Why the Political Power of Black Rural Voters Is Often Invisible

For years, Garrett Snuggs questioned why the predominantly white town council of Wadesboro, North Carolina, didn’t reflect its population — 69% of which is Black.
In the rural town of 5,000, about 52 miles away from Charlotte, he noticed that many Black folks, particularly youth and men, were disengaged from the political process.
That changed in 2022 when the 45-year-old met Cynthia Wallace, co-founder and executive director of New Rural Project, a civic engagement nonprofit. Wallace conducted a rural listening tour and focus groups in the eastern part of the state, and learned that many rural voters there simply felt “unheard and unseen” and didn’t have power.
The conversations sparked a collaboration between Wallace and Snuggs called the Barbershop Conversations: F.A.D.E (Fruitful African American Discussions on Empowerment), which brought nearly 60 Black men together to discuss their top concerns and voting challenges. It prompted them to attend community meetings and join school boards. Last November, Snuggs, the longtime barber, instructor, and sports bar owner, won a local council seat and garnered the most votes of any candidate. The town also made history in that election, electing its first majority-Black council.
“There has never been more than one African American on our council at one time ever, and we currently have three,” Snuggs said. “We’re getting out there — engaging folk, [and] informing them of just how important and how impactful local politics and government plays into their everyday lives.”
Black rural voters in Wadesboro illustrate the influence that engaged and informed rural voters can have, especially in local and state elections, which matter just as much as federal ones, if not more. While Black rural voters have a desire to become a more influential voting bloc nationally, obstacles exist, including the lack of trust in local and state officials in the red states where many live, misinformation, the Democratic Party’s messaging, and a noticeable absence of candidates actively campaigning in rural areas.
“The strength of Black rural voters lies in their power on the state and local levels,” said Dara Gaines, rural researcher and visiting professor at the University of Arkansas. “The race at the top of the ticket has inspired a lot of people who were previously planning to sit out, and they are looking for a way to do something. The down-ballot races are going to feel the weight of the rural Black vote.”
Despite their loyalty to the Democratic Party, rural voters often feel overlooked and neglected by both major parties, especially on the national level. While they’re making marginal gains, they still haven’t achieved full political power, meaning the candidates they vote for — often Black or Democrats — don’t get elected. The GOP still has a stronghold in rural counties. This dynamic exacerbates feelings of disengagement, resulting in low voter engagement.
Capital B spoke to rural organizers, candidates, and elected officials in two battleground states — North Carolina and Pennsylvania — as well as in Arkansas and Virginia to discuss the opportunities and barriers facing rural voters.
“Blue dots in a red sea”

It’s often cited that rural voters tend to lean conservative and Republican. Since the 2000s, several rural states shifted their support to the Republican Party on all levels of government, from state houses to Congress. Today, the Republican Party holds a 25-point advantage over the Democratic Party among rural voters, according to the Pew Research Center.
However, a recent study by Cornell University found that this is not the reality for rural Black voters who, like most urban Black voters, supported Democrats at rates of 90% or more in the last four presidential elections — even though Black support for the party has waned nationally.
In some places, the diversity of rural America hasn’t been reflected in local and state elections. Paolo Cremidis, former rural caucus chair for the New York State Democratic Party, saw this, and between 2015 and 2020, the caucus was able to elect 85 Democratic candidates (who were either LGBTQ+ or people of color) across upstate New York.
“We noticed that folks who won were able to lean into their diversity to overcome culture wars and outran the top of the ticket because of it,” he said.
Cremidis and five other Democratic officials from upstate New York started The Outrun Coalition in 2020, which is now a network of over 500 local Democratic elected officials across 17 states, he said. They started the coalition to ensure elected officials better reflect the growing diversity of rural America. In August, the organization hosted a Rural Americans for Kamala Harris call, where thousands joined and raised more than $22,000.
In the 2022 midterm elections, where states saw record high voter turnout, rural voters helped usher in candidates, most notably in Georgia, which elected its first Black U.S. senator, Raphael Warnock; and in North Carolina, where Diamond Staton-Williams, a Black nurse, and Ray Jeffers, a Black farmer, secured seats in the state House. It’s these races that can help “purple states become a lot bluer, and more Democrats get elected to Congress, state legislatures, and local public offices in red states as well as blue ones,” as one author and professor wrote.
“Oftentimes, rural Americans are told they’re blue dots in a red sea. That’s not true. At the end of the day, one blue dot in a red sea might look like one blue dot, but enough blue dots together form an ocean, and enough oceans put out fires that make our reality better for our communities,” Cremidis said. “This isn’t just about making sure Vice President Kamala Harris becomes president; it’s about breaking super majorities in red states.”
If rural areas are making gains, why are rural counties overwhelmingly Republican? Well, the answer depends on who you ask. The number of rural Black voters turning out is not enough to improve the odds for Democrats. White progressive voter turnout would also need to increase for Democrats to win more.
Republicans dominate because of a combination of nonvoting and restrictive voting laws, said Chris Jones, co-founder of Dirt Road Democrats PAC, a political action committee for rural areas. When he ran for governor against Republican Sarah Huckebee Sanders in 2022, about 900,000 people voted — whereas 1.2 million people didn’t, he said. Last year, Arkansas had the lowest voter turnout and registration rates nationwide.
While voter registration is up by 12,500 across Arkansas, a federal appeals court dealt a recent blow to voters when it reinstated Arkansas’ wet signature rule, a law that mandates voters to submit their voter registration forms with handwritten signatures with pen and ink. This legislation was in response to an online voter tool, created by Get Loud Arkansas, a civic engagement organization that registered hundreds of young voters. Separately, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld four voting restrictions passed by Republicans, which includes changes to a voter ID law and deadlines for voters to return absentee ballots.
Similar election-related laws have been passed in other states. This year, in at least 21 states, voters will face restrictions they’ve never encountered in previous election cycles, whereas voters in 28 states will face new restrictions that weren’t in place in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Additionally, Republicans in battleground states have filed multiple lawsuits challenging aspects of mail-in voting, which is popular among rural voters.
Unfortunately, the efforts to stymie Black political power won’t stop, Gaines, the rural researcher, said. For example, in Florida, the state director of elections instructed local officials to investigate voter rolls based on a list emailed from an election denier. Officials in Travis County, Texas, filed a federal lawsuit against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Secretary of State Jane Nelson for blocking voter registration efforts. And in Arkansas, there was an attempt to completely shut down one of the busiest early voting locations in Crittenden County and only have Election Day voting.
“If you know you’re a person that has experienced some type of political violence before, or you’ve seen what political violence does in a place like where you might live, then you might be less likely to step out and go vote or step out and be vocal about something,” Gaines said. “We also have to be very aware that people don’t live in these places in a vacuum, right? Everything is connected to the past and what people’s former experiences have been. If we’re serious about supporting and protecting rural Black voters, we have to make sure that they will be protected and supported all the way up from registration to the time they cast their vote.”
Going back to “old school” politics

