Hemmed by cornfields, Rep. Tim Ryan perches on a plastic picnic bench, his back to a red barn. He smiles at the local farmers he’s just met and who are now sitting at tables arranged in a horseshoe. 

Mr. Ryan, who is running to be Ohio’s next senator, wears a scarlet Ohio State T-shirt and jeans. His graying hair is swept back above a square-jawed face. He has the physical build and, when he speaks, the steady cadence of a football coach who won’t yell at you – unless he really, really has to. 

He’s come to Honey Haven Farm to learn about the issues affecting farming communities, he tells the dozen invitees. “I came to listen, a lot more than I’ll be talking,” he says. 

For the next hour he takes questions and sounds out opinions on landownership, inheritance taxes, soil preservation, and rural infrastructure. Only at the end does the conversation turn politically divisive. Karen Welch, a dairy farmer, asks Mr. Ryan what should be done to protect voting rights. “You’re here because we have votes, not just because we’re great people,” she says. “That is so cynical,” deadpans Mr. Ryan, sparking a round of laughter. “But so true,” says Ms. Welch, grinning. 

It’s a relatable moment in a slice of Ohio that Mr. Ryan must win. He is the Democratic underdog trying to fill a Senate seat vacated by a Republican. He faces a well-known GOP opponent, venture capitalist and memoirist J.D. Vance, in a state that Donald Trump won twice and where every statewide elected official is a Republican. Once known as a swing state on which presidential dreams turned, Ohio was trending red long before Mr. Trump showed up. And yet, polls show Mr. Ryan’s race against the “Hillbilly Elegy” author is unexpectedly close, and his campaign may hold lessons for other Democrats trying to win back rural, working-class voters. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Political signs promote Ohio GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance outside the Mahoning County Republican Party tent at the Canfield Fair on Sept. 1, 2022, in Canfield, Ohio.

The rolling green hills of Ashland are unfamiliar political territory for Mr. Ryan, a 10-term congressman from Youngstown in Ohio’s industrial northeast. Here, as across much of rural America, Democratic voters are an embattled minority, as much in need of preservation as the topsoil. That Mr. Ryan is here during a campaign that has already taken him to every county in the Buckeye State speaks to the challenge for Democrats everywhere to broadening their appeal beyond their urban and suburban redoubts. Mr. Ryan isn’t about to convert every Republican voter in Ashland. But to beat his opponent, he needs to close the gap in ruby-red districts like this. “There are persuadable people,” he tells the Monitor at another stop. “Just because you voted for Donald Trump doesn’t mean you won’t vote for Tim Ryan.” 

He also describes his listening tour as a moral imperative for a national party that may be tempted to write off much of rural America as a lost cause. “I think it’s important, especially as a Democrat, to let people in these small towns know that we care about them,” he says. 

If he wins in November – an uphill battle, say many pundits – Mr. Ryan’s campaign will be pored over by Democrats desperate to know what sells in the heartland. The answer appears to be an earthy, plainspoken candidate who bucks liberal party dogma while sticking to positions that are broadly progressive – without scaring off conservatives soured on Trumpism. It’s no coincidence that Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, known for wearing hoodies and shorts, is using a similar anti-establishment playbook in his Senate race this fall. 

Mr. Ryan and Mr. Fetterman have different styles, but speak to the same people, says David Cohen, a politics professor at the University of Akron. “They have the respect of the working class and it’s because they respect the working class,” he says. At the same time, “they’re both willing to break with their party if they feel their party is wrong on certain issues.” 

Mr. Ryan talks about an “exhausted majority” of Ohio voters who hold moderate views and despair at political tribalism. His campaign has stressed his record in Congress defending Ohio and its interests, particularly on trade and jobs. In a TV ad, he says his party “had got it wrong” on past trade deals and calls to defund the police. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” he says, while throwing darts in a bar. “You want a fighter for Ohio? I’m all-in.” 

He may be all-in. But is that enough to win in Ohio? And who is Tim Ryan? 

Mr. Ryan was 4 when Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. closed its largest mill in 1977, with the loss of 5,000 jobs. The closure of this and other steel plants cast a long and debilitating shadow over the city, which has since shed more than half its population. 

Raised by his mother and her family, including a grandfather who had been a steelworker, Mr. Ryan imbibed the hard-knocks attitude of Youngstown. He attended Catholic schools in nearby Warren, mixing with other Irish and Italian boys who no longer had jobs waiting in the mills. 

Youngstown’s vertiginous decline, and the battle to reverse it, has become a throughline in Mr. Ryan’s career, one that he says helps him connect with voters in small towns who also feel the sting of economic upheaval. He says the rapport is “instant” when “they hear about where I’m from, because they know what happened. Everyone knows Youngstown. Everybody knows what we’ve been through.”

In high school, Mr. Ryan became the football team’s starting quarterback in his sophomore year; the team went 11 and 2, then lost in the state championship. The team also made the playoffs in 1991, his senior year. “He was a very good athlete,” says Dennis Zolciak, his football coach. “Kids looked up to him.” 

