Jerry Hagstrom
DTN Political Correspondent
CHICAGO (DTN) -- A large crowd of rural delegates and activists showed up at the Democratic National Convention Rural Council meeting to express enthusiasm for the ticket of Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and to get campaign lessons from successful and unsuccessful Democratic candidates for office in rural states and the rural areas of urban-dominated states.
They heard new lines to convince rural Americans to vote for Harris and Walz -- or not to vote for former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, the Republican candidates for president and vice president. Trump over the past two election cycles has dominated rural areas across the country, a trend Democrats would like to change.
"The road to the White House runs through rural," said Kylie Oversen, a North Dakotan who is chair of the Democratic Rural Council. Oversen is a former state representative and former chair of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party.
Walz is set to speak Wednesday night at the convention, and Harris will accept the party's nomination on Thursday night.
Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said, "It is so good for me to be with my people. We are the most courageous Democrats in America," a reflection of how few rural Americans are Democrats now.
Heitkamp said she is "fairly exuberant about Walz" and noted that he had called her to ask if she would talk to the media about his record.
"Vance has not lived in rural America since he was 18," Heitkamp said. "Tim Walz has 60 years of being with us."
Now that Walz is the Democratic candidate for vice president, "I dare the Republicans to say we are the elite party, that we don't have people in our party that care about rural America. I dare them to say we are not rural," she said.
Noting that Walz made his first trip to San Francisco only "a few weeks ago," Heitkamp said Walz is "so authentic."
Walz, she said, would not need to go to Cabela's, the outdoor recreation gear store, to buy hunting clothes, because he already has them in his closet. (On Tuesday evening, former President Barack Obama said of Walz, "You can tell those flannel shirts he wears don't come from some consultant, they come from his closet, and they've been through some stuff.")
Heitkamp also criticized South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem for calling Walz a radical rather than being gracious about another Midwesterner being chosen to run for such a high office.
Heitkamp said that rural Democrats should aim for a 5% better performance this election year than in the past, then aim for 10% more in the next election cycle, increasing from there in future years.
"The best thing" that rural Democrats have going for them is that Republicans are "picking on each other. They've gotten weird," she said, picking up on the line that brought Walz to national prominence.
Heitkamp explained that when she lost her campaign for re-election to the Senate in 2018, she had campaign money left over and used it to start the One Country Project, which she now chairs.
She picked the name One Country Project, she said, because "people are trying to divide us." People throughout the country, she said, want good health care, good education, government to work, to feed their families and be safe.
"We cannot let people continue to divide us or define us," she said.
The Biden-Harris administration, Heitkamp noted, has made "mammoth amounts of investment and commitments to rural America that do not get recognized."
She noted that when she was with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at an event announcing a rural development project in Minnesota, a businessman asked Vilsack why he was there. When Vilsack said a USDA grant had made the project possible, the businessman refused to believe it, she said.
The No. 1 issue in rural America is health care -- "not just reproductive rights, but access to good-quality health care," Heitkamp said.
In North Dakota, she said, "we have locations where if you are in the last months of your pregnancy, you better move" because health care may be 150 miles away.
Affordable Care Act premium subsidies will also phase out in 2025, she pointed out.
North Dakota, which used to have an all-Democratic congressional delegation, went Republican "when Republicans decided they'd better get on board the farm bill."
"Guess who is holding it up -- it is the Republicans," Heitkamp said. They can't get a farm bill done because 20 to 30 Freedom Caucus Republicans won't vote for it, she said. "You should be talking about the Republicans not getting the farm bill done."
Democrats at the event did not discuss specifics such as the party's platform. The party platform calls for "investing in new sources of income for America's farmers, and working to make our farm sector the world's first to reach net-zero emissions by 2050." The plan touts USDA for paying farmers to adopt climate-smart practices, stating, "Already over 80,000 farms covering 75 million acres have adopted these practices."
The Democratic platform also calls for Congress to pass "right to repair" legislation as well as pass legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers, as well as Dreamers and other "long-term undocumented individuals."
Speakers included candidates for Congress in rural areas as well as governors in traditionally red states. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear pointed out that he has gotten elected twice, beating candidates selected by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Beshear said he is "living proof the Democrats can win in rural America. I am a proud pro-union, proud pro-education, pro-choice, pro-diversity, proud Kamala-Harris-for-president governor."
Beshear said, "It's time to run and govern on the issues that matter the most to our people."
