Author Talk with Chloe Maxmin “Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It

This event is a virtual program with the option of viewing it virtually in person at the Jesup and registration is required to attend either in person or on Zoom.

Chloe Maxmin was the first Democrat to ever win Maine House District 88 in 2018. She went on to unseat the highest-ranking Republican in Maine—the Senate Minority leader—in 2020, making her the youngest woman Senator in Maine’s history. An unapologetic progressive and at the time a recent college graduate, Maxmin was running in the rural conservative county where she grew up. The story gained national headlines at a time when America’s electorate is seen as deeply polarized. Now, with her campaign manager Canyon Woodard, she shares what they learned running the campaign and how what they learned can change how we view rural America in the book “Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends on It.”

“Everyone judges what my house looks like. They don’t bother to knock. I’m grateful that you came. I’m going to vote for you.” Those words, spoken by a rural Maine voter to Maxmin during her campaign for State Senator, reflect how she shocked the political world by tapping into a reservoir of previously discounted voters in deep red America. During the campaign, Maxmin and Woodard saw how politics and the Democratic Party have focused for too long on the interests of elite leaders and big donors, abandoning the concerns of rural America. In “Dirt Road Revival” Maxmin and Woodward detail just how everyday Americans have been left behind. Then, they tell the story of their success and distill their experiences into concrete lessons that can be applied to rural districts across the country to build power from the state and local levels.

Maxmin received an honors degree from Harvard College, where she co-founded Divest Harvard. She is the recipient of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes and the Brower Youth Award. She was also named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone and the 2020 Legislator of the Year by the Maine Council on Aging. Woodard was born, raised, and homeschooled in the Appalachian Mountains of rural North Carolina and the North Cascades of Washington. He earned an honors degree in social studies from Harvard College, where the bulk of his education took place outside of the classroom co-coordinating (with Maxmin) Divest Harvard, a more than 70,000 person movement that succeeded in pressuring Harvard to divest its $53 billion endowment from fossil fuels.