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By Catharine Richert, Minnesota Public Radio News

State House candidate Marisa Ulmen showed up to the annual ag expo Farmfest this year with a stack of papers that break down what a Trump administration would mean for farmers like herself.

“[Republicans] really, really, really want to revamp all of the farm subsidy payments,” she said. In her view, that’s bad for an industry already struggling.

But in this deep red part of western Minnesota, where this massive farm gathering is held annually, it’s hard to make her case.

As attendee Mitchell Bublitz passed by, Ulmen tried to hand him her flier. He wanted to talk about her views on abortion instead.

“Oh, I think it’s Farmfest, and we should save those for another time,” Ulmen said.

Ulmen is running in a large rural district just south of Mankato. And as far as she knows, she’s the only farmer running as a Democrat, a rarity among a group of voters who used to be the “F” in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Those fissures between rural and urban Democrats are front and center with Gov. Tim Walz emphasizing his rural roots as a vice-presidential candidate.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign wants to position Walz as someone who appeals to more moderate, rural voters and to progressives who cheer his more recent record as governor.

It’s a division that’s accelerated in recent years, said Cindy Rugeley, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Minnesota’s urban areas are becoming bluer and its rural areas are becoming redder.

“It’s not much different than other areas of the country,” she said. “It’s not over issues like farming or agriculture policy. It’s more social issues and identity issues. It kind of provides an incentive for political leaders to tap into that.”

Red and blue dividing lines

Being a rural Democrat can be challenging these days because DFL messaging around abortion protection, the environment, police reform and gender identity issues doesn’t resonate in rural parts of the state, said Ulmen.

She pointed to the Minnesota Legislature’s heated debate over Uber and Lyft driver pay as an example of this messaging mismatch.

“I’m sure that that’s a huge problem for people that live in the cities, but we’ve never been able to get a taxi in southern Minnesota,” she said. “You know, we live in a place where you can’t get a pizza delivered. These issues, they’re not ours.”

The dividing lines weren’t always so stark, said former state legislator Jack Considine, who used to represent Mankato.

“There was a point in the late ‘80s when you could drive from the Canadian border to Iowa and western Minnesota, and never leave a DFL district. And slowly that eroded,” he said.

He points to the fact that Walz successfully held his congressional seat for 12 years. Today, it’s held by a Republican.

In Considine’s opinion, Democratic leaders started taking their long-time farming base for granted. The DFL’s money and volunteers increasingly focused on urban and suburban wins to build power at the Capitol.

Considine said it’s a logical strategy, even if he doesn’t agree with it.

“It’s not really that much of a risk. They are winning, they’re controlling the houses. They continue to do good stuff for greater Minnesota,” he said. “But it’s not something that [Democrats] talk about.”

A rural voice in the party

Lori Sellner is a long-time DFL activist in southwest Minnesota and co-founder of the DFL rural caucus. She said Democrats often support policies that help rural families in general, like efforts this session to make child care more accessible.

But she said Democrats in St. Paul just don’t tout those wins as much as they once did.

Nevertheless, Sellner said the dynamic is changing: She sees the DFL paying attention to rural Minnesota again.

“In recent [election] cycles the DFL is hiring rural organizers and red to blue organizers,” she said. “I’m seeing more effort with rural candidates out here in the last few cycles. It’ll take time to get back what we’ve lost, obviously.”

Ulmen sees the long game, too, even though she knows her chances of winning in her district are slim, given how much Republicans have dominated it in recent years.

“I’m running to try to be that conduit, that rural voice, to try to get people in the metro to pay a little bit more attention to the struggles — and the wonderful parts — that we have about living in this area,” she said. “And at the same time, if we expect people in the metro to listen to our issues we’ve got to pay attention to theirs, too. It’s a frustrating, continual conversation.”