It only took 30 minutes for the new Harris-Walz ticket to sell out of its supply of 3,000 camouflage hats on Tuesday, bringing in more than a million dollars for the campaign and suddenly raising expectations that, maybe, Democrats could actually woo a key and expansive voting bloc: rural America.
It’s the kind of campaign gear you could buy outside any Trump rally — the ticket’s last names emblazoned in a hunter’s orange against a camouflage background. But it’s not the type of attire typically associated with Vice President Kamala Harris, who grew up in Oakland, California. Nor is it typically associated with Democrats, for that matter.
But for Tim Walz — the blue state governor from a red district, a proud hunter and former co-chair of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus — the hat is a perfect fit.
“You’ve seen him at the county fair in a Bruce Springsteen shirt and a hunting hat, and it doesn’t look like a bit,” said Daniel Jubelirer, who’s involved in rural Democratic organizing with the group Contest Every Race.
“We’ve all seen politicians put on a hunting hat and go to a county fair, and you see someone like Ron DeSantis do it, and it looks totally fake. But Tim Walz is not pretending. He genuinely comes from small-town, rural America,” Jubelirer said.
In Walz, Democrats in rural areas across the country have found a symbol of hope, a recognition that the national party has not left them behind after decades of losses.
“I think we’ve learned our lesson, painfully, that we ignore rural voters at our peril,” Jubelirer said.
Bill Clinton won 1,117 rural counties in 1996. Barack Obama won 455. And President Joe Biden, while touting his working-class roots, only won 194.
“It’s no secret that the Democratic brand is toxic in a lot of rural America,” said rural Democratic strategist Matt Barron.
“And yet, if you’re going to be a national party, you have to compete for rural votes,” he said. “Democrats don’t want to say it, but there’s a limit to how many people you can turn out in the collar counties of Philadelphia.”
Barron worked on Walz’s first congressional campaign in 2006, and he’s been on the front lines of organizing Democrats in rural areas for the last 45 years. He said rural Democrats “have a lot of scar tissue” after decades of local, state and national defeats. And he said those losses are in large part due to resource abandonment at the national level.
“It’s kind of pretty simple, and yet, there’s a lot of people in the consultantocracy in D.C. that are not from rural America. They didn’t go to land grant colleges or universities. They don’t really have the kind of dirt under their nails that you need to see how to engage with us,” he said.
Barron was a co-organizer of a Rural Americans for Harris virtual meeting, another in the downpour of niche group calls that have sprung up since Harris entered the race.
Walz was slated as the headline guest last week, but with the call on the same night as his VP entrance, he wasn’t available.
Still, what was supposed to be a meeting to drum up support for Harris suddenly became a gathering space to cheer on Walz as one of their own.
Walz hails from a town of 400 in Nebraska. He had 24 kids in his graduating class. And in his own words, he was related to half of them. His father served in the Korean War and encouraged him to join the National Guard, which he used to get a college education at Chadron State College.
He doesn’t have a law degree or hail from an Ivy League school. He’s a high school social studies teacher and football coach who went to Congress, then to the Governor’s Mansion, and, if rural Democrats have any say about it, the White House.
On the call Tuesday night, Chris Gibbs with Rural Voices USA didn’t sugarcoat the party’s decades-long losses.
“Now I’m gonna be honest with you. I’m not gonna blow sunshine up your skirt. As I’ve traveled the state speaking to groups, I’ve told them that the cavalry wasn’t coming to help rebuild that brand and that we were on our own to do that, one voter at a time in our rural communities,” he said.
“But tonight,” he added, “I’ve been proven wrong.”
He said that, by choosing Walz, Harris has “given rural America a gift.”
Walz’s strength for rural Democratic turnout isn’t as simple as biography. Rural Democratic activists and strategists often point to massive spending projects from the Biden administration that are earmarked for rural areas as key points for winning back those voters.
Despite the spending, party leaders agreed the message just wasn’t breaking through to voters. But the problem may not have been the agenda; the problem may have been Biden.
“While Biden has working-class roots and appeal with rural voters, historically, just his campaign was not vigorously bringing the message out to people,” Jubelirer with Contest Every Race said.
“Rural voters don’t like being pandered to or condescended to, or feeling like some outsider is going to come and save them. This is a case where the messenger really matters,” he said.
Contest Every Race is built on the power of local messengers. The group has recruited Democrats to run at the local level in the areas toughest to win. Of the 7,000 candidates, the majority of whom are running for the first time, a third were elected.
“We’re not going to win a majority of all rural voters, but I believe that with Tim Walz on the ticket, with the kind of record of Biden has, the question on my mind is, can we get back to that Obama coalition of 50-50 in the rural vote, instead of the 75-25 under Biden?” Jubelirer said. “I think that we can.”
Outside of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, another area where results hinge on rural turnout is North Carolina, which has the second-highest rural population of any state after Texas.
If Harris is going to pull off an improbable victory in North Carolina, Nash County is one of those must-win rural areas. Trump narrowly won the county in 2016, Biden narrowly won in 2020.
Nash County Democratic Party Chair Cassandra Conover is thrilled about Harris. The two first met in 2006 at a district attorneys’ conference and bonded as Black women both from the same sorority.
She said Harris brings an undeniable energy to the ticket, but that Walz offers “humanity” to voters who saw themselves in Biden.
That’s crucial in her county where it takes more work to reach voters, and where even with a party registration advantage, Democrats won’t vote for a candidate simply because there’s a “D” by their name.
“The more that’s come out about Gov. Walz, the more people relate to him, hearing about him as a dad to his daughter,” she said.
“It’s that connection, that humanity, that Tim Walz brings to Kamala, because he’s a dad and a veteran, and he coaches football — all the human stuff that people can say, ‘Hey, I’m that, I’m that,’ and at the same time, he’s got that political experience,” she said.
To Barron, Walz’s story comes down to three elements: guns, sports and patriotism.
Pennsylvania is second only to Texas in the number of hunting licenses issued this year.
“You talk about the military, where do people who fight our wars come from? Rural America, where opportunities are less for people to go to college or get some kind of degree,” he said.
For Harris and Walz, the inroads to gaining ground in rural America has nothing to do with winning: It’s all about cutting the margins.
“I’m not trying to make an argument that he’s going to flip a place like Elk County or Clearfield County on the New York-Pennsylvania border, they’re deep garnet red,” he said. “But I think like [John] Fetterman proved in 2022, you win by cutting the margins.”
Organizers outside the battleground states also are using Walz’s background to their advantage. In Arkansas, Democrats are pushing to flip eight seats in the state Legislature, enough to end a Republican supermajority. In a state that voted for Trump by 27 points, party strategic director Will Watson told NOTUS that Walz is a symbol for change that will fuel voter turnout at the local level.
“We’re Democrats in Arkansas, but we are also country folks, and hearing that your vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket is an Army Command Sergeant Major who won the sharpshooting competition every year just gives you a new angle to talk about what kind of person is reflected in our party,” Watson said.
Watson said it’s about Walz’s policies, but it’s also about “the vibes component.”
“There’s no question that many voters who are fed up with the extremism of the Republican Party, but also wary of what they saw as the creeping liberalism of the Democratic Party, can look at Tim Walz and see, look, the guy is feeding hungry kids, he’s standing up for everyone to make their own health care decisions,” Watson said.
“But he also can outshoot every member of Congress and knows how to wear a camo hat like nobody else.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.