Welcome to the Hot Dish, comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi
Heitkamp and Joel is AWOL. Not sure what he's doing.
Maybe planting his pumpkin patch, maybe sitting out there with a lawn
chair and a beer, watching it grow. I have no idea. But
I'm on my own this week. We're joined today
by some amazing guests for an episode analyzing anything that's going
on in the world of rural. Later, I'll be speaking with the
amazing Jess Piper about breaking Republican
supermajorities in red states like Missouri and North Dakota.
You'll also hear a fantastic conversation between our
producer Richard Fawal and the independent journalist Bryce
Oates, who writes for Barn Raiser and on Substack
about rural America's desire for information and where we can
all find hope. But first, let's listen to Isaac Nehring.
He, he is a promising young man who is the 2025
Montana recipient of the Truman Scholarship. I
am well familiar with that program, having given many
speeches and being inspired by all these young people who
want to commit their life to public service. Isaac is using his
scholarship to help rural communities in his home state of
Montana and nationwide. Let's hear from him in his own
words.
I'm Isaac Nehring. I grew up in Helena, Montana
and I'm now a student at Stanford University. I
spent all the first 18 years of my life in Helena and
grew up in sort of the western Montana area, spending a lot of time
outside and doing various activities with my family.
I think what led me to Stanford from there was, you
know, I was lucky to get in, and then I really wanted to stay in
the West and be able to focus on issues in this part of the
country. And so, so that's how I ended up down in California. I worked for
Senator Tester Winter to Spring of my sophomore year of college and I
got a great view of his view of advocating for
rural issues and advocating for Montana. And that
small town connection to all the work the Senator was doing was
really cool and important to me being in his office.
So he was a really great advocate for Montana and rural issues
at large in this country. And I think losing him is really significant
and really challenging for those of us who
appreciated a moderating voice and a laser focused
voice on local issues, not the nationalization stuff we see now.
And so some of the big controversies from
my political view out of D.C. right now are these efforts to sell
off public lands, these efforts to turn, I think, too
much of our public land into, you know, places for drilling
and, and extracting, as opposed to other values like recreation
tourism, like agriculture, and, you know, just the
softer values of what public lands give us. They feed our souls in a
lot of places in rural America. I've come to advocate for
rural conservation issues just by realizing
how important the land is to me and how, how
critical it has been in shaping who
I am through just exposure to it, being outside, camping, hiking,
fishing, skiing even, like all these things
that rely on public lands in my experience. And
I also, when I think of conservation, it is an inherently
rural topic to me because the people who are close to
the land, which in Western states is vastly owned by the
federal government, are those who live in rural communities and,
and farm or work for the agencies or just
interact with the land. Rural development has been sort of a
budding and recent passion of mine and it
stems not from really focusing on it in my own
professional experience, but having just observed it in
communities that are really important to me, that I grew up in.
I think my main foray into rural development per
se is trying to lead where I'm at here at Stanford
and advocate for awareness on that issue,
for the most part, because Stanford itself, it's about 3%
rural students, which is quite low. The country's, I
don't know, almost seven times that I'd say, and so not
very well represented here. But I'm supposedly in this breeding
ground for future world leaders and private and public and
everything. And so it was really important to me pretty
much the minute I got here and had this realization that there were not
a lot of folks from states like mine, "flyover country," "heartland," whatever you
want to call it. And so it's really been a mission
of mine to make people care about it here at Stanford as
students, when I feel like we're open-minded as college students
and bring speakers to campus and other leaders
who can really distill their passion and years
of experience, which I don't have yet, to get people interested in
investing in rural communities and visiting and just considering them
politically. I was recently awarded the Truman scholarship
and the 2025 Scholar for the State of Montana. And this
is the living memorial to President Truman. He wanted
to give the gift of education to future public service leaders,
in his words. And so every year
at least one scholar from every single
state and a couple of the territories is awarded a $30,000
grant for graduate education. And that's a
big deal. But I think what's more awesome and
important with this scholarship is the network of people
in public service from all over the country that I might not already be
crossing paths with. And so, I mean, it was
drilled into our heads by the Foundation that once you're a Truman Scholar, you're
always a Truman Scholar. And so there's this great 50 year long
sort of network of folks who've received this award who can
serve as mentors in all sorts of spaces, from things
like ag and conservation that I'm interested in to a
lot of folks in healthcare and public health, to
folks in the legal profession, but all over. And so
it's a big honor to get to represent Montana, especially to receive
this award.
