, and are often the decision makers on how federal funds are spent. For example, about 45 percent of the resources in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will be decided by state and local governments.

States are increasingly limiting the flexibility of local jurisdictions and sharing less of their resources, moves generally attributed to political differences between state leaders and large metros. Yet such shifts can have negative consequences for local rural governments, as evidenced by the impact of the tax cuts enacted in Kansas. Some rural leaders are recognizing that state policies driven primarily by culture wars could have negative consequences for their communities. The impact on local rural governments of state policy changes driven by tensions with metropolitan governments is an area ripe for further research.

In general, the capacity of local rural governments is significantly constrained, especially compared to their suburban and urban counterparts. In a recent survey of rural county officials, fifty-two percent reported that their governments experience “moderate” or “significant” levels of fiscal stress. Rural governments are often led by volunteer, part-time elected officials and thinly staffed town halls, struggling to provide basic services and possessing limited ability to respond to major economic or social shocks. For more rural places to succeed, we must strengthen the ability of local governments to govern.

3. “Big business is killing rural.”

Readers pointed to the impact of big-box chains and national franchises on locally owned businesses. Yet national retail and restaurant chains are simply emblematic of larger trends toward financialization and corporate consolidation that have challenged many local institutions that traditionally create a sense of security and self-sufficiency.

Sixty-eight percent of counties without a daily or weekly newspaper are non-metro. Forty percent of rural counties lost bank branches between 2012-2017, and 190 rural hospitals have closed or converted since 2005. Local leaders in rural communities now try to attract stores such as Walmart and Dollar General, not only to improve access to groceries, but because it provides jobs and a signal to the market that their community is worthy of investment.

4. “It’s not just rural: What about other places that are lagging?”

Many small and mid-sized cities in former industrial centers are also facing challenges, leading some to suggest less focus on rural and more on lagging places overall. Indeed, the future of many rural places will be linked to their nearest metros. But rural places are often minimized in regional efforts, resulting in distrust and approaches that fail to meet their unique challenges related to governance, distance, workforce, and access to capital. Perhaps a national rural strategy would ultimately be a subset of a national economic strategy—but leveling the playing field depends upon articulating one.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the comments expressed negative views dismissive of rural America, with many opposed to any targeted policy.

One set asked “Why should we care about those people and places?” This ignores the important inter-dependencies between non-metros and the rest of the country. As the country seeks to address climate change, for example, and shift to a clean energy economy, rural places will be where the solar and wind farms are sited, the minerals for batteries are mined and the batteries themselves produced, and where agricultural practices evolve to reduce methane gases.

Indeed, rural places are implicated in many dimensions of the 21st-century economy, from data processing to fabrication plants to cryptocurrency mining to online retail distribution. How these economies evolve, who benefits, and how well communities manage them—these are clear and present policy issues that are receiving little attention, leaving rural places to their own devices and offering few guardrails to prevent a modern version of the extractive arrangements prevalent throughout history.

Even more heated were the comments suggesting “it’s their own fault:” i.e., that rural people are getting what they deserve, their votes the primary cause of what they are experiencing. This has odd echoes of the arguments wielded against single mothers during welfare reform debates—ascribing all bad outcomes to bad choices—an argument that was dehumanizing then, and is dehumanizing now.

Several weeks after my essay, the Times published an editorial by Paul Krugman asking what could assuage “rural rage”? While the essay made a tentative foray into exploring the implications of, and offering support for, newly enacted policy, the image that rural residents go through their daily lives filled with fury left even local Democratic leaders in so-called Trump country shaking their heads. Such a broad brush conveniently thwarts consideration that policy decisions associated with trade agreements, the movement of capital, enforcement of anti-trust legislation, and regulation of transportation may have played major roles in abetting the challenges rural places now face -- p olicy decisions, I might add, that many rural people didn’t control or necessarily vote for.

Getting past the “anti-rural rage” and the vitriol reflected in the reactions to my essay will be as important as addressing whatever resentment rural people are harboring. When I listen to the stories of real people in rural places working to provide the best for their families and communities, I find commonalities that cut across the divisions defined and deepened by the obsession with rural politics. So my final response to readers is where I began: We urgently need a constructive bipartisan dialogue to consider policy solutions that can enable thriving, sustainable economic and social structures and create opportunity in all sizes of places across America—and specifically rural ones.

July 4 reflections: If our national divisions run along rural-urban lines, rural news media should pay attention to that

By Al Cross, director and professor
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Economist and liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, in his effort to figure out what made the Republican Party "so extreme" (and he notes that mainstream analysts called it an "outlier" 10 years ago), writes that he looked for "cases in which right-wing extremism rose even in the face of peace and prosperity, and I think I’ve found one: the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s."