His first taste of politics came as an intern in the Washington office of Rep. James Traficant, who also had played quarterback at a Catholic high school in Youngstown. A decade later, after attending college and law school in Ohio, and winning a seat in the state Senate, Mr. Ryan ran in a six-way Democratic primary for Youngstown’s House seat, held by Mr. Traficant, his former boss.

But Mr. Ryan’s toughest opponent was Rep. Tom Sawyer, a congressman who had supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. That put an anti-union target on Mr. Sawyer’s back that allowed Mr. Ryan to win the primary and be elected in 2002. He was 29. Democrats in Ohio blamed NAFTA, a 1994 trade agreement signed by President Bill Clinton, for job losses in manufacturing. But the entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 would prove a greater accelerant of U.S. outsourcing of production, mostly to the detriment of Ohio’s blue-collar workforce. 

Mr. Ryan rose up the ranks in Congress and learned to work with Republicans in Ohio’s delegation and to build relationships that could withstand partisan rifts, an approach that allies say makes him a stronger Senate candidate in the current political climate. “I’m looking for candidates to support that I think are not divisive,” says Bruce Zoldan, a businessperson in Youngstown who hosted a recent Ryan fundraising concert by singer-songwriter Paul Simon. Mr. Zoldan says he also donates to GOP campaigns: “I go both sides of the aisle. I’m looking for people who are going to work on both sides.”

After Democrats failed to win control of Congress in 2016, Mr. Ryan made waves by challenging Nancy Pelosi for the party’s House leadership. He argued that the party needed leaders who could speak to working-class voters in states like Ohio that Mr. Trump had just won. He lost by 134-63 to Ms. Pelosi. Still, some Democrats took notice of his message and his ambition. 

In 2019, Mr. Ryan announced a presidential run, which quickly fizzled out. He then endorsed Joe Biden, a fellow moderate, who campaigned as an everyman from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and went on to lose Ohio in 2020 by 8 points. It was the first time since 1960 that Ohio hadn’t sided with the presidential winner, underscoring the challenge for a Democrat in the Buckeye State. 

Mr. Ryan’s advisers point out that Mr. Biden skipped Ohio in order to focus on swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A better benchmark, they say, is 2018, when Sen. Sherrod Brown, a progressive Democrat with strong union ties, won reelection by a comfortable margin of 300,000 votes with a jobs-first economic message similar to Mr. Ryan’s. “It’s a state that leans right, but not all that much,” says Justin Barasky, who managed Senator Brown’s reelection campaign and is consulting for Mr. Ryan. “The way you win is by being relentless on workers.” 

Ann Hermes/Staff

“He’s the only politician that has reached out to me: state, local, or federal. Politicians don’t care.” – Pat Eslich, president of United Steelworkers Golden Lodge Local Union 1123, on Democrat Tim Ryan’s outreach after a furnace explosion in July killed a steelworker. He’s seen here on Sept. 2, 2022, in Canton, Ohio, in front of donation buckets for the worker’s family.

The night shift had started at the Canton, Ohio, steel plant on July 26 when a powerful explosion ripped through the building. The explosion of the electric arc furnace at TimkenSteel’s plant could be heard across the city. Three steelworkers were rushed to hospital; Joe Ferrall, a 34-year-old father of three, later died of his injuries. 

Pat Eslich, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1123 at TimkenSteel, got a call that night about the accident. It wasn’t his first. Six months earlier, another worker had died in an accident at a nearby TimkenSteel plant. In June, the company paid $290,000 in fines and was cited for federal safety violations. The cause of the furnace explosion is still under investigation. “Anyone who’s worked in the steel industry knows it’s a dangerous job,” says Mr. Eslich, a fourth-generation steelworker who lost half a finger in a machine. “It’s not a popsicle shop.” 

The day after the furnace explosion, Mr. Eslich got another call at home. This time it was Mr. Ryan, calling to ask about the injured workers and to express concern. “He’s the only politician who has reached out to me: state, local, or federal,” says Mr. Eslich. “Politicians don’t care. The only thing they care about is the damned votes.”

But Mr. Ryan is different, he continues. Take his support to amend the 2021 infrastructure act to mandate the use of American steel, a victory for steelworkers and their unions. “He cares about the workers,” he says. 

Mr. Ryan, however, knows his ties to Ohio union leaders are no guarantee of votes from rank-and-file members. In 2016, Mr. Trump won over disaffected Democrats in Rust Belt Midwestern cities by vowing to rip up trade deals and bring back manufacturing jobs. (Overall, U.S. manufacturing employment made modest gains during Mr. Trump’s presidency. In Ohio, close to 20,000 jobs were added, hitting a pre-pandemic peak of 704,000 in July 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.) 

Ohio’s red shift is illustrated by Mahoning County, where Youngstown sits. In 2012, Barack Obama won 64% of its presidential votes; by 2020, Mr. Biden only polled 49%. Other districts saw even larger shifts: Democrats’ vote share in Scioto County fell by 20 points from 2012 to 2020. Exit polls showed the biggest swings to Mr. Trump were among white voters without a college degree. 

