Weekly Skews - Good Skews: Lynlee Thorne on the 2025 Virginia Elections

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

In 2025, Virginia is one of only two states with major elections—and the results will shape the midterms and even the 2028 presidential race. Producer Matt talks with Lynlee Thorne of Rural Ground Game about why it matters to compete in every district, the surge of new candidates, and how rural local leaders are fueling Democratic momentum statewide.Support the show

Hello and welcome back to Goodsues. I'm your host, Matt Hildreth. This year, all eyes are on Virginia in 2025. Virginia is just one of two states in the country holding major elections, and the results here in Virginia will set the tone going into the 2026 midterms. And even the 28 presidential race, voters will decide who can control. the governor's office, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and also all 100 seats in the House of Delegates. That makes Virginia a testing ground for both parties this year, a place where strategies, messages, and grassroots energy will be measured before the rest of the country

heads to the polls next year. Joining me today, to break this all down for us, is Lindley Thorne of Rural Ground Game, an organization that's recruiting candidates in building local infrastructure while supporting Democrats in the communities that are too often ignored. We talk about why it matters to compete in every district and what's moving new candidates to step up and how organizing in rural areas can make the difference in statewide races. It's a lot of good news you're going to want to stick around for it. So, Lindley, do you want to just give us a little bit of a context

about where we're talking from? Yeah, I am chatting with you from my, Pol Barne here in the Shenandoah Valley. I'm just north of Harrisonburg in Rockingham County. And yeah, a big, big year in Virginia, high stakes for us here, but also a lot of pressure. We remember what it felt like on election night of 2017 right after Trump was first elected, and it felt really good to show up in a way where Virginians made the case that we were going to reject what we were seeing at the national level and fight back for our state. And we're hoping to bring a good news story to everyone again this year. That's great. And for those that don't know Virginia

geography, can you just talk a little bit about the community you're based in, maybe a little bit about the politics and, you know, how people make a living there? Yeah. So Rockingham County is the largest agricultural locality in Virginia. So I'm about 12 miles from the West Virginia border in like the northwestern part of the Commonwealth. We don't call it a state or someone will come for your head. It's always a commonwealth, which is honestly a term that I love when you look at that a little closer. Our Senator Tim Kane always says that the wealth we hold we hold in common, which I always think is a nice way to think about how we want to treat our neighbors. So, yeah, politically, this is a tough place to be if you were on the left side of most things.

We've seen a lot of the fights that have drawn national attention, attacks on trans kids, attacks on books, things like that have really been prominent in local politics here in Rockingham County at the school board level and kind of right on up. I think a lot of communities in rural areas have been having these fights and certainly not limited to rural communities. So it has been challenging. We also have a lot of community members who come from all over the world. We have a lot of immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley. We're definitely seeing a lot of concern from those communities and the people who care about them. And for those that don't know that part of the Commonwealth, talk about the little bit about what you're what's your favorite part about living there. I it's a breathtakingly

gorgeous. It just is. And even politics aside, which is hard to imagine politics being aside because of what I do for my day job and the climate that we're in. But on the small stuff, on the day-to-day stuff, people really do look out for their neighbors. You know, I'm in one of those communities where if you're cutting your hay too early or, you know, you happen to to rake it right after a rain, you know, the phone tree lights up up and down the road and people are passing their, their kind judgments and they're helpful, their helpful advice on how maybe you could have done that better and could they come around and help you out? I have a neighbor that regularly unannounced just drives over here on one of his lawnmowers and brings smoked

meet just randomly. So it is it is still one of those places where those interactions are possible. I think, you know, through COVID and especially now the climate that we're in, it can feel like I felt this in myself that urge to isolate, that urge to be angry at a world that feels really mean and cruel. And I don't think there is a way past that, certainly not through isolation, but through more connection, remembering the ways that we can help each other out and seeing each other a bit more clearly. Our mutual friend, Danny Cook, uses a line that I've taken to heart that is, you know, the more connected we are to each other, the less likely we are to hurt each other. And I think just being mindful that maybe we're in a place

where we have to dig really, really deep and not allow ourselves to isolate, but to connect to each other a little bit more, our neighbors and sharing what's going on with ourselves, with our family, and have the hope and expectation that others will care enough to maybe change their minds and act. Yeah, and how did you end up there? I grew up originally in rural North Carolina, Summerfield just north of Greensboro and kind of lived in Colorado and Southeast Asia for a while and knew I wanted to be back in North Carolina or Virginia where I'd spent a lot of my childhood as well and was just driving a country road looking for farmland and landed on this spot. Well, you mentioned your day job and how sometimes the politics can be a little bit of a challenge in your part of the Commonwealth. But what are the dominant things that people are talking about, not in terms of the news or the pundits or the, you know, things we would see on TV about places like where you're at. But what is it in your conversations that you're having with people?