We're so proud of Isaac and we wish him absolutely the best of
luck and we will check in occasionally with how he's doing.
Now here is Richard and Bryce Oates. Bryce is such an interesting
guy. You're going to love this. I'm Richard Fawal. I'm a producer here at
the Hot Dish. And today I am thrilled to be speaking with Bryce Oates
who writes the Cocklebur on Substack. You can find that at
thecocklebur.substack.com and by the way, be
sure to check out the One Country Project on substack at
onecountryproject.substack.com. Bryce is also a
contributing editor at Barn Raiser, which is a twice weekly newsletter
that delivers independent reporting from rural and small town
America. Bryce, thank you for joining the Hot Dish. It's good
to be here. It's good to be here. Let's start by telling people a little
bit about who you are, where you come from. You cover all these
rural issues. You write about rural communities and the issues affecting rural
communities and the politics and the policies. But did
you grow up rural? Did you come to rural later in life? Tell us about
yourself. I grew up country, man. Country. I grew up in a butcher
shop and on a farm. So that's where I
come from. West Missouri country people. I'm actually
the first person in my family who ever graduated from college.
My older brother went before me, but I
graduated before him. But we,
we had a butcher shop growing up, you know, Meat Locker we called it. It
was awesome. We had a farm too. I mean ever-
everybody farmed. I don't know, is it, it was just sort of like what you
did in West Missouri. You know, on the one side of my family,
farming people. On the other side of my family, people who
did construction work. So it's just working class country
people. You don't live there now. You're not, you don't live in Missouri anymore. So
how long did you live there and where did you go and, like, what were
your travels to get you where you are today? I went to college and then
I stayed in Columbia, Missouri, which is a
cool college town. Lived around there for a while, got
married to a city girl, had kids, and
then moved back home and, and did the farming thing. Like, we did the
homesteading thing. We built a house, raised organic vegetables.
I mean, we did all that stuff and then
moved to the Pacific Northwest after. So
that. That's what we did. Did, did you study writing in
college? Was that what you, what you did? Were you a journalist
or did you come into that later? I was not a, a "journalist"
journalist, but I was in the English program and I took every
writing class you could take in terms of, I was more of a fiction
and prose sort of person rather than...At
the University of Missouri, it's a big journalism school, as you probably know.
But I didn't go through that professional thing.
What got you into writing about politics and rural
issues specifically? I'm an activist, frankly, so
it's like, I'm really into the politics of
peace and the politics of local
democracy. Right? And so I've always been the writer
for, like, every group I've ever been involved with, which is all kinds of
groups. So where I come from is
rural people, working class,
small towns. And I find that the
politics doesn't make all the sense
for them. It doesn't make sense for the people. Right? Like, they don't understand
how they're getting screwed over. They don't understand who's in charge
or they don't understand how it all goes. And so
luckily, I have been able to get
educated and also activated to
connect with some of those people, right, who are in charge of their, of the
decisions that, that matter in their lives. And so that's
why I write about it. That's why I write about it. The politics is what
matters to me because I can kind of see the
connections between who's making the decisions and
who isn't.
Now let's get into that. Let's talk about what's, what's going on, what you're seeing
and what you're writing about. So tell us what you're
seeing about the, about who's making the decisions that impact rural America and what do
those decisions mean for rural folk? Well,
I guess. Where do you start? Right? There's
a lot, right. Right now I'm really pissed off
about, I'm gonna just say, like, I'm fucking pissed about
what's happening in with the budget. I mean, it's
just, it's, you're gonna get like hundreds of thousands of people
kicked off of Medicaid, my kids included, who are on Medicaid.