One question for Mr. Ryan’s campaign is whether recent legislation passed by Congress that provides billions of dollars of support for manufacturing in Ohio, coupled with his record of opposing trade deals and supporting some of Mr. Trump’s policies, can sway those voters. Mr. Ryan won the Democratic primary, “because they thought they could get those voters back,” says Paul Sracic, a political scientist at Youngstown State University. But he doubts that Democrats will succeed, particularly because most GOP candidates are also anti-trade. “Those working-class voters are convinced that Democrats are not on their side.” 

Last year, Mr. Ryan sponsored the House bill that later became the CHIPS and Science Act, a $280 billion package that includes subsidies for Intel to build a semiconductor plant near Columbus. On Sept. 9, President Biden joined Ohio’s Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, at the groundbreaking of the Intel plant. Mr. Ryan, who has kept his distance from Mr. Biden during his campaign, also attended. He told an NBC affiliate that he was thrilled to see support for“middle-class jobs” in his state. 

Mr. Ryan leans against a wire fence, looking at knee-high dark-green soybeans shimmering in the midday late-summer sun. Angela Huffman, a farmer, stands beside him. She explains that her family owns the 80 acres of soybeans and that she raises sheep who winter in a barn that her forefathers built in 1897. “It’s so peaceful here,” says Mr. Ryan, gazing into the middle distance. 

“I could show you the barn, and the sheep are over there,” says Ms. Huffman, pointing behind. 

“Yeah, I gotta see the sheep,” he says, rousing himself. 

Mr. Ryan follows her into the barn. It’s his first stop of the day, and he’s wearing beige slacks, an untucked chambray shirt, and white sneakers. Very white sneakers. Sparkling toothpaste white. 

I’m reminded of the togas that Roman senators wore during election campaigns. Each toga was specially whitened to symbolize integrity, and was known as candidatus, from which the word “candidate” derives. 

But white sneakers for a visit to a farm? He didn’t check the schedule before he packed, he tells me. “I was like, tennis shoes and dress shoes. I figure when I get one pair dirty, it will be the white ones.” 

Under an oak tree, 12 farmers sit on hay bales in a circle. It’s another listening session for Mr. Ryan, another opportunity to meet rural voters in another GOP electoral district. One of the attendees is Chris Gibbs, a bearded man of great stature who farms soybean, corn, and cattle on 560 acres in Shelby County, an hour’s drive away. A former Republican county chair, he broke publicly with his party in 2018 after Mr. Trump’s trade war with China led to retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans. “I lost a lot of friends over this, but that’s fine,” he says. 

Mr. Gibbs now calls himself “a Truman Democrat – someone pragmatic that just wants to get something done.” Earlier this summer, Mr. Gibbs hosted a roundtable with Mr. Ryan at his farm. The majority of the 28 men and women who showed up were Republicans, he says, which was intentional. At the end, the group posed with Mr. Ryan for a photo in front of a combine harvester. “I don’t know if they’ll vote for him or not. But they were willing to hang around and to put themselves into the photo,” he says. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Chris Gibbs, Ohio farmer and Rural Voices USA board chairman, stands near a cornfield after attending a discussion led by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan on Aug. 31, 2022, in Wharton, Ohio.

Seth Middleton, a farmer and banker who joined the roundtable, says he’s a conservative who votes Republican. But Mr. Ryan made a positive impression. “I heard conservative values,” he says, noting that Mr. Ryan goes hunting. “I thought, this guy could be my neighbor.” He also appreciated that Mr. Ryan criticized President Biden’s student debt-relief package and seemed serious about tackling inflation. Mr. Middleton says he could see himself voting for Mr. Ryan in November, though he’s also waiting to study his opponent. “I’m telling my friends, my family, ‘Hey, give the guy a look, even if it’s nothing more than to know his policies,’” he says. 

Democrats say this is the point: Candidates need to show up in small towns where a toxic party brand – elitist, leftist, out-of-touch – precedes them. “You can’t win these states without winning a share of the rural vote. It’s pure math,” says Robin Johnson, a Democratic consultant and political scientist  at Monmouth College in Illinois. “Democrats have ceded the territory to Republicans without so much as a fight.” 

The math also runs the other way: Democrats need to turn out more affluent voters in cities and suburbs since they can no longer count on working-class support. In Ohio, that means firing up voters in populous districts that once leaned Republican. Katie Paris, a political consultant in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, started Red Wine and Blue in 2019. The Democratic group organizes events to mobilize suburban voters; this year it has expanded to Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Getting Mr. Ryan elected to the Senate is one of her priorities, and polling shows suburban women have taken note of his outreach. “They want a candidate who can win in all areas of Ohio,” she says. 

Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, observes in a statement that a mid-September poll shows a gender split in the race: “Men break for Vance by 19 points, whereas women break for Ryan by eight points.”

The Supreme Court has also played its part in galvanizing women by overturning Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to abortion, Ms. Paris says. “I keep hearing from women who said, ‘I thought it was OK to keep voting for Republicans down-ballot. ... There was a [constitutional] check on what they could do,’” she says. 

Mr. Ryan says he supports a restoration of Roe’s limits – restricting abortion only after a fetus becomes viable. He formerly opposed abortion rights, but in 2015 he announced that his “feelings on this issue had changed” and that he supported women’s reproductive rights. Still, Mr. Ryan can also sound like a Republican on the issue: “If you’re against big government, this is big government in your bedroom, in your doctor’s office.”