What's really getting them animated? Yeah, it's interesting. and it really does vary community to community. I was actually recently in Southside, Virginia, so the Danville area. There is a local member of city council in Danville, Virginia. He's a local cardiologist, and he's running for House of Delegates as the Democratic nominee down there. And I promise this is real, but we were doing some video interviews with folks down there and got some really wonderful content from people who were willing to share a lot about their lives.

And I also knock some doors down there because that's always, I want to get a vibe of the community. And I promise this is true. The very first door I knocked, this woman comes out. She's in the middle of eating lunch. And I, you know, she sees my literature. And she's like, oh, I know Dr. Miller. He gave us more time with our family members. Like, as a heart doctor, she credited him.

for like extending the lives of members of her family, had a big smile, wanted, I was there to tell her about him, but no, she could like tell me, she could tell me more about him than I could tell her. And the fact that she just saw who that was, and I think, you know, as Democrats, we can be really proud to have someone like Dr. Miller on the ballot running as a member of our team and our party because that's a lifetime of credibility that he's built. and trust that community members have in him. And they wanted to talk about health care because he's a doctor and that is how many of them have interacted with him. And they've seen him advocate for a new emergency room in the Danville Hospital.

They've seen him, you know, not just be their doctor, but also look for policy changes to build new infrastructure and improve health care in his community and wanting to go to Richmond to fight to close the case. gaps we're going to see from the coming cuts. So health care is coming up quite a bit. And we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about rural ground game and the work that you're doing on the ground and the good news that I'm at least hearing coming out of the work that you're doing. But I'm wondering before we talk a little bit about that, what do you think CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets like that get right about your community or communities like yours?

And what do you think they get wrong? I think what they may get right, and I'm not going to lie, I haven't watched a lot of CNN lately, but calling on my memory from having watched in the past, I do think they are getting right that there's a deficit in trust, kind of full stop, big picture. I think that is real, and I do feel like the national media has covered that. What I think they get wrong is, is the misdirection of anger, I think, or where the anger comes from. And I like to kind of look at that as a human being personally when I'm experienced anger or rage in response to what's going on.

And I think for people, this is coming from a place of care and extreme disappointment at knowing that we could do better at scale for our neighbors. and we continue to choose not to do that. I think they get wrong how people engage, and I don't think they recognize that there's no replacement for the in-person one-on-one conversation. And people are eager to talk about the issues. They're eager to be asked a question about their own life,

and that really changes the dynamic enormously. And I think what's really harmful about the national talking heads is just the broad stroke assumptions that are made about wide swaths of the country without simply going in and asking some questions about how people feel and what they're experiencing. We know it's a big year. We are hearing about it. You know, there's a lot of people talking about Virginia in New Jersey. Can you just talk a little bit about what's at stake? Well, damn near everything. So no pressure. But yeah, we have our three statewide offices, of course, up for grabs, which is, you know, grabbing the biggest attention as usual. So Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, really, really critical. So our ticket of Abigail Spanberger, Gazella Hashmi, and Jay Jones on the Democratic side, critical that we move margins in rural areas in particular to secure that statewide when. It's not possible without rural voters.

But I think to me, it's a little more exciting that we have 100 House of Delegates districts and we have 100 Democrats running. Last week, we actually had one candidate, a Democratic nominee, have to remove herself from the ballot due to some medical issues. And within a few days, we had a new candidate. Somebody else who stepped up and was able to meet the deadline and make sure that we will continue to have 100 Democratic nominees in. in every community in Virginia. I think that says a lot by itself, that people care enough about their communities, that they're not going to lit what people assume

is the partisan breakdown, deter them from stepping up to be part of this fight and to fight for their communities. And then I think really the real stories that we're hearing from people and the hope, I think, comes from those House of Delegates districts. That's really where the real connections are happening with community and where we better understand each other. So that's a really big deal for people that aren't that plugged in to politics.

