Rural young voters continue to feel ignored in politics as the presidential election intensifies, according to research this spring from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). 

Described as the least contacted and most undecided demographic by the Rural Youth Voter Fund, their participation in the upcoming presidential elections could be critical in deciding the next four years and beyond. In swing states during the 2022 midterm elections, youth made up 10% to 15% of all votes cast, according to CIRCLE, large enough to change outcomes.

“There’s this huge opportunity to engage with young people [and] to give them the opportunities to learn more about the system and make their mark,” said Michael Chameides, communications director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, which helped to create the Voter Fund. 

The Voter Fund supports local youth-led initiatives and brings together leaders interested in civic engagement. Chameides noted the most successful initiatives are relationship-focused and allow young people to become leaders and reach their peers. Initiative projects are also dependent and modeled on their local communities and relatability, based in schools and popular events. 

“You have leaders who genuinely care about the people around them and instill an organizational passion for supporting other people and building those relationships,” Chameides said. “They’re using language that resonates with their peers and makes sense to their peers and feels natural. A lot of people are driven by a certain desire to make their lives better and to make their families’ lives better and make their community’s lives better … In a lot of communities, skating is really popular, and so maybe there’s skate to the poll events. Knowing your audience and doing things that are both fun and meaningful is really powerful.”

Having places to engage in issues is crucial for turnout, according to suggestions for rural youth voter empowerment by CIRCLE. Although civic information access is similar across geographic regions, rural youth were less likely to feel there were comfortable places to engage with that information. That lack of support translated into lower voter turnout: rural youth – aged 18 to 29 – voter turnout was 44% in rural counties compared to 52% in urban counties, according to the spring research from CIRCLE. 

Alejandro Rangel-Lopez is a 23-year-old campaign manager at New Frontiers, a project from Loud Light that empowers young Southwest Kansans to build community power. He organizes meetings to help young voters develop leadership skills in places he can find such as community centers and bubble tea shops. However, he finds there are less opportunities for voters to engage with and learn about the issues closest to them in rural areas or smaller towns such as Dodge City and Garden City. 

“We get all our news from Wichita,” Rangel-Lopez said. “We know what’s going on at the state and national level, but we don’t know what’s going on a block or two away.”

Additional reports reaffirmed the importance of infrastructure in voting turnout, showing infrastructure was tied to a sense of belonging that excited voters. Courtney Smith, director of voter engagement at Forward Montana, also noted voting barriers specific to rural communities. Online voter registration is not allowed in Montana, which presents a significant challenge if people need to drive 100 miles to the nearest election office in Gallatin County. 

“If folks are miles and miles apart, it’s harder to bring folks together,” Smith said. “But we do have programs where we try to reach people still at home. For example, we host a voter registration drive in high schools called Democracy Days, where we’re able to have a host on site who registers students at the high schools and the local libraries within communities in rural parts of Montana so that they still have access to voting even if they’re far away.”

Kathleen Alonso, also a community organizer with New Frontiers based in Liberal, Kansas, has encountered challenges in creating cultures around volunteer advocacy. By investing in leadership development and hosting fun events such as a Sip and Paint, she’s hoping to make organizing for affordable housing and fair cost-of-living more accessible and break stereotypes of youth as unengaged voters. Alonso pointed to an isolation factor in her personal experience with finding peers interested in similar issues and politics. 

“In my experience and with the people I’ve connected with, we feel isolated in our areas and across the state when it comes to other issues,” Alonso said. “When it comes to economic issues, a lot of the time we hear Wichita and Kansas City on the radar. People a lot of the time tend to forget Southwest Kansas, Liberal, Garden, and Dodge.” 

Claire McCoy, an organizer with Down Home North Carolina and a student at Appalachian State, agrees reducing stigma around young people not being engaged in politics will help turnout. She became involved in Down Home as a way to have an outlet for nonpartisan, working class organizing for housing and healthcare accessibility. Although she encounters mixed political views while canvassing, her peers are highly engaged with issues close to them. 

“The issues that affect everyone affect young people at an expedited rate,” McCoy said. “We’re going into and trying to live in a world that we won’t thrive in, and we need rent caps and more healthcare in rural areas.”

In Boone, where McCoy grew up and lives, 75% of homes are rentals, compared to 35% for the state and national average, impacting students and young people less likely to own. Although Down Home was not able to pass rent caps, they did achieve funding for low-income housing weatherization and helped secure two homes for recovery housing. They worked with other local nonprofits to do this, such as WAMY and the Mediation and Restorative Justice Center, which McCoy says is crucial for reaching people across rural counties and keeping them engaged.

“I think with young people, they sometimes don’t feel they can help or doing things in the community doesn’t seem like enough,” McCoy said. “I think that’s a narrative that needs to change…I do believe part of the reason Watauga County struggles to retain young people is lack of economic and housing opportunities. Most people want to stay and be involved in the community but it’s not a viable option.”

Forward Montana engages young Montanans to advocate for issues they care about. Through polling, they’ve noted affordable housing, climate change, inflation, and reproductive rights as paramount. Smith said focusing on change at the local level can increase accessibility and engagement. However, both on the local and national level, youth feel ignored and disillusioned with politics. 

“They feel like they’ve been dismissed by a lot of politicians in the things that they’ve heard and the things that they want aren’t actually coming to fruition,” Smith said. “A lot of young people feel frustrated, especially by the two party system, and disillusioned with that.”

