Editors’ note: This article has been updated for clarity.
During the 2024 election, rural Washington state did something unexpected: People in deep red counties like mine protected funding for our schools, childcare, land, and water, and we did it by taxing the super-rich and fining polluting corporations.
This path mirrored other seemingly incongruent election results across the country. In the Bronx, NY, for example, voters reelected both progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Donald Trump. And in 11 states that reelected Trump, voters also ushered in significant minimum-wage increases.
At a time when so many organizers and movement leaders are trying to make sense of the election and planning for how to protect working families in the years ahead, it feels a bit like tithing to write about our win in Washington. I hope in writing this, we’re offering something back to this movement that has shaped us, and inviting more people to join in strategies that work to organize a multiracial majority in rural America.
Organizing Our Neighbors
We’ve put the knowledge of our rural neighbors at the center of our strategy.
In 2020, a few of us in Okanogan County, WA, started Rural People’s Voice (RPV) with the unshakeable belief that everyday people deserve to be heard and trusted, and if we get together, we have the power to transform the future of our rural communities.
Since then, we’ve organized in rural Washington because for most of us—and most working-class people in the United States—full-time jobs no longer guarantee we can afford to fix our cars, much less fund our kids’ education or plan for retirement. No matter how much we work, things keep getting harder—and this isn’t a future we want for ourselves or our children. But rural communities like ours will never have the money to lobby for better laws the way big business does or push an agenda like the super-rich can. Our power to change our future depends on our ability to get people together, tell the story of a better future, and actively bring about the change we need.
To build this kind of power, we at RPV have followed thought leaders, writers, and organizers to build a movement that focuses on people over party, and we’ve put the knowledge of our rural neighbors at the center of our strategy. In the 2024 election, this approach led to an extraordinary electoral win, despite the stories told about and within rural communities.
We’re told to blame immigrants, other poor people, LGBTQ+ people, the right and the left, anyone but those at the very top and the corporations raking in record-breaking profits.
Broken Stories
It often seems like rural communities are on the furthest side of the conservative fence in our divided country. If you drive through rural places like Ferry County or Pend Oreille County, you don’t have to go far to see your first “Don’t Tread on Me” flag or “F*$k Biden” stickers on car windows. Big cities vote blue, but a trip through the hills and wheatlands of rural Washington leaves you feeling like this part of the state is mad, mean, and politically extreme.
You also see a whole lot of people struggling to make ends meet in aging downtowns and gravel-road neighborhoods, trying to keep up with the price of gas, the cost of housing, and vanishing clean water. It’s not hard to understand why so many of us are angry. The economic ground is eroding beneath us, and we can’t get ahead. Meanwhile, to make sense of these deteriorating conditions, we’re told stories designed to distract and divide us. We’re told there isn’t enough to go around—that we have to choose between going to the dentist or keeping our lights on; that some people get to retire with dignity, but we have to settle for whatever we can pinch together. We’re told to blame immigrants, other poor people, LGBTQ+ people, the right and the left, anyone but those at the very top and the corporations raking in record-breaking profits.
These stories keep us fighting over scraps while some of the richest people in the country continue to line their pockets at our expense. In 2024, our coalition pushed back on some of these broken stories and laid claim to a better future for all of us. With real power and strategy from the people who call rural Washington home, we won things that mattered to our community.
Millionaires Trying to Make More
In the spring of 2024, a mega-millionaire across the state in Seattle named Brian Heywood poured $6 million into a slate of ballot initiatives designed to roll back existing laws and help him and his rich friends make even more money. With help from a slew of paid signature gatherers, four of his seven proposed initiatives came to a vote of the people this last November. Among this bundle of ballot items was an initiative to repeal a hard-won capital gains tax passed in the state in 2022.
Despite being a “progressive state,” Washington has one of the most upside-down, regressive tax codes in the country. Here, the poorest people pay almost 14 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the wealthiest pay just 4 percent. However, in the last couple of years, working people regained some ground after helping pass laws like the capital gains tax. This tax ensures that the top 0.02 percent of people in the state—those profiting from large sales of stocks and bonds—pay their fair share. In 2023, that tax brought in $786 million to fund schools and childcare. Heywood spent millions trying to repeal it, siphoning billions away from our local schools, kids, and families.
People were ready for a campaign that didn’t require contempt for our neighbors but instead built connections around our shared struggle.
