Running on farm bill may help, opposing it doesn’t hurt | Food and Environment Reporting Network

Rep Collin Peterson, the Democratic leader on the House Agriculture Committee, uses his legislative successes on the 2014 farm law – retention of sugar subsidies and creation of a new dairy subsidy program – as talking points for re-election, says Bloomberg. Peterson’s district leans Republican and the GOP congressional committee is spending heavily on ads to defeat him. “Farming defines the towns that dot the region’s two-lane highways. Along with (sugar) beets, the district is the nation’s biggest producer of turkeys and the fourth-biggest of corn and soybeans,” says Bloomberg.

National Journal says farm groups rally around Republicans running for the Senate even if they are farm bill heretics. As examples, it cites Joni Ernst of Iowa, who said during her primary election campaign that she would not have voted for the 2014 farm law. The Kansas Farm Bureau is backing Sen Pat Roberts although he voted against the farm bill. While Democrats hoped to make headway with the issue, there isn’t much traction.

“Farmers are not a single-issue constituency even though the farm bill plays an outsize role in agriculture policy and politics—and on top of that, totally separate from farm policy, they just lean Republican as a group,” says National Journal.