Within the Margin

I’ve been in North Carolina since Sunday night, but it wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon’s Democratic National Committee Rural Council meeting that this convention really got started for me, and that I figured out why I was here. Briefly, it’s been a brutal summer for me on a personal level. And let’s face it, Republicans have spent four years offering a lot of hyperbole, spite and resentment. That wears on me. It takes a lot out of me, which is exactly what they want, sadly. So politics simply hasn’t been fun for me for a while. I’ve had people telling me daily how wonderful it is to go to a convention, and how lucky I’ve been, but for some awfully legitimate reasons, I haven’t felt that way. But yesterday, some of the magic came back, thanks to the folks at the Democratic Rural Council meeting.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “BK, Red Hook is a small town surrounded by farms, but you’re across the river from Kingston and a half-hour from Poughkeepsie. How rural is that, really?” Fair enough. Red Hook is not isolated. It’s not suburban, either, but you might call it some version of exurban. I barely get cell service on my back porch, yet I’m only a five-minute drive from a grocery store.  But I attended the meeting for two reasons. One is that as a delegate, I represent more than just semi-rural northern Dutchess County. My current Congressional district stretches north and west to the Adirondacks and Catskills, with many small towns and isolated settlements, and a large number of farms of various sizes along the way. After redistricting it well get more rural, losing mostly-suburban Saratoga County but gaining Ulster, Sullivan and Schoharie with their mountains, foothills and extensive farm acreage (of note, it will also be more Democratic as a result). The other reason I wanted to be there is that I have an intense interest in agricultural policy and smart growth. Both are incredibly important to our rural communities: the former is a huge part of the rural economies, and the latter preserves the character and geography of our rural communities rather than encroaching upon them with sprawl. These are things I know a little about and seek to study in greater detail. This was my chance to connect those interests with the politics of the moment.

And so there I sat in the council meeting room with about 100-150 other folks, with Nebraskans and Alaskans in front of me, an American Indian delegate sitting to my left, and a collection of Texans to my right. Things got off to a rousing start as Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was introduced. I was thrilled because beforehand I didn’t even realize he was up there on the stage – I was busy looking at everyone’s shirts and pins (the rural Dems dress down a little more and bring more flair than the New York delegation, so I fit in better in that respect too. I’m a big fan of Schweitzer, who I first learned about in 2004 when I stumbled upon a gubernatorial debate on C-SPAN. That day, it took about 30 seconds for me to think, “Wow, we’re going to win the Montana governor’s race.” That’s how good Schweitzer was. And yesterday, when he took the podium and launched into a story from his first 4-H steer competition as a nine-year old, it took about 30 seconds for the crowd to be enraptured, laughing along at each twist and turn.

But Schweitzer isn’t just about the laughs. There’s always a bigger message. In this case, he wanted to capture the connection between land and government. Like many states as one travels westward, Montana was long ago divided into townships and then sections, with certain sections set aside in trust to generate revenue to finance local public schools. In a state where so much of the land is publicly owned, it is vital that fair value be extracted from federally-owned lands, or the legislature has to appropriate greater and greater amounts from the general fund to pay for schools. And he described the cultural and economic importance of keeping Montana’s public lands open for hunting, fishing and camping. Along with minerals, these conservation-related activities form the backbone of the state’s economy.

Former Iowa governor and current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack followed Schweitzer to the microphone. The Montanan is more fun to listen to, but Vilsack arguably provided more to work with in terms of this election. He related an enormous laundry list of the Obama administration’s accomplishments in rural America. These include often-historic investments in farm/ranch loans, crop insurance, disaster relief, credit to rural small businesses, water treatment facilities, highways, and broadband access. One of Obama’s first actions as president to issue an executive order forming a Rural Council (not to be confused with the party subset of the same name) composed of various cabinet members whose policy spheres impacted rural areas. Four years later, we’re looking at record agricultural exports, a record agricultural trade surplus, record levels of conservation acreage, and record farm income – all despite severe drought conditions in many parts of the country.

Vilsack described a conversation with President Obama, as the magnitude of the drought began to sink in, in which the president told him to “do whatever you have to” to help farmers and ranchers. The problem was insufficient tools, and a Republican-led House that was unwilling to expand these tools. New tools had to come from the executive branch – and come they did, in the form of a streamlined disaster classification system, increased loans, and more lands opened for grazing. Crop insurance companies agreed to offer a grace period before charging interest on overdue payments. $170M worth of product was authorize to be purchased in pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to offset the high cost of feed caused by the drought.