Another Heywood initiative aimed to roll back the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), landmark legislation passed in 2021 that fines big corporations when they pollute our land and water. The CCA positioned Washington as a leader in the nation on legislation that protects rivers, forests, and air in ways that create real, living-wage jobs. Its repeal would be both devastating for Washingtonians and a sobering bellwether for the broader project to take on corporate polluters that harm working families with impunity. Funding from the CCA brought my community free public transportation, funding for wildfire prevention, forest management, fish habitat restoration, and so much more.
The Heywood initiatives were a cash grab by a few at the very top, targeting laws that mattered to our working-class communities. They expected rural people to fall in line. Instead, we stood together.
How to Win
Coordinating with other rural organizations like ours, such as Firelands Workers United, we seized the opportunity to go on the offense and launch an organizing strategy with some good old-fashioned gumption. Here are some of the tactics that worked for us:
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Start early and tap into what people already know.
We started knocking on doors months before many other campaigns, including the statewide coalitions. In our conversations, we told the story behind the ballot initiatives with clarity and purpose: mega-millionaires trying to make as much profit as they can, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab.
Fortunately, rural people don’t have to be convinced this story is true. No matter who we are—a fifth-generation rancher, a grocery store clerk, a recent immigrant working the fields, a construction worker—working-class people know things are wildly unfair. We lifted up this frustration and brought it right to the heart of our campaign message: We have a choice. Is Washington state going to work for billionaires or working families?
Name the right villain.
We relentlessly named the villain, clarifying how the billionaire class tries to line its pockets through initiatives like these and take from the public programs the rest of us built together through years of hard work. We even brought along a full-page photo of Brian Heywood. We made it clear this battle wasn’t about the right versus the left but instead about a corrupt few at the top versus all the rest of us. We staked thousands of bilingual yard signs with messages like “Blue Collar, Not Billionaires” and “No Thanks! Billionaires Can Pay Their Own Taxes.” Our most popular bright yellow sign read, “We’re with Working Families.” On some neighborhood blocks, the sign stood on 20 lawns and fences.
Get personal and build for the long-term.
In every conversation, we armed ourselves with personal stories, and we took the time for real connection. Our work to deepen relationships mattered because our goal was bigger than defeating the 2024 initiatives; it was to unveil the long-standing narratives about who’s to blame for our struggle and start building power for the next campaign for our schools, our public lands, and our water. To win in rural Washington—and in so many other places—we’ve got to build a strategy that can last beyond one campaign cycle.
Send trusted messengers to amplify a better story.
Our teams were White, Latinx, and Native; farmworkers, teachers, students, social workers, and more—the messengers our communities needed. We didn’t just contest the story told to us by a few at the top; we invited people into a better story told by their neighbors, one in which we all belong and deserve a good life, no matter our race, background, or zip code. In our scripts, radio ads, mailers, text messages, postcards, and social media, we described this future we want and reinforced that everyday people like us are the ones who can get us there.
People were ready for a campaign that didn’t require contempt for our neighbors but instead built connections around our shared struggle. We leaned on the language, the people, and the grit that connects us, and when people told us about their hard times, we believed them.
Make it a big tent, but be clear about your base.
Because we are clear about the tools used to divide us in rural Washington, we invited people to join us without having to choose one political side. We trained our teams how to pivot when confronted with “culture war” topics that are designed to distract us. That said, when we engaged with someone whose belief in these broken stories was thoroughly immovable, we didn’t give up time and mental strength to shift them. We were purposeful and disciplined about the base of people we needed to bring together.
Moving Forward Together
Ultimately, in the counties we organized, most people voted for Donald Trump, and against the millionaire-backed ballot initiatives—perhaps a surprising combination to some. The results reveal how open most people are to real talk about what really helps working families. Our campaign succeeded because we spoke directly to the working class, not a political party. And that’s how we’ll keep winning in the future.
Of course, we did not do this alone. Hundreds of organizations and even a few big funders pitched in to our statewide opposition campaigns, some of which brought television ads and more visibility of the issue to our small towns. Together, we showed that rural America is ready for a different kind of politics—one that builds connections, not contempt.
We don’t have all the answers, but we’re experimenting and learning as we go. To be truthful, this task is harder than it sounds. At times, we’ve had to undo “what we know,” and we often find ourselves in the grind of starting something new. It’s not easy.
So, today, I’m writing to offer the knowledge we’ve earned this year because in rural communities like mine—and many across the country—the conditions are more ripe than most realize for something wiser to take root. The possibility of bringing everyday people of all backgrounds together across our political divides is real and immense. Let’s keep going and build back the strength of working people.