He’s also reversed his stance on student debt, having previously called on Congress to reduce debt loads and voting for bills that would cancel loans. Mr. Vance’s campaign, which has derided Mr. Ryan as a progressive making a fraudulent play for Republican votes, called this a flip-flop. 

Mr. Ryan’s attack on Mr. Biden’s debt forgiveness plan also rankles Emily Hill, a history major who is a senior at the University of Akron. A first-generation college student, she worries about paying off her debts and whether she can afford to go to law school. “I still support Tim Ryan, and I’m going to vote for him. But I was disappointed by that” stance, she says. “I understand the politics of this. You want to get those conservative voters who may be on the edge. But it was kind of a bummer that he’d say this.”

Ann Hermes/Staff

“I understand the politics [of Tim Ryan’s criticism of the student debt-relief plan]. You want to get those conservative voters who may be on the edge. But it was kind of a bummer that he’d say this.” – Emily Hill, a Tim Ryan supporter and senior at the University of Akron (left) with Hayley Bunner, at the University of Akron on Sept. 2, 2022, in Akron, Ohio. Both are Ohio Student Association leaders and plan to go to law school.

The sun is sinking behind the union hall as Mr. Ryan steps to an outdoor podium on his final stop near Cincinnati. Behind him is a pickup truck and an overgrown baseball field. The neighboring lot hosts a clay pigeon shooting range, and gunshots echo in the evening air. 

His audience is mostly union members in the building trades who hold up banners. Tammy Simendinger, a finance officer, has brought her high school daughter to what is a rare sighting of a Democrat in her corner of southwest Ohio. “I think they’ve given up on this area,” she says. 

But she’s hopeful that Mr. Ryan can turn the Republican tide in Ohio. “He’s not extreme on issues. He’s looking out for the working class,” she says. 

Mr. Ryan starts out by joking about the gun club. “I was going to go along and shoot a few guns before I came over here. Why do they get to have all the fun?”

As he builds up pace, talking about his grandfather, manufacturing, and how Americans need to move past partisan labels and work together, the gunshot ricochets punctuate his speech. “I made a pledge when I first announced to run for this office (boom) that I was going to go everywhere in this state (boom) and I was going to meet the people of the state of Ohio (boom), regardless of how big (boom) your town was or how small your town was (boom), or if you were urban or rural (boom).”

He pauses, then hits a familiar note. “I want to come see you, because I grew up just outside of Youngstown, Ohio, and we know where I come from, what it’s like to be forgotten.”

[Corrections. In our original story, we misidentified the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. Also, we incorrectly stated the years when Ohio's presidential vote didn't corresponded with the national results. In 2020, Donald Trump won Ohio, but Joe Biden won nationally. Prior to that, 1960 was the last time Ohio's selection didn't match the national presidential results.]

Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times

Fatima Nuñez Ardon teaches second graders at Madrona Elementary School in SeaTac, Washington, Sept. 28, 2022. Ms. Nuñez Ardon earned a teaching degree through classes at a community college, which is an option available in only a handful of states.

In her second grade classroom outside Seattle, Fatima Nuñez Ardon often tells her students stories about everyday people realizing their dreams. One day, for example, she talked about Salvadoran American NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and his journey to the International Space Station.

Another day, she says she told them her own life’s story – how she, an El Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in middle school speaking very little English, came to be a teacher. 

Ms. Nuñez Ardon took an unusual path to the classroom: She earned her teaching degree through evening classes at a community college, while living at home and raising her four children. 

Community college-based teaching programs like this are rare, but growing. They can dramatically cut the cost and raise the convenience of earning a teaching degree, while making a job in education accessible to a wider diversity of people.

In Washington state, for example, nine community colleges offer education degrees. Nationally, data from the Community College Baccalaureate Association (CCBA) indicates that six other states – Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, and New Mexico – offer baccalaureate degrees, or bachelor’s degrees, related to K-12 education. Texas and Wyoming offer early childhood education degrees. 

The expansion comes at a good time: Teacher shortages have worsened in the past decade, as fewer undergraduates enter teacher training programs. A report in March from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education showed that the number of people completing a teacher education program declined by almost a third between the 2008-09 and 2018-19 academic years. And many educators fear the pandemic worsened the crisis.

More community colleges around the country are starting to offer teacher education, says CCBA President Angela Kersenbrock. In all, 51 community college-based K-12 teaching programs have launched across the country since the early 2000s. All of Washington’s teaching baccalaureate programs have received approval from the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to launch since 2016. 

And they’re attracting students like Ms. Nuñez Ardon, who, in her mid-30s, became certified to run a K-8 classroom in June. It’s likely she wouldn’t have pursued a classroom career otherwise. 

“A highly rigorous program” 

Teacher shortages predate the pandemic. For years, the number of people graduating from teacher education programs has fallen short of teacher demand. In 2018, 57,000 fewer students nationwide earned education degrees than in 2011.  

A 2021 report from the state’s Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) found that schools were forced to lean on individuals who had not completed certification requirements to fill the gaps, and waivers had risen to 8,080 in the 2019-20 school year, a spike from fewer than 2,800 a decade prior. 