You're gonna get hundreds of thousands of people losing
their SNAP, nutrition benefits, food stamps, whatever you call,
whatever you want to call it. And I just, I, like, I'm,
my mind is, is boggled, for tax cuts for
billionaires. And I just don't understand how - no one
wants rich kids to get tax cuts to
pay for poor kids to get kicked off of SNAP
and Medicaid. And that's
what's happening. That's what's happening. Like, it's very direct and it's,
it's, it's just maddening. It's just maddening. Aside
from the work that you're doing, obviously, the writing you're doing, you know,
the writing coming from Barn Raiser, the stuff that we're doing here at the One
Country Project, like, how else can we get the
right information to rural folks about what's going on? I mean, I think
we have to get more direct to rural people.
Democrats are horribly unpopular, but
our issues are 100% popular. I guess I'm,
you know, like, I'm not a Democratic insider. Don't get me wrong.
That's not, that's not my thing. Right. But I just,
I can't believe that we
can't get to more people. You know, it's like, how do you, how do you
get to them? Well, where I grew up, we
used to have a small town newspaper and we don't have one
anymore, you know, and all the towns in
my like, home county are like that nowadays too.
So it's like, how do you, how do you end up getting to people?
I don't know. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about,
and I'm not talking about the politics of this, so I'll be really clear. I'm
not talking about what could Democrats do to reach rural voters. I'm talking about
what can those of us who are producing content about an important to rural.
What can we do? How do you think we could get to
your folks and your, you know, your community that you
grew up in? And it could be anything. Like, I just want to be creative,
right? Is it billboards, is it planes flying around
pulling, pulling things behind? What do you think we could do? I honestly think if
we produced a newspaper and we sent
it to these people, that would be better. I know that's so
costly. And I know that, like, that's so old school. But if
we produced a newsletter, like
a print newsletter. I'm talking print. I'm serious.
Oh, yeah. And we sent it to people in the country, that would be
the most beneficial thing we could do. And I don't mean like a
mailer where it's just like, you know, politics, politics,
politics. Yeah. Not junk mail. Yeah, it's not junk mail exactly. I
just mean like an actual news
paper, that they would read
it. They do read it. They do. I know my grandma's still alive.
Like my parents, my grandma. Like, they read it,
but they don't read email. You know, they don't read.
And these are country people. Again, I'm not sure why you would do that
other than for politics, connection, all the
things. But they do read it. They do read it. Let me
ask this. If we could do that. And that's, I'm not saying
you could do that or I could do that or One Country Project could do
that, but just, just playing this out. If we could do
that, how much of what we put in
those newspapers would have to be
explaining to people that what they're hearing from the other
media that they're probably consuming and what they're hearing from the Republican
politicians is bullshit. I don't even think you'd have to address that. I
just think they would read it. They want rural content. They
want to know what's happening in their government. They do. These are
people who want to know. They're very active politically. They're
very, like, curious people generally. So you
think, you think that we wouldn't even have to address the
whole misinformation and we just have to tell them the truth and just.
Yeah, just tell people the truth. That's it. That's all. Yes, I
absolutely believe that. Have you ever been to a rural community?
People, they just want the truth. They
want clean water, they want clean air. They want
local democracy to work. You know, these are not
conspiracy theory people. They're just
people, and they just want
their government to work for them, you know? Yeah,
I understand where you're coming from, and particularly
the, he argument you're making about, you know, they're just people. I
- not to inject myself into the conversation too much - but I live
in East Tennessee, near the Smoky Mountains, moved here about two years
ago from the Washington, D.C. area and have been involved
in sort of politics and political policy communication for, for
a long, long time. And now that I know people
who live in these rural communities and I talk to them
all the time. I get really offended when people I know from the city are
like, well, they're the reason Trump won, and they're the reasons,
and, and, and just talk down about people, rural folks and people
in the country. It's like that they're actually all really, really good people. They just
don't know what you know, and there's no effort
being placed into, into helping them know. We just turn up
our noses at them. I mean, Bryce is throwing up his hands.
Everybody, honestly, like, this whole
blame the country people for getting Trump elected is, you know,
rural people voted more for Trump. I know that. That's, you know,
they have since 2016, 2020.
