Maine state Sen. Chloe Maxmin correctly recognizes that coastal Democrats are confused by rural America. She’s exploiting their ignorance in “Dirt Road Revival.”
THIS PAST WEEK, Maine Democratic state Sen. Chloe Maxmin has received glowing media attention for a new book about how to woo rural Donald Trump supporters. Maxmin, a 29-year-old first-term state senator and former member of Maine’s House of Representatives, and her campaign manager, Canyon Woodward, argue in their book “Dirt Road Revival:
How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends on It” that the Democratic Party has “abandoned rural communities” and given up on trying to persuade people who disagree with them. Their book tour, which has stretched from the pages of the New York Times and Teen Vogue to the studio of Bill Maher, has focused on the insights she says she gleaned in flipping a rural state Senate district.
Their recent New York Times op-ed “What Democrats Don’t Understand About Rural America” describes how Maxmin — a progressive, small-town politician — stood up to party bosses, rejected standard Democratic Party dogma, and flipped solid Trump voting districts blue by having 20,000 face-to-face conversations with Trump voters over two election cycles. In a recent appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” Maxmin lays out her argument this way:
This is the kind of hopeful path forward in red America that Democrats in blue areas have been craving: that because she focused her campaign on engaging so many conservative voters, she was able to defeat a popular Republican incumbent in a Trump voting district.
The possibility that Maxmin and her young team had cracked the “Make America Great Again” code is intoxicating. And it meant that Maxmin had no difficulty getting air and print space.I share Maxmin’s concern that the national Democratic Party needs to do a better job of winning back rural voters. As a former state Representative who also defeated a Republican incumbent in a similar rural district up the coast, I also firmly believe in the mantra of knocking on doors and engaging with and listening to as many voters as possible.
Like other Maine Democratic candidates, I was also able to get a few Republicans to put my lawn signs next to their signs for Republican Governor Paul LePage. But many of Maxmin’s claims about Senate District 13 and the nature of local Democratic campaigns in Maine are distortions and exaggerations.
コメント