Welcome to the hot comfort food for middle America. I'm Heidi
Heitkamp. And I'm Joel Heitkamp. This is an exciting
episode. I'll be speaking with Marilyn Lands, a. Democrat
who just won a special election to the Alabama legislature.
Yep, that's right. A Democrat was elected in
Alabama. There is hope today we're going to find out how she
did it, so stay tuned. Then Joel and I will discuss women's
autonomy and freedom from a generation that remembers how the original
Roe v. Wade decision created more autonomy for women.
But first, I want to share something special with you. One
country board member and Iowa state representative JD
Shulkin recently read the book White Rural
rage, and he has a bone or two to pick with the authors. He
expressed his thoughts in an editorial published in the Hill,
a Washington, DC publication covering Congress.
But we thought it would be great for all of you listeners outside the
nation's capital to hear what he had to say.
White Rural rage is a book version of a clickbait article written by
two people who don't seem to engage with rural Americans regularly
and who used other people's data to come up with their conclusions about
why rural americans lean right. I'm not an academic or
journalist like the two authors, but I am the only Democrat at the state
level or higher amongst 32 counties in northwest Iowa
and someone who ran for Congress in 2018 in a district Trump won by
27 in 2016, and I only lost by three points.
The one thing they failed to mention is the lack of investment by the Democratic
Party campaigns and adjacent groups in connecting with rural
voters, according to ruralorganizing.org study.
With open secrets for every dollar a Democrat running for
federal office spends in rural areas, Republicans spend
14. While 30% of Americans and 20% of
registered voters live in rural areas, barely 3% of
Democrat affiliated expenditures occur in these areas,
a clear lack of priority given to cultivating world
champions. Media has changed. The 1996
Telecommunications act allowed media companies to buy up stations
at the cost of local news. Combine that with the miss and
disinformation on social media and the algorithms that amplify
them, and you give conservative messaging a channel to success.
Radio stations that used to play AP News now provide
hours of right wing propaganda a day, leading to voters hearing
one side disproportionately far right wing politicians are able
to push their personal agenda in a lot of these deeply read and
rural districts. We saw that firsthand in northwest Iowa with former
representative Steve King. In many ways, he was ahead of his time when it
came to the modern far right wing with his racism and xenophobic
rhetoric and actions. I would also give credit to the northwest
Iowa voters for being ahead of their time for voting him out of
office. What makes these right wing messages resonate with many
rural voters has to do with economic concentration.
Independent farmers are few and far between, with nearly every sector
of agriculture consolidated, just a few multinational
corporations squeeze the average farmer from the input side, and on the
market side, wealth gets extracted by dollar generals
or hospitals or multinational ag corporations with little
money invested into these communities when it comes to new
wealth, as of just a few years ago, 80% of venture capital
was invested in only 50 counties in our country, out of nearly
3100. A lack of opportunity is eroding rural
communities and sowing understandable discontent,
discontent that republicans point in the wrong direction. For
years I've talked to farmers who will always vote for me and some who will
never vote for me, and everywhere in between, and not one of them pushed back
when I talked about egg monopolies screwing them over. When I first ran
for office, farmers were going through five consecutive years of low commodity
prices. But do you know what the number one complaint was? It was the
lack of affordable health care. It's not all hogwash. What
the book got right is the power the rural vote has in this
country. When it comes to the electoral college, the Senate, and the
judicial branch of government, rural voters have an enormous voice.
It was rural voters in Saskatchewan that led the way for universal health
care in Canada. Rural voters in America have that same
power to create change. The right has spent decades
investing in that power, planting seeds of fear that are sowing
division. If the left wants to win, or at least the very
least gain ground, we need to invest in rural Americans and make sure our
common interests benefiting rural regions are heard.
Today, I am thrilled to have with me Marilyn
Lands, probably not a household
name in the political world until a couple
weeks ago, when she really shocked so many people in
politics by winning a house race in
a fairly red district in Alabama, of all
places, and winning that house race on the issue of
choice, on the issue of women's reproductive rights. And so,
Marilyn, welcome to the podcast. And before
we get into this race, if you could give us a little bit of your
political history, because I think some, some people think people like you just
land and oh, here I am. And that's definitely
not your story or your history. Yes. So I actually
ran in 2022, and we came very close to winning
then. In fact, we were the closest to flipping a house
seat in the entire state. And I think we had
a lot of momentum going into this campaign, but the
landscape changed so much. Even during that first race
in 2022, when we developed our
messaging and our platform, we hadn't had
Dobbs yet, and so it wasn't even on,
you know, our talking points. And then when the Dobbs decision was handed
down and Alabama pulled our trigger law, which then other states
followed, of course, it became a major
theme in that campaign. And then this time around, it
was very much different, because I shared my
story, and I think that really resonated with people.