I mean, unless you are working day in and day out, you probably don't have experience recruiting candidates and getting people to run. And the fact that you have 100 districts and 100 candidates running, has that happened in recent history in Virginia? It's not happened. And can you talk about why? it's happening now and the work that went into making that happen behind the scenes, things that are happening behind the scenes in rural Virginia that most people will never even see. I think it's really, really important to always credit the local folks, the volunteers in these communities who have been part of brainstorming, a list of names, looking at lists that we provided to them

to say, hey, we're looking at all these community leaders. What do you think? Can you help us? Can you pick up the phone? Should we pick up the phone? How can we partner to to call these folks and see if they would think about doing this? All the credit should really go to local people because anybody from out of state or out of town can, you know, reach out and ask somebody to run. That's probably not ultimately going to work too well unless local people step up to wrap their arms around these folks who are wanting to serve in this way. So just really want to recognize the local. people all over rural Virginia who have made this possible and who are right now, my inbox is absolutely full of, you know, local dims sending a newspaper article or a suggestion for an event for their candidate or a newspaper ad idea or whatever it is, just regular people volunteering to put the pieces that need to come together for a campaign together and offer up their time and their, you know, their thoughts about what would move the message. forward. So just watching that kind of collaboration happen, watching people be so generous with

their, with their time and their skills. We've got volunteers editing videos, volunteers doing graphics, people doing all the important things like knocking doors and making calls and the voter contact, but so much more than that. I think it's absolutely amazing that you have so many candidates running in so many districts, especially when you talk about the local politics being tough for for democrats and i i know that it would be a challenge in in so many places to put your name out on the ballot as a democrat and say hey i'm here um and i think a lot of times people feel like they're exposing themselves to negative feedback can you can you talk about why people are getting involved now when they hadn't got involved in the past is it because

of donald trump is it because of the health care cuts is it just kind of everything. What's motivating people right now to put their name out there and say, you know what, I'm willing to put my neck out and I'm willing to do something publicly? Yeah. This one gets me a little emotional just because I've heard so many of these candidates explain their personal reasons for stepping up. People aren't going to let their kids give up hope. They're not going to allow that. They're not going to be in their community, their hometown that they've poured their lives into and been there for generations and have been proud to be from these places. They're not going to retreat. They're not going to allow for there not to be a voice right now to

speak up. We know the history of fascism, of authoritarianism. People know that in their bones and their instinct is to step up and act. And I know I personally have found a lot of days since the last election where I've struggled. The work right now is hard. It is hard to see and hear and feel everything that's happening and know that you've got to move past that feeling of despair. And what I hear over and over again from these candidates who are stepping up from every single corner is just absolutely not. There's just not going to be a world where there is not someone who steps up in every way possible to to fight back and fight for our neighbors. And there's just, there's no way in how we're going to tell our kids that there's no hope.

And like you said, the credit needs to go to the local folks, especially the people putting their name out on the ballot. But talk about rural ground game, the organization that you work for. How do, how does rural ground game fit into the picture and support these candidates? Yeah. So we offer a lot of free. I want to emphasize free. a lot of free staff time and resources to Democrats running in rural areas from

school board right on up to we were doing independent communications for our top-of-ticket candidates as well. So some of the things that we want to talk to candidates about and directly be hands-on with them is that we set up their field plans. We say, look, this is how... I was recording. I've never had this problem. We're going to just let through it.

No problem. in the middle. You're saying, yeah, can you just pick up where you got cut off? You're saying Yeah, we, we try to, we give candidates a roadmap. Like, here's how many voters are in your district. Here's how many, at minimum, you're going to need to pull this off. And we don't care if you're in 80-20 district. We are going to try to create a roadmap for you that is your win number, the view of how many people you need to be talking to each week at the doors on the phones, on text messages. And then we work with them to manage their data, make sure that they don't spend their time doing things that we could do for them remotely and behind the scenes. We do things like place ads for them, create graphics for them, recruit volunteers for them.

We run up multiple phone banks where we have lots of volunteers who are just cranking through hundreds of thousands of calls as we get closer to Election Day. And then just generally trying to troubleshoot making sure that you filed your paperwork, correctly every time a compliance filing comes up with the state, asking, you know, being present for them to ask questions and try to be in it with them rather than them feeling isolated and like no one has their back. You mentioned the fact that you'll, you mentioned the fact that you'll help people in an 80-20 district.

I think that's really unique about rural ground game because so often those candidates get ignored. But can you talk about why it's so strategic to support candidates who might not actually win their district, but are mobilizing voters in their community to cut margin? And that's helping the statewide candidates because I think that's one of the things that people have missed the most when it comes to rural politics is that we need to turn out people in every county and we need to cut margins in every county if we're going to win for the governor or for the Senate races or any of the other statewide races? Yeah. I mean, we lost the governor's race in 2021 by a margin of about 58,000, I believe. I have to double check my numbers, but something like that. And we had, you know, over 300,000 people just in my congressional district alone who were pretty strong Democrats who just didn't show up to vote. The margin could have been made up several times over in what we would call rural Virginia alone. So it's just strategically doesn't make a lot of sense. to leave so many votes on the table and not turn up and fight for those. But on the policy front, I don't think people think enough about that because some of the craziest ideas coming from the far right are coming from these 80, 20 districts because they had nothing to lose, right?

