This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I guess this would be a “”logical day to write about the U.S. Supreme Court and abortion, given all the news about the leak of a draft opinion proposing to undo Roe V. Wade.

But, for me, there never is a logical day for such writing.  I will leave all of the discussion about abortion (at least almost all of the discussion) — not to mention vitriol — to the pundits and commentators.

For me, this is a good day to write about an long-timne reality in Oregon – the so-called “Two Oregons” – the urban one and the rural one that never can get together.  Or, at least they refuse to understand each other.

The division persists today. 

And the divide exists in other states, as well.

I encountered the reality when I worked as deputy director of the Oregon Economic Development a number of years ago.  For us, it was easier to recruit businesses to grow and expand in urban areas than it was in rural areas.

That’s just the reality of the economy.  But, at the risk of defending myself when no one is charging me with anything, my colleagues and I in the department made a variety of intentional efforts to reach out to rural Oregonians.

We traveled the state.  We welcomed interaction with rural residents.  We tried to understand their perceptions, though, to state the obvious, all of us in the department were from an urban area, either Salem or Portland.

On this subject, a solid story appeared in the New York Times early this week written by Chloe Maxmin, the youngest female state senator in the State of Maine’s history, and Canyon Woodward, who ran two of her campaigns.  They wrote a book – “Dirt Road Revival” – which offered some suggestions about how to bridge the urban-rural divide.Top of Form

Their notions are not magic answers, but they are worth considering. 

Here is how their essay in the NY Times started:

“NOBLEBORO, Maine — We say this with love to our fellow Democrats: Over the past decade, you willfully abandoned rural communities.  As the party turned its focus to the cities and suburbs, its outreach became out of touch and impersonal.  To rural voters, the message was clear:  You don’t matter.

“Now, Republicans control dozens of state legislatures, and Democrats have only tenuous majorities in Congress at a time in history when we simply can’t afford to cede an inch.   The party can’t wait to start correcting course. It may be too late to prevent a blowout in the fall, but the future of progressive politics — and indeed our democracy — demands that we revive our relationship with rural communities.

“As two young progressives raised in the country, we were dismayed as small towns like ours swung to the right.  But we believed that Democrats could still win conservative rural districts if they took the time to drive down the long dirt roads where we grew up, have face-to-face conversations with moderate Republican and independent voters and speak a different language, one rooted in values rather than policy.”

That’s good advice.

I put it this way.  State agency administrators and legislators from urban areas in Oregon should make an intentional effort to travel around Oregon to meet people in rural areas. 

Travel the “dirt roads.”

Talk to these citizens.  But don’t just talk.  Listen.

Maxmin and Woodward did this in Maine, and it worked.

“To us,” they say, “it was proof that the dogmas that have long governed American politics could and should be challenged.  Over the past decade, many Democrats seem to have stopped trying to persuade people who disagreed with them, counting instead on demographic shifts they believed would carry them to victory — if only they could turn out their core supporters.

“The choice to prioritize turnout in Democrat strongholds over persuasion of moderate voters has cost the party election after election.  But Democrats can run and win in communities that the party has written off, and they need not be Joe Manchin-like conservative Democrats to do so.”

In 2018, the two authors reported, with chagrin, that the chair of the Democrat National Committee, Tom Perez, told MSNBC, “You can’t door-knock in rural America.”

In effect, what he said was that rural America wasn’t worth a dime.  He wrote off hundreds of thousands of citizens throughout the country.

Maxmin and Woodward add this:

“That blinkered strategy is holding the party back.  When Democrats talk only to their own supporters, they see but a small fraction of the changes roiling this country.  Since 2008, residents of small towns have fallen behind cities on many major economic benchmarks, and they watched helplessly as more and more power and wealth were consolidated in cities.  

“The current Democrat strategy leads, not just to bad policy, but also to bad politics.  Our democracy rewards the party that can win support over large areas.  Ceding rural America leaves a narrow path to victory even in the best circumstances.

“What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community, and hard work.  Democrat campaigns often seem to revolve around white papers and wonky policy.  In our experience, politicians lose rural people when they regurgitate politically triangulated lines and talk about the vagaries of policy.

“Rural folks vote on what rings true and personal to them:  Can this person be trusted? Is he or she authentic.”

Some political scientists and many mainstream Democrats don’t believe their own strategies must change.  Rather, they believe rural Republicans are too ignorant to vote in their own best interest.  

“It’s a counterproductive, condescending story that serves only to drive the wedge between Democrats and rural communities deeper yet.” 

And, the two authors offer this anecdote:

“Chloe has knocked on more than 20,000 doors over the past two cycles, listening to stories of loss and isolation.  One man told her she was the first person to listen to him.  Most campaigns, he said, didn’t even bother to knock on his door; they judged him for what his house looked like.  Another voter said she had been undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump until Election Day but voted for Trump because, she said, at the Republican convention, he talked about regular American working people and Clinton didn’t at her convention.”

Something has to change.

Democrats need a radically different strategy if they are to restore their reputation as champions of working people, committed to improving their lives, undaunted by wealth and power.

In their campaigns, the two turned down the party consultants and created their own canvassing universe — the targeted list of voters they talk to during the election season.

As for campaign signs?  They were hand-painted or made of scavenged wood pallets by volunteers, with images of loons, canoes, and other hallmarks of the Maine countryside.  Into the trash went consultant-created mailers.  Instead, the two designed and carried out their own direct mail program for half the price of what the party consultants wanted to charge while reaching 20 per cent more voters.

In addition, volunteers wrote more than 5,000 personal postcards, handwritten and addressed to neighbors in their own community.  And, they defied traditional advice by refusing to say a negative word about their opponents, no matter how badly they wanted to fight back as the campaigns grew more heated.

More from the two authors: 

“We heard some rough stuff, and we didn’t tolerate hate.  But through the simple act of listening, we discovered that we could almost always catch a glimpse of common ground if we focused on values, not party or even policy.

“If people said they were fed up with politics, we’d say:  ‘Us, too! That’s why we’re here.’  If they despised Democrats, we’d tell them how we had deep issues with the party as well and we were trying to make it better.  It was how we differentiated ourselves from the national party and forged a sense of collective purpose.”

It is possible to apply these lessons to Legislative and Executive Branch bastions, both of which have tended to ignore rural areas for too long.

If I was going to advise Democrats in charge of nearly all sectors of political power in Oregon, I would say – “Go to rural Oregon and listen.”

If I was going to advise the top brass in state agencies, I would say the same thing.

All of this reminds of one of the favorite sayings of one of my partners in my old firm.  He was fond of saying, “God gave you two ears and one mouth.  So, listen twice as much as you talk.”

That is a basic prescription for solving at least part of the urban-rural divide in Oregon – and elsewhere.