You did something that I think a lot of people didn't think was
possible. You told stories of late term
terminations that were essential for the health of the mother.
And that resonated as well. Exactly. I felt
that there was a completely different energy in this campaign from
the very beginning. And I think it is because we told
stories. I would have women come up and hug me
when I knocked doors or even at the grocery store. And I
had many women and families share their own stories of
heartbreak with me. And I think many of them told
me that they hadn't talked about this in
30 years, or they hadn't told anyone ever, except for their
immediate family. And so the campaign felt very personal
right from the beginning, and it felt very reciprocal. It wasn't
me just trying to sell myself. It was having these
honest conversations around issues of
grief. So I chose to share my story. And
for me, it was such a moment. And I'll tell you how it happened.
I saw the Diane Sawyer special on the brink, where she profiled
16 women from around the country, but mostly in the south,
who were caught up in this abortion ban and
having to go outside of state and travel many miles to get
health care. And some of the stories were just horrific. Women
whose fetuses had died inside them and were getting
septic and organs were shutting down. And one
of the women in this story, Alyssa Gonzalez, was the only woman from
Alabama, a very young woman. And her story was so
powerful. Her husband also spoke and kind of spoke on behalf of the
husbands. And Alyssa and I stories
had such parallels. We both were expecting
second sons. We both had a genetic defect known
as trisomy. Both of us were told that the
pregnancies were absolutely not viable. It was 100%
catastrophic that our lives were at risk.
And so it was just the intersection of
these two stories and then the fact that there was this key
difference, and that 20 years later, Alyssa could not get the healthcare
that she needed in her home. I was able to have my own
doctor and my hospital and my community
around me. And Alyssa had to travel over 500
miles. I know she's not ever been out of the south. I'm not sure if
she's ever been out of the state of Alabama. It was a very scary
trip for her and her family, and a very devastating one in many
ways. I mean, she's in shock and grief. And
it just, to me, that became the story,
that difference and how we've gone backwards, and we're supposed to
be moving forward. This is not the way that history is supposed
to work. We're supposed to advance and make progress. And here
we've just taken this huge step backwards for women.
And being of a certain age, I've seen women make
great strides, and it just feels so
terrible to be moving backwards in this way.
I think a lot of people, when they think about what happened in
Alabama, the big news out of Alabama was the decision
on your personhood constitutional amendment that
resulted in a huge uncertainty
revolving around IVF. And IVF is a procedure that
a lot of people use. It's not normally been
in the mainstream of discussion about women's reproductive
rights or reproductive freedom.
When you analyze kind of abortion
politics over a long period of time, I think that there
has always been the story of
people in your circumstance, Marilyn and her
circumstance. That story is never told. The story was
always, oh, look at this selfish woman who couldn't make up
their mind, who now just wants to have a
procedure, and it's late term, and it's all
elective and has nothing to do with the health of the mother. And
that's really kind of the narrative. You know, what? Why is it in
the United States of America, women have to tell the most intimate
details, the most intimate, personal,
horrible, like, reliving it details
in order to protect other women. That's what we're doing right now.
And I just want to applaud you for telling this story.
Applaud her for telling her story, because it takes a lot of
courage, but it shouldn't be necessary. People should
trust women and their doctors to be making this decision. And
so you have given us a lot of hope, Marilyn,
that we won't have to expose women who
have had this life experience to the political process,
that people have a much better understanding
now. I also felt that often we don't
think enough about the husbands and the fact that it is also
a grief for them and the other children involved. And that was
one of the things that was really central to my mind, is
what will this do to my other child? You
know, the longer that we carry this pregnancy, and if
we did carry it to the end, what would that be like
for him to know his mother gave birth to a dead baby
and that the brother that was supposed to be coming,
you know, how would he, in his young mind, he
would have been five at the time. You know, how would that impact him in
the long run? I think sometimes people don't think about that. So it's
not just a woman's issue, but it is, as you said, it's
a very intimate thing that happens to women and
women's bodies. And I think there's a lot
of mystery around that. And I think telling the
stories has been healthy. When I able to hear
from other women, I think it's been a cathartic thing for a lot of people
to be able to say things that, as you said, they've been ashamed of
and made to feel ashamed of for no reason. There shouldn't be
any shame about this. It was a hard, hard decision to make.