In the words of Dwan Walker who became the first Black mayor of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, in 2011, “You got to be in these places in order for you to affect change. You got to go back to old school politics. You just can’t court us in November, and think we’re going to turn out for you.”
Beaver County, where Aliquippa is, had been a Democratic stronghold, but that changed in 2008. Still, Walker, who served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, believes Harris and running mate Tim Walz visiting Aliquippa in August will pay off at the polls. This week, both Harris and former president Donald Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, Walz formally unveiled the details of Harris’ agenda for rural America at a campaign stop in western Pennsylvania.
“I can’t remember another presidential [candidate] that ever paid this much attention to rural America as this campaign is doing; it’s a beautiful thing to see because I don’t feel forgotten right now,” Walker said. “[They told us] we want all rural communities to have a seat at the table. And no one has ever invited us in like they’re inviting us in.”
If candidates, or their representatives, don’t meet directly with rural voters to talk about voting or their vision, those voters may stay home, said Alexsis Rodgers, political director at Black to the Future Action Fund. About 42% of Black urban and rural voters in three states sat out of the 2022 elections because they felt “uninformed about the candidates they were being asked to vote for,” according to a December 2022 report by Black to the Future Action Fund and HIT Strategies. The authors consider this as “another form of voter suppression … the lack of information about elections and the people who are running to represent you.”
“Rural Black voters across the South have the power to deliver the White House. They have shown up in margins before,” Rodgers said. “But, they just don’t feel like they’ve seen the Democratic Party necessarily deliver on the ideas, and they know Republican candidates have been talking about issues they don’t agree with. The real power of Black voters is that they want to see elected officials or candidates deliver on results.”
Showing up is only part of the battle. Messaging is another.
In the case of organizers and candidates, there is a lack of resources to build a strong infrastructure to support Democratic candidates and rural voters.
Jade Harris, a 26-year-old substitute teacher who ran last year as the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s newly drawn 3rd Senate District, agreed it’s difficult for candidates to run without infrastructure or resources.
Before running for Senate, Harris served as a city council member in Glasgow, Virginia, a 76% white town of nearly 1,400 people. At the end of the term, she ran in a special election to secure a seat for the state House of Delegates. She campaigned for three weeks with limited campaign resources. Although she lost, she performed better than both parties thought she would, she said.
“Everyone said I was going to underperform, but it turns out that election was kind of the first one post-Dobbs [the U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision overturning Roe v. Wade] and we saw that trend of Democrats overperforming,” Harris said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ This little special election in rural Virginia gave the nation a forecast of what to expect.”
Following that race, she gained more resources, so she decided to run for Senate, which she lost, but still overperformed for a Democrat. She also served as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, an honor bestowed on by the state and congressional leaders.
Gaines, the professor and researcher, mentioned the record-breaking $1 billion the Harris campaign has raised, but the funding doesn’t trickle down to the local parties or civic engagement groups. She referenced how people spend resources on registration drives, but “consistently drop the ball” when it’s time to get them to the polls. Additionally, the “show up when it’s time for elections” strategy isn’t working, she said.
There must be long term strategies to build up viable candidates.
That’s Wallace’s mission. Whether through front porch talks or Beauty Salon Conversations: C.U.R.L.S (Cultivating Unified Relationships with Ladies for Success), she wants to equip voters with tools and resources to step into their power.
“A big part of the work we’re doing is to empower these rural communities of color to change their own communities and know that they have that power,” Wallace said. “If you’ve been in a town for decades, even though you were the majority that was being led by the minority, you kind of feel, you don’t have power.”
As a citizen, Snuggs is concerned about the potential outcome of the upcoming election. But, he won’t allow the obstacles to stop him from engaging and educating others.
“It’s ridiculous to think that we have arrived as a people and still have work left to be done,” Snuggs said. “The fight is still ongoing, and we got to do something to reverse this.”
Correction: A photo caption in a previous version of this story misidentified Garrett Snuggs.
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