July 4 in Boone, N.C. (High Country Press photo)

That Klan was actually a revised iteration of the first Klan, the terrorist group in the Reconstruction South. The reprise was "a white nationalist movement, to be sure, but far more widely accepted and less of a pure terrorist organization [at least in the North]. And it reached the height of its power — it effectively controlled several states — amid peace and an economic boom," Krugman writes. He cites Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the K.K.K.: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, which he says "portrays a 'politics of resentment' driven by the backlash of white, rural and small-town Americans against a changing nation. The K.K.K. hated immigrants and 'urban elites'; it was characterized by 'suspicion of science' and 'a larger anti-intellectualism.' Sound familiar? OK, the modern G.O.P. isn’t as bad as the second K.K.K. But Republican extremism clearly draws much of its energy from the same sources. And because G.O.P. extremism is fed by resentment against the very things that, as I see it, truly make America great — our diversity, our tolerance for difference — it cannot be appeased or compromised with. It can only be defeated."

Historical analogies can be useful, as George Santanaya reminded us by saying "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Immigration is again a big issue, but the last century has seen many changes. Skeptics of science are driven not so much by religion (we are approaching the 100th anniversary of the John Scopes trial) as by political motive, a sad legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rural America is now a very small piece of the U.S. population, though it still enjoys over-representation in the Senate and to a lesser degree in the Electoral College. But the biggest change in politics has been that the sharpest lines drawn not by economic concerns but by issues of personal belief and conscience, such as abortion and gender identity, on which there is little room for compromise. The 1973 Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade compromise lasted almost 50 years, but has been abolished by today's court, which a key expert says is the most conservative since 1931.

More broadly, changes in the media landscape have poisoned our politics. The advent of television brought us the widespread use of political money and the cheapening of political debate. The rise of cable TV brought us audience-hungry news channels that are more likely to give viewers what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear. Such misinformation grew exponentially with social media, which have delivered a wave of nationally oriented news and opinion and reduced the time and attention that Americans give to local issues. Those platforms and the internet have destroyed the advertising-based business model for newspapers, the main finders of fact in our society. And as local politics has become nationalized, small-town newspapers have grown even more wary of alienating readers and advertisers by weighing in on national issues.

But if the deepest fault line in our politics runs along the rural-urban divide, such reluctance by small-town newspapers is a disservice to their communities, their states and the nation. Publishers and news staffers who are fully engaged with their communities, and provide reliable news coverage, have the level of trust and respect to cover and comment on divisive issues. And such coverage and commentary can create bridges that make the issues less divisive. In small places where we know each other and want to get along may lie the beginnings of bigger bridges that could heal the nation.

Four-part webinar series on rural-urban divide starts tonight

A free, four-part webinar series about the rural-urban divide kicks off tonight from 7 to 8 p.m. ET. Register here. From the description: 

The rural-urban divide is deep, it’s widespread, and it’s getting worse. Liberal people from cities and suburbs think most rural folks are ignorant, racist, stuck in the past, their communities heading towards oblivion. Many in the countryside view urban people, academics, and the government as elitist, contemptuous of rural ways, and dismissive of the people living there. While race and racial resentment play major roles in this polarization, the divide between urban and rural is perhaps the most poorly understood component of our divisions. And it’s killing us, enabling the richest people and biggest corporations to dominate our democracy while the great majority of us fight amongst ourselves. How did we get here, and how do we begin to overcome the divide? More to the point, what role has those who espouse a fair and just world played in exacerbating the divide, and what must we do differently?

Future Generations University, LiKEN Knowledge, and Appalachian Voices are hosting the webinar series and say they'll discuss:

• Six underlying causes of the divide and how they reinforce each other
• How the neglect of rural development has enabled the divide and how effective, bottom-up rural development strategies can help reverse it
• Better, more accurate ways of understanding rural perspectives on regulations, the environment, and the role of government
• Much better ways to talk about and talk to rural communities
• Other tools and strategies for overcoming the divide

University, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce sponsoring series of discussions to bridge state's rural-urban divide

The political divide between rural Republicans and urban Democrats is seen in many states. In Kentucky, the last three legislative elections have relegated Democratic legislators to almost entirely urban enclaves and made them a largely inconsequential minority. But Republicans represent several urban areas, and there are still substantial numbers of Democratic voters in rural areas.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and the public-policy school at the University of Kentucky say they will try to "find new ways to bridge Kentucky’s urban-rural divide" with a series of webinars called the Kentucky Public Policy Roundtable Series.

