How are you going to win votes in this election?

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear began his speech at the Democratic National Convention last week by talking about abortion rights as a matter of humanity and empathy — and as a winning issue for his reelection campaign.

“I beat the candidate chosen by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell by more than five percentage points,” he told the cheering crowd.

Beshear is an increasingly rare figure: a Democrat holding statewide office in a state where politics is dominated by Republicans.

In Kentucky, Republicans hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and in both seats in the U.S. Senate.

Beshear’s political success in the state as a Democrat could therefore be a useful example for the Harris-Walz campaign.

One of Donald Trump’s most common attacks on Kamala Harris is that she represents the most left-wing slice of America.

When you look at her history as a candidate, it’s true that before becoming vice president, Harris had only won elections in solidly blue and liberal places — becoming San Francisco district attorney, then California state attorney general, then California senator.

To win the White House, the Harris-Walz duo will need to attract voters from purple and even red areas. We asked Democrats who live in those areas what might help.

Democrats say it’s all about presence

Many delegates to the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago from more conservative parts of the country.

NPR asked them what Democrats should do to reach voters in their area. Here’s what some of them said:

• Leah Midgarden of Minnesota: “It’s so important for leaders to step up and say, ‘Let’s step back, recognize and take a moment to realize that we all have shared values.’”
• Chris Jones of Arkansas: “Really, the key is to be present and if (Harris) can show that, ‘I’m present and I’m listening, I’m saying, I see you, I hear you.'”
• Bre Maxwell of South Carolina: “We have to not only be there, but make sure we meet people where they are.”

Maxwell says meeting people where they are means talking about the things that are important to them — not culture wars, but basic needs.

“We all deserve clean water, access to health care, funding for K-12 education and women’s access to reproductive health care,” she said.

Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridges Initiativeechoed the need for the Harris campaign to get that message across at the convention.

“For too long, both parties have completely neglected the struggles that (rural voters) face, sometimes even facilitating them,” he said, noting that residents of Republican states want to hear that candidates will fight for the economic and everyday interests of small business owners rather than the needs of big business.

“I think if they stick to that core message and show that they’re sincere and their policy proposals reflect that as well, then I think they have a very good chance of winning.”

And according to Maxwell, much of the work his party needs to do in Republican states is unattractive and invisible: “Making sure that we invest in coordinated campaigns in those states and in statewide voter registration.”

It comes back to the idea of ​​showing up. She says Democrats have not prioritized this issue in rural areas so far.

And then there’s the tone.

The Messenger and the Message

Midgarden grew up on a farm in North Dakota and now lives in Red Wing, Minnesota, a town of 16,000.

“Rural people really feel that they are being looked down upon by urban elites,” she said.

The DNC speakers seemed to get the message. It wasn’t about deplorables, as Hillary Clinton once said in a speech, or people who get bitter and cling to guns or religion, as President Obama once said at a private fundraiser.

Here’s how Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke about his Nebraska childhood at the DNC: “That family down the street may not think like you, may not pray like you, may not love like you. But they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you.”

For all the optimism and enthusiasm in Chicago, the numbers are very clear and do not bode well for Democrats: the party’s performance in rural America sank regularly for more than a decade.

But you can find places on the map where Democrats have won statewide elections in red states, and those campaigns often have the same man working behind the scenes: Eric Hyers, a Democratic political strategist.

Hyers said that to win Republican areas — as Gov. Beshear did in Kentucky — the messenger matters as much as the message. “We had Republican sheriffs, we had Republican business leaders, and we maintained that for many, many weeks,” he said.

Most of the prominent Democratic politicians who have won elections in Republican states have been white men. As a woman of Black and South Asian descent, Harris is not. Chris Jones of Arkansas — a Black man — ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor against Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

He said it was no coincidence that Democratic winners in Republican states tended to be white men, noting, “If you look at most industries in the United States over the last 200 years, they’ve been white men.” But he believes the past should not predict the future.

Democrats’ trends in red areas aren’t going to change overnight, but the path to victory may not require Harris to win a majority in the areas Trump won four years ago. It may be enough to lose in those counties by slightly less of a margin.

Ashley Brown and Patrick Jarenwattananon contributed to this report.

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