Kansas might have an answer to Democrats’ rural voter problem

TOPEKA, Kan. — Support for Democrats in rural areas fell off a cliff in recent cycles. Then, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly did something improbable.

The Democrat got rural voters to say yes. And then, when she ran for reelection, she got them to say yes again.

Not all of them. Not even a majority of them. But Kelly wouldn’t be in office without her gains with voters among the state’s sweeping farmlands who wouldn’t even consider voting for other members of her party.

Now, Democrats hope her success here could provide clues to solving one of the party’s most pressing problems ahead of 2024: their near-total wipeout among rural voters.

“Basically, follow my playbook,” Kelly said during an interview with POLITICO at her statehouse office, which was decorated with swag commemorating Kansas’ recent collegiate athletic success and a handful of sunflowers, the state flower.

That’s the key for Democrats: Lose by less in rural areas, and Democrats have a clearer path to control of Congress and the presidency — even if Democrats not named Laura Kelly won’t be competitive in Kansas specifically.

Kelly’s playbook is in some ways the antithesis of the national political moment: Avoid culture war fights, focus on local economic issues, and spend a lot of time talking to the wheat and soybean farmers you know mostly won’t vote for you.

The latest test of Democrats’ rural efforts comes next week. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear also needs to run back a win in a red-leaning state and is facing down a similar challenge that Kelly did two years ago: Republicans in the state are relentlessly trying to nationalize the race, invoking Biden and hot-button cultural issues to try to drag down a popular incumbent.

Of course, it’s not that easy. Kelly’s success comes, in part, from her individual personality — her campaign pollster recalled a focus group participant who compared her to “a kind grandma where she would give all her grandkids a dollar for ice cream.” She also ran against a uniquely controversial candidate in 2018 and benefited from incumbency advantage last year. And she’s competing for state — not federal — office.

No one expects Joe Biden to be competitive in Kansas or similar states next year, or to reverse decades of Democratic losses among rural voters.

But key battleground states like Wisconsin or Georgia have significant rural populations that are similar to those in Kansas, making it crucial for Democrats to find a way to stop the bleeding. In Kansas, Kelly improved on Joe Biden’s 2020 blowout loss margin in every one of Kansas’ 105 counties. She overperformed most in rural areas of the state, giving her just enough cushion to squeeze past her Republican challenger.

The party is also defending Senate seats next year in states like Montana and West Virginia that could decide control of that chamber.

“She's won twice in Kansas, which I think folks would say largely that Democrats could never do again,” Democratic Governors Association Chair Phil Murphy said, praising his committee vice chair.

Murphy nodded to the slate of 2023 gubernatorial elections in red-leaning rural states: “Her input is invaluable.”

Over the past decade — and accelerating since former President Donald Trump’s win in 2016 — rural voters have been racing away from the Democratic Party, which has increasingly focused on winning urban and suburban voters. Despite years of warnings from operatives focused on luring back rural voters, candidates continue to complain about a lack of investment and seemingly no bottom to their troubles.

Part of the problem, Kelly said, is Democrats getting dragged into constant culture war fights like transgender rights or abortion policy. She still cares about these issues, she said, but avoids them on the stump, even when Republicans sought to bog her down in them.

“When you go out to rural Kansas, they are not talking about all of the divisive social issues,” Kelly said. “What's on their mind is ‘are you going to fund my schools?’ Or ‘are you going to build my roads, fix my roads?’”

The most frequently aired GOP ad during the midterms was one that said Kelly “opposed common sense efforts to ban men from competing against girls in high school sports.” Kelly has vetoed anti-LGBTQ bills, both before and after the 2022 election, and she supports abortion rights.

But she didn’t make any of that central to her campaign. Recalling her time as a state legislator, she said she might “vote in a way that might spark some flames, but I would never be throwing them.”

