Pete Buttigieg speaks at a town hall in La Crosse, Wis. on Jan. 16, 2026. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

Dairy farmers and U.S. military veterans were heavily represented among the hundreds of voters from western Wisconsin and Minnesota who packed the La Crosse convention center Friday night, braving snow and freezing temperatures to hear what former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to say about our current political predicament.

Buttigieg was following in the footsteps of other Democrats who have visited Wisconsin’s closely divided 3rd Congressional District to needle Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden for failing to meet publicly with his constituents who are bearing the brunt of tariffs, high prices and unaffordable health care spurred by Trump administration policies Van Orden has supported. 

In making his La Crosse appearance to bolster a Democratic candidate in a swing district ahead of the midterms — and perhaps to stick his toe in the water ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run — Buttigieg connected with rural and blue-collar Midwestern voters.That’s something Democrats arguably need to do better if they are going to overcome total domination by the party of President Donald Trump. 

The most interesting thing about the La Crosse town hall was the energized audience of rural and small-town Wisconsin and Minnesota residents worried about the the scary, violent authoritarian regime that is rapidly consolidating its power over a stunned and fractured citizenry. 

Democratic state Sen. Brad Pfaff, who took the stage ahead of Buttigieg, praised him as “a son of the Midwest,” denounced President Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom, and declared, “The rich get tax breaks and what do the rest of us get? Rising costs!” Pfaff also took a jab at “tech bros” who got front-row seats at Trump’s inauguration and are profiting from algorithms that sow “hate and distrust and division.” 

Buttigieg picked up on that theme, urging people to reach out in person to connect with their neighbors who might disagree with them. Responding to a veteran in the audience who said he was in despair about talking to people who live in a pro-Trump social media bubble and who “don’t know how close to the abyss we really are,” Buttigeig said, ”This is where I believe in the power of the offline.” 

“We are increasingly sorted into these silos where not just our opinions, but our facts, or would-be facts, are presented to us. But our relationships, our families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our churches, our little league, our sports loyalty, right? That’s where we have a chance to get through to people.”

Rebecca Cooke, who lost her challenge to Van Orden in 2024 by three percentage points and is seeking a rematch, used her few minutes on stage ahead of Buttigieg to emphasize her dairy farm upbringing and work experience as a waitress, declaring, “I’m a working-class Wisconsinite who hopes to be your next member of Congress.” Cooke touted “right to repair,” legislation, “so every time your John Deere breaks down you don’t have to go to the dealership.” Her parents, she said, were on their annual trip to Mexico to get their dental work done for an affordable price “which is ridiculous.” She described how her dad was hit with a bill for over $1,000 at Walgreen’s when he went to fill a prescription for cancer medication. She’s running, she said, to represent people who “just want to be able to put gas in the car and have a little money left over.”

Going beyond Democrats’ ubiquitous talking points about “affordability,” audience members brought up their spiritual beliefs, the meaning of democracy, how technological change is driving a growing sense of alienation, the need to reconnect with neighbors and overcome political divisions, and the horror of seeing federal agents gun down a woman in a residential neighborhood in Minneapolis.

A young woman who lives near Minneapolis broke down crying as she asked Buttigieg, “How do we deal with this attack on our community, on people that we love?”

“The only antidote to a politics of fear is a politics of courage,” Buttigieg told her, praising her compassion and her desire to work for change. “It seems like you’re alone in caring,” he added, but “the majority of Americans think what’s going on there is wrong.” He had just come from talking to farmers in a conservative area of the state, he said, who were very worried about the impact of immigration enforcement on their workers. “We can bring together strange bedfellows,” he said, “as they’re doing everything they can to pull us apart.” 

A Vietnam veteran, part of a large contingent of vets who stood to accept applause as Buttigieg acknowledged them and thanked them for their service, held up a copy of the U.S. Constitution and said he was upset by Trump’s “abuse” of the military and the National Guard. “I’m really worried that a lot of our people are going to look at our veterans, look at the National Guard — and I’ve got that same creepy feeling that we used to have when we came back before — we’re not going to get the respect for what we really are.”

“Thank you for reminding us of your experience, and I know that was an experience for, really, a generation of service members,” Buttigieg said. When he finished his tour of duty in Afghanistan, he added, “I was fortunate to belong to a generation of veterans who came home to a pretty good welcome, because our country learned the hard way how to separate its attitudes about a policy from its attitudes about the people who were sent somewhere by that policy.”

He connected that change in attitude to a general capacity Americans have for learning from their mistakes, “We learned, we grew. That’s the best thing about this country,” he said. Current efforts to whitewash U.S. history assume that “any time you talk about the things that were wrong about America, that must mean you hate America,” he said, but “some of the finest moments that brought out the greatest character of this country is how we put it right.”

There’s a long way to go before we put things right in our country now, just one year into what already appears to be the most destructive administration in U.S. history. But the feeling in the room at the town hall in La Crosse was hopeful that a new, majoritarian politics could shake off the divisiveness and fear of the Trump era and reclaim democracy and a government by and for the people.

As third-generation dairy farmer Sabrina Servais put it, describing the loss of half of dairy farms in Wisconsin since the early 2000s and her fierce love for her own family’s small, organic farm, “the most beautiful place on Earth,”  “It’s easy to feel small when you’re so far away in rural America. Will anyone listen? … But we matter. We’re a swing state. We have the power to change the outcome of elections. We are the working class of America. How dare they doubt us? … We believe that, despite everything, the world is still beautiful.”

