Moving To A Small Town Does Not Make You A White Supremacist

Ninety minutes from the noise and congestion of Nashville, nestled in the quiet hills and secluded hollers of the Upper Cumberland, sits historic Gainesboro, Tennessee. A town of about one thousand people in a county of more than 12,000, Gainesboro is like many bucolic little towns in this region: peaceful, safe, almost like taking a time machine back to the ’90s in all the best ways. These attributes drove me to move my family and my real estate business here after years in urban hubs.

Having grown up just down the Cumberland River in rural Trousdale County, the last thing I expected to encounter after moving to Jackson County was an organized, resourced, and aggressive progressive faction attempting to make inroads into the community.

If I stumbled onto a network like this in my small town, it could be happening in your small town too.

If you followed the Nashville press last year, you probably saw the storyline. NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams ran a series about “Christian nationalists” coming to rural Jackson County, replete with ominous music and interviews cherrypicked to stoke fear.

I run a rural real-estate company. We buy old properties, fix them up, and invite customers to rediscover small-town life. Yet in that initial media onslaught, my company was presented as a caricature (“Menace arrives in Mayberry!”). We don’t blame any good faith locals who initially fell for it — big-city camera crews are disruptive in many ways. But we do blame the well-oiled operation behind it all.

These reports targeted two of my customers who have a right-wing political talk show. They’ve never spoken on behalf of my company, RidgeRunner, but the Nashville reporter attempted to paint their political commentary as somehow defining how our company runs its business. Along the way, Williams made numerous factual errors: calling us a “Christian nationalist developer,” which we aren’t; erroneously labeling us as “an out of state developer,” which is ironic given his reporting about our company’s headquarters in Gainesboro (not to mention my Tennessee roots).

Whatever you think of the customers featured in the report, the motive of the reporting was obvious — baselessly tar newcomers (and anyone near them) as misogynists, racists, fascists, and use other typical smears from corporate media. Of course, all these accusations couldn’t be farther from the truth. And they weren’t harmless lies. In the aftermath of the TV reporting, the customers that Williams targeted received credible death threats from Antifa types out of Nashville. Some of my employees, customers, and I had our addresses doxxed by liberals in local Facebook groups.  

Many locals saw right through it, but some people were scared. And most of all, the Nashville audience enjoyed having all their priors confirmed about the “scary,” “backward” rural heart of Tennessee.

The Power Players in the Background

Williams’ opening attack didn’t occur in a vacuum. His employer, News Channel 5, has partnered financially with Wildwood Marina, owned by local Chamber of Commerce president John Deane. Williams’ sensationalized reporting gave Deane political cover to move against my business.

Deane is not a run-of-the-mill rural businessman. He’s a progressive mega-donor according to OpenSecrets.org, a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, and a former elector for Kamala Harris. He has personally donated $16,500 to Gloria Johnson, far-left state representative, among other donations totaling over $200,000 to progressive candidates and organizations across the years. Earlier this year, he fell short in a gambit to win an interim appointment as Gainesboro’s mayor. As of today in our little county, there aren’t party primaries for positions like this.

The very morning we put up a billboard in town advertising our love for this county, Johnson posted a photo of our billboard libeling us as “white supremacists.” Maybe Deane sent her the photo, maybe he didn’t. But as we all know, politicians are beholden to their donors.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Through a state open records request, we uncovered a political dossier about my company prepared for Deane by States at the Core (SATC), a front group funded through Neo Philanthropy, which has received at least $66 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. The dossier painted me as a threat because of my personal Christian faith and my professional conservative connections (citing, for example, my attenuated connections to J.D. Vance).

Deane used the dossier as the basis for booting RidgeRunner from the local Chamber of Commerce. His signed endorsement of the group is still available for review on SATC’s homepage.

We joined the local chamber because we care about this county’s economic future. Our development philosophy prioritizes long-term stewardship of any community where we invest. Part of our company’s efforts center on recruiting businesses to relocate and invest in this region, and to that end we’re proud that a national manufacturing company has decided to break ground here in Jackson County after hearing our pitch. We expect them to create at least 125 well-paying manufacturing jobs in a region ravaged by NAFTA.

But here in our conservative county and region, which overwhelmingly voted for Donald J. Trump in 2024, Deane isn’t the only activist with deep ties to state and national Democrat figures.

The ‘Just a Neighbor’ Who Is a Party Official

In News Channel 5’s media offensive, one of the most animated “concerned residents” presented herself as a folksy civic-minded neighbor. What viewers didn’t hear disclosed is that Carol V. Abney is the treasurer of the Tennessee Democratic Party — a fact the party itself publishes, and that she corroborates on her social media.

