MONROE COUNTY, Wis. — Democrats are making an all-out push to recapture support in rural areas by touting massive federal investments in everything from broadband to monthly child tax credit payments. But they’re facing some deep skepticism from the people the money is supposed to help.
Biden and Democrats sent billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid relief to rural areas, many of which were hit hardest by Covid-19 deaths and infections. Billions more in funding is on the way from the bipartisan infrastructure law for new roads, safer drinking water and updated ports to assist farmers in moving their products to market.
And, if Democrats can pass it, their $1.7 trillion climate and social spending package would provide lower prescription drug prices, funding for child care, and more than $80 billion in agriculture programs for farmers and rural economies, where poverty rates are higher than anywhere else in the country.
Administration officials such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are now fanning out to rural areas to explain the benefits. Local Democrats are campaigning in districts like this corner of southwest Wisconsin along the Mississippi River that once swung for Barack Obama and has been trending redder and redder ever since.
But as local voters — who are overwhelmingly white, blue-collar workers — increasingly disagree with Democrats on cultural issues, GOP arguments against government spending are resonating, making it difficult for the White House's messaging to stick.
“Money for roads, broadband, that’s a big deal,” said Gary Weber, a dairy farmer who voted for Biden. “But people around here think it’s a bunch of wasteful welfare. They’ve got to convince people this is for the average person and not big companies.”
White House officials, who as recently as this summer argued Biden could “go anywhere” and engage voters, even in rural communities, privately acknowledge his policies have yet to move the needle with rural voters as Republicans hammer the administration over rising inflation.
“He’s got a big job on his hands because people hate him for no reason,” Weber said of Biden.
Biden narrowly won Wisconsin in 2020. While he performed slightly better than Hillary Clinton did with rural voters in 2016, Biden lost almost every rural county in the state. Democrats can’t afford to fall further behind in rural areas like these, where small margins could determine critical races across the country next year — including Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District and the Senate race.
Millions in federal aid from Democrats' pandemic relief law have already reached small communities in southwest Wisconsin. The money has helped local governments keep schools open and respond to Covid-19. Nearly $30 million is helping to keep rural health care facilities running.
And families with two children under the age of 17, for instance, have likely received federal stimulus checks and monthly child tax credit payments this year totaling around $12,000.
The White House criticized efforts to detract from those gains.
The latest climate and social spending bill, which aims to extend the child tax credit, “is an economic growth plan that will cut the biggest costs rural families face,” said White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher. “By opposing [the plans], the GOP is voting to raise families’ biggest costs, hike taxes on the middle class, and worsen inflation — all to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Democrats in Congress, who fought for the funding and argue it’s helping families address rising costs, acknowledge that many people don’t know it’s something Democrats championed.
“No one really connects it, even though they're getting the checks,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in an interview. As in Wisconsin, Brown’s state has pockets of small communities that once voted Democratic but have since turned deep red.
Former President Donald Trump’s lingering influence is hard to miss across this county of rolling farmland and small villages in southwest Wisconsin. “Trump won” flags are still everywhere.
The district’s longtime Rep. Ron Kind, one of the remaining farm-district centrist Democrats in Congress, barely survived reelection last year. Kind has since announced he’s not seeking another term.
Republican leaders in the area are railing against Biden’s Covid-19 public health mandates while embracing ongoing investigations into false election fraud claims in the 2020 election.
Democrats who will face off in a primary next August to replace Kind have been trying to navigate how they talk to voters about their party's plans, despite Biden’s claims that his climate and social spending bill is paid for in part by raising taxes on the wealthy.
“There is recognition in this district for the need for broadband, for child care, for job training programs, for transportation. That is all that's very real,” said Brad Pfaff, a Democratic state senator who grew up on a farm in the area and is running in the primary for the open seat. “And you know, people have shared that, but they also recognize the fact that money is not unlimited.”
Local Democratic organizers are not convinced that the investments, while historic, will be able to slow the shifting electorate.
“What we do with messaging and policy making and all that, of course, influences people,” said Wayde Lawler, chair of the Democratic Party in Vernon County, the district’s most competitive rural county. “But it’s by no means the only determining factor.”
Many voters in the area, like Sharon Stroh who voted enthusiastically for Obama in 2008, are full-time Trump supporters now. Stroh doesn’t doesn’t ever plan to vote for a Democrat again — no matter how much money they invest in her village of Wilton, population 500, which is slated to receive more than $400,000 in pandemic relief funding.
Millions more are on the way from the infrastructure law to maintain roads, replace lead pipes and provide high-speed, rural broadband internet, all of which Biden and Democrats have touted as game changers for rural communities.
“We don't need to print any more money,” Stroh said. “Obama talked about being shovel ready and all that. That was a bunch of crap.”
Stroh acknowledged money for new roads in her area would be nice, and even create some jobs, but she’s more concerned about her granddaughter learning what she described as “too much about gender identity” and race in her school in the Madison area, the state’s capital and a Democratic stronghold.
She plans to vote for Derrick Van Orden, the Trump-backed Republican who narrowly lost to Kind last year. Van Orden, who has been campaigning across the district's small communities for months, traveled to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6, before the Capitol attack occurred.
Democrats have called for Van Orden’s disqualification following reports that he entered Capitol grounds during the riot. Van Orden denies that. But some voters, like Stroh, say they would support him either way.
As local Democrats try to push back, they’re simply overwhelmed.
Like many Democrats on the ground in rural areas, Mary Von Ruden, chair of the local party in Monroe County, said national Democrats haven’t dedicated the necessary resources to these areas for years. That makes it even harder to address voters' genuine concerns about the spending while pushing back against misinformation, Von Ruden said.
“They don’t understand that if they come out here, they’re going to make a difference,” said Von Ruden, who at 70 years old, often knocks doors by herself across miles of farmland and small towns. “It’s a monumental task,” she said of the challenges facing Democrats in her area.
Democrats' last hope for holding the district and their remaining footholds in rural America is a small sliver of rural voters whom they still might be able to persuade.
“I don't think anybody expects the rural areas to go Democratic,” said Brian Rude, a former Republican state legislator whose small village of Coon Valley voted for both Biden and Kind in 2020. “But there's enough voters on the edge — perhaps some undecideds, some moderate Republicans, independents, some old-fashioned Democrats — who can on occasion be brought back.”
Meanwhile in Washington, Democratic lawmakers are anxious to pass their social spending and climate bill as quickly as possible so they can hit the road themselves to explain the plans and push back on the GOP ahead of next year’s midterms.
“Republicans face a real challenge in rural Wisconsin explaining to people why they oppose delivering results that make a real difference in people’s lives,” said Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin’s Democratic senator.
Just to the south from Kind’s district, Rep. Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is also retiring from her swing seat in rural Illinois as Democrats continue to lose rural incumbents. Bustos acknowledged cultural issues remain a challenge for the party and said she hopes the investments will demonstrate Democrats’ “commitment to helping people in rural America and every part of the country.”
At the very least, Bustos said, “I hope this will help regain some trust.”
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Biden’s rural investments run up against the culture wars in Wisconsin - POLITICO
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