However, Smith said Forward Montana has noticed more energy around voting from young people since Biden dropped out, largely because of Harris’ younger age and increased relatability. But above a particular candidate, Smith noted young voters care less about party systems and more about issues. She hopes they will increasingly be treated as persuadable voters who don’t identify with a party. 

“Young people’s issues that they care about are important, both at the state level and the national level, and their ability to feel heard and listened to and valued by politicians is vitally important to making sure that they stay engaged and active citizens and participants in the future,” Smith said. 

Rangel-Lopez has seen a “night and day” shift after Biden dropped out. A despair he noticed before has transformed to energy and joy for voter mobilization. The most discussed issues among the Southwest Kansans they work with are reproductive rights, LGBT+ protections, and immigration protections, especially given the majority minority population of the area. He has also seen increased interest in preserving and shaping local communities, especially around stopping “brain drain” and fresh water decreases. 

“We’re becoming the adults in the room. No one else is gonna figure this out for us,” Rangel-Lopez said. “It’s both exciting and scary for a lot of folks, but we take it one step at a time.”

“A lot of people see their futures in the communities that they’re in,” Chameides said. “…I think that place-based thing is a big motivation. It is a sense of ‘I want to be in a place that is livable and have opportunities to thrive in those communities.’”

The post ‘Least Contacted and Most Undecided:’ Young Voters in Rural America  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a decision that most political analysts called a waste of time: He opened field offices in rural America. 

Obama raised an unprecedented amount of money to fund his campaign – roughly $750 million. This was more than double the amount his Republican opponent, John McCain, raised, and was the most money raised out of any presidential candidate in U.S. history. The majority of it came from small donations, with 90% of his donors giving less than $100, according to Politico reporting. 

All this money allowed him to open many more field offices than a “standard” presidential campaign. He focused on battleground states in particular, and instead of opening just one or two offices in the state capital and major cities, he focused on more rural areas, too. 

For example, in Nevada, Obama opened campaign offices in three of the major cities – Carson City, Reno, and Las Vegas – and in small towns like Elko and Winnemucca. By September of 2008, Obama had opened 14 Nevada state offices, hired 100 paid staffers, and recruited over 3,500 volunteers. By contrast, McCain had opened nine Nevada state offices. 

This full-state campaign strategy worked: Obama won Nevada by 12.5 percentage points, a margin of victory that hadn’t been achieved by Democrats in Nevada since 1964. In rural Elko County, Obama won 28% of the vote – almost 10% more than Democratic candidate John Kerry’s Elko County performance in 2004. 

While Obama still lost the majority of votes in Nevada’s rural counties, the marginal increases he made thanks to a boots-on-the-ground rural campaign strategy helped him win the state overall . He employed similar campaign strategies in states like Colorado and New Mexico, both of which he won by significant margins. Overall, Obama won 43% of rural U.S. votes – 3% more than Kerry in 2004.

This could have marked a turning point for how Democrats perform in rural America (slow and steady, upticking progress), but by 2016, the tide had shifted significantly. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won just over 30% of the rural vote. Liberal pundits blamed rural voters for putting Donald Trump in office, without acknowledging the drastic shift in rural voting behavior between 2008 and 2016. In 2020, Trump garnered an even higher percentage of the rural vote at 65%, despite losing the overall presidential election to Joe Biden. 

Over the past 15 years in presidential and midterm elections alike, many Democrats seem to have fallen for the stereotypes associated with rural America. They think it’s a homogenous swath of backwards, uneducated people that vote Republican no matter what – aka, it’s not worth it for Democrats to campaign there. Clinton’s 2018 comments that she “won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,” while Trump’s whole campaign “was looking backwards,” exemplified this stereotype. 

Now, in 2024, the presidential election is highly contested, and the result could hinge on which way rural people vote. But does Democratic nominee Kamala Harris know this?

By and large, rural America leans Republican. There are a lot of complicated reasons for this, ranging from the post-World War II pursuit of industrial development in rural America (an argument historian Keith Orejel posits), to economic anxiety fueled by the 2008 Great Recession (as authors Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea theorize). 

But not every rural voter casts a Republican ballot. And those marginal victories – like Obama winning 28% of the vote in rural Elko County as opposed to Kerry’s 19% – matter. Shaving down the number of Republican votes by even a few percentage points in rural counties can lead to statewide wins for Democrats. 

But Democrats have to show up in those rural places if they expect people to show up for them at the polls.

That’s a campaign strategy Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz need to remember over these next two months. The two of them are scheduled to visit North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the next week. 

Including small towns during these stops – and speaking to the unique issues each of them face – could help shift the margins in their favor. 

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The post Does Campaigning in Rural America Actually Work for Democrats? appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

As the 2024 presidential election hurdles closer, voters are clamoring for more information about what policy might look like under Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump. 

For agriculture policy, experts predict it could follow two very different paths depending on the results of the election: more tariffs and subsidies for big farmers under Trump, or climate investments and expanded crop insurance under Harris.  

To know what might happen under a second Trump administration, clues can be found from his first presidency. As for a Harris administration, the question will be how much a new Democratic president would continue the policies of her predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump’s Tariffs and Subsidies

Early in his term, former President Trump withdrew from a free-trade agreement the U.S. had entered in 2016 that would have lowered trade barriers for domestic producers. Soon after, Trump invoked a series of tariffs on imports from nearly every other country in the world. Many countries retaliated by invoking their own tariffs on U.S. products.