The first one will be a panel discussion about the health disparities between rural and urban Kentucky, and differences in health-care access and delivery, at noon ET June 8. Future programs will address the rural-urban divides in education (July 15) and economic development (Aug. 10).

“We are very excited to partner with the Chamber on this important initiative,” said Ron Zimmer, director of the university's Martin School of Public Policy & Administration. “We have an outstanding faculty and a network of distinguished alumni across the state and nation with expertise in important public policy areas affecting urban and rural issues.”

Kate Shanks, vice president of public affairs at the Chamber, said “We look forward to not only engaging in these roundtable discussions but also serving as a resource for policy-makers and other interested parties. Our goal is that these sessions will lead to better understanding of these important issues and help develop Kentucky-specific solutions.”

Panelists for the first event will be:

• Mark Birdwhistell, UK Health Care chief of staff and vice president for health services administration
• Larry Gray, president of Baptist Health Louisville and former president of Baptist Health Corbin
• State Sen. Ralph Alvarado of Winchester, chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and a physician
• State Rep. Kim Moser of Taylor Mill, chair of the House Health and Family Services Committee and a former nurse

Both legislators are Republicans. Chamber Senior Policy Analyst Charles Aull will moderate the discussion. He said it will include the opportunity for questions from participants. The webinar is free; to register, click here.

Springsteen's ad for Jeep from the center of the contiguous states was no masterpiece, but didn't deserve urban insult

A marker for the nearby geographic center of the 48 contiguous states (Photo from Google Maps)

By Al Cross

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

As the not-so-Super Bowl was winding down, one of the two-minute commercial breaks was occupied by one ad, by a superstar who had never done one before: Bruce Springsteen. The musician from the country's most urbanized area went to a very rural place, the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states, to make a pitch for Jeep, and for healing the country.

Google map, adapted

Just northwest of Lebanon, Kansas, population 218, stands a monument marking the center (which is on a nearby farm). On the same plot of ground is a tiny chapel that, inside and out, is the centerpiece of the ad, now on Jeep's website. 

"All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle," Springsteen says. "It's no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear. Now, fear has never been the best of who we are, and as for freedom, it's not the property of just the fortunate few, it belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, it's what connects us, and we need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground, so we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop through the desert, and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there's hope on the road up ahead." The ad ended with a dedication: "To the ReUnited States of America."

Chris Richards, The Washington Post's pop music critic, was not impressed. "Springsteen was famous for refusing to cave to advertisers across his 48-year career, but now here he is on our Super Bowl screens, squinting into the middle distance like a parody of himself," Richards wrote after seeing a preview. "Despite the healing sound of his voice, Springsteen is ultimately preaching reconciliation without reckoning — which after January’s Capitol siege is no longer an acceptable path toward progress. Plus, this is Bruce Springsteen. Isn’t he the guy who’s supposed to know everything about hard work? Suggesting that we should all swiftly and metaphorically travel to the nucleus of White, rural America to make up and move along feels insulting and wrong."

It's Richards who is insulting and wrong. Hard work and rural America go hand in glove, and while Jeep's message is heavy on clichés and light on memorable points, we don't need liberal urbanites (Richards also slammed fossil fuels, though Jeep is developing electrics) discouraging multi-million-dollar messages that are aimed at helping people in our country find common ground – especially those from an urban Democrat reaching out to increasingly Republican rural America.

"Springsteen is a Democratic Party donor and was a sharp critic of former President Donald Trump," CNN reports. "He voted for President Joe Biden and performed "Land of Hope and Dreams" at his inauguration last month."

In The New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich has a better take: "Whether or not the Jeep commercial inflates your sense of national unity will likely have something to do with whether or not you’ve fully metabolized that [Jan. 6] event and have somehow—bless you—already arrived at a place of magnanimity and healing. There is, at least, something exquisitely and singularly American about a message of political unity being delivered by a rich and cloistered celebrity who has long been positioned as an Everyman savior, while he is simultaneously selling cars, partway through a football game being held before a not insignificant crowd in the midst of a global pandemic."

Springsteen was more than just paid talent, based on what Oliver Francois, chief marketing officer for Jeep parent Stellantis, told Brian Steinberg of Variety. It took Jeep 10 years of persuasion to get The Boss to do his first TV commercial, and he agreed to do it only last month, Steinberg reports: "Jeep offered to let him film scenes at his home in New Jersey, then mix them in with footage captured at the Kansas church, but Springsteen insisted on flying out to the chapel a week ago."