The state in recent years has encouraged “Grow Your Own” programs, or alternative pathways to classroom certification that attract local talent. Some are run by districts, while others are college or university efforts. They’re seen both as a way to buffer the teacher shortage and to grow a workforce more representative of the student body. Statewide, 50% of Washington students are people of color, while 87% of classroom teachers are white. 

The PESB report indicates that community college baccalaureates in education are already helping ease the teacher shortage.

“It’s a highly rigorous program,” says Elizabeth Paulino, who runs Yakima Valley College’s teacher education baccalaureate program. 

The college’s model is much like others throughout the rest of the state. Teacher candidates come in with an associate degree and spend two years taking classes in education, primarily in the evenings. Then, weeks before the second and final year of the program begins, candidates begin a residency at a partner school. They are assigned mentors who come recommended by their principal or superintendent and have at least three years of classroom experience, Ms. Paulino says. 

While juggling their work and school load, teacher candidates are also taking a series of tests required by the state for certification. “By the time they finish their residency, they have fulfilled all of their requirements not only of the program but also of the state,” adds Ms. Paulino.

Pushback from universities

There has been pushback against community college baccalaureate degrees in education in Washington and nationally, as universities with teacher education programs grapple with a yearslong decline in enrollment, says Debra Bragg, the founder and former director of the University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives group. 

Community colleges argue that they’re a good place for teacher training because they’re open-access – there is no selective admissions process to get in – and that they “are attracting students that the universities probably are not attracting and probably won’t attract,” she says.

Ms. Nuñez Ardon says this was the case for her. She was unable to move because of her growing family, and the nearby University of Washington doesn’t offer a bachelor’s degree in teacher education. 

The cost was another important factor. Tuition and fees for one year at Western Washington University – one of the nearest public four-year universities – come to more than $10,700; when housing, meals, and supplies are factored in, the yearly cost is about $30,000. The program Ms. Nuñez Ardon attended at Highline College costs roughly $7,100 a year, allowed her to live at home, and accommodated her work schedule. 

Because of their local and open-access qualities, community colleges could help fill the teacher supply gap, says Dr. Bragg. What’s more, “If it’s important for us to prepare teachers who look like students in their community, representing that diversity of the community, then it might make sense to look at what the community colleges are doing.”

At Pierce College, paraprofessionals propelled the program. They were working in local school districts and enrolling in the early childhood education program with the hope of becoming certified teachers. But that associate degree program didn’t lead to teacher certification. 

When the college began considering an elementary education baccalaureate program to meet community interest, there was some pushback from Central Washington University, which is well-known for its teacher education program and shares a sub-campus with Pierce College.  

But leaders from the two colleges’ education departments came to realize that the college and university programs would serve different demographics, says Leesa Thomas, Pierce’s director of education programs. The result was a strengthened relationship between the two.

Extraordinary need

Many of Washington’s other education baccalaureate degrees grew in response to demand from local schools.

Connie Smejkal, Centralia College’s dean of teacher education, says area superintendents were calling frequently to say they were struggling to hire teachers. It also was tough to retain them because districts recruited anyone who applied, “rather than picking really high-quality candidates. Their need was extraordinary.” 

In fall of 2016, Centralia and Grays Harbor College launched a teacher education baccalaureate degree together, anticipating that neither would have enough students to run a full program on their own. Each planned to have an initial cohort of 12 teacher candidates. But Ms. Smejkal says student interest in the program was as hot as school demand: There were more than 80 applicants to Centralia alone for the first cohort. The school admitted 52 of them the first year.  

“We realized how thirsty the community was to become teachers,” she says. The next year, Centralia and Grays Harbor formed their own separate programs. Each welcomed their sixth cohort this fall, and between the two schools, 175 people have completed degrees. They each report that the majority of their graduates go on to teach in local classrooms. Ms. Smejkal says everyone from last year’s cohort who was interested in classroom teaching had signed a contract with a school before graduating. 

Peter Finch, superintendent of West Valley School District in Yakima, says he’s experienced no shortage of general education teachers since the launch of Yakima Valley College’s program. 

Teachers hired from the local program have so far been predominantly Latino, he says, and half have been bilingual Spanish-English speakers, better matching the district’s student demographic and support needs. Some new hires are now pursuing special education endorsements, which will eventually help to fill another gap. 

Meanwhile, Ms. Nuñez Ardon spends her days at Madrona Elementary, in the city of SeaTac, as a teacher and role model to young students she sees herself in – and in whom she hopes to inspire the same curiosity and passion for learning.

This story, produced by The Seattle Times, is part of an eight-newsroom collaboration that comprises the Monitor, AL.com, The Associated Press, The Dallas Morning News, The Fresno Bee, The Hechinger Report, and The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, with support from the Solutions Journalism Network. Other stories in this occasional series on tackling teacher shortages include “US teacher shortages stem from low unemployment, stiff competition” and “How the 1954 Brown decision still influences today’s teaching ranks.”

