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The Iowa Farm Bureau didn’t have too many surprises when it announced its endorsements in 133 races. The Farm Bureau endorsed exactly 3 Democrats in the 67 races where the organization made a choice. 

“This year’s endorsements passed over Democratic legislators who have supported some of the Farm Bureau’s key issues in recent years,” reports Jason Clayworth in the Des Moines Register. “They include the vice chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, a longtime dues-paying Farm Bureau member.”

• Meanwhile, in Kentucky, columnist Al Cross notes the cluelessness of MoveOn.org, which is running ads supporting Democrat Jack Conway in the U.S. Senate contest.

MoveOn.org is attacking Republican Rand Paul for, gasp, being supported by the Chamber of Commerce. The ad is about spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but Cross points out that MoveOn.org doesn’t make a distinction between the national Chamber and the local Chamber. Cross writes that “‘the Chamber,’” in most Kentucky places, is a small-town organization with a good image, not the national servant of Wall Street that the ad depicts.”

“Once again, the primarily urban left shows its ignorance of rural America,” Cross continues. “(A similar ad is running in New Hampshire, an even more rural state.)”

• The Washington Post writes that refugees are finding work in rural communities, largely on farms.

International organizations are finding work for refugees in small American towns, where they learn English and work largely on farms. 

• The Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader tells about Monica Marks’ return to Russell High School, where she graduated in 2004. She went to the University of Louisville and is now a Rhodes Scholar — straight out of rural America. 

Marks (above) was the daughter of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion that she said “discouraged higher education among its practitioners.”

Marks told Russell High students she had a three-part recipe for success: “Be stubborn, be spunky, be determined,” she said. “It requires a simple, sheer stubbornness to learn.” 

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