Francois said Springsteen thought the concept was spiritual: “He looked at this as a prayer,” and “felt it was time for him to be this guy in the middle of America, talking to America from this little chapel in the epicenter of America, and stand for the middle and nothing else. . . . He spent 12 hours on site. He was totally hands-on about the editing. He was very, very, very active with the editing and the process. He knew what he wanted, and he got what he wanted. . . .I hope, really hope, that this will be understood. We acted in good faith, and as good people, and trying to do this thing for the greater good. Now, it will be in the public domain and we will see what happens, but I have no regrets.”

Google map

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."

Urban hospitals could take severe rural Covid-19 patients by transferring less-acute patients to rural hospitals

Percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients in rural
vs. urban hospitals in the U.S. (N.C. Rural Health
Research Program chart; click to enlarge)

A pair of new studies show that rural hospitals had slightly higher percentages of Covid-19 patients than urban hospitals in the last quarter of 2020, but that rural hospitals had a greater percentage of beds available than urban hospitals. The upshot: rural Covid-19 patients with severe cases may have a harder time being transferred to urban hospitals because of limited urban bed availability. But urban hospitals could free up some beds for very sick rural Covid-19 patients if rural hospitals accepted transfers of less-acute urban patients. The studies were conducted by the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

The percentage of Covid-19 hospital patients was 4 to 6 percentage points higher in rural areas than in urban hospitals in that time period, according to the first study, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services. That raises concerns about rural hospitals' ability to continue operating efficiently. Rural and urban hospitals saw about the same percentage increase in Covid-19 patients over the last quarter of 2020, according to the second study (from 10% to 25% in rural hospitals and from 6% to 20% in urban hospitals).

The second report says the tighter bed restrictions in urban areas could limit rural residents’ ability to get advanced services if urban hospitals limit or reject transfer patients. Conversely, the greater percentage of open beds in rural hospitals could help urban hospitals expand capacity if rural hospitals accepted transfers of patients with less need for acute care. At least one state, Colorado, is already doing this.

Colorado rural and urban hospitals collaborate to combat pandemic overcrowding; transfers can go both ways

Coronavirus rates are rising not just in rural areas across the nation, but in many urban areas too, filling up hospitals. That has meant trouble for critical rural patients, who would usually be transferred to larger, more well-equipped urban hospitals. But what about transferring less critical patients to rural areas to make room for them?

The Colorado Hospital Association has a new system to facilitate that, KCNC-TV in Denver reports. The system could be a model for other states. Its Combined Hospital Transfer Center "will be a centralized resource where hospitals can coordinate patient care, should one start nearing capacity or reach capacity," Karen Morfitt reports. "It will help rural areas in need of more critical care space and larger centers looking to release patients."

Less-critical urban patients can be moved to less-specialized rural hospitals so critical rural patients can be moved to the urban hospitals if necessary, CHA spokesperson Cara Welch explained: "We are all in this business for the same reason: We want to take care of patients and we have to work together to be able to do it. When you get to this level of volume, no one should be working on an island."

Rural Democrats' advice for their candidates to 'just show up' in rural areas could work this time, giving them Senate

For more than a decade, as Republicans got more of the rural vote, rural Democrats have told their urban counterparts that there are still important votes to be won outside metropolitan areas, if only Democratic candidates would "just show up" instead of writing off rural voters. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post starts his latest column with that point, then looks at Senate races in three states that President Trump "carried handily in 2016" to show that the advice that may have found its time.

He starts with South Carolina, where Black Democrat Jamie Harrison is "in striking distance" of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in part, Harrison says, because the descendants of African Americans who moved north are moving south.

In Montana, rural voters are appreciative of the expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by Gov. Steve Bullock, who is challenging Republican Sen. Steve Daines. Health care is the main issue at town halls in Iowa, which also expanded Medicaid, says Democrat Theresa Greenfield, who is narrowly favored to unseat Republican Sen. Joanie Ernst.

"All three point to how rural America is changing in ways that are compatible with practical progressive politics, and how disappointment with Republican policies — particularly on health care, taxes and Social Security — is pushing many rural voters to reconsider their GOP loyalties," Dionne writes. Because every state has two senators, creating a rural bias, "For Democrats and progressives, the success of candidates such as Harrison, Greenfield and Bullock could spell the difference between real power in the Senate and either fragile control or no control at all."

