The Democratic National Convention kicking off Monday in Chicago gives the party a chance to make the case that it cares about lifting up rural residents, a demographic Democrats have been accused of ignoring in recent elections even as their support in non-metropolitan areas has shrunk significantly.
If anyone can make that case, it’s Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, according to some former congressional colleagues, including longtime Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., who served with Walz in Congress from 2006 to 2018.
“I think people in rural communities can relate to him and his background, and he certainly works harder to get into those areas and listen to them,” said Kind, now a member of Arnold & Porter’s legislative and public policy practice.
“I think one of his superpowers is his listening ability,” Kind said. “Not enough people running for office take time to visit these small rural communities, sit down and just listen to people and what they're up against. And Tim does that so well and learns from it and grows from it, and that's why I think he's been such an effective leader.”
Harris and Walz come into the convention with the party enjoying new energy and momentum in the polls, but races in key battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain tight. Carving into former President Donald Trump's rural dominance would help the Democrats.
According to the Pew Research Center, former Trump increased his share of the rural vote from 59% in 2016 to 65% 2020.
Kind noted that Walz grew in small-town Nebraska before marrying and moving to Minnesota, where he became a schoolteacher and served in the National Guard.
“Policy-wise, he knows that we need to be investing in our rural communities — economic development, infrastructure, rural broadband, support for our family farmers.”
He contrasted that with Trump’s talk of at least 10% across-the-board tariffs, including higher duties on China, and “it’s a recipe for economic disaster.”
“China is still our No. 1 export market in the world. There will be retaliation if Trump does the across-the-board tariffs, which will disproportionately affect rural America and our agriculture producers.”
Kind also points to Trump’s immigration plans, outlined in the Republican platform, to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the U.S.
With “mass roundup and deportation of migrant labor, our dairy farms in the Upper Midwest will not be able to survive,” Kind said.
Steven Schier, emeritus professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota, said he believes Walz could help the Democrats grab back some of the support they’ve lost in rural America.
“If you look at the polls this year pretty steadily, Biden and Harris have not done well with rural voters, and you can see why. I mean, they're not exactly rural candidates in their backgrounds or orientation. So, it is interesting to ask if Walz will be able to cut into that.”
Given his own background, “there are some reasons to think he might,” Schier said. In addition to his boyhood, in which he spent summers working on the family farm, Walz went to Chadron State College, a public university in Nebraska, and was a football coach and social studies teacher in Mankato, Minn., “a medium-sized city in Minnesota.”
“All that would suggest a Midwestern identity that might appeal to rural voters,” Schier said. “The other question is where he is on the issues, and I would think on ag policy, he'll be well-received, but on all the culture war issues, he'll be controversial in rural America, because, as you know, it's culturally the conservative part of the country.”
Speaking for the other side of the ballot, Indiana farmer Kip Tom, who is leading fundraising efforts for the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump 47 Coalition, said he has nothing against Walz on ag policy.
“He’s stood alongside agriculture,” said Tom, a former ambassador to the United Nations agencies for food and agriculture Organization in Rome. While careful to say he’s not advocating for Walz and Harris, he said the governor has “supported the farmers’ position on [waters of the United States],” has been “good on ethanol,” and also has been positive “for some of the animal agriculture, but it stops right there.”
But Tom criticized the Democratic ticket on tax policy, saying “it sounds like they're going to walk the same line that Biden did,” which would include trying to end stepped-up basis and reducing the federal estate tax exemption.
Stepped-up basis means that the capital gain on an inherited asset is calculated from the date that the original owner died, rather than when he or she acquired the property. Under current law, heirs don't owe taxes until the assets are sold. President Joe Biden proposed in 2021 to tax capital gains at death but the idea never got anywhere in a Democratic-controlled Congress.
The estate tax exemption was doubled by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 and is now $13.6 million per person; the doubling of the exemption is scheduled to expire at the end of next year along with a number of other TCJA provisions important to agriculture.
Asked about Trump’s continuing talk of tariffs, Tom said, “First of all, President Trump needs to finish the sentence and say, What does he mean by those tariffs? You've never found a person that likes to deal more than President Trump. He loves to look for, in his words, ‘beautiful deals,’ and I don't see him doing anything that's going to damage a base that is highly supportive of him, yet depends on the exports of our goods.”
“When he starts talking about tariffs, I think if you go back when he was in office, he made things right with us. He got back out there and created deals on the side with other countries, and ended up fixing what needed to be done. So I'm not as worried about him on trade as a lot of people are.”
The DNC had not released a schedule of speakers as of Sunday, but a number of issue-specific caucuses will be holding meetings on the sidelines of the convention, including the Rural Council, the Environmental & Climate Crisis Council, and the Labor Council.
Kylie Oversen, the Democratic National Committee’s Rural Council chair, said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is scheduled to appear Tuesday along with his lieutenant governor, Jacqueline Coleman.
Oversen, a former state legislator from North Dakota, said the council is hoping to organize “rural tours” involving surrogates from the campaign in battleground states and beyond “as much as we have the capacity to do so.”
President Joe Biden is the convention's keynote speaker Monday night.
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