Cory Haala is a political historian of the United States Midwest, specifically political organizing, activism, and the Democratic Party. In April 2026 he published his first manuscript with the University of Illinois Press, When Democrats Won the Heartland: Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan. In it, he argues that grassroots activists applied the historical principles of left-populist parties to revive working-class solidarities that transcended rural-urban, racial, gender, and other divides. Beginning in response to the 1980s’ twin economic shocks of deindustrialization and the Farm Crisis, these self-described “progressive populists” fought to re-center liberal politics on “pocketbook” issues, electing a generation of, representatives, and local officials across the Midwest at a time where the United States—and the Democratic Party—swung to the political right.  

His public work has included The Majority Report with Sam Seder, appearances on Illinois Public Radio and Indiana Public Media, video conversations with progressive populist advocate Jim Hightower, written work at TIME Magazine’s Made By History, and moderating a panel at Farm Aid 40, “Lessons in Mobilizing: From the Farmer-Labor Movement to the Tractorcades to Today.”  

 His current research projects include articles on state- and provincial-level reactions to the North American Free Trade Agreement, voter registration initiatives from South Dakota reservations to Minneapolis welfare offices, and a co-authored article on the twin economic crises of the 1980s American Midwest with fellow DePOT member Emiliano Aguilar. He has also begun work on a new manuscript (see below) with support from a Sam Fishman Travel Grant at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. 

 

Project Statement:

Citizen Action, the Midwest Academy, and the Fight to Remake the American Left

This book-length project documents the rise and fall of the Citizen Action activist group, a national federation of state-level activists who had supported causes from utility rate regulation and health care reform to labor rights and farmers facing foreclosure. 

Formed with the help of the progressive training organization Midwest Academy, in the 1980s Citizen Action aggressively involved itself in Democratic politics by embracing a range of populist organizing and policy solutions to the intertwined crises of neoliberalism—in the American Midwest, the deindustrialization of the Great Lakes region and the collapse of family farming. Working with self-described “progressive populist” elected officials in the 1980s like Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, Citizen Action backed national figures like 1988 presidential candidate Jesse Jackson before becoming embedded in the Clinton Administration’s quixotic efforts at health care reform. 

This project highlights the successes of economically-populist organizing against deindustrialization, the challenges of embedding those politics within the Democratic Party, and the interconnectivity of rural and urban spaces affected by deindustrialization.   

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