Exiled to rural northwest Connecticut, NYC brand consultant says her work has gained from the beauty of nature

Rural Intelligence, an online publication for the Berkshires and part of the Hudson River Valley, says it "asked some long-time readers in a variety of fields to reflect on what they miss from their pre-covid lives and how they are compensating for those losses." Here's one of the submissions.

Diane Meier (Photo by Jerry Bauer)

By Diane Meier

I build equity for companies and brands; in part, by reading the culture and understanding the ways assets can be created, ignited, or developed in perception or value. Manhattan embodied my drive. It carried my family’s history. And for decades, the streets of the city were my tea leaves. The material that drove insight. But here we are. Lockdown in the Northwest Corner. Surrounded by beauty and calm and Nature. Yikes.

Was I afraid of what I might lose? Of course. But to my great relief, I’ve found that I’m no less informed and certainly no less effective right here. Quite the opposite. Teams of clients, expanded staff, experts and consultants are available to me, and I to them, from everywhere in the world. And my inspiration flies in on a screen.

Across digital publications and countless platforms, one can’t miss an enormous interest in immune-boosting nutrition, and products that support sustainable practices. There’s more interest in science and biotech than I’ve seen since the invention of the heart transplant. Corporate positioning is now inextricably linked to traceable social responsibility. And when cities erupted just weeks ago, and important brands immediately posted that they “stood with the protestors,” a cultural exhale was equal to thunder. I’ve always known what to make of the signals, but now they’re even more visible and far more diverse, from London and Sydney to Omaha. Suddenly, the streets of New York seem provincial.

To the right of my screen, a full view of our East Field reveals a great horned owl who comes to sit each evening behind a cowlick of grass. Hydrangeas are blooming and trumpet flowers are about to burst. The skies are always changing. The Natural World is just being noticed, now that my gaze can encompass the cultural, the commercial, and the natural by just shifting focus at my desk in the Big Barn.

Ingmar Bergman once said that he couldn’t have a clear thought on the streets of New York. I suspect he would have appreciated the dramas of our hawks and bears, and the views of the field and the Litchfield Hills. And if he was uninterested in reading the cultural messages buried on the small screen, he wasn’t expected to save billion-dollar companies. For those of us who are asked to do just that, the new idea that where we live can deliver the beauty of Nature and the vitality of Commerce is an amazing gift I’m not taking lightly. But in the spirit of what I do –– I know I’m not alone in this revelation, either.

In that regard, I welcome my new neighbors to the world of “Rural Intelligence.” If ever a name were right and proper, it’s found its moment. Realizing this surely has been, at least for me, one of the great gifts in The Great Pause.

Diane Meier is an author and president of Meier, a New York City-based marketing firm. She lives in Northwest Connecticut.

Black progressive who nearly won Senate nod in Ky. says liberals must listen to rural conservatives, find commonality

Charles Booker in Pikeville, Ky. (Lexington Herald-Leader photo)

First-term state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville, an African American who nearly won the nomination to face Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, told The New York Times that progressives need to "show up and listen" to rural conservatives who like President Trump if they want to build a winning coalition in the Democratic Party.

"What I tell folks is that, honestly, we should take some notes from a Donald Trump — being careful when you do," Booker said in a transcribed interview. "He called out that the system is broken, and he spoke to people that, for a long time, felt like nobody even knew they existed. Now, he was stoking hatred and racism and weaponizing it, but one of the truths there is that the system is broken. And if we go to those places that are deep red, and we show up and listen, but lean into our values, you can build relationships that way."

He prefaced that by saying, "Regardless of what your political ideology is, especially in a place like Kentucky, everybody’s broke and everybody’s struggling and everybody’s trying to figure out how to keep food on the table, keep the lights, take care of their family and protect their livelihood."

Kentucky is only 8.4 percent Black, and has many rural areas with hardly any African Americans, but Booker said he had no problem "building support in rural parts of Kentucky. I spent the majority of my campaign explaining how a Black person can win in rural parts of Kentucky and how the issue of rationing insulin is not partisan. And so when I tell my story of nearly dying from diabetic ketoacidosis, and explaining that’s why I fully support Medicare for all — because nobody should die because they don’t have money in their pocket — people get it."

Booker got 42.6% of the vote in a 10-way primary won by Amy McGrath, who got 45.4% after raising more than $41 million, the most of any Senate candidate this year. "The real determinant in our race was money," he told the Times. Many political observers said Booker would have won if most the votes had been cast on primary-election day; most were absentee due to the pandemic, which also caused the election to be delayed for five weeks. During that period, Booker's campaign caught fire due to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and resulting protests, which in Kentucky focused on a police killing during execution of a no-knock warrant in Louisville.