Or they don't think they do because no one is going to challenge them. They know they're going to win and they can bring the craziest policy ideas that are cooked up by Alec or these right-wing think tanks and move those. forward and make progress on that. And if we don't care enough to step up and try to challenge their power and question them and hold them accountable for the sake of their constituents, then it doesn't look like we care a whole hell of a lot about fighting for people. Break. Yep. So you guys are, real ground game is not officially part of the Democratic Party. You work with Democratic candidates. But you have an interesting perspective.

perspective because you are doing a lot with Democratic candidates and local Democratic parties, but you're outside of the Democratic Party. Do you feel like the Democratic Party's doing enough to support people like you, the candidates that you're working with, the local folks that you're working with, especially when it comes to these 80, 20 districts where all the crazy ideas tend to come from, although I will always remind people that Stephen Miller is from Santa Monica and Trump is from New York City. So this idea that it's just a rural problem is not is not the case, but especially when it comes to the local elected officials that are moving these crazy ideas, I thousand percent agree with you. It's coming from these districts where Republicans have nothing to lose. But do you feel like the Democratic Party is supporting you? Or, I mean. So I have a fun update for you. So I'm going to write something about this for one of our Virginia press outlets. I got a call a few weeks ago very early in the morning. Speaker Don Scott, our Democratic leader, He called me up and said, hey, I'm going to send a rural ground game $25,000.

I just started giggling because this is very unprecedented. Also got a call soon after that from the new chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, pledging some support as well. We've received support from Senator Tim Kane, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan, a ton of members, Democratic members of the General Assembly, who since our founding in 2019 where people are like, oh, that doesn't matter. And we're like, well, we exist because we feel like

something should be happening out here. We have seen, we talk about chipping away at the margins, and I think we're doing that on the support side here in Virginia. I think there is now a recognition that like we absolutely must invest in this. And I'm not sure that all of them understand fully the value of doing that, but the willingness is there. And I want to, rural organizing, I think you or no, maybe John Ray wrote a piece about, you know, 3% of democratically aligned dollars are being spent in rural areas.

This is maybe a few years ago. Yeah, it was John, it was John Ray and I did it together, yeah. I use that piece all the time just to kind of say, hey, y'all, like, it shouldn't be a big mystery. Like, I hate that money is part of it. Right. But ultimately, we do need resources to fight this fight in rural. areas or any community. It's not just rural areas that are being left behind by the party. So the party needs to do more in rural areas. It does need to take it more seriously. I do just want to

point out that there's a positive story here in Virginia where it looks like members of the party elected officials and leaders are saying, okay, we see it. We recognize. And I don't. Take it up it. I don't know what it will take. Yeah. I don't. I think the party, I think we we're all feeling a lot of frustration collectively about this party. I think it needs to undergo a deep introspection and significant transformation. But I think we also want to be mindful of like, are we seeing signs of life? Are we seeing signs of hope in the process of making that transformation? So I do just want to point out that at least here in Virginia, what we are seeing from party leaders is a shift, is a recognition in the

value of rural communities and bringing the fight to those at least in some way. And my hope is that we continue to express our appreciation for that and continue to build on that. But I think, you know, giving credit where credit is due, the leadership is coming from you and from rural ground game and the Democratic leaders are getting behind your leadership. I mean, that's the other thing that I think is really important about the work that you're doing there is that we don't have to just sit. back and start from scratch. And, you know, I can't stand. If there's one more New York Times, you know, op-ed from somebody in New York saying nobody knows what to do with the Democratic Party,

it's just, you know, we're, you know, we're rudderless, we're clueless or whatever. I'm going to lose my mind because the fact is, is that we do know what's needed. And I think groups like yours. You and I are really fortunate, you know, Matt and I are in a big group chat, one of many and like we we get to hear from rural organizers all over the country people who know like matt said exactly what needs to happen and they're doing that they're doing that with far too few resources and recognition and yeah it is absolutely infuriating when you get those like hand ringing pieces nobody knows what to do and it's like yes they do you're just not talking to the right people you're not paying attention to good work that is that is happening that you can

could invest in. And it's, and it's working. That's the big thing that I would add to this is that what you're doing in Virginia is working. We'll see what happens with an election day. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves. But the fact that you guys have 100 candidates in 100 districts, and that's not happened in recent history. And that reflects the, the momentum on the ground, people that are stepping up, putting their name out there and saying, my kids deserve better. I'm not going to let my kids lose hope and it reflects the fact that you've developed a system and a structure and a strategy that people can get behind. So one second. I'm going to reset. So you guys have the strategy and you have the structure. And the other thing I want to just ask about is you mentioned the remote