In a break from many other Democrats last year, Kelly did not emphasize abortion rights during her campaign — despite the fact that voters in Kansas rejected a ballot initiative pushed by anti-abortion groups in the summer of 2022, months before Kelly was on the ballot.

“Kansans don’t centralize it,” she said of abortion. She added that while Kansans “came out in full force” to reject the ballot initiative, for her election she “needed to stay on track, and discuss or have conversations about the issues that I knew really mattered the most to voters, particularly my voters in the rural areas.”

Stephanie Sharp, a moderate former Republican state lawmaker who supported Kelly, agreed. “There is a very small fraction of the electorate that wants to talk about that stuff,” she said.

Instead, Kelly focused on projecting an image of a moderate governor focused on economic issues. Supporters and opponents alike mentioned the effectiveness of her “Middle of the Road” ad, the campaign’s most-played television spot. In it, she describes herself as “like most Kansans: I'm not too far right, or too far left.” The spot touts a budget surplus and fully funding schools — a central plank of her campaign that she said resonates with rural voters.

How translatable Kelly’s strategy will be to other Democrats remains a big question, but others are trying.

Beshear — Kentucky’s Democratic governor — also ran well ahead of Biden in 2019 when he was first elected, and will similarly have to be at least nominally competitive in rural areas of his state to win another term on Tuesday. And Kelly shares some staff with a similarly situated Senate Democrat: Shelbi Dantic, who ran Kelly’s successful reelect, is now helming Sen. Jon Tester’s campaign in Montana.

And then there’s Biden.

“It’ll be harder on the federal level, no doubt about that, than it is on the state level” to close the gaps between urban and suburban voters and rural America, Kelly said.

She praised some of Biden’s legislative victories, naming the infrastructure bill and CHIPS Act specifically, as things that “have really allowed states to experience incredible economic development.”

But she acknowledged that “clearly individuals have not sensed that,” adding that the president “just needs to change the message.”

She urged Biden to hit the road to highlight his economic record — which the president’s reelection campaign has touted as “Bidenomics” — and to increase outreach to rural voters.

In places with major infrastructure projects like railways and highways that could be appealing to rural voters, “he needs to go into those areas and highlight that, just like you would highlight the impact on the automotive industry and the impact on the tech world.”

Many Republicans in the state chalk up Kelly’s success to her reaping the benefits of circumstances beyond her control, not a superior political strategy.

Kelly’s first victory in 2018 came in a banner year for Democrats and benefited both from running in the wake of the deeply unpopular former GOP Gov. Sam Brownback and against the controversial then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the general election.

And in 2022, Kelly got the benefit of running as an incumbent governor facing off against a Republican challenger whom D.C. Republicans publicly groused about for running a lackadaisical campaign. An independent bid from a conservative lawmaker also siphoned GOP votes.

“The dynamics of the Kansas governor’s race last year were unique because of a conservative former Republican state senator who ran as an independent combined with Governor Kelly portraying herself as middle-of-the-road,” House Speaker Daniel Hawkins said through a spokesperson. He noted Republicans’ success in Kansas’ legislative races and said Kelly has “given up any pretense of being middle of the road” now that she’s secured reelection.

Democrats know they can’t just try to become a carbon copy of Kelly to win.

“There's no one size fits all,” said Margie Omero, a prominent national Democratic pollster who worked on Kelly’s campaign.

She compared Kelly and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), two wildly different Democrats who did well in 2022. Omero said the key was authenticity, not a specific personality or set of policies.

“That's how people feel connected to a candidate that's different from whatever the national debate is,” she said.

And most national politicians aren’t known for Kelly’s understated style, anyway.

At a recent event Kelly had with Dolly Parton, who was expanding her library program statewide in Kansas, the philanthropist lightly ribbed Kelly: “You’re just so soft-spoken, how did you get into politics? I thought you had to scream and yell and hoot and holler to be in politics.”

“It’s my magic, Dolly,” Kelly deadpanned.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.