Rural Americans just as worried about pandemic as national average, according to new poll

Early on in the pandemic, rural Americans as a whole tended to be more skeptical about the coronavirus pandemic than their urban and suburban counterparts, a difference driven mostly by political ideology. But a new nationwide online poll shows that most rural residents are taking the pandemic seriously these days, Tim Marema reports for The Daily Yonder. The poll was conducted from April 24-26 by Civis Analytics and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the poll, nearly 90 percent of rural respondents said they will probably continue social distancing and other precautions even when their state begins to lift mandatory restrictions. "About three-quarters of rural respondents said they are somewhat or very concerned about the coronavirus," Marema reports. "The response from rural participants was slightly lower than the national response. But the 3-point gap is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning the rural and national responses are statistically indistinguishable."

Other results from the poll:

• About half of rural respondents, about the same as the nationwide average, agreed that their state has taken appropriate action to contain the pandemic.
• Only 5-6% of rural and national respondents said the government has overreacted to the pandemic.
• About three-quarters of rural and national respondents said they've avoided crowds and public spaces during the pandemic.
• About two-thirds of rural and national respondents said they're committed to social distancing.
• Rural attitudes toward the pandemic varied by region: rural Southerners were more likely to wish their states were doing more to control the pandemic than rural Northeasterners.
• About one-third of rural respondents said they're very unlikely to lose their job because of the pandemic, compared to about one-quarter of national respondents.
• About one-quarter of rural people of color said they were unlikely to lose their job because of the pandemic, compared to more than half of rural whites. 
• Rural and national respondents reported similar levels of trust in information sources except when it came to info provided by President Trump or Vice President Pence. Nationwide, 45.4% of respondents said they trust info from the president or vice president, compared to more than 55% of rural respondents.

Racial justice protests happening in rural areas too

Chad Jones of Holland, Ark. (photo provided)

Thousands of communities, some in foreign countries, have held demonstrations over the past week to protest the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other people of color at the hands of law enforcement, as well as general racial and ethnic inequality. But such protests aren't limited to big cities: some are happening in small towns.

Some are college towns, like State College, Pa., and Morehead, Ky.; such communities tend to have younger and more liberal residents, Alisha Ebrahimji reports for CNN. Others are smaller, agrarian communities like Holland, Ark., pop. 552. Local farmer Chad Jones staged a one-man protest recently because he wanted to show that "not all small towns come with small minds."

"Demonstrators marched and chanted for racial justice in Corbin, Morehead, Barbourville, Richmond and many more Kentucky cities and towns," the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. Corbin had "a notorious incident in October 1919 in which a white mob forced scores of black people out of town." In Midway, between Lexington and Frankfort, dozens of locals drew anti-racism messages on sidewalks Saturday, the Midway Messenger reports.

Hundreds of residents in small, politically conservative towns in southern Illinois have protested in recent days. As one protester said: "We don’t want Franklin County to be known for its racism. This is more about bringing the community together more than anything else," Molly Parker reports for The Southern Illinoisian.

In Ontario, Oregon, pop. 11,366, hundreds came out for a protest Thursday where local educators, organizers, and government officials gave speeches and shared stories about their experiences with ethnic and gender inequality, Rachel Parsons reports for the Malheur Enterprise.

Ellis, who was only rural correspondent in Ky.'s capital, dies

Ronnie Ellis in a prime spot, outside a leadership office on the legislative floor of Kentucky's Capitol. (Lexington Herald-Leader)

Ronnie Ellis, a political reporter and columnist who was the only rural correspondent in Kentucky's state capital, died of lung disease Monday. He was 68.

Ellis retired in November 2018 as the Frankfort correspondent for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., but continued to write a column for the company, which has daily newspapers in Ashland, Richmond, Somerset, Corbin and Ellis's hometown of Glasgow, plus several Kentucky weeklies. His passing brought tributes from political leaders on both sides.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said, “Ronnie Ellis’s journalistic instincts were surpassed only by his journalistic integrity. The role he played for some of Kentucky’s more rural outlets was integral to the Capitol press corps.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Ellis “earned a reputation as one of the hardest working reporters in Kentucky. He was always armed with the tough questions, and he helped set the standard for other journalists. Ronnie gave his readers a first-hand look into their government and helped shape countless conversations across the commonwealth. . . . Even when he disagreed with your position, you knew he’d treat everyone fairly. I’m going to miss his insightful perspective.”