volunteering. So for people that are listening that are in Virginia or near Virginia or maybe not near Virginia, how can they get behind your work and support the work that is happening on the ground and the local leaders that you're talking about? What's the best way for them to plug in? Yeah, a couple things. Anyone can reach out to us via email hello at ruralgroundgame.org. Also go to our website. We have two weekly phone banks going right now. We will add to that in partnership with our friends at Swing Blue Alliance, Red to Blue, Lean Left Vermont, folks who are calling hundreds of thousands of Virginia voters making them aware of the coming health cuts and then what Democrats are doing to fight back. The thing that I really want to highlight, though, is our

storyteller project. This is where we are going out with cell phones, tripods, microphones, and interviewing people about the personal impact of the policies that are coming from the state and from Washington right now. And this has been a It's a really emotionally kind of exhausting project. There's a lot of ways people can get involved in this. I'll give you an example. We found this guy, Bill, went to his home. He invited us in, and his wife has profound dementia.

He's looking at his finances. He was able to put her into a memory care facility. But with the coming cuts to Medicaid, he's thinking to himself, the money that I have is going to run out in five years. and at that time, the next step for her would be a nursing care facility that is 62% funded by Medicaid. If those funds aren't there, if that nursing facility in his rural community is gone, where will she go? He doesn't have an answer for that. He's saying things out loud, like maybe it would be better if he passed away before then

and that money from his life insurance policy could help her. People are having these types of pretty dark thoughts, and I know we want to end on a good note here, and maybe we don't think we're headed there. But here's the thing. After we interviewed Bill, and we'll be cutting his video into a 60-second ad that we will share, because we think it's important to do more than just say hundreds of thousands of people will be impacted. If you don't think you know someone who's going to be impacted by these cuts, we want to introduce you to someone like Bill. We want you to have access to this personal story, his love for his wife and what he's going through and what they're experiencing.

The thing that really surprises me when we go out and do these interviews, and this happens over and over again, people are so grateful that someone cared enough to ask them to share their story that I feel like we're there to take their story from them, they're really grateful to get a chance to share. I think for a long time our party has relied on these kind of Beltway consultant flashy scripted ads. And I don't think the answers are nearly as complex as people want to make them. We need the truth. We need to include everybody as the messenger. The reason why the other side is so afraid of our history and why they're threatening Smithsonian museums and trying to retell the full history of who we are is because they know how powerful the truth is. And each and every

person out there, everyone listening, you all have a story about what's going on in your life. And I would ask you to think about how powerful that could be to share, how you personally can humanize the things that you've been through by sharing something about your life. So there's ways that people can participate in this project. This is going to be the cornerstone of our work going into next year as we look at the federal elections and continue to bring in regular people and lift up their voices and stories and make the case that we believe there's enough people out there who care about their neighbors to want a hopeful future and to fight for that. We need folks who have video editing skills. We are

a scrappy little resourceful org. We would love folks to review some of these longer videos and help us find like the best moments. That's what we call our timestamping volunteers. So there's a lot of ways for people to be involved. We've got some volunteer leaders to kind of help guide you through volunteering with us, and we'd love to hear from folks and anybody who has some spare change and would like to throw it our way. These will be really targeted ads that go out across streaming services, specifically to voters we feel strongly are most persuadable and must turn out for this election. And we will definitely be highlighting Democratic nominees running for House and our statewide ticket as part of these video communications. That's amazing. It's

a fantastic program and yes things are horrible yes it's as bad as we all think but we're not helpless we can get involved and we can make a difference going into to this election in Virginia and like we saw in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected the 2017 Virginia elections really turned the tide in terms of moving the folks in D.C. to understanding just how vulnerable the Trump and mega Republicans are. So I think it There's a lot on the line, so people should reach out. Say the email address again that they should email. Yeah, it is hello at rural groundgame.org.

Excellent. Well, Linley Thorne with Rural Ground Game in Virginia, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you chatting with us. Thanks so much, Matt. Thanks for all you do. Well, that's it for today's episode of Good Skews. A big thank you to Linley Thorn of Rural Ground Game for joining us.

As we heard, 2025 is going to be a big. pivotal year in Virginia, not just for the Commonwealth, but for the entire country. If you want to get involved and support their work, you can reach out at hello at rural groundgame.org or visit their website, ruralgroundgame.org. And as always, thank you for tuning in. If you found today's conversation helpful, please share this episode with a friend and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss what's coming up next. I'm Matt Hildreth. This has been good skews. We'll see you next time. Thank you.

Thank you.