Brown, Dollison and the 2022 Georgia Agriculture Commissioner race

Gary Black, Georgia's current Agriculture Commissioner announced this week that he will enter the U.S. Senate race for a chance to take on incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock in 2022. Black was elected State Agriculture Commissioner in 2010 after longtime Agriculture Commissioner, (the late) Tommy Irvin retired after serving 41 years at the helm.

With Black now seeking higher office, the question now is who will run for the post. The rce for State Agriculture is typically a lower profile race but not anymore. There's a bevy of potential candidates on the Republican side who could run from State Senator Tyler Harper to State Representative Robert Dickey, but what about the Democratic side?

LeMario Brown, 34 who's currently serving as City Councilman for the city of Fort Valley is a Pecan Farmer out of Peach County. He's a graduate of Fort Valley State University, later studied at Columbia Southern University interned at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Brown. Brown has the ability to appeal to younger voters and also stem the loss of youth in the agriculture industry. 

Ricky Dollison Sr. a 1978 graduate of Worth County High School is a 4th Generation Farmer and owner and operator of Warrior Creek Premium Meats. The Tifton resident farm over in nearby Worth County and also the former High School Football All American was featured in one of Sen. Warnock's digital ads during the 2020 campaign season. He created Ag First Community Cooperative.

Given how hard its been for Democrats to find a strong candidate with a strong Agricultuel background, either of these two upstanding gentlemen would move Georgia Ag industry into a new era and would be a strong advocates for small family farms.

The REAL Reason Rural Voters Continue to Vote Republican

Why do rural, working class whites vote Republican? Well based on conversations I've had throughout the last few years, many have told me that they are voting their economic interests and decided to leave the Democrats because they feel the party overlooks, ignores, and disrespects them.

Look, rural voters doesn't think that Democrats understand the economic realities of rural and small town life and have not focused attention on them. Instead, rural voters see Democrats as coming from and supporting urban concerns like Stacey Abrams for example who's probably going to run for Governor in 2022. Rural folks also believe that Democrats ignore rural needs and that rural areas do not get their fair share of resources. For example, many rural areas have faced recession-like conditions for decades due to a decline in manufacturing and small farms struggling to compete with corporate farms.

Here's a fact: National Democrats focus on the problems of minorities and rarely talk about the problems of rural voters.  This fact is why identity politics backfires on Democrats. Understandably, Democrats support Black Lives Matter to rectify the historic injustices done to Black folks. However, rural voters hear Democrats excluding them from help. When working class whites claim that “all lives matter,” they are not opposing helping Black Americans per se. Instead, they are claiming that working class whites need and want the help also. If Democrats could broaden their appeal beyond race, spend time in rural areas, and create policies to deliver benefits to these rural areas, Democrats could win more elections. Take a look at Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Georgia's two newest Senators. They know this and have been spending alot of time in rural parts of Georgia pushing policies that will help address some of Rural America's needs.

Also you have to look at the continued support of Donald Trump by rural working class voters can also be explained through this prism. Trump’s trade policies were popular because even though it may hurt some rural workers, they see Trump working to restore manufacturing plants lost decades ago. Moreover, many rural voters see illegal immigrants as competitors for their jobs who work for less and depress their wages which makes “the wall” popular.

Finally, Republicans have misread rural support for Republicans as support for limited government. That is wrong. Rural voters are fine with higher taxes (some of you may disagree with this) and more spending if they think it helps them. Their (republicans) current anti-government views reflect a belief that most government aid goes to urban areas. The challenge is that more government aid to rural areas and the poor conflicts with conservative orthodoxy. However, a more proactive approach to help the poor could help an older, white GOP expand its support among minority voters. But they can't see that and Democrats have failed so far to capitalize on this opportunity by refusing to go in unfriendly territory

Black Farmers have suffered long enough from the decimation of rural America and decades of systemic racism. Help from the USDA finally is long overdue.

You’ve probably heard that $5 billon dollars from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue stimulus plan has been dedicated to farmers of color. 

Specifically, that designation is for “socially disadvantaged farmers,” which, according to the (USDA), is anyone who has been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group. 

You should also be aware that the Biden administration is being sued by several white farmers for racial discrimination, not for the government’s past actions against people of color, but because the current administration is making an effort to address racism and the historic inequalities inflicted on people of color by the USDA.

Let’s be honest for a minute, if those on the right really cared about agriculture and rural communities, rather than targeting cash payments to large-scale farmers and agribusiness firms as they chose to do these past few years, policy makers would have dedicated adequate resources to those truly in need and made a real attempt to reform the inflexible and wasteful system that currently feeds us.