I get it. I get it. But, man, to blame
rural people for Trump, it just doesn't make any
sense. I mean, there's, there's more of a trend, I know,
but what do you, like, who do we blame? Do
we, do we say, oh, well, you know, now Latino and
Hispanic folk are blame, you know, a little bit more for
Trump. Like, do, Black men are a little bit more for Trump.
And that says more about Democrats to me than it does,
like, I'm obviously not for Trump. I
can't stand him. I find him offensive.
I'm like, he's a sexist, racist
prick. But he's a city boy from New York. Like,
that's all you got to say to me, and I'm out. I just,
I can't believe that's where we're at, you know? And
I point out to those folks all the time that, that Trump didn't win because
rural folks voted for him. Trump won because suburban folks and
urban folks voted for him. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, I
got one more question for you. This may be hard for you to answer. I've
asked you a lot of tough questions today, but what,
if anything, gives you hope? Well, I got hope
in young people. I got two sons myself. And
they're just cool, you know, they're like, and their friends are cool.
They care about climate change. They care about democracy.
I just find hope in the kids, man. I mean, I'm not, I'm not even
50, so I'm not that old, you know, but, like, I
love this generation of kids coming up. I think
they're good. I just feel like they believe in
democracy. They're active, you know. All right, Bryce Oates,
thank you very much for joining us on the Hot Dish.
Appreciate your having you here. Yep. Glad to be here. Glad to be
here. Once again, folks, you can find Bryce Oates on substack at the
Cocklebur, thecocklebur.substack.com and you should also
definitely check out Barn Raiser, which is a twice
weekly newsletter focusing on rural issues and
rural folks. And you can find that at barnraisermedia.com.
Hey, I am so happy to be here with Jess Piper,
someone that I guess we've been doing this back and forth for
about two, three years now. But she's returning to the Hot Dish
to talk with me and not Joel. I'm a lot nicer than Joel, Jess,
you'll just know that. She travels the country speaking at town
halls about what it's like to live in in a ruby Red state when you're
a rural Democrat. I'm familiar with that. And she writes
about that and other topics in her substack, the View from
Rural Missouri. But she doesn't just speak and write. She
puts her money where her mouth is. She's also the Executive
Director for Blue Missouri, where she leads efforts
to raise money to support Democrats running for the state legislature
in Missouri. Jess, welcome back to the Hot Dish.
Hi Heidi. It's so nice to be back. We have so much in
common and I love talking to you and your audience.
I wanted to start out by just kind of there's an
old, old baseball saying, you know, we coach so good and they
play so bad. Yeah, I know a lot about that. You know what, I
was a coach for a while. I'm married to a football coach. I
totally get it. Exactly. You know, we've been out there talking
about the challenges that we experience in rural
America and reputational damage that's been done to the
Democratic Party because number one, in your case
and your work, we don't run candidates who actually talk about what the
differences are. But also we haven't been as
aggressive in pushing back for the branding and the labels.
And that contagion is now just not a rural American
contagion with the Democratic brand, but you're seeing that brand problem
everywhere. You really are. I mean, we've talked about this for years.
If we can't stop the red that's happening in my state and
states like mine, it's going to spread into the entire
country just like a contagion. And by golly, it did, right?
This has been real problematic because we have been not running
candidates in spaces. I would knock doors in '22 when I was running
and people would say they have never had a candidate knock their door. They didn't
know the Democratic message. They would look at me and be so confused, you know,
because I don't have horns. I don't look like what
Fox News or OAN or Newsmax said I should look like. But
the real problem is we don't have candidates in areas. So when people
say, you know, you get what you vote for, I got nobody to vote for
a friend. And this has been a problem, and it's still a problem in 2025.
So I have a question. Obviously you've been following and I've
been following the Big Beautiful Bill, which by the way, the same
initials as Build Back Better. I mean, it's been confus for me.
Every time I see BBB, I think where they're back to Joe Biden's Build
Back Better. No, it's called the Big Beautiful Bill, if you can
imagine that. That's how we're legislating now, by slogan.
But what's been interesting to me is how aggressive Josh
Hawley has been, the Senator from your state, has been
in talking about Medicaid. Does that
surprise you at all, Jess? No. And we should all know that
he's not doing it for the benefit of people who need Medicaid.