This eventually led to a trade dispute with China, which resulted in steep tariffs on agriculture products, particularly soybeans and pork products.  

To support farmers who lost out on business from global consumers, Trump authorized $14.5 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) market facilitation program to provide payments to farmers affected by “unjustified foreign retaliatory tariffs.” 

He also greenlit the use of the Commodity Credit Corporation, a credit program the USDA can use to pay farmers without requiring appropriations from Congress. 

“It’s much more like an entitlement program,” said Jonathan Coppess, a University of Illinois politics professor and former administrator of the Farm Service Agency at the USDA. 

“So you can sign up and be entitled to the payment, and then the appropriators just pay off the borrowing, basically pay off the credit card,” he said. 

This provided a lot of flexibility for the USDA, but in combination with the market facilitation program and the payments farmers already received from programs in the 2018 farm bill, Coppess said some payments were made to the same people – many of whom operate large-scale operations that don’t need the extra money. 

This is an issue that goes back much further than the Trump administration. Large-scale federal support for agriculture was first implemented during the 1930s to protect farmers from volatile markets caused by tariffs, natural disasters, or economic recessions. But in recent decades, the majority of that spending has gone to the largest, wealthiest farms. 

“They not only get a disproportionate amount of the income, they also get a disproportionate amount of the safety net,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in a Daily Yonder interview. 

Biden’s Rural Policy Expands Beyond Ag

Vilsack said the Biden administration has been trying to tackle how to funnel more federal resources to smaller farms. Millions of dollars are available through the American Rescue Plan Act to expand small farm operations and support farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture initiatives. The Inflation Reduction Act injected $19.5 billion into the USDA’s conservation programs that incentivize climate friendly farming. 

President Biden has invested in rural communities more broadly through policies like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which funds broadband infrastructure, modernized wastewater and drinking water systems, and road and bridge development, to name a few. 

The Biden administration also inherited Trump’s coronavirus food assistance program, which provided $19 billion in relief to farmers and ranchers at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Biden administration expanded the now-defunct program in 2021. 

But Biden’s time at the White House has also been defined by drawn-out farm bill negotiations, which are almost a year overdue. 

Farm Bill Headache

The farm bill goes far beyond support to individual farmers. For example, it funds food stamps benefits and rural development like sewage and drinking water needs. The bill is reauthorized by Congress every five years, but it often takes longer to approve.

That’s what happened with the 2023 farm bill. Fierce partisan debate over how much money should be spent on what programs has plagued negotiations, and nearly one year out from the expiration of the 2018 farm bill, a new five-year farm bill still has not been passed, even with proposals from both the House and Senate.  

“I do think among farm country, the fact they can’t get a 2023 farm bill done shows tremendous dysfunction and unwillingness to come to the negotiation table,” said Joe Maxwell, co-founder of Farm Action and former lieutenant governor of Missouri. “Both sides just get entrenched.” 

Maxwell said this dysfunction could add to the public’s frustration with politics, especially as the 2024 presidential election gets closer. 

2025 and Beyond

Agriculture experts predict two very different realities for farm policy depending on the results of this election.

Another Trump administration would likely produce more tariffs on China. It also could provide more subsidies to the largest farming operations, according to Scott Faber, the senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group (EWG). 

He’s concerned about what farm bill proposals from Republicans Glenn Thompson, the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, and John Boozman, the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, would mean for small farmers. 

“The House bill in particular provides a roadmap for what Republicans might do if they were to control all the Congress and the White House,” Faber said. The proposed bill would increase reference prices on just a few agricultural products like peanuts, rice, and cotton. This means those farmers are guaranteed payment through the USDA’s Price Loss Coverage program if the market value on those products dips below the reference price. But it leaves out many other commodity farmers, especially ones with smaller operations. 

Critics worry large farm operations would double-dip in different subsidy programs if the House’s farm bill proposal were enacted. “The increase in farm subsidies would be the largest in more than a generation, even though farm bankruptcies are at a 20-year low,” Faber said. 

By contrast, the Democratic farm bill proposal from Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, would incorporate the climate-smart farming investments created by the Inflation Reduction Act into the new farm bill. 

It would also expand access to crop insurance, which for many farmers has been difficult to obtain because of high premium costs. Stabenow’s proposal would increase federal support of farmers’ premium expenses and make it more affordable to access higher insurance coverage levels. 

While Congress is the main driving force behind farm policy, the president can steer that force down certain paths.

President Biden steered Congress toward climate action and rural investments over his four years. Secretary Vilsack said he’s confident Vice President Harris is aware of these steps taken by the Biden administration.

He also said Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has replicated some of these farm policies as governor of Minnesota, which could mean they would be prioritized at the federal level if Harris and Walz are elected to the White House in November. 

“I’m confident that they understand the significance of [investing in small farmers] and the importance of it based on my current experience with them,” Vilsack said. 

The post Election 2024: Competing Visions of How USDA Funding Can Help Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.

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David Salinas knows how to approach strangers. He got good at it while in college, working as a photojournalist. And, he knows what to do when they’re shy at first. He mastered that when working as a car salesman. 

He has one question he always turns to in those moments: “Did you ever finish your education?”

And then, he just pauses … and listens. Sometimes people need a second to open up. It gives him time to read their body language, and set them at ease. That’s another skill he picked up, at his last job, working for child protective services. 