Another Republican, state House Speaker David Osborne, said, “Ronnie Ellis was a legend in Kentucky journalism. His coverage provided local newspapers throughout the commonwealth with unparalleled access to Kentucky government and politics. However, those who knew Ronnie will also remember his great sense of humor and incredible institutional knowledge.”

Last month, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame announced that Ellis would be in its 40th anniversary class, to be inducted later this year. "It just goes to show that what he did was so good," a Glasgow friend, Chris Eaton, in an audio tribute on Twitter. "Everybody wanted to talk to Ronnie Ellis. . . . People followed him throughout the commonwealth."

Services for Ellis are being delayed by the pandemic. The family says memorial gifts may be made to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

Publishers from rural Minnesota and South Carolina win top individual awards from National Newspaper Association

Two rural publishers, one with three papers and one who works for a chain, won the top awards for individuals at the 133rd National Newspaper Association convention in Milwaukee this weekend.

Reed Anfinson of Benson, Minnesota, and Susan Rowell of Lancaster, South Carolina, won the James O. Amos and Emma McKinney awards, named for long-ago leaders in the association. They recognize distinguished service and leadership to the community press and their communities.

Reed Anfinson

"America would be a far better place if every community had a Reed Anfinson at the helm of their newspaper," Georgia publisher Robert Williams, a recipient of the Amos award, wrote in his nomination of Anfinson, a former NNA president who heads the group's foundation.

Anfinson and his wife Shelly own the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, the Stevens County Times in Morris and the Grant County Herald in Elbow Lake. He is a partner in Quinco Press, a central printing plant. He has been president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association and vice president of the old Minnesota News Council, has won freedom-of-information awards, and has been a member of several local statewide civic groups, including the Minnesota Center for Rural Policy and Development, which advises the Minnesota Legislature on rural issues.

Anfinson said in accepting the award that newspapers are important for five reasons: their reach, which gives them authority that "tells those in power that they will be held accountable;" their strength, shown by fights for open government; their persistence, showing up at meetings on citizens' behalf; their knowledge of the laws that govern public agencies; and "We're in print, which allows us to do all these things."

Susan Rowell

Rowell has been publisher of The Lancaster News and a regional manager for Landmark Community Newspapers since 2002. As NNA president and immediate past president, "She helped NNA make a successful transition to new management, which brought in a dedicated team to oversee the daily operations of the association," NNA said in the award announcement. "This transition also was critical in shoring up the association’s financial position."

Rowell said her years in NNA "changed my life." She is also a past president of the South Carolina Press Association and is active in state and local civic matters. “Susan Rowell is a consummate community newspaper leader," Virginia publisher Matt Paxton wrote in his nomination. Past winners are listed at http://www.nnaweb.org/amos-and-mckinney-awards.

NNA announced winners in its editorial contest in June. For complete lists, click here.

First episode of 'Country Music' explores its rich origins

Thomas Hart Benton died in 1975 as he reviewed his "The Origins of Country Music" at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
"It's the closest thing visually to what country music sounds like," says singer Kathy Mattea, who was a hall tour guide.

Only one African American appears in "The Origins of Country Music," the last painting of Thomas Hart Benton, which graces the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. But African influences were a lot more important to the beginnings of the genre, according to the first episode of "Country Music," the eight-part Ken Burns series that began on PBS Sunday night.

"It's probably white man's soul music," says Kris Kristofferson, followed immediately by Charley Pride, one of the very few African Americans in the genre, who says "You can find a country song to fit any mood you're in." Bill C. Malone, country music's leading historian, says "You can't conceive of this music existing without the African American infusion."

The first episode is titled "The Rub." When the genre formed in the 1920s, segregation was enforced, except in music, and "The rub is people mixing," black fiddle and banjo player and singer Rhiannon Giddens says. You may know Jimmie Rodgers was influenced by blacks with whom he worked on railroads in Mississippi, but did you know that Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong? That DeFord Bailey, son of a slave, and Dave Macon, son of a Confederate soldier, were the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry, and that Bailey played the first tune the night the Opry was named? And that A.P. Carter, who couldn't remember melodies, rode the ridges to find songs with black guitarist Lesley Riddle, who could?

The show notes that audience for country was "predominantly white, working-class Southerners," which black and country recording pioneer Ralph Peer called "hill country music," and then "hillbilly music," which didn't set well with some. The adjective "is almost like a racist remark," Dolly Parton says. That suggests common ground; script writer Dayton Duncan says the music met "the need of Americans, especially those who felt left out and looked down upon, to tell their stories."

