Zephyr Teachout
In 2016, during the surreal presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, I was the Democratic nominee for Congress in a swing district in the Hudson Valley. The incumbent was a retiring Republican, but Barack Obama had won in the area by several points in 2012. A Democratic pickup seemed within reach.
In the mainstream media, voters in rural and postindustrial regions like the Hudson Valley tend to be portrayed as insular, caring largely about domestic issues like inflation and welfare. And yet the people I met at county fairs and chicken dinners and parades also cared deeply about trade. If you asked them their top priorities, they wouldn’t say “trade policy,” necessarily. But if you heard them tell a story of their lives, their work, and the towns they lived in, they’d invariably say jobs were being lost to Mexico and China, or mention NAFTA. Our internal polling backed up what I was hearing at the Ellenville Blueberry Festival. Of seven “profile” messages we tested, the strongest was: “[Candidate] believes we need to bring jobs home, make things in America again, and support local farming and manufacturing.” A net 93 percent supported it.
