Politics
In Tim Walz's rural hometown, his Democratic politics are an awkward fit
Mayor Kyle Arganbright steered his dusty diesel truck through this ranching town, past the rodeo grounds and livestock auction, and pointed out the football field of the Valentine High School Badgers, whose roster once included a teenage Tim Walz. Next up: the quiet, tree-lined street where the Walz family once lived.
After Walz, the Minnesota governor, was named Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, reporters descended on his hometown of Valentine, population 2,600.
“Now I’m the local Tim Walz tour guide. Write that on the list of things I never thought I’d do,” Arganbright said with a laugh as a fishing rod, stretching from the back seat, rattled on his dashboard.
Harris and Walz come from vastly different worlds.
Harris is the biracial daughter of immigrants whose career was forged by the rough-and-tumble Democratic politics of the Bay Area — a place nationally synonymous with West Coast liberalism.
Walz is a white guy who spent formative years in Valentine, the remote seat of Cherry County, the nation’s top producer of beef cows.
Walz leans heavily on his upbringing, and during a campaign stop in Los Angeles this week, he even walked onstage to the John Mellencamp song “Small Town.”
But here in Cherry County — where former President Trump won 87% of the vote in 2020 — the presence of a hometown boy on the Democratic ticket is, well, a little awkward.
Asked if Walz might flip many votes, Arganbright chuckled.
“Um, no,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, grew up in Valentine, population 2,600.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)
Arganbright, a fifth-generation Valentinian, said most voters here are Republicans with a leave-me-alone libertarian bent.
“If Tim Walz came back, I bet someone would buy him a beer if they saw him and say, ‘Hey, welcome home, man,’” he said. “People are very accommodating. But they’re not going to give up on their principles to impress somebody.”
Arganbright would not say whom he will be voting for — but said it might be a hint of his party preference that he once interned for Nebraska-born former Vice President Dick Cheney and that one of his young nephews had a show steer named Donald.
With Harris tapping Walz and Trump picking as his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance — whose bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” chronicled his impoverished upbringing in the Rust Belt and Appalachia — the race has become, in part, a contest of rural bona fides.
Though the Trump campaign branded Walz “a West Coast wannabe,” Democrats are betting Walz will help them broaden their appeal in overwhelmingly white swaths of rural America, where the party has been trying to claw back voters after two decades of steep losses.
The country’s urban-rural political divide — evident even in California, where conservative northern counties have long talked of seceding to form their own State of Jefferson— has only grown wider since Trump was elected in 2016.
The Niobrara River bridge on the Cowboy Trail, a hiking and biking path along a former railroad track in Valentine.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)
For urban Democrats, “it’s as if rural America has become a throwaway, and that lack of interest morphed into enormous resentment after Trump was elected,” said Lisa Pruitt, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law and president-elect of the Rural Sociological Society.
During the 2022 midterm elections, 69% of rural voters cast ballots for Republicans, compared with 29% supporting Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. Among urban voters, 68% supported Democrats and 30% backed Republicans.
Randy Adkins, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska Omaha, said he does not see places like Nebraska suddenly going blue.
“What we’re seeing in the polls right now is there’s a little bit of movement toward Harris, but people made hard decisions and they made them a long time ago,” he said.
A building under construction along the newly refurbished Main Street in Valentine.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)
Still, there is palpable excitement among rural Democratic organizers, who say they have long been overlooked by their national party.
Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said in an email that Harris “has absolutely expanded the map beyond swing states with Tim Walz” and that “we do not have to hand him a briefing book on rural issues, because he has lived our experiences.”
Among Democrats’ many identity-based Zoom fundraising calls that have raised millions — including “White Dudes for Harris” — was an event last week called “Rural Folks for Harris.” It drew about 6,000 listeners across 48 states and raised $22,000.
In Valentine, there were no visible yard signs for Harris or Trump this week. At the Cherry County Rodeo, people donned cowboy hats, not MAGA caps.
The rodeo clown wondered aloud if one cowboy in a green shirt had actually “gone green” and had an electric pickup truck in the parking lot. It was a wink-wink joke in this far-flung town with no electric vehicle chargers, where such vehicles are seen not only as impractical — it is 130 miles to the nearest Walmart — but as a whiff of liberalism.
Arganbright — whose 7-year-old daughter rode a sheep bareback for just over two seconds in the rodeo’s mutton-bustin’ contest — is amused by the sudden, if fleeting, national interest that Walz’s selection has brought to Valentine. He hopes to use the spotlight to highlight positive things, like the just-finished, multimillion-dollar overhaul of Main Street.
But, he said, there are pressing issues here in vast Cherry County, where the population has dropped nearly 11% since 2000, to roughly 5,500 residents. Residents have struggled with high inflation, job losses as agricultural work becomes more mechanized, and a lack of child care and affordable housing.
