Obama seeks to score in a very red zone
Rural states like Ind. now in play
KNIGHTSTOWN, Ind. - Most mornings, Roger Roberts, retired auto parts factory worker, puts on his Barack Obama cap and his "Ag Rurals for Obama" button, gets in his red GMC pickup with the Obama sign in the back window, and heads to a truck stop on the edge of town.
In Henry County, where two-lane roads wind around stretches of corn and soybean fields, Democrat John Kerry got only 35 percent of the vote four years ago. But Roberts, the volunteer rural county captain for the Obama campaign here, says he has made progress: More than a dozen friends and neighbors have asked him for help registering to vote.
"I ain't talking about thousands of people," said Roberts, who said he has never done anything like this before. "But . . . even just the ones who registered to vote, they wouldn't have done it otherwise."
As the election draws near, polls show Obama within striking distance in a half-dozen states like Indiana that are usually safely red. The economy is driving that advance, but the Obama campaign is working to capitalize on it by pushing hard in rural areas where Democrats generally don't bother competing. If he can narrow his losing margin in such places, Obama might win states like Indiana, which hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.
Polls suggest Obama is making gains in the nation's countryside. In Indiana's Ninth Congressional District, which stretches along the southern part of the state bordering Kentucky, and where Kerry lost to President Bush by 19 points in 2004, recent polls have shown Obama running only two points behind John McCain. Another poll had McCain leading by just two points in Nevada's largely rural Second District.
Obama is also close to catching McCain in North Dakota, normally a staunchly Republican prairie state, and in parts of rural Ohio.
The McCain campaign is fighting back. A rural strategy team has been at work targeting farmers and ranchers in battleground states on agricultural issues, energy, and land conservation. And the campaign is taking nothing for granted. In Indiana, the McCain campaign hired two respected Republican operatives with extensive experience in the state to direct its organization, which is building on a powerful grass-roots network solidified over decades. In recent weeks it has made phone calls and distributed yard signs by the tens of thousands.
"One of the reasons Indiana has gone Republican since 1964 is a general belief that is strong in rural America of lower taxes, less government, more individual freedom, and strong family values," said Marc Lotter, communications director for the McCain campaign in Indiana.
Rex Early, the former chairman of the state Republican Party, said Obama might do well in Bloomington, home of Indiana University and the most liberal part of the Ninth, but in rural areas of the district, he said, the Illinois senator has little hope.
"A lot of the people in Southern Indiana philosophically are very, very, very conservative," he said. "The fact that Obama is the most liberal senator in the US Senate, I think that's a very telling issue with them. They're pro-gun."
Still, the McCain campaign was concerned enough about the Hoosier State to send vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to campaign in Indiana on Friday, a diversion of campaign resources that amounts to a tactical win for Obama.
Interviews around rural Indiana last week found some people who usually vote Republican considering Obama for the same reasons as their urban and suburban counterparts: They are deeply worried about the economy.
Dee Stark, 43, a secretary at a small college in Hanover, voted for Bush twice. But the bailout scared her. Where is all that money going to come from? she wondered. Trickle-down economics had always made sense to her, but now she finds herself agreeing with Obama that it's time to ask the wealthy to contribute more - and give the middle class a break.
"I never thought this before, but I just think the rich need to realize that they . . . need to step up and do more than the average Joe," she said as she loaded groceries into her car outside Kroger's supermarket in Madison.
In the last decade, the loss of manufacturing jobs has hit rural Indiana hard, and the recent economic slowdown has hurt the surviving companies. Ten years ago, Greg Burchett, a 38-year-old press operator at a tool and dye company in Batesville, could hardly get a day off because there was so much work. The other day he was sitting at
In Indiana's small towns, national chains have elbowed aside the mom-and-pop stores that sustained local economies for generations.
Danny Jackson, who grew up in Versailles - a town of about 1,800 - and now owns the Yellow Dog Tavern & Eatery downtown, described the economic mood as sour.
"Our jobs have gone to Mexico, the Mexican population has moved here, the Japanese have taken over the auto industry, we're borrowing from China to keep the economy afloat, we're spending $10 billion a month on a war that most likely should have never been waged halfway around the world," he said, on a recent afternoon.
A veteran and former Bush supporter, he said he planned to vote for Obama this time because he thinks the Democrat is smarter, more visionary, and more even-tempered than his Republican rival.
But he isn't certain whether Obama can win Indiana. One obstacle, he said, is racism. Indiana is no longer the hotbed of racial vitriol that it was in the early 1900s, when it was home to more Klansmen than any other state. But Jackson said many locals he knows have openly told him they wouldn't vote for a black person.
"There would be a much wider spread in the polls if race were not an issue," he said.
But the Obama campaign is determined to compete in places like Versailles. Obama himself has made time in the post-convention stretch to visit rural outposts like Elko, Nev., and he recently gave an interview to the national farm radio syndicate. The Obama campaign has also deployed an army of surrogates with agricultural credentials, people like Fred Yoder, the former head of the National Corn Growers Association, who have gone to farming communities to testify to Obama's support for the farm bill and ethanol subsidies, both of which McCain opposes as wasteful.
In Indiana last week, Birch Bayh, the former senator and father of Senator Evan Bayh, traveled through rural communities with the former head of the Illinois Soybean Growers Association and the head of the Illinois state Senate's agriculture committee, pressing the case for Obama. At the Blackford County 4-H building in Hartford City, the 80-year-old Bayh rhapsodized about growing up on his grandparents' farm and winning his early campaigns in country precincts.
"At the end of the road, when you're so tired you can't do anything else, get two more votes for Birch," he told them.
The campaign has also built a vast network of volunteers to call their neighbors, spread the word at the myriad local harvest festivals, and hand out fliers detailing Obama's position on gun rights. The campaign has rural county captains for each of the state's 92 counties and opened up nearly four dozen field offices. The work is not easy, and it requires a sense of the local culture. Sitting across the table from Roberts at the truck stop in Henry County the other day, Roger Wallace, a lifelong Republican, said he would vote for McCain despite McCain's opposition to ethanol and other farm aid subsidies.
"I think ethanol is going to continue regardless of who's in office," he said with a shrug.
Roberts didn't argue. Instead, as Wallace moved to the next table, Roberts spoke about how the mother of his granddaughter's playmate asked for help registering to vote, and how she put Roberts in touch with some of her neighbors. The key, he said, is to be low-key.
"We hustle wherever we can," he said. "But you got to know, people here, they don't like to be pushed, at all."
Correction: Because of a reporter's error, a front-page story on Sunday about the Obama campaign's attempts to win over rural voters in red states erroneously quoted Marc Lotter, communications director for the McCain campaign in Indiana. Lotter was discussing the reasons Indiana has gone Republican since 1964, not Iowa. 