Growing up, Vijay Kumar’s favorite book was a Tamil historical fiction novel that told tales of a mighty king who ruled over southern India, where Mr. Kumar is from. It sparked in him an interest in ancient Indian history, particularly temples and the shrines and sculptures that filled them.

“I wanted to visit the places mentioned in the book, look at the small bits of history and feel the inscriptions,” says Mr. Kumar, now in his late 40s. 

Little did he know that his interest in Indian artifacts would one day help nab some of the world’s biggest art criminals. 

For decades, thieves have been looting temples and monasteries across Asia and smuggling their haul overseas where it often ends up in the top museums and auction houses of the world. Illicit trade of cultural property is the third-largest international criminal activity, surpassed only by drug and arms trafficking. 

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning movement to bring back the stolen art, and hobbyists like Mr. Kumar are the backbone of these efforts. Collaborating over Facebook groups, he and other heritage enthusiasts spend their spare time scouring virtual museum catalogs and auction listings to identify stolen items, as well as urging authorities to hold the art world accountable. 

Courtesy of Vijay Kumar

Volunteers with India Pride Project sometimes identify stolen idols by comparing fuzzy archival images, like this one of a bronze Shiva statue (left photo), to photos found in museum catalogs and auction house listings (right photo). It's a meticulous task that can take years.

As a result, artifacts have begun trickling back to South Asia. The United States alone handed over about 250 antiquities estimated to be worth $15 million to India last year. Museums have also returned artifacts to Nepal, the most recent being a 13th-century wooden sculpture of a tree deity that had been with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1991 and was repatriated in August.

Every single return motivates the volunteer sleuths to keep digging. At the heart of their slow and often frustrating work is a quest for justice and a sense of patriotic duty. Although they’re based on different continents and rarely meet, Mr. Kumar and his fellow volunteers share a unique camaraderie born out of a desire to correct historical wrongs. 

“We are happy with what we’re doing, but we still feel that we are scratching the surface. That’s what keeps us going,” says Mr. Kumar. “We are like the Avengers.”

The making of an art sleuth

It all started in the early 2000s, when Mr. Kumar and his friends began taking weekend trips to visit obscure temples, only to find that the idols and intricately carved sculptures that adorn temple compounds were often missing. They also noticed that a lot of Indian pieces in museums or auction houses abroad had ominous clues of theft: chisel marks at their base, vague descriptions of how the object had been acquired, and traces of vermilion pigment indicating the idols had been in active worship.

So they started documenting their findings. Mr. Kumar and his friends formed Facebook groups of like-minded people, including people who were living abroad and could check out artifacts in person. Others scanned books on Indian art to build a repository of idols in situ. Once they had a sizable database, Mr. Kumar and his core group of volunteers began the process of matching the items described in the books to artifacts overseas.

Courtesy of M.T. Anderson

Museum director and member of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign Roshan Mishra (center) stands with other volunteers from around the world who worked to bring the Laxmi Narayan idol back to Nepal.

It’s a meticulous task that involves looking for unique markers like discoloration, dents, or inscriptions. 

“Some [of the idols] we search for three or four years,” says Mr. Kumar. “Some of them happen in a night.”

Soon, law enforcement in the U.S. and other countries investigating art theft started contacting Mr. Kumar’s group for help. A big breakthrough came in 2010 when Mr. Kumar’s team tracked down an archival photo of an 800-year-old bronze Nataraja, a sculpture of the dancing Hindu god Shiva, that had been stolen from a small village in southern India. It turned out to be a vital piece of evidence against New York-based art dealer Subhash Kapoor, who had smuggled artifacts worth approximately $140 million and was arrested in 2011.

Mr. Kumar later founded the India Pride Project, which now has nearly 8,000 volunteers spread across the globe. Some disappear for months on end due to family or work commitments, but they almost always resurface, he says. Most have no formal training in art or history. Mr. Kumar works in the shipping industry, and his core group consists of a techie, an auditor, and an engineer. 

“We are not special,” he says. “We’re common citizens who are just using a bit of common sense.” 

But experts in art theft attest that through cooperation and commitment, these amateur investigators punch well above their weight. CEO and founder of London-based Art Recovery International Christopher Marinello says the volunteers’ research and his team’s legal skills together are “a considerable force in encouraging the possessors of looted objects to give up without a fight.” 

Courtesy of M.T. Anderson

The idol of Laxmi Narayan stolen in 1984 was returned to Nepal last year, with devotees and volunteers who contributed to its return carrying it in a palanquin to be reinstated at the temple.

Work of devotion

Locating a stolen idol is only half the battle. Often, idols remain on display in museums for years after they’ve been identified as stolen. That’s where volunteers like Slok Gyawali come in. 

Mr. Gyawali maintains an Excel spreadsheet of cold cases based on leads posted by the anonymous administrator of a Facebook account called Lost Arts of Nepal. Whenever he has free time, the Portland-based sustainability consultant contacts museum authorities, presenting evidence gathered by volunteers and asking them to share the idol’s provenance.

“They usually tell me to bugger off,” he says.

One case that has been on his mind for a long time is a copper necklace of the goddess Taleju Bhawani, a patron deity of Nepali royals, which has been with the Art Institute of Chicago since 2010. Despite being located years ago, it hasn’t been returned to Nepal, where Mr. Gyawali is originally from. 