As for people’s views of the federal government? One of the best examples, he said, of how “federal policies aren’t taken great locally” is the federally established time zone line, which, until the late 1960s, ran along Main Street, splitting Valentine between Mountain and Central time.
He said it took the government too long to fix it — although some bars are said to have benefited by opening on the west side of town, where they could stay open an hour later.
Bud Pettigrew, with wife Angie at the 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses, attended Valentine High School with Tim Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official.
(Melanie Mason / Los Angeles Times)
Bud Pettigrew, who attended Valentine High School with Walz and is a former Nebraska Democratic Party official, said he’s heard mixed reactions in the Cornhusker State to the vice presidential nod.
“The people who are Democrats or open-minded independents are all thrilled about Tim,” said Pettigrew, former Marine and high school teacher. “The MAGA-type Republicans, they don’t care. He’s just another liberal. Once you move away, you don’t count anymore. You hear this a lot from rural people.”
Pettigrew, 63, was a senior when Walz was a freshman quarterback on the junior varsity team. Pettigrew saw in Walz “a pretty tough kid who had some ability.”
Walz’s father was the school superintendent, and Pettigrew remembers him fighting for a school bond — not an easy feat in a fiscally conservative town — to replace the 1897 schoolhouse said to be haunted by the ghost of a student who died after someone poisoned her clarinet reed.
Pettigrew is planning to vote for Harris and Walz.
Darlene Meyer, who owns the Plains Trading Company bookstore on Main Street, said she “was frightened” when she learned Harris was running — not because she dislikes her, but because she figured too many conservatives would refuse to vote for her because she’s a woman, because she’s Black and Asian American, and because she’s from California.
“How many strikes can you have against you?” she said. Walz, she added, was a smart choice.
Meyer is a registered Republican but not a party-line voter. She does not like Trump and said it was frustrating that he politicized masks during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
Meyer, a septuagenarian and longtime nurse, still requires masks in the bookstore, a 1914 building with poor ventilation. A few people have spit on the floor in protest. Others boycotted.
Still, Meyer tries to avoid discussing politics.
“There’s plenty else to talk about. The weather. Grasshoppers.”
The quiet main drag in Butte, Neb., where Walz moved with his family when he was a teenager.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)
When he was a sophomore, Walz moved with his family 100 miles east to the farm town of Butte to be near relatives after his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. His dad died when he was 19.
Butte, which had a population of around 500 back then, has shrunk to about half that size. Butte High School — from which Walz graduated in 1982 among a class of 25 students — closed years ago. A fading mural downtown reads: “Save the Rural Schools.”
A Trump 2024 flag flies alongside the American flag next to the Butte Community Center.
Walz’s mother, Darlene, still lives in town, and some residents said that while they don’t agree with her son’s politics, they try not to talk about it because they don’t want to hurt her feelings.
Richard Meadows, from left, Dorothy Boes and Francine Meadows are friends of Tim Walz’s mom, Darlene, in Butte, Neb.
(Hailey Branson-Potts / Los Angeles Times)
Dorothy Boes, a retired special education teacher who lives just over the South Dakota line, goes to church in Butte and is in a women’s coffee group with Darlene Walz.
Boes does not like the way Trump “talks about and bad-mouths women” and was outraged by the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. She worries about more potential violence.
“I just feel like he’s not going to go quietly into the night if he doesn’t win,” she said.
Boes, 77, does not know much about Walz’s political record. But she knows that he comes back to Butte often to take care of his mom and that he frequently brings her to Minnesota.
“Those are good, positive things, and, in my heart, I feel that he deserves a chance. And so does she,” Boes said of Walz and Harris. Boes is a longtime Republican who voted twice for Trump — but is undecided this year.
Richard Meadows, an 81-year-old “die-hard Democrat” who mows Darlene’s lawn, said he and his wife “coexist” peacefully with their Republican neighbors in Butte.
But Meadows — who has a chest-length white beard and worked for years as a professional St. Nick — knows who’s getting his vote.
“Santa Claus is gonna vote for Tim and Kamala.”
As for Valentine? Its post office gets inundated with packages every February by romantics who want a holiday-themed postmark. But the town is not named for St. Valentine.
It is named for Edward K. Valentine, a Union soldier during the Civil War and a congressman.
He was a Republican.
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By Shawn Paik
April 22, 2026
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Sparks flew on Capitol Hill as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., accused Federal Reserve nominee Kevin Warsh of being a potential “sock puppet” for President Donald Trump.
Warsh, tapped by Trump in January to lead the Federal Reserve, faced a two-and-a-half-hour confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
If confirmed, he would take the helm of the world’s most powerful central bank, shaping interest rates, borrowing costs and the financial outlook for millions of American households for the next four years.
