How Nebraska became a Republican stronghold

Like many East Coast liberals, I find it hard to understand why Midwesterners—particularly rural Midwesterners—continue to accept the former President's lies, resent and resist any government intrusion in their lives (while accepting farm subsidies), and hate government-mandated health care. Ross Benes has written an outstanding book, Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold, to help me understand. 

Benes has written for many media outlets including The American Prospect, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, The Nation, New York, Rolling Stone, Slate, Vice, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of Sex Weird-o-Pedia and The Sex Effect, which was described as “Freakonomics without pants.” He’s a lively writer, a diligent researcher, and is not afraid to include himself in the story when it helps the reader understand how he’s come to believe what he believes.

He spent his first 19 years in Brainard (pop. 420), a village in eastern Nebraska, and attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which is about 40 miles to the southwest. He had a brief stint in Detroit, moved to New York City where he worked for Esquire magazine. He has stayed in New York, and his book traces how his political views “evolved as I’ve shifted from being a right-wing small-town Nebraskan to a card-carrying member of the East Coast ‘fake news’ media.” The book is about “the dissonance of moving from one of the most rural and conservative regions of America to one of its most liberal and urban centers as the two grow further apart at a critical moment in our country’s history.”

Abortion is evil

Start with abortion. “In Brainard,” says Benes, “we will support anything Republicans do as long as Republicans say that abortion is evil.” The right to life trumps all other issues: income inequality, basic health care, environmental degradation, immigration, and more. What’s more, the issue is non-negotiable. If you believe that a woman’s egg becomes a human being the moment a male sperm enters it the subject is closed and any talk of a woman’s right to control her body, or back-street abortions, or human misery is irrelevant. 

So in Nebraska, Republicans support life while Democrats are baby killers. “Across Nebraska, billboards featuring Jesus and babies decorate cornfields that grow so tall that you can’t see past the country road intersection.” Nebraska school children look for ideas for pro-life poster they draw for school or their Catholic church. “They probably won’t realize that they’re advertising someone else’s politics. When you’re isolated in a depopulated area that consists almost entirely of people who look like you and share your beliefs, you don’t really question these things,” which is a theme that runs through the entire book. 

As a result, state and local Nebraska political candidates must avoid any discussion of abortion, any hint that a woman has the right to decide whether to carry a fetus to term or not. As one state senator told Benes, “If you’re talking about abortion, you’re losing.” And be careful about the way you talk about immigration while you’re at it.

Immigrants go away 

Nebraska actually has a record of accepting record number of refugees. Nevertheless, Benes writes that “city councils push ordinances aimed at making life unlivable for illegals despite their economic dependence on migrant labor. State legislators try to take away government funds for immigrants’ prenatal care even though these lawmakers ostensibly oppose abortion.” 

Growing up in Brainard, Benes says he drank the Kool-Aid (invented in Nebraska): he wanted fewer illegal immigrants in the country; he wanted them deported; he wanted stricter border patrol. “Our safety depended on it. We law-abiding citizens didn’t deserve to be exposed to those who don’t respect the law.” With immigration, however, there may be room for negotiation.

He interviewed the mayor of Schuyler, a town that changed considerably when Cargill expended its beef plant and used migrant laborers to fill low-paying jobs, jobs Cornhuskers did not want to take at the wages offered. “Now Schuyler has the demographics benefitting an international municipality.” Immigrant businesses like The African Store, Chichihualo Supermarket, Novedades La Sorpresa clothing store, and Paleteria Oasis ice-cream stand help keep the town alive. “I’ve been to a lot of withering towns in Nebraska that would kill to have as many operating businesses as Schuyler has.” 

Of course, there have been growing pains. A local man Benes talks with is unhappy that the golf club is the only place in town these days that serves a decent meal. While “an international ag corporation decided to expand its beef operations, now there is nowhere in town to regularly get a good steak because of it.” Blame the immigrants.

Then there’s health care. When you are used to “doing whatever you damn-well please on your own property, forcing people to participate in a massive health-care marketplace feels restrictive of personal liberty.” People in Brainard generally embrace principles like personal responsibility, fiscal restraint, limited government, respect for authority, and individual liberty. 

Republicans are great marketers

Benes writes that the Republican Party “has done an incredible marketing job convincing people in rural areas that it values these ideal and that it’s the only party doing so.” You don’t want the government sticking its nose into your business until there’s a tornado, a flood, or a pandemic—and for many people not even then. Benes has suffered a number of medical calamities, and the benefits he received from Obamacare “made me reconsider other ways the government helped my life.”

So what’s the answer? There is no one answer. Because a single party controls the system, many actions that would make the state less hidebound are impossible: end gerrymandering, reform campaign finance laws, open primaries, ranked voting, improve secondary and higher education. 

At the same time, Benes believes change is possible. With the right messaging, he says, “there’s an opportunity for Democrats to win some rural voters with health care.” And rather attack the immigrants, “redirect their ire at the corporations who, through consolidation and union busting, drove wages down so far that the only people who will take their jobs any more are the people they recruit from other countries eager for a new life.”

Rural Rebellion is an insightful and useful book. Benes is a splendid writer who has added prodigious research to his personal experiences to help readers understand how Nebraska (and by extension other red states) became a Republican stronghold.