CEDAR RAPIDS — A year after Democrats suffered staggering defeats up and down the ballot as voters, especially those in rural areas, abandoned the party, Jason Kander has a simple remedy: Talk to those voters.

Kander, a former Missouri secretary of state who lost a close election for a U.S. Senate seat to an incumbent Republican, says Democrats have to take their message everywhere to everyone.

“You don’t win arguments you don’t make,” according to Kander, who will speak at the Linn County Democratic Party’s annual Hall of Fame Dinner beginning at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Longbranch Hotel and Convention Center in Cedar Rapids.

As a Democrat, Kander believes that what the party is proposing and stands for “is the best thing for every voter, not just the best thing for some Americans.”

“Given that, it doesn’t make any sense to leave out some people who we make our argument to,” he said. “What we’re for is right, and we have to unabashedly say so because that’s the only way you win an argument.”

That includes talking to voters in rural areas, like Iowa, who backed Barack Obama and then voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Democrats need to explain that what they are about “is making sure folks can return to the communities that raised them because they can afford to do that because wages are high enough, because they aren’t saddled with so much college debt that it is unaffordable, and get things done like criminal justice reform to make sure the communities are safe,” Kander said.

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Kander, 36, an Army veteran, has been getting some attention as someone who could be part of a 2020 presidential ticket.

He deflects questions about his plans but has visited 28 states this year, including multiple visits to Iowa and New Hampshire.

“I’m somebody who ran for office because there was a change I wanted to see and there was an office between me and that change,” he said. “If that happens again, I will run.”

In the meantime, he’s formed Let America Vote, which he explains is creating “political consequences for politicians who perpetrate voter suppression.”

For a long time, he said, voting rights battles have been fought almost exclusively in the courts. Through Let America Vote, Kander is waging the fight in the court of public opinion.

He called Let America Vote “a boots-on-the-ground organization,” opposing people like Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, who Kander said is trying to exclude some people from voting by requiring voters to present a photo ID at polling places.

“For a long time, there hasn’t been a political consequence for that. We’re creating the political consequence,” Kander said. “When Republican politicians see that it can get them kicked out of office, they’re going to be a lot less likely to make it harder to vote.”

Let American Vote has staff in Iowa and plans to open offices in five states, including Iowa, in early 2018.

The goal is to fight back against what Trump and Republicans are doing “to forever change our democracy in a way that degrades it,” he said.

“I was willing to put my life on the line in Afghanistan for the rights and freedoms our country has to offer, and I’m not about to watch President Trump and Paul Pate take those rights away.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com