And then Vilsack talked about the impasse in the Farm Bill. Republicans keep saying it’s about nutrition assistance cuts – i.e. SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps. That allows them to claim it’s a matter of cutting handouts and eliminating government reliance. Well, Vilsack noted that 90% of SNAP recipients are children, seniors, the disabled, and workers. Interesting categories to condemn as reaching for a handout. But beyond that, Vilsack also said it’s never just been about food stamps. The Republicans are highlighting that in order to cover deeper cuts to other key facets of the Farm Bill: crop insurance and disaster relief, for example. He also noted that farmers will ultimately lose billions in income if these SNAP cuts are enacted, as farmers receive 14 cents of every dollar from the program.

Vilsack ended by saying that these four years of investments, and the continuance of them for four more years, will mean that today’s rural children and grandchildren won’t have to leave their communities. This resonated with me: every ten years, the census reveals fewer and fewer people living in rural areas, leaving behind abandoned farms and shuttered Main Street businesses. It should go without saying that these are beautiful places which can touch a person deeply, and which can sustain wonderful communities. We’ve been losing them for decades, and the incredible level of detail Vilsack offered about the White Houses’s investments to sustain them energized me – and fellow audience members. Even many of the president’s supporters are likely unaware of all of these efforts; I didn’t know the half of them. The irony, of course, is that Republicans enshrined in their platform a condemnation of the Democratic party’s supposed attempts to engineer mass urbanization – ignoring everything Obama and Vilsack are doing to preserve rural America.

Then we heard from a senator: Alaska’s Mark Begich. Here the conversation turned from “rural” to “extreme rural” as he described a state where milk often costs $10/gallon and where 80% of towns are unconnected by roads. He praised the cabinet’s 2009 rural tour, in which 4 cabinet secretaries came to his state to get a sense of what was needed – paving the way for a total of 13 cabinet visits to Alaska during the Obama administration, an unprecedented figure. The stimulus was huge for Alaska, particularly in terms of improving the telecommunications on which so many of Alaska’s schools depend for a complete education in a land where populations are spread out and teachers are sparse. He also talked about the status of veterans’ health care: previously, veterans could not make use of the excellent Indian Health System facilities, even if they were in their home town: they had to fly to Anchorage or Seattle to visit the nearest VA facilities. Well, that’s changed now: veterans now have access to IHS facilities, saving them thousands on airline costs. Begich reported that the cabinet has readily understood that one size doesn’t fit all in federal programs; they’ve been very receptive with rural set-asides to meet the special needs of rural communities.

Next was a charismatic third-generation farmer from Turtle Lake, North Dakota, Roger Johnson. He served several terms as the state’s elected Ag Secretary before becoming president of the National Farmers Union. He noted that the administration has offered enormous bipartisan outreach, but that it’s all for naught “without a hand reaching back” from the other side.  In terms of policy impact, he observed that as ag commish, he heard most frequently from farmers and ranchers about access to health care in rural areas. These areas are high-risk in the insurance world – the populations are older, working in a financially-risky occupation. The Affordable Care Act’s provisions to expand care will make it easier for these people to get access to the care they need.

Wrapping up the proceedings was John Carson, from the Office of Public Engagement. He talked about his Wisconsin farm – in his family for a hundred years – and talked briefly about the 2008 election. The story of that election, he said, is often said to be the engagement of college students, minorities, suburban moms. Less well-known was the unprecedented organization in rural America, with field offices in towns that had never had them before. North Dakota comes instantly to mind for me, with at least ten Obama offices open in 2008 in a state that Bush had carried by close to thirty percentage points four years earlier. The edge was cut to a little over eight points in 2008.

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So I was left with a couple of things. One was a great deal of knowledge of how this administration has invested in rural communities, supporting agriculture and infrastructure to help them through a difficult climate – in both the economic and meteorological sense. I’m an information guy. I like details. I like them more than rhetoric. I was also left with the awareness that there were a lot of like-minded people in that room: they’re pragmatists who want to know what we’re doing and what we have to do to win a campaign and govern well – and who have a connection to the land that I envy and which grounds their thinking. Overarching was the sense that we’ve done great things, that there’s much more to do, and that if we can articulate those things with specifics – not rhetoric and hyperbole – that we’ll be able to do much more. And that’s just for rural America.

Being here, then, as a delegate has clicked for me. It has more of a meaning now. It allows us me to affirm that the last four years have mattered, and it gives me tools to help win an election so that the next four years can matter too. I didn’t know I was going to get that yesterday, and I’m glad I did.