He feels frustrated by his inability to send the deity home, especially around the festival of Dashain — the only day when the goddess’ temple in Kathmandu is open to the public.

“These are works of devotion, of art, and they mean something,” says Mr. Gyawali, a devout Hindu. “My gods don’t deserve to be away from the devotees.”

In the rare instance that the gods do return, they’re greeted with nothing short of a festival. On a crisp December morning last year in Patan, Nepal, an idol of Laxmi Narayan was carried in a palanquin and reinstated with Hindu rituals as the community gathered to seek blessings. Stolen in 1984, the idol’s return was the result of a collaborative campaign between the civil society group Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign (NHRC), the Nepal government, and U.S. law enforcement. 

“It was almost like having a family member back after 37 years,” says Roshan Mishra, a member of the NHRC. “It was so overwhelming, I was in tears. I have never experienced that sort of emotion.”

Outside his day job as the director of a Kathmandu museum, Mr. Mishra, with help from his wife, runs a virtual museum of Nepal’s lost heritage. “It’s our duty to protect it and bring it back,” says Mr. Mishra. 

He worries that Nepali culture may fade as Western influence increases among Nepali youth, and makes an effort to talk about his work to his teenage son.

That sense of duty to past and future generations of Nepalis is something Mr. Gyawali can understand. He sometimes feels guilty for leaving Nepal to come to the U.S., but helping repatriate Nepal’s lost heritage makes him feel like he’s giving something back. It makes his mom proud, too, he adds.

As I stand on the blue bridge, gateway to a subtropical garden on this island haven near southwestern England, I look to the side and see a small creature sitting astride a mound of hazelnuts. Its fur blazes a bright russet color, its tail fanned out like a sail. I glance up, and in the neighboring pine tree I see two or three more, racing up and down the trunk, pausing every so often to steal a glance at the feast below, waiting their turn.

These are red squirrels, and to see them in the wild, let alone in such numbers, is a rare treat. The animals were once common throughout the United Kingdom, but the invasive gray squirrel has pushed them to the brink of extinction in all but a few strongholds.

There is, however, hope of a comeback. This sanctuary on Tresco – one of the Isles of Scilly lying 28 miles off the southwest tip of England – represents a part of that hope: a translocation project, where red squirrels are now thriving. And this is only one facet of a multipronged approach that seeks to reduce the exploding populations of gray squirrels and give the reds a chance of clawing back some of their native habitat.

“I see it as unacceptable to do nothing,” says Sir Ferrers Vyvyan, chairman of the Cornwall Red Squirrel Project. “If we want to preserve an iconic animal of our countryside, we need to take active steps or the grays will eliminate the last few populations we have remaining.”

Red squirrels have been a part of Britain’s native fauna for thousands of years. They are emblematic of the British countryside, so much so that generations of schoolchildren have been raised on Beatrix Potter’s “tale of a tail” about a little red squirrel named Nutkin. By contrast, the first recorded introduction of North American gray squirrels into a British park occurred in the 1870s. 

Through a combination of competition and the transmission of disease, the gray squirrels have all but wiped out the reds in much of the U.K. While there is debate over whether the aim should be countrywide removal of the nonnative grays, it’s clear that the two species struggle to coexist, so most experts agree that at the very least, red squirrel populations need to be defended against encroachment by their bigger cousins.

Jason Thomson

Red squirrels live in this habitat on the island of Tresco, where they have no natural predators and are protected from an incursion of gray squirrels by the vast stretch of ocean separating the island from the Cornish coastline.

Potential on The Lizard and Land’s End

Sir Ferrers is spearheading the efforts in Cornwall to reintroduce red squirrels, but the situation is far more complex than on Tresco. There, the red squirrels have no natural predators, and there has never been an incursion by gray squirrels – not to mention the vast stretch of ocean separating Tresco from the Cornish coastline, which constitutes a formidable barrier to any grays that might have a mind to venture there.

But there are parts of Cornwall that offer potential – in particular, two peninsulas, The Lizard and Land’s End, that are surrounded on three sides by the sea. If gray squirrels could be eradicated from these areas, a buffer zone could be put in place at their necks, to keep the grays at bay.

Indeed, progress was being made on The Lizard in doing just that. But those efforts ground to a halt during the pandemic, and the gray squirrel population has rebounded. 

So, the Cornish project is on pause, while its participants regroup. Sir Ferrers is determined to have the habitat ready, and a sufficient number of red squirrels lined up for reintroduction, before embarking on the final stages.

“Cornwall is a good example of very careful and guarded steps towards translocation,” says Craig Shuttleworth, honorary research fellow at Bangor University, and an adviser to the Red Squirrel Survival Trust. “The headline is that reds return to the south of England, and you can get that by being cavalier – you can grab the flag and say we’ve done it first – but you might end up on the rocks later on.”

Could predators help?

Playing a vital part in the Cornish efforts is a place called Paradise Park, a wildlife sanctuary and attraction that focuses mainly on parrots, but also hosts an abundance of other animals. Red squirrels are being bred in captivity there, and the progeny from this project have already been used to bolster a reintroduction program on the Welsh island of Anglesey.