He noticed that a lot of people were scared to admit not having finished high school or attended college.

“No?” he finally replies, once they’ve opened up. 

“Well, what if I knew a way for you to get a GED for free?”

People love it when they hear free, he tells me. It’s clear the former salesman has perfected his pitch. 

In fact, it seems like his whole life has prepared him to be a career navigator for UpSKILL Coastal Bend, a coalition of education leaders and community partners working together to help the South Texas communities around Corpus Christi.

The group formed in 2018 with a goal of breaking down barriers to education, fostering open dialogue, and creating “a singular vision to power solutions that prepare our workforce for good-paying middle-skill jobs in high demand across the region.”

It’s a noble mission, if perhaps a bit vague. Such flexibility is important to their model, which depends on having enough wiggle room to address their challenges in sometimes creative ways … for instance, by turning a rural Dollar Store into an economic incubator or convincing a local judge to sentence offenders to a classroom instead of a jail cell.

Then there are the on-the-ground career coordinators. Like Armando Castellano, who covers seven towns yet is never more than a text away from racing to help his clients. Or Aaron Trevino, a city alderman in Falfurrias, a small town known for its famed tribal healer, a curandero, and an infamous border patrol station.

In such remote places, where some towns are a few hours drive from each other, organizers can’t afford to place all their time and resources in Corpus Christi.

“We’ve been really strategic to make sure the navigators are embedded in the communities we serve,” says Ann Vlach, the operations director at the nonprofit community foundation Education to Employment Partners.

David primarily advises residents of Jim Wells County. It is one of 11 counties serviced by the coalition, which includes representatives from local community colleges, the state’s workforce group, and various nonprofits.

Their work has to be holistic, David says. The same person who needs their GED is often making little or no income. They likely are searching for a new job, and may also be struggling to get housing or food benefits they would qualify for. The coalition works together to connect people to all the services they need at once … before they can accidentally slip through the cracks.

That’s why one of the first things David did, after taking the job two years ago, was make friends with Rosie Rodriguez at the Housing Authority of Alice. He gives weekly workshops there, some as simple as how to write a better resume, others about accessing adult education and potential workforce opportunities.

He keeps going, even though it’s an hour commute roundtrip from his home in Kingsville. Even though only a few people typically show up and most are retirement-aged. It’s important to be there. 

“They’ll know either nephews or grandchildren, and that’s one way to get word of mouth out there,” he says.

Jasmine Vegas certainly was glad that he did. The 37-year-old mother of four kids visited the housing authority a month ago, and left her number, after Rosie said she could possibly get her GED for free.

“I got a call from David the next day,” she says.

Jasmine tries to tell her two teenagers that they need to stay in school, even when they don’t want to … and she is tired of them responding by saying ‘Well, you dropped out.’

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The post The Man Helping Rural South Texans Get Their GED — For Free appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is her vice presidential running mate, bringing her campaign up many notches in rural credibility.

Walz grew up in Valentine, Nebraska (population 2,700), on his family’s farm before moving to the even smaller town of Butte, Nebraska (population 300), his sophomore year of high school, graduating in a class of 25 students.

After high school, he joined the National Guard and worked in manufacturing before attending Nebraska’s Chadron State College for a degree in social science education. He taught and coached high school football in Alliance, Nebraska (population 8,000), where he met his future wife, Minnesota-born Gwen Whipple. They married in 1994 and moved to Mankato, Minnesota (population 45,000), in 1996. Walz taught geography and coached football at Mankato West High School, where he also headed the school’s first gay-straight alliance.

In 2006, he ran for Congress as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee (a third party unique to Minnesota whose platform centers “progressive agrarian reform” and advocates for farmers, union workers, and the public ownership of utilities, railroads, and natural resources, as well as social security legislation, according to their website.) He won the disproportionately rural first congressional district of southern Minnesota, beating the district’s six-term Republican incumbent. He represented the district from 2007-2019 before becoming governor of Minnesota.

All this to say: Walz knows rural America.

Unlike many other Democrats, Walz understands what it’s like to be from a small town where no matter your political ideology, neighbors still look out for one another. He’s privy to political nuance in rural communities, like in the congressional district that voted for him and also voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Walz doesn’t hold the same disdain for or condescension of rural folks or Trump supporters that some Democrats are guilty of (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment about Trump supporters is the most famous example of this).

This last point is what I find most compelling about him. Walz doesn’t think Trump supporters are dumb or are voting against their own interests; he thinks that Democrats have a messaging problem. In an interview with Ezra Klein, he harkened back to his teaching days to describe this issue.

“The schoolteacher in me keeps thinking, if I give a test, and 90% of the students fail, I can guarantee you it’s not because the kids aren’t smart, there’s something wrong with the test or the way I’m teaching it,” Walz told Klein. “I keep coming back to this: if they’re not voting for us, there’s not something wrong with them, there’s something [about Democrats’ messaging] that’s not quite clicking.”

Since it was first announced Walz was being considered for the V.P. pick, he’s developed his own way of talking about the threat of another Trump presidency by keeping it simple: Republicans are just plain-ole “weird.”

Before Walz hit mainstream media, Democrats were warning of the “existential threat to democracy” that Trump poses, but now they’ve united around Walz’s phrasing. Republicans who want to take books away, to be in your medical exam room – they’re weird for that.

