STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In this country, there's a common theme in Democratic campaigns that are competitive right now in deep red states, places like Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, states of the Great Plains. They're evoking a populist movement on the Great Plains more than a century ago. NPR congressional reporter Sam Gringlas says prairie populism is having a moment, and he's here to explain. Sam, good moment.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: Good morning. Good moment and good morning.
GRINGLAS: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: Prairie populism, what is that?
GRINGLAS: So this is the name for a political movement from the late 1800s. People in the heartland were angry that corporate monopolies back East were getting rich off what they were producing. So regular farmers and workers united to try and curb their influence over politics. And you can kind of hear how that theme might resonate in 2026 when voters are frustrated with high costs, corruption and both parties.
INSKEEP: OK. Give me an example of this from Montana, where I know you've just been traveling. There's a House district where Trump won in 2024, double digits, and now the Democrat running there has a chance.
GRINGLAS: Yeah. So Montana used to be much more purple, but in the Biden era, Democrats were struggling to hang on. And this year, they see an opening. Their candidate is Sam Forstag, a former smoke jumper for the U.S. Forest Service. He talks about how, despite doing this elite job parachuting into remote forest fires, he was struggling to make ends meet. I asked him what it means to run as a populist.
SAM FORSTAG: I'm going to answer to the people I've worked with for the last eight years. I'm going to answer to people like the kid I was growing up, whose belly is full because of food stamps. It does not feel like that's who Congress is answering to right now.
GRINGLAS: And now small farmers and ranchers, especially, are hurting because of tariffs and the Iran war. Aligning with this economics-focused prairie populism is a way to speak to those concerns, tapping the same antiestablishment anger, fueling populist campaigns around the country and inviting rural conservative-leaning voters back into the fold who might be turned off by Democrats or contentious social issues.
INSKEEP: I appreciate you saying this, Sam, because people have described President Trump as populist, and it seems there's more than one way to be a...
GRINGLAS: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Populist. There has been more than one way. But is this actually helping Democrats?
GRINGLAS: Well, take Cliff Meyer (ph), who I met as he filled up a diesel truck. He sees politicians getting rich in D.C. while Montanans get squeezed. And he told me he has almost no hope Congress is going to do anything.
CLIFF MEYER: They tell you they're going to do this, tell you they're going to do that. So don't tell me you're going to cure cancer when all you're doing is peddling Band-Aids.
GRINGLAS: But after voting Trump three times, he says he is willing to give Forstag a shot. And because of voters like Meyer, this district is a toss-up now.
INSKEEP: Does this mean that Democrats are realizing they have made mistakes in the past by writing off rural or red areas?
GRINGLAS: I talked about this with Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic Party chair. She told me it's perplexing when Democrats complain that the only way to win more places is to basically change the Constitution.
JANE KLEEB: That we need to redo Electoral College or it's not fair that small Nebraska gets two U.S. senators. I think instead of these theoretical ivory-tower conversations, we should get back to nuts-and-bolts organizing in these states. We used to elect Democrats in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana.
INSKEEP: That's true. In recent memory, in fact. Now, the things that you're hearing on the planes, do they resonate in other parts of the country?
GRINGLAS: Yeah. These are themes I've heard from a diverse array of Democrats, from Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan to Jon Ossoff in Georgia. Now, if Democrats do gain ground in harder-to-win places, it might still be difficult to parse how much of that is a reflection on these campaigns or just how bad the environment is for Republicans. So maybe a more important test will be whether these candidates deliver on recalibrating the relationship between Congress and the people who send them there.
INSKEEP: NPR's Sam Gringlas. Thanks so much.
GRINGLAS: Thanks, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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