'Rural areas are not buying what Democrats are selling'

By HERB PRITCHETT

Member, Kentucky Democratic Party State Central Executive Committee

Democrats need to understand that our governing systems, state and federal, really are not democracies but rather are democratic republics – and plan accordingly. 

It is not enough to have a simple majority of the voting public on your side. You also have to have a majority of the land mass of a governing unit (nation or state) on your side. 

This obviously applies to Kentucky. Democrats  are winning in the cities and losing in the rural areas.

Trying to build the grassroots of the party as a member of the Kentucky Democratic Party’s State Central Executive Committee, I have visited and interacted with party officials and voters in some 25 counties in the First and Second Congressional District over the last two years.

Quite frankly I can, with great confidence, report that the Democrat brand is toxic in western Kentucky and in most rural areas of Kentucky, for a variety of reasons. They include bad policies themselves, our national leaders, some of our national office holders who need to stay off TV, and our failure to effectively communicate the good of many of the policies we do champion. 

I am glad we do well in the cities – but to put together a governing coalition, we have to run well in the cities AND rural counties.  To win in Jefferson and Fayette counties is not nearly good enough.

Turning briefly to the national picture, yes, in this 2018 election, nationally, Democratic Senate candidates received 12 million more votes than those cast for Republican candidates. But the Senate represents land mass and states - not people. Since the Republicans carried the land mass, they retained their majority. 

Yes, Democrats received more votes in U.S. House races, and since its makeup is based upon population, we took back the House. 

Yes, two years ago, Hillary Clinton received three million more votes than Donald Trump, but because Donald Trump carried 85 percent of the land mass of the country, he is president.  

Republicans understand what Democrats both in this state and in the country obviously do not –to elect a governing coalition in both the executive branch AND legislative branch (both houses of Congress-Kentucky General Assembly), a party has to attract BOTH a majority of the people AND a majority of the land mass of the electorate. 

From Al Gore through Donald Trump to 2018, Democrats have failed to grasp this simple reality and plan their policies, programs, messaging AND electoral efforts accordingly--and appeal to voters not only in the concentrated urban areas and cities, BUT ALSO in the sparsely populated rural areas.

If you are prone to ignore what I say, ponder these realities:    

-- In the election in which KDP poured significant effort this year, the Sixth Congressional District, Amy McGrath carried ONLY Fayette and Franklin counties; she lost the 16 other more rural counties and the election.   

-- When the General Assembly meets in January, there will not be a single Democrat in the House west of Henderson and not a single senator west of Interstate 65. 

The Democrats in western Kentucky, an area that a generation ago was a bulwark of the Democratic Party, and makes up one-sixth of the state’s population, will have only two Democrats out of 100 House members--1/50th of the chamber--representing them in Frankfort. 

Fourth Democratic Sen. Dorsey Ridley, carried Henderson County by 2,100 votes but lost the other five rural counties and his re-election. If we are doing such a good job, why since 2010, ONLY in the urban Third Congressional District (Louisville and Jefferson County) have Democrats put more voters on the rolls than Republicans?  

In the mostly rural First, Second and Fifth Districts, Democratic registration has declined by 3,965 registered voters while Republican voters have increased by 197,424.  Even in the Sixth (centered in Lexington and Fayette County), Republicans registered two times more voters than Democrats from 2010 to 2018.

Simply put, rural areas are not buying what we Democrats are selling.

But if you need even more convincing, look at some maps from recent state wide “important” elections.  Look at the red-versus-blue county results and then tell me we are winning the rural vote in important races.

So, my urban friends please bear with those of us in the trenches in the rural areas and please heed what we say.  You may not like it, but we know of what we speak – and we cannot continue on the paths our state party has thus far trod--unless of course we are fine with being an irrelevant party with no chance of governing.