This messaging is refreshing in its simplicity. The way Walz uses “weird” isn’t to shame Trump supporters; it’s to point out how odd Republican policies like book bans or abortion bans really are. Isn’t it counter to personal freedom – one of the fundamental values in the United States – to dictate what a person can and cannot read? Isn’t it a terrible privacy infraction to want a say in the healthcare people receive? Can’t we all just respect each other’s personal freedoms and mind our own business, Walz asks?

As Minnesota governor, Walz has passed an impressive number of progressive policies. Some of his signature accomplishments include investments in public education like free breakfast and lunch for all students, expansion of the state’s child tax credit, protections for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, a $1 billion investment in affordable housing and expanded voting rights access, to name just a few.

But he’s got critics, too. His governor’s campaign ran on a “One Minnesota” message meant to bridge the state’s rural-urban divide, but some Minnesota pundits say once he was armed with a Democratic trifecta in the governor’s office and in both chambers of the state legislature, his “One Minnesota” message changed.

“But once he got that trifecta, his message shifted to: ‘This is what we can do with single party control, the era of gridlock is over,’” said Hamline University professor David Schultz in a CNN interview. Other pundits have wondered whether he’ll be able to rekindle the unity that message spurred if the Harris-Walz ticket loses in November.

Even with these critiques, Walz seems to be a strong choice for the Harris campaign.

He hits many of the demographic factors Harris’ advisers were looking for, whether officially or not: He’s a white, rural, middle-age veteran who has won over the internet through a single word. And the power of the internet is nothing to scoff at – one of this summer’s it-girls, musician Charli XCX, declared Kamala Harris a “brat” (a counter-intuitive compliment that references Charli XCX’s hit album), and enthusiasm for Harris soared among young millennials and Gen Z. Capitalizing on Walz’s internet virality is a good strategy for getting young voters.

Pair that with Walz’s rural credibility (he recently said he could out-shoot Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance in a pheasant hunt), and the Harris-Walz ticket could be a force to be reckoned with.

The post Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Gives Harris Campaign Rural Cred appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

In rural Kansas, if you’re between the ages of 21 and 39ish, you might be considered a PowerUp —  but not just because of your age or location. A PowerUp is someone who is rural by choice. 

“The name was created to illustrate the goal of empowering and moving younger people in rural communities into positions of leadership and influence,” Simone Elder said. 

She is the PowerUp & Engagement Manager for the Kansas Sampler Foundation (KSF), which focuses on preserving and sustaining rural culture. “For years, returning to rural has gotten a bad rap — the perception that it’s less than or someone failed at their bigger endeavors elsewhere,” Elder said. But KSF has been working to shift that mindset. 

Despite old narratives about small towns being places to escape, grassroots leaders and policymakers in rural communities nationwide are exploring ways to attract young people to these places and make them feel at home there.

For example, KSF is challenging residents to envision new possibilities by getting out on the back roads to experience overlooked assets in their hometowns. “Through the Big Kansas Road Trip, we help Kansans and other visitors from outside the state to see Kansas with new eyes,” Elder said. 

After identifying PowerUps as some of the strongest assets available, KSF has emphasized cultivating rural influencers. “There’s tremendous value in having an older person visibly and intentionally elevate the work of younger people in rural,” Elder said. 

Many PowerUps KSF has interviewed express wanting a sense of community, especially when it comes to raising kids, and a number have voiced entrepreneurial aspirations. Elder noted that while being rural by choice can mean loving where you live, it can sometimes feel lonely or frustrating. “It doesn’t mean you chose wrong,” she said. It’s about having a strong network of champions that can move forward together.

In neighboring Nebraska, Megan Helberg has become one of those champions. Fifteen years ago, she was a “returner.” Similar to Kansas, Nebraska was having an issue telling its own story. “We used to kind of joke about how small we were,” Helberg said. “But we started to realize that people listen to what you say.” 

Helberg, who decided to return despite that old narrative, is now a local rancher and secondary school teacher. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Nebraska Community Foundation and serves as chairperson for the Calamus Area Community Fund. 

She is one of many spreading the message that young Nebraskans should go explore but then bring their greatness back. “We need you here, we want you here, and you can make a great life here,” she said. In 2024, her school’s senior class had six graduates, all of whom are heading off to college. But 75% are committed to coming back to help with an existing business or start one of their own. 

Creating the climate for those kinds of endeavors is where the community fund comes in, relying on unrestricted endowments, local bank accounts that accept donations from community members. Only the accumulated interest can be spent and all funds must be poured back into the community.

“It has been absolutely transformational,” Helberg said. In her area, the community fund has supported the renovation of neglected homes, making the properties available again to combat the housing crisis. Two new childcare centers have also opened with local support, as well as additional funding sources.

While these grassroots efforts show the power of community when everyone joins in, there is also critical work happening at the policy level across the country. New Hampshire-based Stay Work Play is a non-profit making it easier for young people to call the Granite State home. 

Part of its approach is non-partisan, issues-based advocacy informed by statewide data collection. Take, for instance, Stay Work Play’s Policy & Pints series, which gathered young locals at area breweries for focus groups to identify barriers to feeling welcome and secure in New Hampshire. 

Unsurprisingly, housing and childcare were high on the list. “We’re not experts ourselves in housing or childcare, but we do work with partners across the state for whom this is their business,” said Will Stewart, executive director. 

Stay Work Play is supporting greater investments in the state’s workforce housing fund and advocating for the ability to build smaller units on smaller lot sizes. “Things that young families need to get a toehold here in the state,” Stewart said. 

