Bridging the Red-Blue Divide, One Concrete Deed at a Time

Luray is a small town in Page County, Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Its municipal council has for years been majority Republican, with no elected Democrats. In that regard, it’s a microcosm of Page County as a whole. Not surprisingly, county Democratic committee members have had negative experiences over the years with city officials, reinforcing local Democrats’ sense of belonging to a small and unpopular minority.

About two years ago, it was with some trepidation that Skip Halpern and Sara Finn first approached the council on behalf of the Page County chapter of Community Works, a recently launched strategy aimed at getting neighbors to work together across the divide. Their request that the council support water testing done by Friends of the Shenandoah River was unanimously approved. This marked the beginning of an ongoing collaboration between Democratic-backed community works and a wide range of mostly conservative churches, civic and community groups, and government agencies in the county. Like other Community Works chapters in Virginia and elsewhere, the Page County chapter undertakes a wide range of community service activities approximately three times per month. Whether it’s testing water, picking up trash, installing fire alarms in trailers, or distributing food to homebound residents, Community Works’ activities occur without politics or proselytizing (disclosure: I am the executive director of Community Works’ parent organization).

Community Works’ experience with the Luray City Council is not unique. In fact, anecdotal evidence that Community Works builds trust and reduces partisan polarization has been growing since the initiative launched in rural Virginia in the summer of 2023, followed by Georgia a year later.

Community Works was designed as a pilot project to test whether sustained, concrete, apolitical action at the local level would gradually restore trust in rural and red communities, and whether some more conservative rural people would moderate their views toward liberals and Democrats. It’s not really surprising that Democrats, Republicans and local independents are putting aside their differences long enough to get things done. But it remained an open question whether this would lead to a more permanent change of hearts and minds.

The evidence is now available and it is compelling. Community Works curbs partisan polarization. Significantly.

With the help of political scientists Nick Jacobs of Colby College and Kal Munis, then at Utah Valley University, the Community Works team designed a survey to gauge rural residents’ feelings and opinions toward Democrats and Republicans. The surveys were conducted in Community Works counties before the program launched, as well as in other deep red counties nearby.

The survey was readministered after two years of Community Works operations in Virginia and just after only one year in Georgia. According to Jacobs, “in six counties in two states and on several outcome measures, Community Works systematically reduces the intensity of partisan polarization. [Emphasis mine.] The study period (2023-2025) coincided with a difficult national political environment for Democrats, particularly in rural communities where attitudes toward the Democratic Party have deteriorated sharply in Virginia and Georgia. In this context, Community Works counties stand out: Rather than following the broader pattern of “cooling” attitudes toward Democrats and “warming” toward Republicans, partisan attitudes in these counties have changed much less dramatically.

Jacobs says the pattern of results is neither accidental nor insignificant. “The consistency of findings across multiple domains increases confidence that the observed moderation in partisan animosity is meaningfully related to community work,” which “appears to anchor political judgment more firmly in local experience and less in national partisan narratives.” In simpler terms, how Democrats performed relative to Republicans improved in counties with active Community Works chapters, including an increased association of Democrats with things like timeliness and responsiveness.

Diffusing partisan polarization and improving the Democratic brand were not the only positive results of this local action. According to Meredith Dean, national director of Community Works, the shift in views has been a two-way street. “We started Community Works in hopes of changing rural communities’ opinions of Democrats, but what has been most inspiring is how it has changed Democrats’ opinions of their rural communities.” This is particularly important because, as Dean points out, “many rural Democrats are urban and suburban transplants who bring both conscious and unconscious stereotypes into their new environment.” Changing some of the negative views that many people on the left have in rural areas can be a challenge, but according to Dean, “the best way to bust the myths is to spend a day with someone handing out baby supplies or cleaning a roadside or public park.”

Most of the nearly 500 community works projects undertaken to date have taken place in the six pilot counties in Virginia and Georgia. However, as of 2025, the initiative has expanded to 14 counties across seven states, including Alabama, Maryland, Kansas, Washington and Wisconsin. County chapters have great flexibility in what they do, who they partner with locally, and when and how they clearly express their association with the local Democratic Committee (which is part of each chapter). Although all chapters so far are in rural counties, the demographics of these counties vary, just as they do in rural America in general. Counties in Virginia and Maryland, for example, are majority white, while those in Georgia and Alabama are much more racially diverse. But the process works the same way: people who are tired of business as usual find their energy through community work; civic engagement and more positive outlooks grow; trust and good neighborliness begin to reappear; partisan animosity declines.

The idea of ​​integrating public service into Democratic committee work is certainly gaining popularity. But is it scalable? The Community Works model involves lots of training, ongoing peer support, and up to $10,000 per county per year in funds to support local work. If Democratic committees in a thousand rural counties adopted this model, it would cost about $10 million each year. This amounts to less than a quarter of 1% of the funds Democrats spent on television ads in the 2024 election cycle alone. Now that we know this approach reduces polarization and restores trust, this seems like a deal the Democratic Party cannot afford to ignore.