Democrats Worry About Their Losses In Farm Country

By Marc Heller

Rep. Cindy Axne’s Election Day loss was more than a defeat for the two-term Iowa Democrat. It continued a collapse of Democratic representation in rural areas of the Midwest that shows no sign of reversing.

When the new Congress is seated in January, Iowa will have no Democrats in its four congressional districts or in its two Senate seats, joining Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota among pure-red Farm Belt states.

Indiana will have just two Democrats in a delegation of nine, and Minnesota — home of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — will be split evenly with four on each side of the aisle.

The significance of Axne’s loss to Zach Nunn, a Republican state lawmaker, was not lost on one former farm country heavyweight.

“My farmers have gone so hard to the GOP, I don’t know how to get them back,” former Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), said at a recent conference. Peterson, a moderate who chaired the Agriculture Committee before losing in 2020, added, “That is a huge problem. It’s hard to do farm policy with one party.”

It’s a problem with few solutions. And farm policy is even more top-of-mind now, as the five-year farm bill is currently being shaped in a divided Congress. Moreover, some advocates worry that the erosion of farm country Democrats will hurt agricultural interests. Still, some are pointing to areas of bipartisan agreement, including biofuels.

It didn’t used to be this way. Midwestern Democrats with federal farm policy expertise once held sway in Congress: Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa was Agriculture chair and Tom Daschle of South Dakota was Senate majority leader.

But in 2010, fifteen Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee were swept out in a Republican wave election. Many of them were moderate Midwesterners, like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition and a party whip.

More recently, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, the ranking member on an Agriculture subcommittee, lost her election in 2018.

Agreement on biofuels

Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and himself a former Republican congressional candidate in the region Axne represents, said the change is historic.