'Things are worse!' GOP gets shot across the bow from rural battleground state voters

Democrats are hoping to flip a rural North Carolina county, and voters put Republicans on notice this week on CNN.

John King, anchor and chief national correspondent, joined Erin Burnett on Monday on her show, "OutFront," to discuss what he's hearing from voters in rural Madison County. Democrats in the state hope to flip the 11th Congressional District, which covers Marshall, and the battleground state also features one of the most competitive Senate races in the country.

The mountain community should be safely Republican territory, but King found something Democrats are counting on: voters who are angry, worried, and losing faith in the war.

"So John, what are you hearing from voters?" asked Burnett.

"Number one, Erin, the voters we talked to call it a war. Number two, if you live in rural America, and we're in rural America, that means you drive a lot. The price of gas matters more to you than it might matter to somebody who doesn't have to drive," he said, summing up his conversations.

Voters told King the Iran war's economic toll is hitting hard and fast. A dollar increase per gallon of gas in just 3 1/2 weeks as farm supply costs surge.

"Things are worse," Ed Winebarger, a small farmer and caterer from near Boone, told King. "Everything's expensive. Inflation hasn't stopped. It's continuing. "

Korey Hampton, who runs an outdoor adventure business in Marshall, put it another way.

"We've kind of got this double whammy situation with the politics and the economy at the same time," she said. "On top of the storm, it's a little bit of extra X factors that don't make it real easy."

Hurricane Helene fallout still hang over the region, according to the report. Even an independent Republican-leaning business partner told King the war has raised his costs "without question."

King's verdict was blunt: he "shouldn't be here" in Marshall right now.

"This should not be a battleground race," he said, noting the Republican incumbent won the district with 58 percent just two years ago. But Democrats have a candidate calling himself a "mountain Democrat, not a Washington Democrat" — and several hundred people just showed up to his fundraiser.

The same is true in Tennessee and Iowa.

"The question is, can you turn a good year into a great year?" said King.