Nobody wants to make that kind of decision, but it was absolutely
the right decision to make. The IVF
decision actually awakened America to
what personhood bills and constitutional
measures could potentially mean. How is
the community and the healthcare
industry responding to the new legislation in
Alabama regarding IVF? And do you see
any additional reaction,
legislative reaction to that decision as well? Well,
I think the legislation that was passed to try to be a
workaround is simply not enough. Our mobile
clinic is not going to continue services.
I've heard from families that were planning
to move to Alabama had a job offer here, and now they're not
coming because Alabama doesn't appear to be family
friendly. And I can understand that we don't look family
friendly. So I think there's a lot of
unintended consequences. I think people haven't thought through
the economic development that the impact on jobs, the
impact on the state's reputation. But I did
see, while we saw a lot of energy around
the abortion issue, I would say the IVF issue
kind of brought it to another level. But we certainly have to do
more and very concerned now. This is a slippery
slope that contraception will be next. And
leader Daniels, our minority leader, has put forth some
legislation that's in committee but will be introduced, the
Alabama right to Contraception act. So we're
looking at getting behind that. But I think there's a lot that
we're going to have to do to undo all of this and make Alabama family
friendly and make it a place where
women feel like they have freedom. I felt like Alabama
has been ground zero for attacks on women's freedom
and reproductive health care. And it just seems to
get worse. When you consider the
IVF issue. And I think
what has maybe brought it so much into the
forefront is the explosion of the use of this procedure.
Women are waiting longer to have children. I would argue a
lot of that is driven by healthcare costs, not selfishness. But, you
know, they have, they want to be able to afford to have children, and that's
an expensive proposition in today's world when you can't find
daycare. And what is particularly
egregious to me about what Alabama has done is
if you're wealthy in Alabama, you can go someplace else and
add that extra, you know, thousands of dollars for
securing this procedure in a state that is more family friendly than
Alabama. But if you're poor and you've been saving so much
money and you're so excited to have an opportunity
to have a child, now all of a sudden you have added
outrageous amounts of expense to an already really
expensive procedure. And so this is not just about health care.
This is an economic justice issue. I think so. And I've
been making an economic wellbeing argument for a long time now,
because where I'm from in north Alabama, we truly excel
at economic development, but we do not have economic well
being for all of our people. We have many, many people who
are struggling. Alabama has the worst
maternal mortality rate in the entire country.
We have lost so many of our rural hospitals.
So I think there's so much around all of this, and particularly
the unintended consequences that do unduly
affect the least of us in this state.
And I think we don't take
into account that women's health care
decisions largely have to do with privilege. I
couldn't have said it any better. And I want to just turn and
ask you about, you know, you're a scrapper,
you're a fighter. You haven't yet. You know, you've been willing to put your
name on the ballot at least twice in a state where no
one thought anyone with your profile or your
policies and your heart could
make it. Now you're there. So tell.
So spend a little time telling us, are you glad you got the
job? Or is it what's been the joy and
what's been the challenge? I am very glad to be
here, and this is my third week now. It's been
exciting, and it's definitely got a steep learning
curve. I have 102 other colleagues
at the moment plus staffers. And then there's the Senate side of things. It's
a lot of names and faces to put together and just
even finding my way around in the buildings. But I've been
enjoying it. People have been really welcoming.
I'm glad to be here. I'm excited. I think one of the things that has
bolstered me the most is how many people tell me that
our race has given them hope and that they have, for the first
time in a long time, they have some hope in
Alabama. And I really want to focus on building
relationships here and getting to know my colleagues, focusing on what we
have in common, because we are all human beings living
on this planet, sharing a common human experience, and we
all have joys and we all have sorrows. So I'm trying to meet
people where they are, get to know them and listen to
them. Our son took debate in high school, and I think that was formative
for our whole family because I really do want to understand where
people are coming from and understand their perspective and their
take on an issue. So I'm looking forward to
getting to know my colleagues and to working together and try to build
bipartisan support where we can. Marilyn, when do you
have to run for reelection? I will run for reelection in
2026. So my term here, I came in
in the halfway through the second of a four
year term. Terrific. And I know that you have inspired
not just women in Alabama, but women all across, I
mean, all across the country and probably the world.
How does it feel to go from a
scrapper in a tough district in Alabama to being
a national icon? Well, I have difficulty thinking of
myself as an icon, that's for sure. It has been
Mister Toad's wild ride, that's for sure. And
I just do hope I can provide some hope and inspiration.