Another success story in red squirrel conservation, Anglesey presented an entirely different challenge than on Tresco. The island off of Wales is far larger – measuring some 720 square kilometers (278 square miles) to Tresco’s 3 square kilometers (1.2 square miles) – and it was already home to a large population of gray squirrels. It is also far closer to the mainland, being separated only by a narrow body of water, with two bridges spanning the gap. 

All of this meant that even though grays were successfully eradicated there in 2013, some occasionally ventured back from mainland Wales, both across the bridges and by swimming over the Menai Strait. As a result, monitoring and trapping encroaching gray squirrels had to continue.

But such a commitment of finances and personnel cannot be guaranteed indefinitely, which is why the Anglesey project is pivoting to a fresh approach based on recent research: the reintroduction of another native mammal in decline, the pine marten. Despite the pine marten being a natural predator of squirrels, the scheme is garnering increasingly broad support.

“The idea is that red squirrels are very fly, and the pine marten is a natural predator of theirs, so they’re better at getting away,” says Alison Hales, director at Paradise Park. “Whereas for gray squirrels, the pine marten is not a natural predator, and the grays are a bit more chunky, too, so they’re not quick enough to get away, and they’re more likely to end up as prey.”

Karen Norris/Staff

Where pine martens are present, the evidence suggests that gray squirrel populations are suppressed and red squirrel numbers rebound. Projects are afoot to reintroduce pine martens in other parts of the U.K., not least in Devon, the county next to Cornwall, where the Two Moors Pine Marten Project hopes that bringing the animals back will help restore the natural balance. 

But this is not the only novel approach to controlling gray squirrels – an important shift, as more traditional methods, which often include trapping and killing the animals, sometimes cause emotions to run high. The other ideas currently being developed are lacing food for gray squirrels with a contraceptive or (more controversial) using a gene drive technology that would manipulate the genetics of gray squirrels to induce infertility.

While these techniques are likely years away from widespread adoption, assuming they overcome all of the test phases and regulatory hurdles, Dr. Shuttleworth finds hope in the possibilities.

“I’m very optimistic,” says Dr. Shuttleworth, who has worked in this field for more than two decades and led the project on Anglesey. “Red squirrel conservation has a lot more local groups involved – that’s good, because if you’ve got community driving the project, it gives you sustainability.”

Reuters

Protesters hold a "dignity" banner during a protest demanding better conditions and infrastructure for studying, in Santiago, Chile Sept. 9.

One after another, Latin American societies have been turning leftward in recent years, fueled by broad movements demanding social change and more inclusive economies. Now, that political “pink tide” seems to have stalled. In Chile, voters demanded a new constitution and then rejected a draft for reaching too far left. In Brazil’s presidential election, a hard-right populist survived a first-round ballot last Sunday to force a runoff against a widely revered socialist. What’s going on?

The new popularity of an old Chilean protest song may offer a clue. Its line, “Until dignity becomes a habit,” rang out in 2019 during the country’s largest demonstrations since the return of democracy 30 years ago. The idea of inner dignity was echoed as well during this year’s elections in Colombia, as a campaign slogan for Francia Márquez on her way to becoming the country’s first female and Black vice president.

For decades Latin Americans felt like victims of authoritarian regimes, economic disparity, corrupt elites, and great-power competition. But a new mentality has taken hold, say regional experts, shaped by demands for honest government, equality of individual rights, and freedom from violence and corruption. “Citizens are now, understandingly, seeking solutions,” wrote Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Washington-based Council of the Americas, in Barron’s. “Equality of opportunity has never really existed across most of Latin America. It is now central to voters’ demands.”

That change in expectations has gained momentum since the pandemic, but it was already underway. Despite the current swing in political leadership from right to left, voters across the region are showing more appetite for competence in government than for broad reinventions of governance. They are impatient for results, yet wary of ambitious reform.

In Chile, for example, voters elected a young progressive named Gabriel Boric on a broad platform of inclusivity in government, recognition of Indigenous rights, and economic reforms to close the wealth gap. Yet six months after his inauguration, they rejected a new constitution that attempted to address those concerns through 388 different provisions. Voters found it unwieldy, and Mr. Boric has since asked the Congress to create a new, smaller drafting assembly.

Elsewhere, the desire for social and political change is gradually chipping away at the region’s long tendency to rely on strong, authoritarian-leaning leaders, or caudillos. In El Salvador, for instance, President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself “The Savior,” enjoys broad support both in spite of and because of his iron crackdown against violent gangs. But voters are now torn by his attempts to override a constitutional prohibition against seeking another term. Though weary of violence, they seem unwilling to sacrifice the integrity of their democratic institutions.

As the annual regional survey, AmericasBarometer, noted last year: The Latin American public “strongly asserts its desire to have a voice in politics.”

Democratic awakenings are often accompanied by setbacks and cultural contradictions. Yet, as the Mexican writer Octavio Paz observed, “There is something revealing in the insistence with which a people will question itself during certain periods of its growth. It is a moment of reflective repose before we devote ourselves to action again.” In Latin America, a recognition of dignity as innate is helping redefine democratic participation.