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Memo to California’s Next Governor: Rural Places Matter

Rural communities are crucial to the state—and the country. Why do they get so little attention?

California gubernatorial candidates at a debate on May 5, 2026.

On April 7, Del Monte shuttered a peach cannery in Modesto, a town in California’s Central Valley. It was the company’s last remaining factory in California, and its closure left 600 full-time and 1,200 seasonal employees suddenly out of work and 70 growers without a buyer for their contracted 50,000 tons of peaches. In a town with a 7.4% unemployment rate, the plant closure was a gut punch.

Since then, the panoply of candidates running to be governor of California have participated in four debates. Modesto is the county seat of Stanislaus County, which leans Republican but not by much. Across all those debates, one or more of the seven Democrats and Republicans on the stage might have brought up Modesto’s plight as emblematic of the economic challenges that California’s rural communities face. Democrats, in particular, should have welcomed the opportunity to chip away at Republicans’ rural dominance, following in the footsteps of the DCCC’s new rural outreach program.

But that’s not what happened. There was zero discussion of farming or other rural issues, such as energy-and-water-sucking hyperscale data centers, the right-to-repair farm equipment, and the decline of manufacturing, fishing, and logging. There was no mention of the 735,000 rural Californians and 13 Native American reservations that lack safe drinking water. A few candidates called for free college, but no one mentioned trade schools or apprenticeship programs that provide vital pathways for rural youth.

There was also no discussion about the Save Our Bacon Act, which was passed by the US House shortly before the May 5 and 6 debates. The act takes direct aim at California’s Proposition 12, which bans the sale of products from inhumanely confined animals. Prop 12 was endorsed by the United Farmworkers and the Center for Food Safety alongside numerous animal welfare organizations. The California Farm Bureau and large feedlot operators opposed it. Whether the law stands or falls has major repercussions for small pork and egg producers and consumers; why not ask candidates about it?

The sum total of rural debate content was the following: Katie Porter alluded in passing to the state’s hospital closure crisis, an issue that disproportionately impacts rural communities (though she didn’t note that). And San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan let it be known that he grew up in a farming town. That’s........

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