In addition, he’s seen “a return to older models,” like employer-supported housing. Some companies are paying existing employees to house new ones until they’re able to secure stable living situations. A leading healthcare provider has also been exploring options to develop on land already under its ownership. “But they’re just one example of a company that’s looking for novel solutions,” Stewart said. 

Beyond these logistical factors, social infrastructure is a key element that’s sometimes less talked about. In New Hampshire, young residents reported high satisfaction with “being able to get out of work and 30 minutes later be on the ski slopes or out hiking or on a paddleboard,” Stewart said. But making friends or finding a date can mean an ever-expanding search radius on social apps. The need for more “third places” where people can gather organically is strongly felt. 

As small towns rise to the challenge, sharing a new narrative through effective branding and marketing is essential. Stewart points to Littleton, a rural New Hampshire town that has cultivated a buzzing downtown, food and drink scene, and outdoor recreation network. 

For potential “returners” who may not have been back except for holiday dinners, “they probably don’t have an understanding of places, like Littleton, that have changed, and to use a scientific term, gotten cooler,” Stewart said. That’s an opportunity for a redefined rural place to find its people.

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Caroline Tremblay is a freelance writer who covers Radically Rural, an annual two-day summit on rural issues held in Keene, New Hampshire. This year’s event, featuring the people and organizations cited in this story, will take place September 25-26. For more information, and to register for this year’s summit, visit radicallyrural.org.

The post Young Americans Returning to Rural for More than Just Holiday Dinners appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see?  Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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Imagine, for a moment, a world in which a former U.S. president is nearly assassinated, a Republican vice presidential nominee is announced, and the current U.S. president and presumptive Democratic nominee drops out of an election occurring not even four months from now, all in the span of roughly one week. 

Oh, yeah! We don’t have to imagine, our reality really is this absurd. 

I am still reeling from the past week, but of course, the news cycle races on so my journalist brain is already onto the next question – what does all this mean for rural America? 

The most likely Democratic nominee is Kamala Harris (enough Democratic delegates say they will back her, according to an AP survey, to clinch the nomination), but the former Bay Area prosecutor doesn’t have much of a rural track record. 

However, her association with President Joe Biden, who made large investments in rural America through the novel Rural Partners Network and laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs Act, and Chips & SCIENCE Act, could bode well for rural under a Harris administration.

As vice president, Harris was tasked with being a spokesperson for reproductive rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Earlier this year, she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, to see how the Midwest has been affected by abortion bans. The issue is likely to be a central talking point in her campaign if and when she’s officially declared the Democratic nominee. 

Harris’ other focus as VP has been on immigration. Since 2021, she’s helped secure private sector investments from companies like Nestle and Target to create local jobs in Central America in order to decrease migration into the U.S. Whether this actually worked is debatable: the number of undocumented folks hailing from nearly every region of the world who moved to the U.S. grew by half a million people between 2021 and 2022, according to Pew Research Center data. 

Lastly, Harris has worked to codify voting rights protections. She was one of the biggest proponents of the now-stalled Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act that would have expanded voter registration and access, and established Election Day as a federal holiday. 

All three of these focus areas intersect with rural interests. Abortion access in rural communities is limited because of the location of abortion clinics (and as clinics have been shut down in more red states, rural folks have had to travel even farther). Medication abortion by mail is another option for rural folks, but many states have restricted access to medication abortion and one state – Arizona – has fully prevented its delivery by mail.

Immigration has also proved to be a hot button topic, with a Gallup poll from early this year showing it as a top issue for voters. Immigration is likely to be front of mind for folks living in the rural border regions of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. 

Voting rights protections also have big implications for rural America where voter turnout is the lowest, in part because of barriers like mail-in ballot restrictions and fewer in-person polling locations. 

Rural voters are likely to be an essential voting bloc this presidential election. A 2023 survey from the Center for Rural Strategies (publisher of the Daily Yonder) and Lake Research Partners suggested as many as 37% of rural voters could be swayed by either party. 

Harris’ work as VP intersects with rural interests nicely. (In a Venn Diagram, perhaps?) Pair that with expanding the Biden administration’s work to invest in rural America, and she could make headway with some rural voters – if she chooses to pay attention to them.

The post What Would a Harris Presidency Mean for Rural America?  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.

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A few years ago, Sara White moved back to Harlan County, the rural Kentucky community where she was raised. 

Her home is coal county. Well, was: The pickaxes are mostly gone. Now, the closest you can get to the glory days is in a rail car shuttling through a former U.S. Steel mine, as the area’s mining history is told by automated displays of coal-dusted mannequins at the tourist trap Portal 31.

White has long known some of the challenges that come up in the region, having spent decades in eastern Kentucky as an education advocate at Berea College and, later, the nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact.

To her, students had limited vision when it came to their future education and career goals: when all you know is what’s in front of you, it’s hard to imagine what else is possible. Most of the professionals here are in teaching or medicine, which makes it difficult to see how students can turn their interests into other career pathways.

“Those are really the only mentors and role models they have,” says White, who works remotely as the Southeast regional admissions recruiter for the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. 

“If you wanted to pursue something artistic, there isn’t a lot of demand locally for that, outside of teaching art. Even in the science fields, it’s really hard to consider being, say, a biologist, when the only person you hear talking about biology is your biology teacher,” White says.