So in Missouri, our lawmakers would not pass Medicaid
expansion. And so we forced their hand by putting it on the ballot as a
Constitutional Amendment. So now they are forced to fund
Medicaid expansion through our Constitutional Amendment. We also
have something called the Hancock Amendment, which means that
lawmakers cannot raise taxes in Missouri unless they put
it in front of the voters and unless we vote for it. So this is
what's happening. Josh Hawley knows his really wealthy people are
about to be in a bind in Missouri because they're not going to get the
tax cut, cuts they've been asking for. They're not going to get rid of the
estate tax, which they have been asking for, because
there won't be enough money to fund Medicaid
expansion if those federal dollars don't come through. So to
act, everybody has been like, oh my God, he's a changed man. He's a
great person. No friends, no friends. He is not. He is still
protecting the wealthiest. That is such an interesting
perspective, Jess. I've been like watching this going
and the inside story is always interesting. But it goes back to
why we need people like you in states like Missouri
to tell the truth. Because we see this at a national state and we think
he's a changed man. He's out there, you know, fighting for the little
guy. And, you know, that's not exactly it, is it? What you
see with Josh Hawley is often not at all what you get.
Because that man, I mean, we know, we all saw him put his fist up,
you know, for the mob and then run away in the Capitol. Josh
is for Josh. Josh is for the wealthy folks. He's not going
to fight for us. He showed up in Wentzville during the campaign because we
see him every six years, right? He finds, he finds a plaid shirt and a
pair of boots, and he hits the circuit and goes to all the county
fairs and state fairs and all that. But we saw him in
a picket line in Wentzville, Missouri, for UAW. And I'm
telling you, those people were so confused because Josh Hawley
is pro Right to Work. He was for years. And now
recently, he's decided that, you know, maybe he needs to back off of that.
But Josh is who he's always been. Don't ever, don't
ever think, oh, my gosh, he's changed his mind. He's a great guy because he's
always fighting for the same people and it ain't us. Yeah. And the,
the reality is that if he wants to be labeled a
populist and not an elitist, these are some good issues. He's taking
a page out of Donald Trump's book. But I want to pivot to the
Big Beautiful Bill and whether you see an opening
for rebranding the Democratic Party or at least having a conversation
with people about difference in values that
are being reflected by that Bill versus the Democratic
agenda. Are you seeing that in Missouri much?
I am. Even Republicans and our Republican
lawmakers are realizing what's going to happen to our state when they cut funding
for SNAP, when they cut funding, funding for Medicaid, when they go after Social
Security. Because all of these are, you know, social safety nets.
But in places like Missouri, 40% of our kids are
born on Medicaid. We're supposed to be a Pro Life state. And now we're
cutting the benefit that poor folks had to deliver
the babies that our state is demanding. They're going to cut that. They're going
to cut SNAP. They're going to try to put in Medicaid work requirements, which we
know don't work. You can look at Arkansas. Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to do
this. They found out real quick that most of the people on Medicaid were already
working. And the fact is, these people are working for places like Walmart,
who's not paying a living wage, who gets government subsidies
themselves, and then most of their employees end up needing SNAP,
Medicaid and other social services because they're not paying them
a living wage. So this is the part where Democrats can step in and say,
Big Beautiful Bill, like you said, that is an outrageous,
outrageous name. It's so Trumpion and it sounds so,
so weird, but almost every person who has even a
limited understanding of it understands that it's coming after the
most marginalized in our communities. Yeah. And the one thing that I want
to put on the table, because we've been talking about this Big Beautiful Bill
and the changes that it's going to make to the Medicaid system, but the
expanded credits for the ACA, which a lot of
states, including mine and yours, we have a lot of people who have
greatly reduced their premium costs. Those expanded credits
are going to go off even if they're out on the exchange buying
health insurance. Because by the way, employers, not every employer
offers health insurance. That, I saw a Senator recently who
said, oh, you know, they'll just get it from their employer when they go back
to work. I want to say, what don't you people understand about
the struggles are of people that you think, you think are
slackers? I was on Joel's radio show, Jess, and a
guy called in and said, you Democrats, you just want to give away
money to, you know, on daycare and on, you know, food
assistance. And he went through all these, Section 8 housing. And so he went
through all these programs. And I said, let me tell you a story, a story
about somebody who works at a fast food restaurant who makes
$10 an hour. Guess what they make. They make under $25,000
a year. So who are you really subsidizing
when you offer those benefits? You're subsidizing the employer.