Senator Warnock in Byromville Georgia with group of black farmers

The lawsuit on behalf of a group of white farmers in Wisconsin, launched by the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, claims that dedicating resources to specific groups to which white farmers may not belong, is racist. 

What such lawsuits really show is not a concern with agriculture, but instead a shallow form of identity politics that is meant to rally poor, rural white people to the political right.

Farmers of color, especially black producers have suffered from both the decimation of rural America as well as decades of systemic racism. 

The USDA and federal government can begin to reverse the racism against Black farmers not only through debt relief, but also the $1 billion in outreach and training from the Biden stimulus bill which is necessary to ensure that current and beginning farmers of color acquire the necessary tools to produce food for themselves and their communities. 

Most importantly, to address racism it must be confronted directly. Lacking that specific intent, history has shown us that Black people are always left behind. 

There is no anti-white racism involved here, only further attempts to perpetuate decades of institutional racism against Black farmers.

It's Put Up Or Shut Up Time! Will Georgia Democrats Compete in Rural Areas, for Rural Legislative Seats in 2022?

I've always said that a Democratic vote in rural Mitchell, Marion, or Ware County counts just as much as a vote in suburban Cobb County. It’s important for Democrats to take stock of their efforts to turn out rural voters in the same way they assess their tactics in other areas of the Peach State. The party was successful last year because candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock expanded the map beyond the Metro Atlanta area and didn't take any votes for granted. Last year Democrats made significant inroads in small towns and rural areas down in central and south Georgia, and it’s crucial they keep up that effort going into the 2022 midterm elections.

Democrats have to stay competitive in rural areas of the state and that starts with recruiting a legitimate, strong candidate to take on incumbents like Austin Scott in GA-8, Buddy Carter in GA-1, Drew Ferguson in GA-3 as well as candidates for the state legislature. It’s clear that suburban and urban voters were a major driver of our victories, but they can’t forgo small towns and rural counties. If Democrats want to get things done in Atlanta and at the local level and mount a strong challenge for control of the Georgia General Assembly next year, they have to win outside of the suburbs.

Democrats can win these communities by showing up and passing policies that directly benefit rural Georgians. That’s why newly elected Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff spent the final week of his campaign on a tour through Southwest and Central Georgia. Popular Democratic priorities like Medicaid expansion, which helps fund rural hospitals and extending broadband infrastructure see some of their biggest benefits in rural communities, and it’s important that they keep working hard to support these policies.

It will be tempting for democrats to look at the results of last year’s elections and conclude that Democrats here need only win votes in suburban and urban areas to be successful. That would be a mistake. As the party has grown stronger over the past few years, they've expanded their presence across the Peach State. 

There have been a lot of great candidates that did not make it to the Gold Dome and me over the years like Marc Arnett of HD 138

Marc Arnett

who came up short of unseating Mike Cheokas, or Jack Lance who ran back in 2010 for HD 8 along with the endorsement of late Governor Zell Miller but I would not consider those campaigns to be losses. It will take time to flip some of these rural areas.

Jack Lance with Zell Miller

Democrats can absolutely be competitive in rural Georgia. They just have to get back to basics, and that will start with real conversations about community issues. I am a big advocate for localized messaging and community-based organizing. Democrats love to hire people who are out of state and expect them to know how to communicate in their new turf. That doesn’t work, especially not in rural Georgia. Rural Georgians can smell an out-of-towner from miles away. They need people who live there to have these conversations. Local people are experts in their communities and should be the ones to drive the conversation.

There are some people that will not be receptive to having a conversation because they disagree on wedge issues, and that’s fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. We all have limited time and resources. It is a much better use of time to talk with someone who is willing to have a productive conversation than someone who is committed to arguing.

 

 

Could Marjorie Taylor Greene Be The Gift Democrats Need in 2022?

14th Congressional District Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rhetoric is offensive, harmful, and dangerous. We’d all be better off if she were gone from politics. But since the House Republicans refuse to expel her, the democrats at least use her to win the midterms.

Don’t you see? Greene is a huge gift in my opinion to the democrats. All they have to do is use her extremism, her outside of the mainstream views against every House Republican who’s running for re-election in a moderate district in 2022. Greene has three centrist

democratic challengers in Holly McCormick (D-Ringgold), Marcus Flowers (D-Bremen) and Lateefah Connor (D-Dallas)

The media keeps spinning Greene as spelling doom for the Democrats, but they can never say why. That’s because it’s not true. In every district where Greene helps the republicans in 2022, they were going to win anyway. Greene hurts the republicans in numerous moderate/swing districts.