There are other ways her home is changing though. When she was growing up, highschoolers couldn’t wait to get their driver’s licenses, for example. Now, it feels like her nephews and all their friends could care less — and even without cars, their exposure to the wider world is greater than ever.

“They don’t care because they all connect virtually anyway,” she says. “I don’t hear much from them about career planning, but if I do, it’s all about gaming and other virtual stuff.”

Her observations are particularly interesting at a time where many wonder if getting a four-year degree is still worth it. The connection between education and career outcomes is especially important for lower-income rural students, who often can’t afford to risk pursuing degrees that won’t pay off in the long run. 

What they are exposed to plays a major role in determining the pathways they may choose, whether or not that route best serves them. And rural areas are more likely to have a mismatch between the types of courses available to students and the projected local jobs of the future. 

That’s according to the Georgetown University Center on Education Workforce, which found in a recent report that a “Great Misalignment” is occurring across America, with most labor markets needing to shift at least half of their middle-skills credentials programs to accurately match projected local labor demand.

Rural areas are particularly struggling with that mismatch because they tend to have fewer educational institutions, which makes it harder for them to meet broader job-training needs as a result. 

Eastern Kentucky is one of the most misaligned stretches in the eastern United States, according to that Georgetown report — to more accurately align with future workforce demand, the darkest-blue counties in these charts would need to shift more than 70% of their credentials programs.

The Georgetown report relies on 2019-2021 IPEDS data from the US Department of Education, which means it could be missing some of the fast-track and shorter-certification programs that many rural colleges have started offering in fields like construction, welding, and nursing. 

Still, the report provides an interesting shorthand for universities and colleges to start assessing whether the programs they offer are well-suited to prepare their students for the types of careers that will be available to them.

It’s a topic that is often on the mind for Heather Davis, the director of transition services at Eastern Kentucky University, which is based in Richmond, a suburb of Lexington that borders this stretch of misalignment.

Davis works mostly with adult learners who have never attended college or transfer students of various age groups. They often joined the military, married young and had a family, or were just forced to immediately enter the workforce. 

“Regardless, the narrative is the same: I had a big life event happen, and I put myself and my education on the backburner,” she says. 

“Those who do pursue education later are either pursuing a lifelong dream or they’re working in a place that is willing to pay for their continuing education, and they know they’ll be promoted once they get that credential.” 

One example at Eastern Kentucky University: The Associate’s of Applied Science in Nursing program, which is “blowing up right now,” Davis says. 

Offering a quick path to becoming a registered nurse, the program isn’t just a good example of degree-workforce alignment. 

It also shows how colleges can assure prospective students that the skills they learn will make them hire-able after graduation: Last year’s cohort reported a 100% pass rate in national licensing exams, compared to the state average pass rate of 77% in 2022. 

“If there is a two-year degree that is lucrative here, it’s AASN,” Davis says.

She’s seen similar success for rural students in four-year programs like early childhood education, business, and social work — in fact, the university just partnered with Somerset Community College to start offering a new social work degree an hour away in Pulaski County, one of those rural counties that currently struggles with significant misalignment.

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The post Rural Student Qualifications Don’t Align with Local Job Markets appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

A new survey of small business owners from rural parts of the country shows that 87% believe it has been difficult for working parents to afford high-quality child care programs for their children.

The survey found that small businesses across the country, and especially in rural areas, are wanting to grow, said Janetta King, Midwest regional director for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices, which conducted the study.

“But the No. 1 challenge that they have is hiring and retaining workers. And one of the reasons that they cite for hiring and retaining being such a challenge is the lack of access to affordable childcare in their communities,” King told the Daily Yonder in an interview. “We found that this challenge is exacerbated in rural areas,” she said.“Rural small business owners who want to grow, who want to expand, are citing lack of childcare as one of the reasons that they are unable to do that.” 

The study also found that 66% of rural small businesses say their communities do not have enough high-quality and affordable child care programs. That’s 9 percentage points higher than the general population, where 57% say that child care is lacking in their communities. Additionally, 43% of rural small businesses say that a lack of child care has had a negative impact on their ability to operate or grow their businesses, which is 5 percentage points higher than the general population, in which 38% say that a lack of child care has had a negative impact on their ability to operate or grow their businesses.

“Childcare is very expensive,” King said. “For some candidates who are considering going back to work, they look at the cost of childcare in relation to what they might be making and their job. And the math doesn’t add up. And so they’re opting not to enter into the workforce because childcare is so expensive. So it’s both an affordability issue and an access issue. And for our small business owners, it’s a competitiveness issue, especially in rural areas.”

Ashley Kingdon-Reese is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs program and runs multiple businesses in rural South Dakota, especially in-home care for aging adults and disabled individuals. 

The age at which people can do that sort of work, she said, is the mid-point of life, when many have children to take care of. 

“We really had to pivot and change even how we do everything from orientation, to their onboarding,” Kingdon-Reese said during a phone interview. “What we started doing is in lieu of or where their options are a match for daycare, and using things like co-ops with other agencies who are facing the same problems.”

Instead of working three 12-hour shifts like what is normal in the industry, Kingdon-Reese has her employees work a more traditional schedule so that they can be home for their kids. 

“Our morning meetings start at 8:15 as the kids get to school, and we set up carpools,” she said. “And we rotate. It’s been some strategizing just to make sure that you’re able to start the job.”

Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund — an organization dedicated to working with Congress and the Administration to increase support in early childhood education — said there just isn’t enough child care across the board, no matter where one lives. 

