Can Democrats Make Progress in Red States?

Since the 2024 election, there has been a growing schism inside the Democratic Party over its top priorities and plans to retake Congress and the White House. Many in the media see the party’s infighting and fitful reckoning over its strategic errors as analogous to the wilderness years of the Reagan era. Back then, “bleeding heart” urban liberals and community activists drawn to the new social movements of the 1970s vied with moderate, business-friendly Democrats from the South and West who found refuge in the Democratic Leadership Council, the eventual incubator of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign. Following three consecutive, decisive losses at the presidential level, Clinton's victory heralded a new type of broad coalition aimed at suburban swing voters and optimism about globalization.

A similar clash between “progressives” and “the establishment” no doubt animates the party in the second Trump era. Despite a somewhat different set of technological-economic challenges and a radically changed geopolitical context, Democratic strength has once again receded outside of big coastal metros. Former supporters have either switched to a Trumpified GOP or withdrawn from routine political participation. The party is disdained in most rural parts, while public support for its congressional wing hovers at near-historical lows. Professional advocacy groups, far more ensconced in the party hierarchy than in the 1980s, are seen as preventing necessary debates over the path to recovery. As before, sympathetic commentators and would-be party reformers are looking to what are now “red state” Democrats, especially governors, for lessons on how to win back middle-of-the-road voters.

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, has attracted the most interest as of late. She is widely commended for restoring the state’s fiscal stability and improving its overall economy after the debacle of Republican Sam Brownback’s “supply-side” experiment, which needlessly slashed taxes and gutted public revenue without any boon to growth. Kelly, moreover, is seen as a potential model for communication, trust-building, and pragmatic, popular governance in regions usually hostile to Democrats. In a state Trump won by over 16 points, she eked out reelection in 2022 by two points and has enjoyed approval ratings north of 60 percent. Notably, Kelly has succeeded in keeping her socially conservative constituents focused on development, schools, and infrastructure while being a known defender of the right to an abortion and bodily autonomy—no small feat in a state where conventional business conservatives have struggled in recent years to fend off extremists to their right.

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To be sure, there is no guarantee Kelly’s model is replicable in other states dominated by Republicans. Neither is her style likely to excite progressives fixated on celebrity. At seventy-five years old, Kelly is not a plausible contender for the 2028 presidential nomination, and she lacks the persona conducive to dominating social media and Beltway discourse.

Yet it is exactly Kelly’s unflashy approach, coupled with her disciplined focus on shared economic interests, that warrants observation, especially by Democrats confounded by their party’s shrinking support. Most profiles depict Kelly as a shrewd moderate—she grew up an East Coast Republican—who has impressed local Chamber of Commerce types by recruiting major firms such as Panasonic Energy and Merck Animal Health to Kansas. For today’s progressives, this is hardly earth-shattering stuff and seems to be of little import to questions of social justice. Indeed, she might as well be a Republican if held to the standards of, say, San Francisco, Seattle, or Greater Boston. But the plain fact is that Kelly has made steady progress on behalf of regular Kansans previously worried about the economic future Brownback saddled them with. And she has done so despite her party’s staggeringly poor reputation in the Farm Belt. Judged by the standards of mid-century liberalism, her efforts to boost inclusive growth, invest in long-term economic prosperity, increase rural housing construction, improve grid resiliency, and introduce pro-labor reforms in a state historically unfriendly to unions all appear to be salutary.

Progressives may be inclined to dismiss Kelly’s tenure, with its emphasis on public-private partnerships, as an unglamorous retread of the Third Way. But absent the kind of administrative reach of the federal government, such partnerships have always been integral to development within the states; the question is whether they serve narrow interests or broader social ends. Kelly seems committed to the latter. Furthermore, simply getting stuff done in an age of legislative dysfunction, hyper-partisanship, and excessive veto points should be welcomed. At a moment, too, when progressivism is suffering a crisis of purpose—of lacking, arguably, a coherent worldview—Democrats once more need to show active government can efficiently deliver. If the stated agenda entails higher-wage jobs, better educational outcomes, and more affordable housing, progressives can stand to be a little more flexible about the political and legislative means of getting there—particularly if it means shifting the Overton window in the reddest of states.