I really want to inspire more women, more democrats
in general to run for office. I want to inspire
people to vote. All of our elections are
important, and sometimes we all get hyper focused on the national
level. But state and local issues are really where
it meets our daily lives and what really impacts us the
most. And I also want to encourage people to get involved at
whatever level. There are all kinds of commissions
and appointments out there to get you involved in
local government or school boards, but I think it's time for us
all to step up where we can and make a difference. Well,
as someone who has spent the better part of their career encouraging
people like you to run for office, I can't
tell you how much I think you are just such a
symbol. Of hope for so many people. I do believe that all
things work together for good. It was hard, hard losing in
2022, but you never know where the world will take
you. And so we are here, and I'm talking with you today, Heidi,
and I've admired you for a long time, so this is a treat for me.
Marilyn, thank you. Thank you for telling your personal, very private
story. Thanks to the people of your district who sent
a message that I hope will resonate not just across
Alabama but across the country, that sometimes what
happens to people is pretty complicated, and
a lot of times it's none of their business. Very well said.
Very well said.
Heidi and Joel Banter.
You know, Joel, it's interesting, and I want to talk
about just for a minute, the politics of abortion,
because there's a lot of talk about what's going to happen in this next election.
A lot of focus on foreign policy
challenges that the president has, a lot of challenges
on what's happening with the economy. But the issue
that keeps coming up and shocking, I think,
America, is the issue of abortion.
Now. We see beyond what happened in Kansas, beyond what
happened in Ohio with the reaffirming of a woman's right to
choose. We see this narrative playing out
politically in the deep red state of
Alabama. And I think it's fascinating. See, and I think
that people are just taking for granted what your generation
did. They did for years, and now it's gone. Right? I mean,
you know, women got active and they got the
right for women to choose. You know, they've got that right for women
when it comes to their healthcare. And, you know, people just took it for granted
that my daughters did. And, and quite frankly, their daughters
aren't too far away from this potentially being an issue. And
so if everyone thinks that this isn't playing out in red
states, I think you're being incredibly naive, because in North
Dakota, the state I live in, in South Dakota, the state I live close
to, if those things were on the ballot, I'd bet you my last
$20 that the right for a woman to choose would pass. Oh, I think
that's right. You know, we rejected a personhood bill, but, you know,
that's what's in play in Alabama with the IVF. They actually
passed a personhood bill, and all of that was okay as long
as it was basically illegal to implement it. Now,
I think on top of what you're saying about that taking
something away, you also have the complicating
factors of how difficult
medically this is. You know, because there's just all of the discussion
has been on late term abortions, like, as if they were
elective procedures. And now they're finding out
these are procedures that are medically necessary. They
may not involve the life of the woman, but they could affect her
fertility going forward and certainly her mental health. And
so now, all of a sudden, this very uncomplicated issue. Are
you. Are you right to life, or are you pro choice? Do you believe in
protecting the unborn? It has gotten so
complicated in the United States as this
plays out. And I think that complication has really
added to a lot of the feeling that
maybe this has gone too far, and you see it with the IVF
decision, but also a bigger discussion in states
like Texas about the access to late
term. It's interesting. I was listening
to one of the women from Alabama who still provides
reproductive services, obviously not abortions,
but she was saying that many of the hospitals now, if it's
a fetus that is not viable, that they're forcing
women to have c sections to prove that they tried to have a live
birth. Well, and I think the conservatives forgot to call Mike Pence. I know he's
not their hero after he certified the election or actually allowed it to
go forward, but, you know, his family had children through
in vitro, and, you know, our family had children
through in vitro. And the reality is, the
conservatives are so conservative in the middle of this country that the
legislation they've put forward and actually are even
proposing more make in vitro illegal. And in
the state I live, the policy that's put forward by
the republican party actually calls them out as
being murderers. And this is gonna play out as the election
continues. But for a lot of people, they think, oh, well, it's all about
the economy. You know, as James Carville famously said, it's the
economy, stupid. Guess what? For a lot of women in this country,
it's their autonomy that is on the ballot, and they are
definitely voting. Their desire to continue
to maintain their rights, to make decisions for themselves and
their family. And so it's gonna be a major issue
once again on the ballot. We saw it in Alabama. We saw it in Ohio.
We're seeing it all across the country.
In a bit of good news, we heard from a wonderful listener,
Wendy, who is not from rural America. She's from urban
America. But she said, I follow your podcast closely.