She has been a fierce advocate for rural Dem organizing. This is not to say she can’t believe whatever she wants to; it’s a free country. The point is about transparency. When a statewide party officer is prominently shaping the story in your town while being characterized as a representative local voice, the audience deserves the full context. Anything short of that is journalistic malpractice and deceit.

Abney’s own social media openly embraces her progressive bona fides. Just look at her X bio: “@TNDP Treasurer & TNSD12 EC | she/her/y’all | Country as cornbread & Progressive AF #WeAreTN #Resist #F47.”

Here’s where the national and the local meet. In February 2025, the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) published a “Letter to the DNC Chair” urging Democratic National Committee leadership to redirect a meaningful slice of nationwide funds to year-round Democrat organizing in rural spaces, describing rural and working-class voters as a priority segment with “the lowest hanging fruit for the party and the Left more broadly.” Abney’s own local chapter of the Democrat Party publicly acknowledges that Democrats can’t “squeeze” any more votes out of blue cities.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s an open letter. A letter that “concerned local” Abney signed. Abney’s letter endorses RUBI, an organization that produces resources like: “Talk Like a Neighbor.” Talk Like a Neighbor explicitly advises liberal operatives to avoid “academic or activist jargon,” “don’t lecture,” and “stay out of the policy weeds,” among other tips designed to soften the image of liberals that turn off rural voters.

Why Small Towns?

As a Democrat, if your aim is statewide power, there’s not much more juice to squeeze out of Nashville or Memphis. So, it’s logical you’d chip away at red counties — school boards, chambers, planning commissions, small town mayor’s offices — where a few hundred votes can swing a race and a handful of local operatives can have outsized influence. Once you gain power, you exclude neighbors with conservative viewpoints.

RUBI’s argument to the DNC is straightforward: redirect a sliver of the billions spent on ads toward vote-winning operations and infiltration in rural communities. They even quantify it: had Democrats set aside 10 percent of their 2024 spending, they write, that would have created a $400 million rural infrastructure head start for the midterms.

I’ve worked in media and politics long enough to know that tone often beats content. RUBI’s “Talk Like a Neighbor” document is an admission that progressive policies as seen in big cities are a liability in places like mine. So the playbook is this: keep the same rotten candy, just change the wrapper.

The DNC is increasingly desperate because small towns are poised for growth.

Small Towns are Growing Because of Their Conservative Identity

Since the start of the pandemic, millions of Americans are relocating from big cities or stale suburbs to rural areas. And ten of millions more want to relocate.

It’s not hard to understand why. Americans want confident, particular, and self-determinative local culture. They are looking for a community that feels authentic, in contrast to the homogeneity and overly corporate feel of big cities and suburbs. In this new world, the conservative politics and Bible Belt culture of many small towns is a feature, not a bug; not something to be embarrassed by or viewed as an obstacle to growth.

That’s why our flagship residential development here in Jackson County, Brewington Farms, will feature an organic working farm, beautiful estate-style land parcels, and amenities like walking trails, a playground, and access to organic meat and produce befitting a more natural way of living that’s in demand more than ever. We do this all while celebrating the Appalachian terroir, pitching the beautiful outdoors full of friendly locals and a lifestyle far more rooted and safe than coastal cities.

Rural towns should be partnering with developers like us who help attract new residents who are excited about a place’s longstanding ethos and way of life. What you draw them in with is what you keep them with. Will your town be a playground for visiting urbanites, or a place to be loved and called home?

Here’s the Takeaway

Small towns are worth rebuilding and defending. That starts with telling the truth about the dark money networks that now treat rural America as the decisive terrain for the next decade of their social experiments.

But take heart. Rural America is a target precisely because it is delivering historic wins for the conservative coalition as it draws new residents in who are looking for, precisely, what rural America has to offer. Common-sense, small-government politics and revitalized regional traditions that make these places unique will win the day, with a little diligence on our part.

The only question is whether the people who love rural towns and counties will see it in time, and act like neighbors in the original, not the Democrat focus-grouped, sense of the word.

Josh Abbotoy is the founder and CEO of RidgeRunner, a rural real estate development company. Josh is the grateful beneficiary of Christian education, having been homeschooled, then earning his B.A. (history) from Union University and an M.A. (medieval and Byzantine studies) from the Catholic University of America before earning his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Josh was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and his writing can be found, among other places, in American Reformer, First Things, the American Mind, the Federalist, and the Tennessean. He lives with his wife and four children in rural Tennessee.