A Democratic Party intent on building a big tent must recognize the considerable potential of competent, disciplined leaders like Kelly to actually effectuate the kind of reforms the left professes to want. The point, after all, of mid-century liberalism was to catalyze, with respect to different regional histories, cultures, and levels of economic sophistication, the greatest degree of tangible, lasting improvements to the general welfare. Nationally, the New Deal embodied core principles of social and economic egalitarianism, but at the regional level a different mix of policies could be called for depending on the breadth of industry and the (sometimes quite intimidating) political climate. Kelly’s priorities and decisions, then, must be understood not only in terms of Kansas’s challenging ideological terrain but also as in keeping with what Democrats have historically done outside the country’s preeminent financial, industrial, and cultural hubs.

In the past, these types of Democrats have typically been developmentalists foremost concerned with pre-distribution, meaning access to a quality public education, full-time work, decent housing, and other goods essential to a productive life; sometimes they tilted in a populist, antimonopoly direction, and sometimes in a direction more focused on luring big, fixed investments from prominent firms. In practice, of course, reform-minded Democrats in underdeveloped regions had to combine both approaches. On the one hand, large enterprises had to be accommodated to some extent to justify expanded public investments in infrastructure and technical and higher education. On the other hand, municipalities and states eager to close the gap with regions that enjoyed a higher standard of living understood that simply becoming a more “modern” company town would seal an undesirable fate. To prevent subordinacy to the top local employer, steps had to be taken to further broaden the economic base and ensure development resulted in widespread benefits.

There are signs of intrepid red state Democrats are recalling these lessons. Like Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky or Josh Stein of North Carolina, Kelly seems to grasp that pushing development is typically the most effective way to de-concentrate economic and political power in states where attacking “big government” is de rigueur. That’s not to say everything that has occurred under her watch has been an unambiguous benefit to working people. This spring she signed into law a bill that supports enforcement of “nonsolicitation agreements,” which effectively dampen economic mobility and fair competition, at a time when other states, including deep red ones, are pursuing or have passed restrictions on non-competes. And not every aspect of Kelly’s mini-industrial policy is guaranteed to withstand the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the Inflation Reduction Act and related clean energy subsidies. Of particular concern is whether Panasonic Energy will now commit to the 4,000 jobs it promised to create at its new EV battery plant, given that its investment contract with the state reportedly lacks workforce and pay stipulations.

Still, the larger point stands. One of the Democratic Party’s most urgent tasks is to rebuild trust in public policy. To do so, it must cultivate leaders in the unlikeliest places who can set a reasonable benchmark for reform—not just for other heartland Democrats, but for coastal officials who have either grown complacent and entitled about their rule or who have punted on their own economic promises.

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The green shoots of red state reform also illustrate the main axis of intraparty competition is not always between “the left” and “the center.” While these typologies, like center-right and populist-right, are still relevant tools of political analysis, they don’t capture the range of policies and stances an aspiring political leader can choose from. In between the inflexible cultural radicalism that defines the contemporary left and the expired neoliberal solutions still proffered by the establishment is a politics of reform that can attenuate regional polarization and ultimately move the country in a more hopeful direction.

Politicians like Kelly thus point to yet another cleavage in the Democratic coalition, but perhaps one that leads to a more productive dialogue about the way forward. That is, the divide between those who want to govern successfully and those consumed with power and attaining celebrity status. Framed this way, one might see how some economic populists from the coasts and heartland Democrats could find common ground against those who refuse to change or compromise, whether out of fear of upsetting the donor class or being pilloried by identitarian activists.

Kelly’s example, finally, underscores that the country’s remaining red state Democrats aren’t inherently anachronistic “blue dog” conservatives or meek incrementalists. Rather, the successful and unbought ones know how to broker advances on behalf of electorates who are more complicated than their reputations might suggest. Democrats in safer seats should take this to heart if they hope to ever build momentum toward a new, nationwide mandate. Kelly may not check all the boxes demanded of progressives, but she is holding the line for a different kind of politics when so many other Democrats seem to have given up.