WHO IS KEVIN WARSH, TRUMP’S PICK TO SUCCEED JEROME POWELL AS FED CHAIR?
Kevin Warsh, nominee for chairman of the Federal Reserve, listens to ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., make an opening statement during his Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In her opening remarks, Warren sharply criticized Warsh’s record and questioned his independence, arguing he is “uniquely ill-suited for the job as Fed chair” and warning he could give Trump influence over the central bank.
She accused Warsh of enabling Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis, which fell during his tenure as a Federal Reserve governor when he served from 2006 to 2011.
“In our meeting last week, we discussed the 2008 financial crash, where 8 million people lost their jobs, 10 million people lost their homes and millions more lost their life savings,” Warren said. “Giant banks, however, got hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts… and he said to me that he has no regrets about anything he did.”
She added that Warsh “worked tirelessly to arrange multibillion-dollar bailouts” for Wall Street CEOs, with nothing for American families.
The hearing grew more tense as Warren pivoted to ethics concerns, pressing Warsh over his undisclosed financial holdings and questioning him over links to business dealings connected to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The two spoke over each other and raised their voices in a heated exchange on Capitol Hill.
WARSH’S $226 MILLION FORTUNE UNDER SCRUTINY AS FED NOMINEE FACES SENATE CONFIRMATION
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: The Fed has been plagued by deeply disturbing ethics scandals in recent years. It’s critical that the next chair have no financial conflicts — none. You have more than $100 million in investments that you have refused to disclose. So let me ask: do the Juggernaut Fund or THSDFS LLC invest in companies affiliated with President Trump or his family, companies tied to money laundering, Chinese-controlled firms, or financing vehicles linked to Jeffrey Epstein?
Kevin Warsh: Senator, I’ve worked closely with the Office of Government Ethics and agreed to divest all of my financial assets.
Warren: Could you answer my question, please? You have more than $100 million in undisclosed assets. Are any of those investments tied to the entities I just mentioned? It’s a yes-or-no question.
Warsh: I have worked tirelessly with ethics officials and agreed to sell all of my assets before taking the oath of office.
Warren: Are you refusing to tell us if you have investments in vehicles linked to Jeffrey Epstein? You just won’t say?
Warsh: What I’m telling you is those assets will be sold if I’m confirmed.
Warren: Will you disclose how you plan to divest these assets? The public might question your motives if, for example, someone who profits from predicting Fed policy cuts you a $100 million check as you take office.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren questions Kevin Warsh during his Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Warsh: I’ve reached a full agreement with the Office of Government Ethics and will divest those assets before taking the oath.
Warren: I’m asking a very straightforward question. Will you disclose how you divest those assets?
Warsh: As I’ve said, I’ve worked with ethics officials.
Warren: I’ll take that as a no.
In a separate exchange, Warren invoked Trump’s past statements about the Fed and challenged Warsh to prove his independence in real time.
She insisted that Warsh answer whether he believes Trump won the 2020 presidential election and if he would name policies of the president with which he disagrees. The hopeful future Fed chair dodged the question and said he would remain apolitical, if confirmed.
THE ONE LINE IN WARSH’S TESTIMONY SIGNALING A BREAK FROM THE FED’S STATUS QUO
Warren: Donald Trump has made clear he does not want an independent Fed. He has said, “Anybody that disagrees with me will never be Fed chairman.” He’s also said interest rates will drop “when Kevin gets in.” Let’s check out your independence and your courage. We’ll start easy. Mr. Warsh, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
Warsh: Senator, we should keep politics out of the Federal Reserve.
Warren: I’m asking a factual question.
Warsh: This body certified the election.
Warren: That’s not what I asked. Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?
Warsh: The Fed should stay out of politics.
Warren: In our meeting, you said you’re a “tough guy” who can stand up to President Trump. So name one aspect of his economic agenda you disagree with.
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Kevin Warsh listens to a question during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Warsh: That’s not something I’m prepared to do. The Fed should stay in its lane.
Warren: Just one place where you disagree.
Warsh: I do have one disagreement — he said I looked like I was out of central casting. I think I’d look older and grayer.
Warren: That’s adorable. But we need a Fed chair who is independent. If you can’t answer these questions, you don’t have the courage or the independence.
On March 28, a sunny Saturday in southwestern Utah, Jack Hoopes and his wife, Lorna, brought their homemade signs to the local “No Kings” rally.
The couple joined a crowd of 1,500 or so marching through the main picnic area of a park in downtown St. George. Their signs — cut-out words on a black background — chided lawmakers for failing to stand up to President Trump and urged America to “make lying wrong again.”
After about an hour, the two were ready to go home. They got in their silver Volvo SUV, but before pulling away, Jack Hoopes decided to swing past the demonstration, which was still going strong. He tooted his horn, twice, in a show of solidarity.