Under his leadership, Beshear said, Kentucky has created rural jobs, expanded health care with two pediatric centers in rural Kentucky and built the first four-lane highway in eastern Kentucky.
"We have to show up in every state, in every community," Beshear told his fellow Democrats.
Americans have been "asked to pick a side in everything, including the beer we drink," but Harris and Walz "will lead us into a better future in which neighbors can talk to each other," he said.
Noting that Vance had criticized people without children, Beshear said Democrats should tell people that "we will not call you names, and you have a place right here with us."
About being considered for vice president, Beshear said he was proud that a governor from rural America had been in the mix.
"Tim Walz is a great friend, a great governor and will be an amazing vice president," he said, adding that he expects to campaign "in places where we need to show up more often," such as Iowa and Oklahoma.
Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, said there are Democrats from other states who are amazed to learn there is a Democratic governor in a rural state like Kansas.
From the media, she said, "You would think we are some kind of endangered species. I won twice in Kansas."
"The secret to winning over rural folk," she said, is "to talk to them about their school, health care, roads, housing."
She said respecting women's rights "is also a rural value" and noted that Kansas voters had upheld the right to abortion. (After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, Kansans a few weeks later defeated a ballot initiative that would have removed the right to abortion from the state's constitution.)
Democrats will "win in rural America when you decide you want to win in rural America," she said. Democrats need to "show up not just for pictures but to learn and talk about why we are proud of that rural way of life, why it is so important to protect."
Kelly pointed out that she is now the chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), succeeding Walz, "who represents everything good and decent about the Midwest and rural America. With Coach Walz, what you see is what you get."
Kelly also noted that the DGA "invested $20 million to elect Gov. Beshear."
Kelly said she is "looking forward to saying, 'Hello, Madam President.' Let's go win and shock everyone by doing it in rural America."
Xochitl Torres Small, who won a House seat in 2018 for New Mexico, lost in 2020 and is now the USDA deputy secretary, said, "I got a chance to serve because that rural America showed up." Torres Small said she was elected "in the middle of the Trump presidency, in the middle of trade wars" when farmers were losing money and rural hospitals were worrying about closing their doors "because Trump took too long to recognize the size of the COVID problem."
Trump today still talks about ending the Affordable Care Act and talks about starting another trade war, she said.
Speaking as a private citizen rather than an official, Torres Small said, "We know how to show up. Biden and Harris have been showing up for us. We are going to do the real work that rural America knows how to do to win this election."
Joel Heitkamp, brother of Heidi Heitkamp and a radio show host in North Dakota, engaged in a dialogue with David Pepper, a former Ohio Democratic Party chair and local official, about the importance of using talk radio in campaigns and of running for local government positions.
Farmers "are willing to listen to you on talk radio," Joel Heitkamp said. "Jump on any tractor, and you will find them listening to talk radio."
Pepper pointed out that Vance did not grow up in rural Ohio, but in a suburb of Cincinnati. Pepper said Vance did not learn in Ohio to criticize women who don't have children as "cat ladies" or "trashing veterans" as he did when he criticized Walz for retiring from the National Guard.
Pepper said that Vance "showed up well after law school and living on the West Coast and now has bought a house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
"Trump gave us a gift when he picked JD Vance," Pepper said.
Noting that Vance wrote a forward to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-backed agenda for the next Republican administration, Pepper pointed out that the project would eliminate Head Start and reduce free school meals.
School vouchers "may be the single most potent issue" in local elections, Pepper said, suggesting that Democrats highlight the mascots in schools and ask why Republicans "are attacking" the mascots.
According to Project 2025, conservatives favor lifetime caps on Medicaid and no vaccines in schools, and less in-person rural health care, Pepper said.
Joel Heitkamp said Democrats need to remind voters that it is the job of Congress to pass a farm bill, but it is not getting the job done.
Project 2025, he said, is "anti-farmer" and also proposes separating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from the farm bill. Pepper said Congress will pass a farm bill "when we elect a Democratic Congress."
Also see "Meat Industry Pushes Back on Harris' Rhetoric Over Price Gouging" here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….
"Vance Challenges USDA for Providing Farm Benefits Based on Color," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
"Farm Programs, USDA Would Shrink Under Project 2025 Goals for Ag," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton contributed to this report.
Jerry Hagstrom can be reached at jhagstrom@nationaljournal.com
Follow him on social platform X @hagstromreport
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