WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rhiannon Hampson travels hundreds of miles across Maine’s rural landscape each week in her role as the top rural development official for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the state. She points out that in the past year, there has been an unprecedented amount of road paving and bridge reconstruction across the state.
One of the numerous projects funded nationwide by President Joe Biden’s bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure law is the replacement of Maine’s century-old Ticonic Bridge in Waterville and upgrades to the airport in Presque Isle.
However, Hampson noted that this fact often goes unnoticed by the people who use these improved infrastructures. “We’ve had historic levels of funding in the last couple of years,” she said, “but maybe it’s just harder for us in rural spaces to see the breadth of it.”
This disconnect lies at the heart of Biden’s efforts to regain support in rural America – a region that constitutes one-fifth of the American population – and which leaned heavily towards Donald Trump and the Republicans in the last two presidential elections.
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Crediting Biden for the economic improvements is crucial for his 2024 reelection campaign, and this is especially challenging in rural areas of the U.S., where frustrations have mounted among predominantly older, white voters due to decades of industrial decline, job losses, globalization, and a dwindling agricultural sector.
Biden’s campaign plans an aggressive outreach to rural voters, who account for 30% of the electorate in swing states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, approximately 22% in Pennsylvania, and a substantial 61% in Maine.
According to Reuters interviews with over two dozen Democratic officials, local politicians, activists, and academics, years of neglect of rural areas, skepticism about government spending, and divisions over social issues such as abortion and education pose significant challenges for Biden in these areas.
Trump increased his lead among rural voters to 65% in 2020 from 59% in 2016. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republican candidates secured 69% of the rural vote.
The issues Biden faces in Maine’s rural second district, which supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 before embracing Trump, mirror the challenges seen nationwide, as highlighted by Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Orono.
Biden did win the coastal, more populated first district, securing three of the state’s four electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska are the only U.S. states that split electoral votes, while the other 48 follow a ‘winner takes all’ system.)
A study in 2022 by Suzanne Mettler, a politics and policy professor at Cornell, and Trevor Brown, a PhD student there, revealed that nearly 94% of the nation’s job growth since 2000 has taken place in urban counties, further widening the rural-urban divide.
Trump and other Republican candidates have exploited the resentment felt by many rural Americans over what they perceive as attempts by urban “elites” to impose their views on education, guns, and gender identity, according to Mettler and Brown.
Ron Kaufman, a Republican National Committee member from Massachusetts, stated that rural voters are more focused on the high price of gasoline and other pocketbook issues than on major government investments, which may take years to boost the local economy and add to the national debt.
Although inflation has decreased since reaching a 40-year peak of 9.1% in the summer of 2022, food costs remain high, and gasoline prices are surging, disproportionately affecting Americans in rural areas who often have to drive longer distances.
“They see this administration being a disaster for the American people on issues they care about like going to the pump,” said Kaufman, a former adviser to Utah Senator Mitt Romney who also worked for President George H. W. Bush.
Democratic officials stated their intent to reinforce their messaging in specific rural areas in preparation for the 2024 election. They plan to highlight the billions of dollars in federal funding that have been allocated to rural areas since Biden assumed office, particularly through infrastructure, semiconductor, and inflation-focused laws.
This funding includes $20 billion for rural health systems, $20 billion for clean-energy agriculture projects, $11 billion for rural electrification, and $13 billion towards rural clean energy projects, as calculated by the White House.
Tom Perez, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee who took over as Biden’s top liaison to governors, mayors, and other elected officials in June, emphasized, “We’re in a moment of unprecedented opportunity for rural America when you look at the investments that have been made.”
However, even political veterans who support Biden remain skeptical. “This administration is doing more than anyone has in a long time to help advance farming, but I’m not sure if it will translate – at least in the short term – into changing voting patterns in rural America,” said John Piotti, a Democrat and CEO of the American Farmland Trust, who served eight years in Maine’s state legislature.
Even young voters, who historically support Democrats according to Pew and other data, leaned towards Republican candidates in rural areas in 2022 by a margin of 64% to 33%, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
White House internal polling indicates that rural Americans overwhelmingly support certain Biden policies, such as those expanding healthcare and veterans benefits, as mentioned by a Biden official. The Kaiser Family Foundation and Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, confirm that these issues enjoy bipartisan voter support.
However, voters aren’t giving Biden credit for these policies. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 60% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation, and many who voted for him in 2020 are unsure if they will do so again.
“When you get out into the rural areas, the folks are older and don’t have the educational level. The cultural, moral values are different,” said James Gimpel, a professor at the University of Maryland.
USDA data reveals that 21% of working-age adults in rural areas possess at least a bachelor’s degree compared to 37% in urban areas. In 2022, voters with a college degree or higher education cast ballots for Democratic candidates by a margin of 56% to 43%, as found by Pew Research.
Gimpel suggested that Democrats might be better off trying to appeal to voters on the outskirts of suburbia.
‘BLEEDING HEART’ DEMOCRATS
Maine has received approximately $4.6 billion in COVID relief funds since Biden took office, in addition to another $2.5 billion for various infrastructure projects, broadband expansion, and climate resilience, according to state officials.
Maine’s roughly 106,000 veterans – just under 10% of the state’s population – stand to benefit from the PACT Act, which offers expanded benefits to veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxins during their military service.
Dick Bouchard, a Vietnam war veteran from Poland, Maine, still sees Trump as a better steward of the economy, despite Trump’s multiple indictments, including charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, giving him pause.
“Biden and [Democratic] Maine Governor Janet Mills: they’re too much bleeding hearts. They say yes to everyone and anything,” he remarked.
Democratic Representative Jared Golden, representing Maine’s second district, cautioned Biden against overstating his economic achievements. “It may be true that inflation and unemployment are trending in the right direction, but that doesn’t mean the economy is booming,” he stated in a message to Reuters.
TRUMP ‘FILLED A VACUUM’
Many rural Democrats in the state express frustration after years of seeking yard signs and attention from the party. “The national Democrats packed up and left, and Trump filled the vacuum,” said Paul Tewes, who led Obama’s campaign in Iowa in 2008 and mentioned having to purchase a yard sign for his mother in northern Maine during the last election.
Matt Hildreth, executive director of RuralOrganizing.org, a national group focused on Senate races in Ohio, Montana, and presidential swing states, stated that his group identified 100 rural counties with crucial congressional and Senate races. Shockingly, half of these counties did not have Democratic county chairs.
“Those are the kind of places where we can’t coordinate with the Democratic Party because there’s nobody for us to coordinate with,” he explained.
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