“We have a lack of availability, and [it] tends to be incredibly expensive and unaffordable for families,” she said in a Zoom interview. 

Head Start is one policy solution, Rittling said. There’s also a bill called “Expanding Child Care in Rural America,” which would be attached to the Farm Bill and prioritize projects that would address availability, quality and cost of childcare in rural communities. The bill was introduced in 2023 by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and had a committee hearing in April. 

Tax credits are another important policy initiative, she added. There’s “a tax credit called the Child Dependent Care Tax Credit to help offset the cost of care,” Rittling said. “It’s in dire need of updating both in costs and also refundability in order to reach some families who need it the most.”

Rittling said people need to come together to address the issue. 

“What we do know is that despite the fact that these are unique challenges and differences, we have to come together and come up with some solutions, because it’s affecting everybody,” she added.

The post Survey: Affordable Child Care a Problem in Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

State governments across the country have been tasked with stewarding a portion of funds acquired through regional and national legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors in recent years – including the likes of Johnson & Johnson, McKesson and CVS. The settlements stem from multiple nationwide lawsuits levied against the companies for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, around 75% of drug overdose deaths were connected with opioids in 2022. That accounts for the deaths of more than 81,000 people that year. Kentucky’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet said in their 2022 Overdose Fatality Report that a little over 1,500 people who died from overdoses in the state were found to have fentanyl in their system.

State governments and localities are using the settlement funds to try to heal communities affected by the opioid crisis and prevent others from being affected.

Kentucky has secured around $900 million from opioid settlements. Those funds have been split into two pools, with half earmarked for the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KOAAC) – a group specifically formed to handle the state’s use of the funds – and half divvied up among the state’s county and city governments. The first installments were distributed by the state to local governments in December of 2022. Payments are expected to continue until 2038 with no deadline in place for when funds must be spent.

Lauren Carr is an Opioid Settlement Advisor for the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACo). She assists county officials in navigating the best practices and reporting guidelines for the opioid settlement funds, which can only be used in specific ways.

“You can’t take these funds and use it for a program that was already being funded. You can’t take these funds and supplant. These funds are supposed to be to supplement,” Carr said. “Either integrate a new program or supplement the existing programs that you have – seeing where barriers are – and providing those services.”

Kentucky’s legislature has already outlined a list of possible uses for these funds in a state statute. Carr said the list – which was created when KOAAC was chartered – provides pathways for localities to take but she said it doesn’t expressly limit their use.

The Paducah Police Department, in far western Kentucky, is using some of the city’s settlement dollars to staff a new position focused on lowering recidivism for the people with substance use disorders.

Paducah Police Chief Brian Laird said hiring a deflection specialist has been a long-term goal for his department.

“We encounter folks regularly that are homeless, folks that have mental health issues, folks that have drug abuse issues,” Laird said. “So the goal was – instead of the officers continuing to respond over and over to these folks – we have somebody that can follow up with these individuals and try to get them some help.”

Deflection is a relatively new philosophy in law enforcement that focuses on keeping individuals with substance use disorders from entering or reentering the court system by avoiding interactions with police. Laird said that he’s aware of other social work positions within police departments in the state but believes Paducah may be the first department in Kentucky to hire a deflection specialist.

The position will be paid, in part, by the police department’s budget, but the majority of the funding comes directly from the city’s opioid settlement money. Applications for the position closed in April, but Laird hopes the specialist to be officially onboard by August.

Other county and city governments in western Kentucky are still trying to figure out how to spend their portion of settlement funds.

Murray officials formed a work group before the first settlement payments were received to investigate possible uses of the funding. City Administrator Jim Osborne said the city is still working alongside the Kentucky Attorney General’s office, but that no official plans have been made as of yet.

“The goal would be using the money to not necessarily just in one area of but could combine areas that are approved uses,” the Murray city administrator said. “I think the key is finding a happy medium of where best it would be used … something that’s legal, transparent and would help the community.”

Similarly, Marshall County Judge Executive Kevin Spraggs said he wants to make sure settlement funds are used in the most efficient way possible.

“We want to make sure wherever this money goes, ultimately, it’s put to the best possible use,” Spraggs said. “We don’t want to jump into something without doing a lot of research, and we’d like to do something with a proven track record, percentage wise, where the most people are being helped.”

For Carr, addressing the opioid epidemic has two major components – prevention and harm reduction. She said that many localities focus on prevention, with enacting programs like “Just Say No” to keep individuals from becoming substance users in the first place. Harm reduction, instead, focuses on helping individuals who are already using drugs.

The statutory list includes 29 potential uses for settlement dollars that would provide funding for projects aimed at helping those with substance use disorder or those who are at risk of using. These include programs focusing on supporting intervention, treatment and recovery services to substance users. The funds could also be used to educate the general public and provide training to healthcare providers, recovery specialists or law enforcement.

The list also includes things like drug-take back and disposal programs and any programs that cover the cost of administering naloxone.

The over-the-counter medicine (also known as Narcan) can be used to treat opioid overdoses in a crisis situation. Carr said that increasing accessibility to the medication and teaching the public about its use could help to prevent deaths.

“At the end of the day, a dead person doesn’t recover,” Carr said. “We all can be first responders. Whether it’s at a basketball game, at the library or at a Walmart, you never know when you may be a first responder, and so being prepared is something that will help save lives for individuals that are in active addiction right now.”

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