"It's about those things we believe in but we can't see -- dreams," says Merle Haggard, who died not long after he was interviewed. And the old songs brought from England, Scotland and Ireland were also an early form of rural journalism; Parton says her mother told her that songs were once how people learned the news.

One thread that runs through the series is the role of the Carters, whose extended family came to include Johnny Cash; in the first episode, Maybelle Carter is given credit for popularizing the guitar style in which the thumb plays the bass or rhythm line; her granddaughter and step-granddaughter, Carlene Carter and Roseanne Cash, reminisce and even sing along with recordings of their ancestors. Magic moments.

New compendium of Wendell Berry essays highlights Kentucky writer's 'complexity and consistency'

Wendell Berry (New Yorker photo by Guy Mendes)

Library of America, a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature, has published a two-volume set of Kentucky farmer and author Wendell Berry's essays that shows "both his complexity and his consistency," Jedediah Britton-Purdy writes for The Nation. Britton-Purdy has an interesting perspective on Berry, whom he met as a young child. When Britton-Purdy became a writer, he discovered in Berry someone who had made his life's work out of a farming background that was thoroughly familiar.

Berry's identity "has been indelibly that of a writer-farmer dug into his place, someone who has become nationally famous for being local, and developed the image of a timeless sage while joining, sometimes fiercely, in fights against the Vietnam War and the coal industry’s domination of his region, Britton-Purdy writes. Over the years, Berry "has called himself an agrarian, a pacifist, and a Christian—albeit of an eccentric kind. He has written against all forms of violence and destruction—of land, communities, and human beings—and argued that the modern American way of life is a skein of violence. He is an anti-capitalist moralist and a writer of praise for what he admires: the quiet, mostly uncelebrated labor and affection that keep the world whole and might still redeem it."

Though Berry's writing takes a long view of the land's history, he is himself "the product of a specific historical moment, the triple disenchantment of liberal white Americans in the 1960s over the country’s racism, militarism, and ecological devastation," Britton-Purdy writes. Berry acknowledged early on that "'the crisis of racial awareness' that had broken into his consciousness was 'fated to be the continuing crisis of my life' and that 'the reflexes of racism…are embedded in my mind as deeply at least as the language I speak.'"

Berry has consistently argued that "the moral and material meaning of an economy must be two parts of the same thing. Our political economy shapes our intimate attachments, and vice versa. The personal is political, and our hearts follow our treasure," Britton-Purdy writes. "This twinned understanding of environment and economy, of personal and public life, is part of why he can appeal both to those who believe that the American ordering of political and economic power needs fundamental reconstruction and to those who believe that the values of individualism, mobility, and self-creation have led to a cultural blind alley."

In many ways, young agrarians, socialists and other radicals are his philosophical heirs, "denouncing extractive capitalism and calling for new and renewed ways of honoring work," Britton-Purdy writes. "They also insist on the need to engage political power to shape a future, not just with local work but on national and global scales. They dare to demand what he has tended to relinquish. If these strands of resistance and reconstruction persist, even prevail, Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent—stubborn, sometimes maddening, not quite like anything else of its era—will deserve a place in our memory."

Brooklyn lawyer doesn't let politics come between her and her cousins at annual reunion in southeastern Kentucky

Rural and urban areas look unequivocally divided on any political map, and many Americans wonder how to bridge the gap. That's one reason Brooklyn-based lawyer Caroline Aiken Koster decided to go to her extended family's annual reunion in Pineville, Ky., this summer. "I wanted to remind my husband and two college-age sons of the things we had in common with the rest of America, Koster writes for The Wall Street Journal.

Pineville, in Bell County (Wikipedia map)

But the Louisville native (whose parents are from Pineville) also wanted "a dose of unconditional Kentucky love. I was hungry for the potluck fried chicken, fried corn, fried apples and green beans sauteed in bacon grease. But I also sought escape from the 24-hour news cycle, the East Coast echo chambers and my like-minded friends on Facebook," Koster writes.

Several of Koster's friends in New York were skeptical about her trip, and wondered whether she would fit in anymore. But, Koster writes that the act of being together, of listening to each other's concerns with love, is what makes understanding possible: "Like many Americans, I’ve been alarmed by studies and polls suggesting we’ve lost empathy for one another. Up in the mountains, love and civility forced us to talk it out. There was no room for identity politics when we sat elbow to elbow at the picnic table. We all knew we had to get along if we want to come back next year. There was no avoiding tough conversations, no unfriending, no ghosting or canceling."