You're not subsidizing that person. That person's working 40
hours a week. And it's this failure of people to understand because
they only show up every six years and ask for a vote
and say, I'm a Republican, be scared of Democrats, and
don't have any ideas and don't improve the lives of the people
they serve. That's exactly it. And when I was knocking doors, I would have people
come to the door and talk about their road. We don't have shoulders on our
roads. Our schools are four days a week, our hospitals are closing. And they would
come out and say, well, Joe Biden. I don't know who you're talking about. He
has no idea where you live. That has come from your State Representative and
your State Senator and you have voted for Republicans for 30 years
we have not elected a Democrat from my district in 32
years, never elected a woman. So all of these
problems, by the way, friends, are coming from your State House and the federal funds
we're going to lose are coming from those Republicans up in the Federal Government.
And you are so right to talk about what is happening with ACA.
I'm self-employed and before Missouri expanded Medicaid, I
didn't have health insurance because it was around $1100 a month and I just could
not afford it. Well, a year and a half ago I went and I was
like, I really am going to need health insurance. I'm nearing 50, right? And
I look at the marketplace and now it's $496, $496! I didn't
know what happened. Now I do. It's because Missouri expanded
Medicaid and that brought down, you know, the
co-pays and all that for my health insurance. I, you know, I'm not someone that
people would look at and say, well, Medicaid has benefited you. Medicaid expansion has benefited
every single person in this state, whether they know it or
not. Well, and the other thing is it's kept our rural hospitals
open, which are heavily dependent, operate on a 1% margin
and are heavily dependent on Medicaid and Medicare
expenditures. And think about this, when we have
uncompensated care, who's going to pay? Eventually everybody pays
because you're going to get care and it's going to be even more expensive. And
yes, Joni Ernst, people will die. You know, my husband's a family
physician and he will tell anyone after
the passage of the aca, when people came in and were able to get
screenings for free, it saved people's lives. He was able to early
detect a lot of diseases, particularly colon cancers,
that had it gone unchecked, those people would have been
on the short list for meeting their maker. And so
it's just naive. I mean this whole healthcare thing is just
absolutely naive. And the point that we need to make,
I think over and over again is that there
are struggles out there that we need to understand
better. But as Democrats, we need to talk about what our plan is,
not just why their plan is bad, we do. And we also
need to catch the people who are trying to get fly under the radar.
My Congressman, for example, has been in D.C. for 24 years. Sam
Graves, he's a Congressman for the 6th district, which is the entire
third part of Missouri. He voted for
the big beautiful bill. He voted to take away Medicaid
and he just came out yesterday with a
bipartisan bill to save rural hospitals. And I'm like,
wait, Sam, you just voted to defund those hospitals,
and now you're writing a bill to fund these hospitals? So everything is smoke and
mirrors, everything they do. So he's going to come out and he has, you know,
he's, he's going to try to get reelected next year, and he's going to come
out and say, look, I tried to save these rural hospitals. No, you didn't. You
voted against them. You created a problem. And now you're, you're coming out with this
bill to say that you're saving them. And the reason it's happening is because under
22 years of the GOP super majority in this state, they have
closed 19 rural hospitals. You have to drive an
hour and a half to deliver a baby that you wanted. You're forced
to deliver a pregnancy that you didn't want because, by the way, we
got rid of our abortion ban. And Heidi, what did they do? They. They
negated our vote. They're putting it back on the ballot again. We
raised 380,000 signatures, and we won. And
they're still saying it doesn't matter because, remember, all of this was supposed to be
about States' rights. "Send it back to the States." But not like that, not when
they approve it, right? And so these are all problems with Republicans.
And right now, as far as, as a Democrat, when I'm
knocking doors, I don't even really have time to give them a Democratic message.