She's a fan of Heidi's and now Joel's. I
don't know why she would be a fan of yours, Joel. She likes the younger
crowd, but go ahead. And she said, I'm aware
of the problems associated with the lack of rural hospitals, easy
access to higher education, out migration, and other
issues facing rural America. But I'm not sure what
Washington can do about these issues, especially since culture
wars, not problem solving, seems to be the order of the day. And
she'd love to hear our thoughts on this. What do you think,
Joel? Well, I think that what they're going to do about
it is nothing. I mean, they can't do anything because they
don't want to do anything. The majority in the house is really not
a majority. They don't like each other. They get up every day and they go
to work, and they find ways not to work. And so I think. I think
Wendy's right on in her concern. I really think it is. It's going to take
an election to fix this, and in the middle of this country,
we're still waiting for a farm bill. Well, but I also would
add to what you've said, Joel, that it's going to take
us seeing each other as interconnected, that it's
not urban America, it's not rural America. This is the United States
of America. And what happens in rural America has to be of
concern to urban America and urban legislators. But
the reverse is also true. And, Joel, you know, how many times have you
heard people say, well, we're somehow better in rural America. We're
more moral. We're the real Americans. You
know, that's not true, either. And so I think that one of
the solutions to all of this is coming up with a
common american identity and making sure
that basic services like healthcare,
like food security, like access to education,
that we are just as concerned about what happens in
rural America as we are in urban America and vice versa.
Yeah. Well, we had sister Simone on, and she talked about how she
traveled to all 50 states and is working towards connecting with
all 50 states. And what she found out is that when she
communicates with people and just sits down and talks to them, we're not that different.
Right. We're not that different. But the difference is with
all of us is we're not in Congress, you know? So going back to
what wendy's saying is congressional leaders that we elect
knowing that we're not that different need to get off their butt. Well,
and the other thing is that if. If we continue to
let the politicians divide us instead of uniting
us, because it's always the fear of the other. Oh, look what's happened in that
big city of Minneapolis. You know, I live part
time in Chicago. And people say, oh, the streets of Chicago are
riddled with horrible crime. And I'm like, I walk home at
night. I go downtown Chicago. There's a lot of people
still walking around, a lot of tourists still in town. And so I think
this buying into the narrative of division
is not what is going to solve our problems. Well, it's going to be solved
by people like Wendy, people like Wendy that care, that say,
look, what can we do? What can get done? And by challenging their
elected officials to do just that, instead of
just plummeting each other in these races, instead of
just doing the, I'm more this than you. How
about, well, I will do this. You know, why
couldn't that be a campaign pledge? Well, and the other, the
other piece of this, not to toot the horn of the one country project, but
I will. The one country project was designed
exactly for that reason. I had a lot of people say, well, it's about rural
America. You should call it the rural America project. I said, no, what
I'm trying to get at is we are one country. We have to be
concerned about each other across that kind of
regional and population divide.
And if we aren't able to see each other as Americans, we
will continue to build the threat from within. And
so we hope that what we accomplish at one country
is coming up with some really good policy ideas,
but also sharing the stories of rural America
and pushing back a little bit on the narrative that somehow
rural America is better than
urban America. We're all Americans, and we all want basically
the same thing for our kids want a better life. We want good health care.
We want good education. We want to keep our taxes low and make
sure that they're not wasted. These are not urban rural values. These
are american values. Well, and Wendy's note to us
shows that there's still hope out there. And I want you, the listeners of
one country, to absolutely, positively know this. Even though
Heidi and I have about as many cousins as you can possibly
have, Wendy isn't one of them. We didn't ask her to write that in,
even though we love the note.
Yeah, no, she's not a cousin. Not that we know of, Wendy.
But we can adopt you. You'd like our family.
Well, listen, Joel, thanks again so much for joining us on
one country. These are really important discussions, as
Wendy points out, and I think that as we
go forward, we'll be talking about more of the policy solutions. But
to Joel's point, you can have all the really great ideas, but if you don't
have a political will. If you don't elect the right people, it's not going to
get done. So thank you so much for writing in, Wendy.
And we hope that we manage to kind of answer your
questions and encourage so many of you to email
us at podcast
neountountryproject.org dot and thank you. For joining us
today on the hot Dish, which is brought to you by one
country project and making sure the voices of the rest of
us are heard in Washington. Learn
more@onecountryproject.org dot and we'll
be back. In two weeks with more hot dish comfort food for middle
America.