Long before Jamie Ager entered politics, he was making his name in a very different place: the meat counter of a grocery store in Boone, North Carolina.
It was the early 2000s and Ager owned and operated Hickory Nut Gap, a regenerative farm near Asheville. Over the next 20 years, he helped build a regional food system that provided healthier food for thousands of people, improved land management and made farming a little more profitable.
We have long believed that American politics would be much better if people like him – workers who care so well for the land and their communities – represented us.
And now he is. On Tuesday night, Ager won the House race for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, resoundingly flipping a Republican seat that Donald Trump had won handily in 2024.
He was not alone. Democrats have narrowed Republicans’ electoral margins in rural areas, erasing nearly half of Trump’s colossal 40-point advantage in 2024. Of the 21 most rurally populated states that have held U.S. Senate elections, Democrats won in 10 of them, including states like Kansas, Mississippi and Iowa, all of which have long gone to Republican heavyweights.
Rural voters still prefer Republicans – but to a much lesser extent. They gave Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate 15 points, compared to their choice for the 2024 presidential election. (Nationally, Republican turnout was down, so we don’t yet know what percentage of the shift was in Democrats’ favor versus the couch).
Non-college voters also reacted strongly. For the first time since 2012, a majority (51%) of non-college voters voted for a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, an astonishing 17 point improvement from 2024.
The campaign platforms of the winning (or leading) candidates in red and purple states demonstrate a clear pattern: the concrete economic issues of working and rural people were central.
In Kansas, Adam Hamilton’s “prairie populism” railed against the crushing costs of agricultural inputs, something Iowa’s Josh Turek also highlighted. In Mississippi, Scott Colom highlighted the loss of labor and delivery services in rural communities. Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico of Texas both spoke out on behalf of rural schools against defunding and voucher programs. Keisha Lance Bottoms has spoken openly about the rural-urban divide and her own roots in rural Georgia.
In South Carolina, Annie Andrews focused on kitchen economics, rural health care, and farmland preservation. And Sam Forstag, the first Democrat from Montana to be appointed to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1994, has focused on protecting the public lands that Montanans depend on for recreation and livelihood.
The nine Senate candidates who flipped (or are expected to flip) their seats have focused relentlessly on easing voters’ financial woes, reining in corruption, curbing AI data centers, and supporting workers, farmers, veterans, and small businesses. With the exception of Troy Jackson and Andrews, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a passing mention of a single culture war issue on a campaign website.
The same goes for the five Democrats who switched governorships. Hinojosa, the Texas governor-elect, told the New York Times: “I have no interest in fighting culture wars. There is only one fight (against the tech giants), and we are so busy fighting with each other… about how we disagree on social issues… I’m not going to perpetuate that anymore.”
That position gave him an eight-point Democratic swing in Texas’ 17 rural counties.
It took several painful cycles for Democrats to understand the benefits of sitting down at the kitchen table and staying there, a strategy that will serve them well for the foreseeable future.
Having learned the hard way that ignoring voters in rural areas and industrial cities is the road to ruin, House and Senate candidates have flocked to small towns. Abdul El-Sayed showed up in barns, union halls and fairgrounds across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Colom visited nearly every county in Mississippi, held 60 town hall meetings and even showed up at a small-town Maga rally to speak to Trump supporters.
Rob Sand embarked on a 100-stop tour across Iowa, including all of its rural counties. Ohio Governor-elect Amy Acton met with local agricultural extension districts to advocate for rural broadband and 4-H. Jake Johnson, who flipped Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, deployed teams of volunteers across the district for one-on-one conversations with voters, contributing to a six-point swing in their rural county.
For the first time ever, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee implemented a rural engagement program that included grassroots organizing in rural districts, mobilizing volunteers, and helping with buying ads and sending mailers. Grassroots organizations, like Every State Blue, Dirt Road Organizing and others, fought for every vote, mobilizing the base while reaching out to influential voters and disgruntled Trump supporters.
The combined effect of all of these rural outreach efforts has been a game changer: When Democrats play ball in rural areas, they can win or, at least, start to make significant inroads in those districts.
Democrats won big on Tuesday, especially in rural areas and red states. The actions they take next will determine whether this is a fleeting rejection of Trump or the start of a movement that ultimately truly seizes the power of elites in the service of working people everywhere.
As Corbin Trent, a media strategist and former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said, Democrats “have been handed the keys to the American people. It’s time to drive the car to a better place.”
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