Greene is probably good for handing five to eight moderate House districts to the Democrats in 2022. That could decide majority control right there. Throw in the upcoming indictment of fringe Congressman Matt Gaetz, and it potentially could be Christmas morning for the Democrats.

The republicans just got done proving this strategy works, when they used fictionalized exaggerated versions of The Squad to win moderate House districts. In 2022 the Democrats just have to use the real versions of Greene and Gaetz to win moderate House districts. But democrats don't know how to fight fire with fire. We'll see next year.

 

The Weight of the letter "D" in Rural Georgia

Democrats are losing rural votes not because of what they propose but because rural voters identify more with the Republican Party. “Democratic” ballot initiatives do well in rural, but Democratic candidates don’t.

In politics these days, it’s not as much what is said as who says it. Urban voters are getting more Democratic and rural voters more Republican.

What we can see now, however, is that Democratic candidates are paying an “identity penalty” in rural counties, they are losing votes not because of what they propose but because of the “D” that sits beside their name on the ballot.

Party is largely about identification these days, not policy. Okay, here's an example...Imagine walking down a hall of a large building. There are gatherings happening in two separate rooms. You can look through a door and see the people in each group. You size them up, seeing what kind of clothes they wear and imagining whether they would be the kind of folks you’d want to spend time with or have your children visit. You make a judgment, pick a room and go in. You join a team.

That’s how political parties are chosen. It’s about identification and social solidarity, not issues. And that identity is strong and divided by geography. Rural residents went in one door and urbanites went in the other.

Identity is not something that people easily give up. (Have you ever convinced a sports fan to change his or her team?) Like someone asking me to switch being a Georgia Bulldogs fan to a Florida Gator fan. Not happening!

And so the “identity penalty” Democrats pay in extremely heavily Republican areas might be too great to overcome. Candidates might do better if they run as independents rather than as Democrats in particularly “red” states.

What Happens to Rural Areas After Trump Leaves, whether it's in 2020 or 2024?

If one word can capture the sentiment of rural and small-town dwellers in recent years, it is resentment.

Residents of rural and small-town communities believe they are not getting their fair share of government attention and vital resources compared to urban dwellers. They believe that America is moving away from them.


People in rural areas like feel as though they are being ignored by urban elites and urban institutions like government and the media at a time when they are struggling to make ends meet.
They believe their communities are dying, the economy is leaving them behind, and that young people, money and their livelihoods are going somewhere else.

They think that major decisions affecting their lives are being made far away in big cities (which is true). And perhaps most importantly, they feel that no one is listening to them or their ideas about things that are important to them. Most distressing to those living in this situation is the belief that no one, and especially no one in government, really cares.

To date, the phenomenon of resentment has been responsible for adding another layer of heightened division among Americans, including an increase in political polarization.

That makes it much more difficult for federal government officials, as well as those at the state and local level, to reach consensus on important issues of the day

It is this frustration and anger of small-town and rural area folks has resulted in increasing political support for Republican candidates, generally, and for Trump, specifically.

Given their intensifying feelings of resentment for being ignored and left behind, rural and small-town folks were particularly receptive to the slogan touted by Trump in his campaign “Make America Great Again!”

Trump won the country’s small town and non-metropolitan areas by 63.2 percent to 31.3 percent, with his largest vote shares coming from the most rural areas.

Like other Republican presidential candidates over the last 10 years, Trump garnered a large majority of the vote in traditional rural areas like Appalachia, the Great Plains and parts of the South.
Surprisingly, however, Trump also won a substantial proportion of the traditionally Democratic small town and rural vote in several key Midwestern industrial areas
 
Other appealing policies were tax cuts for both businesses and individuals; significant reductions in the regulation of business and industry; and import tariffs on foreign goods that compete unfairly with American-made products.

People living in small towns and rural areas who supported these kinds of policies were more likely to vote for Trump rather than Clinton in 2016 and they did.

Above all, Trump promised a shift in the focus of the national government so that much more attention would be directed to rural areas and small towns and the challenges they faced.
This evidently buoyed the hope of Trump supporters in these areas that they would be getting something closer to their fair share of government attention and resources.

Residents of small towns and rural areas are much more supportive of the Republican Party and its candidates than people in urban and suburban areas.

In addition, the most ardent supporters of Republicans are among those small-town and rural folks who are white and male, have less than a college education and vote on a regular basis.

I believe that the urban-rural/small-town divide will continue to act as a major force in politics for the remainder of the Trump era and probably longer.