I have to unwind everything they've heard from all of these sources
that are incorrect about Republicans. So how do
we fix this? I mean, you know, you and I, I'm not afraid to
go anywhere and mix it up with anyone in North Dakota because I
think I have a story to tell, and I'm not going to fall into the
traps of, 'You Democrats are all this.' No, we're not. We're not
all this. We are different people. But we have a fundamental
belief that when you invest in people, and not
just institutions and wealthy people, that when you invest
in everyone and give everyone a chance, that's when we succeed. But let's
turn to the, the damage that's been done to the Democratic
brand in rural America. And how do we fix that, Jess? We fix it
by being here. We have left rural America, and that
is the fault of the Democrats. I think years ago, they decided that they
could win elections by just paying attention to suburban and urban areas. And they
thought "those people," the rural spaces are so red anyway, it doesn't matter. But
look what has happened. We have also given to, only to races
that we have decided are flippable or winnable instead of investing
in every single district across every single state. And look what
has happened in Missouri. We have only invested in those winnable
races. And now we do not have one Democrat elected statewide. Not
one. And we haven't since 2018 when the last auditor
left. So we have this huge vacuum of
leadership of being in the space. You can't win a
rural space when you just have people from other areas come in and knock
two weeks before an election. You can't say, I care about you, but I've
never been here for you. You can't say I care about you, but I'm not
going to. I'm not going to have anyone on the ballot for you to vote
for, because people see through that real quick. We have to actually be in the
communities the Democratic Party needs to support the people who have been on the ground
for decades doing the work that send them funding, send
them money so that they can do even more. And that's how we'll start to
claw our way back. I'm not picking on the
presidential race, but you think about the billions of
dollars that was spent, and you think about the polling before that money
was ever spent. It didn't change any votes because it was done the wrong
way. And, you know, God bless, you know, everyone who worked so
hard on that race. But just, just think of what $100
million invested in rural places would
mean for, number one, telling people who have
been in the fight for a long, long time in rural Nebraska and rural North
Dakota and rural Minnesota, telling them, guess what? You matter.
And we're going to help you build the infrastructure that you need and
develop the candidates that you need. And I think that's the other thing
I want to turn to, which is candidate development. You know, if, if
you know that you don't have any support, you're just out there
like you were. Like you were, Jess, when you were
knocking doors. It really does. That's why I run Blue Missouri. That's
why I, I run an organization where we give money. A lot of
people say, do you endorse candidates? No, I don't. I send them a check
once they have won the nomination for their district or whatever
they're running for. We send them actual cash. We do a
bathtub method from the bottom to the top. So the people who have raised the
least are, get the most from Blue Missouri. And that's why it's hard
for people, because it's flipped it on its head. They're like, yeah, but these folks
aren't going to win. I know they're not likely to win, but you know what?
We've got their back. Asking someone in a rural space to run
is very, it's a huge ask. I know I
lost my job. I can't go back to teaching because I said abortion, because
I said that gay people should be able to be married, because I said education
should be free for folks. And so I can't go back to
teaching. My husband was fired from his teaching
job because I ran for office. You are asking so much of
people, so to ask them to run and then not give them a dime,
that's immoral. That, that - we can't do that anymore. We
can't say, turn your life upside down and by the way, we're not going to
do anything else for you. And that's why I felt called to do this, to
give to the people that are running in the Reddest, the toughest districts
that no one else is going to support. Because you know as well as I
do, Heidi, it's going to take a few cycles. If, if we haven't had a
candidate since 2012, we've taught an entire generation
of people to vote for Republicans because there's not a Democrat on the ballot. And
we've got to do better than that. And we start by making sure there is
a candidate in every single area and then funding those candidates.
Yeah. And training candidates and telling them, look, you know,
here's, here's the best way to approach what you're doing. If you're uncomfortable
defending this position. I, I tell the, you
know, I ran, no one thought I was going to win, kind of similar situation.
And you, you just never know what's going to happen. And you just
don't know. Lightning could strike, right? It could
strike when people have someone to talk to. And that's why candidates on
every ballot are important, because they're out knocking the doors. And,
you know, we have a lot of messaging coming through, and St. Louis messaging
doesn't work in Maryville, Missouri. And so people have to figure that out
as well, too. But by knocking doors, you figure out what's important to people. You
know, what's important to people out here. The schools, the roads, the
hospitals. Not one person did I knock a door and then come out and
say, well, those Trans people using bathrooms - never, not once!
