“What Don’t Democrats Understand About Rural Voters”: an interview with ANTHONY FLACCAVENTO

by Mary-Sherman Willis

Anthony Flaccavento has spent a lot of time reflecting on how Virginians can navigate the deep divide between urban liberals and rural conservatives. A long-time farmer in Southwest Virginia near Abingdon, where he created a farmer’s co-op and co-founded one of the state’s largest farmers’ markets, Flaccavento was always the one with progressive instincts in a conservative region. As he sidelined as a rural development consultant and even ran for Congress on a Democratic ticket, he became an insightful observer of what urban Democrats don’t understand about rural economies. With that experience behind him, he helped found the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), where he shapes progressive programs to rebuild rural economies “from the bottom up.” I asked him to explain his approach.

 Rural Democrats tend to be “transplants from a good-sized town or a big city,” he says. “Even those who’ve been in Washington County or Culpeper for 15-20 years are still mystified—they’re flummoxed, they’re frustrated and a little bit daunted” by the antagonism they feel lately from their Republican neighbors.

 That anger is fueled by both failing rural economies and the failure of either party to supply a remedy. Republicans, who “jumped in and captured racially motivated white people in the 1960s as Democrats became the more inclusive party, provide nearly nothing of substance to rural communities,” Flaccavento said, “but are so damn good at recognizing people’s anger, and then fanning it and channeling it.

 “And especially if you don’t worry about the facts, that sort of frees you up to do amazing messaging!”

 But on the other side, “That anger did not lead any Dems or leading liberals or progressives to try to understand where it was coming from.” Instead, “it was dismissed as a kind of whining white people with their privilege. Or as, ‘These folks better get with the 21st Century because farming and the economy ain’t what it was for their grandpas.’

“There’s been a confluence that’s led to this disproportionate rage and grievance that’s nevertheless very legitimate,” he says.

 Add to that the support of local churches, where can be heard “avowedly anti-Democratic-big-D messaging coming from the preacher,” and the Democrats’ tendency to be “so obsessed with the nuances of the truth that we have trouble saying things simply, and we end up alienating people. People start thinking you’re either lying or you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The result is a deep mistrust. “There are a lot of cultural traditionalists”—as distinct from radical right-wingers—“in rural Virginia,” he says. “They probably voted for Trump, but not so much because they think that Democrats are pedophiles or socialists. They’re dismayed at how the cultural shifts have made their way of thinking and talking seem so alien.”

 These are the folks with whom “we just might find that common ground, and we might overcome that mistrust to begin to get to the tougher issues.

 “Right now, coming with an issue platform or a policy platform is doomed in 99% of the cases because people dismiss it as pandering. They just don’t believe us because the mistrust is so high.

 “If we say, ‘Look, Joe Biden has already put billions of dollars into rural communities, and his Rural Prosperity Program would put more money in their pockets,’ they would say, ‘I don’t buy it. The Government’s the problem…’

 “So the first step is for Democrats to find rural community partners—churches, Rotary Clubs, Kywanis, the chambers of commerce, not the usual suspects among liberals and Dems—with whom to set up hands-on programs to address community needs.

 “Bit by bit, Democrats will become co-workers in the community, and not just people who support immigrant rights. That political divide will become fuzzier, and the more people and local groups are likely to engage.”

 But in the short term, Flaccavento identifies two issues that will have traction for Democrats in rural Virginia. The first is what he calls “soil health” or “working landscape” programs to combat climate change. “We have a pretty good idea about what kind of practices increase the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere and put it in the soil, whether you’re running cattle and sheep, or raising vegetables like me, or doing grains.”

Government incentives make these programs “a win-win-win” solution for the farmer and the climate. “Instead of telling a farmer to ‘stop mucking it up’ and being part of the climate change problem, we’re saying ‘You’re a good steward of the land,’” something that appeals to everyone.”

An even bigger winning policy for Democrats is fighting corporate monopolies. “Rural people are probably a little less likely that the Occupy movement to point the finger, but they’re no friends of the rich and powerful generally,” he says.

 “Democrats, in their minds, are buddies of the Zuckerbergs and the Bezoses of the world, elite corporate people. But Biden has put some incredibly strong people, unlike Clinton and Obama, in the position to do something about anti-trust. That’s a winning issue if you put it plainly and simply. We should combine fighting corporate monopolies with an equally vigorous commitment to small local business, something rural people and working-class folks identify with: making it on your own. Just like being a farmer—you’re independent. It an American thing.

 “Agritourism business fits into that and has grown for the past 15 years or so, but the vast majority of farmers aren’t likely to go down that road. If you grow mostly corn and soybeans, it’s not likely that you’re going to put out a pumpkin maze.

 “We have to show that we understand more traditional, more mid-scale commodity farmers. I’m a small-scale farmer and know that we can’t come across as totally wed to that organic, sustainable kind of local farm as the only model. Farmers think of that kind of thing as not real farming.”

 Similarly with global warming. While rural voters are all in favor of clean air and clean water, and support alternative fuels, the gradual process of climate change leaves them skeptical, he says.

 “I put it crudely: the nature’s always a pain in the ass if you’re trying to make your living from it. If you’ve been at it for four generations, you know that mega-droughts, incredibly late freezes, tornadoes have always been a part of it. We need to honor that. If we don’t, we come off as just hysterical.”

 Flaccavento’s work has taken him to economic development projects in eighteen states, and Canada and Australia. He’s even worked in urban areas in Minneapolis, the South Bronx and Harlem. “That’s what led me to write my book, Building a Healthy Economy from the Ground Up (University of Kentucky, 2016) about grass-roots economy-building in rural and low-income neighborhoods.

 As this farmer would tell you, it starts with the soil.