Harris details rural push ahead of battleground barnstorm
Vice President Kamala Harris is circulating her first detailed goals for rural America in a bid to woo voters the party has been hemorrhaging support among for decades — and who will help determine the outcome of the November elections.
The new document is the furthest Harris has gone in her career to outline how she would approach policy for rural communities and comes as her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, who has been tapped as a sort of special envoy to more rural areas of battleground states in the final sprint, is set to visit Wausau, Wisconsin, Friday. Harris herself is venturing into some of Pennsylvania's largely rural, red counties Friday as part of her battleground blitz over the next few days.
As part of her broad plans, the campaign promises significant new federal investment for rural communities under a Harris-Walz administration and warns that Trump’s policies “will leave rural America behind,” according to the new two-page outline obtained by POLITICO. The document, like similar campaign materials, is meant to help engage and organize voters on the ground with just weeks to go.
The campaign’s new rural outline also pledges to scale up programs to help rural communities access federal funding while expanding small-business financing and other aid. It also attempts to beef up Harris’ limited ties to agriculture and small-town voters, with the document noting both she and Walz are from top agricultural-producing states and “that rural communities are essential to the success and character of our nation.” Harris has yet to release a full policy platform for rural communities, as some Democrats are pressing the campaign to do. Her campaign said the new document isn’t a whole new policy plan for rural America, but is part of their aggressive rural organizing efforts.
Those kinds of details, even small, from Harris’ campaign are critical. Harris, who recently hired her own campaign rural engagement director, is now trying to win over skeptical undecided voters and Democratic-leaning residents in rural regions and small towns who may not otherwise vote. In doing so, she might be able to shave off a few percentage points from Trump’s margins in battleground states in what’s shaping up to be an incredibly tight race.
But Harris is facing steep challenges in driving turnout in rural counties in swing states where Trump threatens to run up the score against her. Some Democratic lawmakers and local organizers fear Harris will do worse than President Joe Biden in rural and rural-adjacent counties, after he managed to claw back some ground in 2020 after Trump’s 2016 blowout.
Harris has grown her lead against Trump in Wisconsin to 5 points among likely voters, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates on the ballot, according to a pre-debate Marquette University Law School poll. Though, that’s just outside the poll’s margin of error, indicating an incredibly close race. Kennedy is still trying to remove his name from the state’s ballot, after dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in late-August.
Wisconsin is already among the top states in the country for voter turnout, so it’s hard for either Trump or Harris to make significant gains at this point.
“We’re talking about a game of inches, rather than yards,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll.
“Walz coming to Wausau makes a lot of sense,” Franklin added, as Democrats are trying to “lose by less” in rural regions. The city of 40,000 people sits in a red county Trump won by 18 points in 2020.
But, Franklin noted, as Trump’s support has fallen off in Wisconsin’s traditionally red, suburban strongholds, the former president is making a more concerted effort to shore up his support in rural counties. The former president recently held a rally in Mosinee, just to the south of Wausau where Walz will be Friday.
The Biden-Harris administration and congressional Democrats have poured billions in federal investments into rural communities, but have had mixed results in rebuilding support among voters there.
Walz is from a small town in Nebraska and represented a largely rural, conservative-leaning congressional district in southern Minnesota. But he’s so far had limited direct interactions with rural voters since Harris tapped him as her running mate, beyond visiting a family farm during a recent campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
While Walz appears more in-tune with small-town voters than other national Democrats, campaign officials understand he too runs the risk of facing less-than-welcoming receptions from Trump supporters in rural areas.
Walz will meet with volunteers in Wausau Friday, where Democrats see several key opportunities to mobilize support among a growing population of Hmong and Native residents in the region, with many being small farmers.
On Saturday, Walz will hold a rally at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, in the port city that largely relies on mining and manufacturing industries and borders Minnesota.