So we have to remember too, that there are issues that, these "Kitchen
Table" issues. Even though Fox News and OAN and all them want to make them
the biggest part. When I knock doors, it has nothing to do with
that. Nobody said, I don't think gay people should be able to be married. Nobody
said, I hope that my tax money goes to a private religious school
that I can't send my kid to. Right? These are things that keep going
through the Missouri House. But no one, no door I knocked
had anything to do with that. So there's this huge disconnect. But
a reason that a lot of people will still vote for a Republican, you
know this as well as I do, is church indoctrination. Because they're
hearing from the pulpit that they can't vote for Democrats, that they can't vote for
people who are Pro Choice. And we work on that message by knocking
doors and actually talking to people. The one thing that I will
say, Jess, is I have a friend who says Democrats approach rural
people as missionaries and not
neighbors. Meaning, you know, they knock a door and say, I'm here to help
you. Look what I'm going to give you. You know what? You need to see
people first. You need to say, I see your hard work. I see your struggle.
I see that you don't have enough money to fix the hot water heater or
to fix the plumbing in your house. How can we make that
better? How can we help? And not how can
I give you something? Because they don't want to be given
anything. They've earned it. And the question is, how can you make
their life better? And that's exactly why deep canvassing works. That's
why I was at doors for an hour, because I was
listening to what was going on with these folks and how hard
it is to live in rural spaces. Listen, if anybody wants to
know what the Trump Administration and what Elon Musk - even though they're fighting right
now - what they want for the rest of country, all you got to do
is look at rural America. They want it hollowed out. And by the way, urban
issues and rural issues are almost identical. We
have the same exact struggle, struggle. And that's why places
like, you know, RUBI, the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative is helpful,
but also in getting a message out. We're suffering from the same
things. It just looks different. But the poverty is the same. The no schools, the
no daycares, the no hospitals, all of these things are very similar. And the
bottom line is that when you approach this as we're so
different, you're going to lose when you approach this. That if I
hear one more Democrat say they vote against their interests. I say, no, they don't.
They don't vote against their interests. Nobody votes against their interests. But
Jess, it is always great to talk to you. It's kind of like, "Yeah!"
And then, "Yeah, that's exactly right!"
Yes, yes, yes. We're both cheerleaders. We're both cheerleaders for the
same exact community. And if folks would just listen and Heidi, you hit on
something that's so important. No one votes against their self interest. When I
knock doors and someone say abortion makes the entire thing for me, it's because
they honestly and truly believe that people are killing babies, right? And so
that's where we have to do this education and unwinding and nothing
happens if there aren't Democrats out knocking doors and talking to
people. Rural people are worth it. We are worth candidates. We are
worth conversations. And if the Democrats would just come back,
we would see a change. Amen. Amen. Jess,
thanks so much for joining me. I just want everyone to know you can
follow Jess on Substack at jesspiper. All one word.
P-I-P-E-R. And good luck with your Substack. Good luck
with your preaching. The bottom line is that if you're not
out there, of course you're going to fail. Exactly. I
appreciate you and thank you for doing all you're doing for rural communities
across the country. Love you, Jess. Thanks so much. Thank
you. Bye.
I learned a lot in today's episode and I hope you did too. It's so
important to support our rural communities. We hope this episode
inspires you to get involved in your community. If there's something you
or a loved one is doing, let's talk about it. Email us
your story or anything else that you have to say
at
podcast@onecountryproject.org. That's
podcast@onecountryproject - all one word - dot org. We're
also on Bluesky and Substack,
so follow us and reach out there too. We'd love to
hear from you because we are optimistic about what can
happen in the next cycle. Hot Dish is brought to you by
One Country Project, making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard
in the Washington. Learn more at onecountryproject.org.
And be sure to register for
the Rural Progress Summit, our online event, which
will be held July 8th through the 10th. We'll
be back in two weeks with more Hot Dish, comfort food for
rural America.