That’s when things took a curious turn.
A police officer parked in the middle of the street warned Hoopes not to honk; at least that’s what he thinks the officer said as Hoopes drove past the chanting crowd. When he spotted two familiar faces, Hoopes hit the horn a third time — a friendly, howdy sort of honk. “It wasn’t like I was being obnoxious,” he said, “or laying on the horn.”
Hoopes turned a corner and the cop, lights flashing, pulled him over. He asked Hoopes for his license and registration. He returned a few moments later. A passing car sounded its horn. “Are you going to stop him, too?” Hoopes asked.
That did not sit well. The officer said he’d planned to let Hoopes off with a warning. Instead, he charged the 71-year-old retired potato farmer with violating Utah’s law on horns and warning devices. He issued a citation, with a fine punishable up to $50.
Hoopes — a law school graduate and prosecutor in the days before he took up potato farming — is fighting back, even though he estimates the legal skirmishing could cost him considerably more than the maximum fine. The ticket might have resulted from pique on the officer’s part. But Hoopes doesn’t think so. He sees politics at play.
“I’ve beeped my horn for [the pro-law enforcement] Back the Blue. I’ve beeped my horn for Black Lives Matter,” Hoopes said. “I’ve seen a lot of people honk for Trump and for MAGA.”
He’s also seen plenty of times when people honked their horns to celebrate high school championships and the like.
But Hoopes has never heard of anyone being pulled over, much less ticketed, for excessive or unlawful honking. “I think it’s freedom of expression,” he said.
Or should be.
Jack and Lorna Hoopes made their own protest signs to bring to the “No Kings” rally in St. George, Utah.
(Mikayla Whitmore / For The Times)
St. George is a fast-growing community of about 100,000 residents set amid the jagged red-rock peaks of the Mojave Desert. It’s a jumping-off point for Zion National Park, about 40 miles east, and a mecca for golf, hiking and mountain-bike riding.
It’s also Trump Country.
Washington County, where St. George is located, gave Trump 75% of its vote in 2024, with Kamala Harris winning a scant 23%. That emphatic showing compares with Trump’s 59% performance statewide.
St. George is where Hoopes and his wife live most of the time. When summer and its 100-degree temperatures hit, they retreat to southeast Idaho. The couple get along well with their neighbors in both places, Hoopes said, even though they’re Democrats living in ruby-red country. It’s not as though they just tolerate folks, or hold their noses to get by.
“Most of my friends are conservative,” Hoopes said. “Some of the Trump people are very good people. We just have a difference of opinion where our country is going.”
He was speaking from a hotel parking lot in Arizona near Lake Havasu while embarked on an annual motorcycle ride through the Southwest: four days, a dozen riders, 1,200 miles. Most of his companions are Trump supporters, Hoopes said, and, just like back home, everyone gets on fine.
“Right?” he called out.
“No!” a voice hollered back.
Actually, Hoopes joked, his charitable road mates let him ride along because they consider him handicapped — his disability being his political ideology.
Hoopes is not exactly a hellion. In 2014, he and his wife traveled to Africa to participate in humanitarian work and promote sustainable agriculture in Kenya and Uganda. In 2020, they worked as Red Cross volunteers helping wildfire victims in Northern California.
Virtually his entire life has been spent on the right side of the law, though Hoopes allowed as how he has racked up a few speeding tickets over the years. (His career as a prosecutor lasted four years and involved three murder cases in the first 12 months before he left the legal profession behind and took up farming.)
He’s never had any problems with the police in St. George. “They seem to be decent,” Hoopes said.
A department spokesperson, Tiffany Mitchell, said illicit honking is not a widespread problem in the placid, retiree-heavy community, but there are some who have been cited for violations. She denied any political motivation in Hoopes’ case.
“He must’ve felt justified,” Mitchell said of the officer who issued the citation. “I can’t imagine that politics had anything to do with it.”
And yes, she said, honking a horn can be a political statement protected by the 1st Amendment. “But, just like anything else, it can turn criminal,” Mitchell said, and apparently that’s how the officer felt on March 28 “and that’s the direction he took it.”
The matter now rests before a judge, residing in a legal system that has lately been tested and twisted in remarkable ways.
Jack Hoopes’ case is now before a judge in St. George, Utah.
(Mikayla Whitmore / For The Times)
As he left an initial hearing earlier this month, Hoopes said his phone pinged with a fresh headline out of Washington. Trump’s Justice Department, it was reported, was asking a federal appeals court to throw out the convictions of 12 people found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“We have a president that pardons people that broke into the Capitol and defecated” in the hallways and congressional offices, Hoopes said. “Police officers died because of it, and yet I get picked up for honking my horn?”
Hoopes’ next court appearance, a pretrial conference, is set for July 15.
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