A person places flowers in front of a photograph of Mother Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, during an interfaith service on behalf of immigrants in November in Miami. GOP reversals in this year’s elections, including in Miami, are setting off alarm bells for Republicans and could cause redistricting efforts to backfire. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

GOP reversals in this year’s elections, especially in some urban and immigrant communities, are setting off alarm bells for Republicans using redistricting to try to keep control of Congress in next year’s midterms.

Redistricting plans demanded by President Donald Trump in states such as Texas and Missouri — meant to capitalize on his stronger showing among certain urban voters in the 2024 election — could backfire, as cities in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia returned to Democratic voting patterns in off-year elections this past November.

Experts see the shift as a sign of possible souring on the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, combined with disappointment in economic conditions.

Paul Brace, an emeritus political science professor of legal studies at Rice University in Houston, said Texas Republicans are likely to gain less than they imagine from new maps designed to pick up five additional seats for the party. He said minority voters’ interest in Trump was “temporary” and that he had underperformed on the economy.

“Trump’s redistricting efforts are facing headwinds and, even in Texas, may not yield all he had hoped,” Brace said.

Redistricting efforts in Texas spawned a retaliatory plan in California aimed at getting five more Democratic seats. Other states have leapt into the fray, with Republicans claiming an overall edge of three potential seats in proposed maps.

Cuban-born Jose Arango, chair of the Hudson County Republican Party in New Jersey, said immigration enforcement has gone too far and caused a backlash at the polls.

“There are people in the administration who frankly don’t know what the hell is going on,” Arango said. “If you arrest criminals, God bless you. We don’t want criminals in our streets. But then you deport people who have been here 30 years, 20 years, and have contributed to society, have been good people for the United States. You go into any business in agriculture, the hospitality business, even the guy who cuts the grass — they’re all undocumented. Who’s going to pick our tomatoes?”

As immigration arrests increase this year, a growing share of those detained have no criminal convictions.

New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District, which includes urban Paterson, went from a surprising Trump win last year to a lopsided victory this year for Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. Trump won the district last year by 3 percentage points and Sherrill won by 16 points. The district is majority-minority and 39% immigrant.

There was a similar turnaround in Miami, a majority-immigrant city that elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in almost 30 years. Parts of immigrant-rich Northern Virginia also shifted in the governor’s race there.

In the New Jersey district, Billy Prempeh, a Republican whose parents emigrated from Ghana, lost a surprisingly close 2024 race for U.S. House to Democrat Nellie Pou, of Puerto Rican descent, who became the first Latina from New Jersey to serve in Congress.

Prempeh this year launched another campaign for the seat, but withdrew after Sherrill won the governor’s race, telling Stateline that any Republican who runs for that seat “is going to get slaughtered.”

Prempeh doesn’t blame Trump or more aggressive immigration enforcement for the shift. He said his parents and their family waited years to get here legally, and he objects to people being allowed to stay for court dates after they crossed the border with Mexico.

“We aren’t deporting enough people. Not everybody agrees with me on that,” Prempeh said.

Parts of Virginia saw similar voting pattern changes. Prince William County, south of Washington, D.C., saw support for Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger jump to 67% compared with 57% for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year. The county is about 26% immigrant and 27% Hispanic.

Asian American and Hispanic voters shifted more Democratic this year in both New Jersey and Virginia, said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, expanding on a November post on the subject.

However, some of those Virginia voters might have sat out the governor’s race, Coleman said.

“I do think there is an element of Trump-curious minority voters staying home this year,” Coleman said. “There were many heavily Asian and Hispanic precincts in Northern Virginia that saw this huge percentage swing from Harris to Spanberger, but also saw relatively weak turnout.”

The pattern is “hard to extrapolate” to Texas or other states with new maps, Coleman said, “but Democrats are probably liking what they saw in this year’s elections.”

He said one of the redrawn districts in Texas is now likely to go to Democrats: the majority-Hispanic 28th Congressional District, which includes parts of San Antonio and South Texas. And the nearby 34th Congressional District is now a tossup instead of leaning Republican, according to new Center for Politics projections.

The pattern in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District this year was consistent in Hispanic areas statewide, according to an analysis provided to Stateline by Michael Foley, elections coordinator of State Navigate, a Virginia-based nonprofit that analyzes state election data.

New Jersey Hispanic precincts “swung heavily” toward Sherrill compared with their 2024 vote for Harris, Foley said in an email. He noted that New Jersey and Florida Hispanic populations are largely from the Caribbean and may not reflect patterns elsewhere, such as Texas where the Hispanic population is heavily Mexican American.

Pou, who won the New Jersey seat, said economics played a part in this year’s electoral shift.

“The President made a promise to my constituents that he’d lower costs and instead he’s made the problem worse with his tariffs that raised costs across the board,” Pou said in a statement to Stateline.

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said immigration and pocketbook issues both played a role in places like the 9th District, as did an influx of Democratic campaign money.

“The biggest reason is a sense of letdown in President Trump,” Rasmussen said. “There were many urban voters who decided they liked what Trump was saying, they liked the Hispanic outreach, they bought into his economic message. And just one year later, they’re equally disillusioned.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.