Jess Piper and her family live on a farm in Missouri. She has used her considerable voice to urge Democrats to contest every election. In the past, the Democratic Party assumed that its candidates would lose in rural districts and failed even to put up a candidate. People like her would go to the polls and find no one to vote for. Jess writes a regular blog called “The View from Rural Missouri,” where she speaks up for those who have been neglected like her. She has been a spokeswoman for “Dirt Road Democrats,” and is now active in Blue Missouri. She is a retired teacher who taught literature for many years.

She wrote soon after the conclusion of the midterm elections:

I stopped at Casey’s Wednesday morning to get some gas, and as I walked across the parking lot, I saw a local activist I often work with…her name is Nancy. 

I knew it was her Expedition because of all of the bumper stickers, but when she saw me, I thought she would cry. I wanted to cry too. When I reached her, I hugged her so hard and for so long that I know people must have wondered who died. 

There were no words needed during our gas station embrace. 

The relief we felt after the previous day’s midterm election, combined with knowing we had won so many important races across the state while losing all the ones in our own backyard, creates a special kind of bond. We live in one of the reddest parts of a “red” state.

But here’s the thing we both kept talking about…the progress we have made in the last decade. We haven’t won in our district in well over 30 years, but the last decade has proven a Democratic shift in nearly every election we have contested.

And you know that’s my passion — contesting every race. Even the rural ones, because we can’t win if we don’t run. So we run in places we can’t win until we do win.

Speaking on rural races at a DNC event in DC a few weeks back…

I bet you heard about what happened across the country Tuesday night in Georgia and Iowa and Kansas and Texas and South Carolina…you know, all the red states that seemed impervious to change and democracy.

But you may have not heard about Missouri, and I am going to change that because it is a story worth telling. We are seeing the beginning of a blue state in progress. A progressive state downloading. Blue on the horizon.

And you should know that I don’t say things like that without thought. I am way too cautious to be wrong on something so big. But I knew what I was looking at in Iowa and Kansas, and I know what I am seeing in my own state. 

I can see a blue wave from the cornfields.

Let me tell you why we are so hopeful and how I know we are close to a blue Missouri: Missouri Democrats just saw 16 seats flip red to blue. We beat another abortion ban. We beat another gerrymandered map. We forced Missouri politicians to follow the will of the people with a constitutional amendment.

In Missouri, we have been rejecting the Republican agenda for years through ballot initiatives, but still voting for Republican candidates. This cycle, that changed. We won races we weren’t supposed to win. Races in red districts.

And, for the first time in Blue Missouri history, our organization funded four Missouri candidates who flipped red seats blue. That means that four candidates, who each raised less than $8000, were supported by Blue Missouri grassroots donors.

Yes, you read that right…we flipped seats in Missouri with very small investments. 

Talk about the cheap seats.

And here is where I am going to get a little salty. When I speak about Blue Missouri, folks will tell me that my organization sounds like a lot of other grassroots organizations raising money for candidates across the country. 

And while I am very excited to see other orgs supporting down-ballot candidates, we need as many as we can get, Blue Missouri is not like any that I know, and here is the reason: we support the races that are supposed to lose. We support the candidates that most other organizations will not support because their races are not viewed as “winnable” or “flippable.”

Our starting question is different. We don’t start with, “Who is likely to win?” We start with, “Who is being left behind?”

And that’s why Blue Missouri is special and why our work is so difficult. We do what others are not willing to do. 

I regularly ask donors to give to candidates who have little chance of winning in their first cycle. Blue Missouri funds candidates who have not managed to raise much money. We fund the folks with the least first. 

We call it the bathtub method. You fill a bathtub by starting at the bottom. 

Much the same, we raise the funding floor for candidates in the entire state by making sure not even one candidate is left out. We know the reddest and most rural candidates will likely have the hardest time fundraising, so we do it for them.

We think it is political malpractice to have a first-time, red-state, red-district candidate spend time on the phone desperately looking for donors when they could be knocking on doors and calling voters in districts who haven’t had a Democrat run in decades. They could be walking in a parade or attending a debate or forum. They could be reaching voters.

Another benefit to funding for these red races is that the word is out and candidates are more likely to run if they can count on money from Blue Missouri donors. They are more likely to stick their neck out in a rural space knowing there is money coming in. 

And these down-ballot candidates are knocking doors in red congressional districts. The congressional candidates reap the benefits of Blue Missouri donors even though they themselves don’t receive funding.

It’s like a massive puzzle that we are finally putting together. We have had missing pieces for decades. It’s much easier to run for State Senate or Congress when you have several other candidates down-ballot doing their part. And while a legislative seat may not flip in a cycle, all those votes are counted at the top of the ticket. 

A win-win.

My friend Michele Hornish co-founded Blue Missouri. I’ve worked with her for three years, and I hear her voice when I talk about underfunded and uncontested races. She started what I can’t get enough of…funding difficult races because we believe in the candidates and in our state.

I also hear the voice of Stacey Abrams and the roadmap she created to take back Georgia. I think of Beto and what he was able to do in Texas. 

And guess what…it worked. They all planted something years ago that finally bore fruit last Tuesday. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They walked so we could run. They ran so we could derail fascism.

We did it. 

Jess