Bush Losing Ground in Rural America

[RPankn]

Voters in struggling outlying areas tend to identify with his values, but economic concerns are alienating some lifelong Republicans.

By John M. Glionna
Times Staff Writer

April 19, 2004

SHERMAN COUNTY, Ore. — Like much of rural America, this isolated community south of the Columbia River Gorge is a place where people — like their parents before them — vote Republican when they pick their presidents. They went with George W. Bush four years ago. And most are likely to support him again this year.

But cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.

They're hardworking people like Sherman County farmer Tom Martin. As he plows the stubble of last autumn's wheat harvest on his 12,000-acre spread, the 60-year-old hears mostly grim economic news on his radio.

"I'm right there on the fence," Martin said. "Bush has lost my vote, but I'm just not excited about [John F.] Kerry either. From where I sit, neither party has much regard for the little man. And that includes farmers." [But the DLC said 'national security' was of paramount concern for Americans! ;D]

For Bush, winning the rural vote looms more important than ever — especially in such swing states as Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2000, rural voters overwhelmingly backed him over Democrat Al Gore, giving Bush the boost he needed to win in some states.

Although analysts predict the president this year will again capture the majority of votes in outlying communities, they say he must win by a decisive margin to remain in the White House.

A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that among rural voters, Bush leads Democrat John F. Kerry, 47% to 41%. But the president's support has slipped — down from 55% in November — for reasons ranging from the troubled economy to growing dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq.

Perhaps Bush's greatest strength with rural voters is an emotional bond based on cultural values. They view him as someone who thinks like they do — a president who speaks their mind on issues like property rights, abortion and gay marriage.

In a seeming attempt to capitalize on that relationship, Republicans last week opened a new front against Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, highlighting Bush's more conservative views on cultural issues.

"Social issues are something that Republicans have used as wedge issues, especially among rural, Midwestern and Southern voters," said Rick Farmer, a political scientist at Akron University in Ohio.

"They'll look for inconsistencies on Kerry's stance on some of these controversial issues. And in close battleground states, especially those with large rural populations, it could make a difference."

'Used to Making Do'

Marked by its rolling wheat fields and steep, narrow canyons, Sherman County can feel a lot farther from Portland than a mere 100 miles.

Locals drive an hour to fill a prescription, shop at a supermarket or order pizza. There are no practicing attorneys, no funeral parlors, one video store and only one part-time doctor. The county's only blinking-yellow traffic light at Biggs Junction was removed this year after officials decided it wasn't needed.

Such isolation sows self-sufficiency — a legacy of the Oregon Trail pioneers who settled here 150 years ago. Farmers don't need a tow truck; they can fix their own broken tractors. And they own guns to scare off intruders. No police needed, thank you.

When choosing politicians, people go by a gut instinct framed by their interest in farm prices and a natural bent toward conservatism.

Along the county's dusty back roads, past fallow wheat fields and rooster-red farmhouses, pro-Bush bumper stickers adorn tractors and silos.

"We're country people, and that's what George W. Bush represents: He's country," said Ray Smith, 57, whose wheat farm spans 3,000 acres. "I'm not going to go crying to the president over dollars and cents. He believes in the same things I do. That's good enough for me."

Farmer Chris Moore says the Bush administration has meant more freedom for folks to run their own affairs without nosy government intervention. The other party, he says, keeps pushing environmental programs that pay more heed to some endangered insect than the economic plight of the American farmer.

"The Democrats don't trust us as stewards of the land. They're in our face with regulations to make the ground we farm one big national park," Moore said.

"They took down big timber first, and farming is next. President Bush may be the only defense we have left."

Prolonged hard times, however, make others uneasy.

"Bush is scaring the heck out of me," said farmer Gary Irzyk, who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 because he thought Bush was too influenced by the religious right. On the economy and foreign affairs, Irzyk says, "He's way in over his head."

When times were good, Sherman County was among the Northwest's richest. Old-timers recall a rural kingdom that flourished beneath the shadow of snow-capped Mt. Hood, a place where private Cessnas seemed as numerous as John Deere tractors.

But a five-year drought and the lowest wheat prices in a generation have caused the community's collective fortunes to plummet. The county now ranks as the fourth-poorest in the nation, with an unemployment rate of 12% — Oregon's highest.


Link: www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-ruralvoters19apr19,1,4629264,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[RPankn]

In the last six years, Sherman County has lost nearly a third of its school-age children as families have moved away to look for jobs. Now most wives work part time, and many families collect food stamps.

Last year, Smith offered 100 free acres to anyone willing to bring a good-sized company — and hourly wages of $15 or more — into the county. So far, there have been no takers.

But across the nation's countryside, Democrats have yet to capitalize on Republican vulnerabilities. [ What? Americans are not concerned about 'national security'?!]

In Blaine County, Neb., the nation's second-poorest in per capita income, Republican chairwoman April Wescott said rural Americans didn't believe in pointing fingers at politicians.

"We're used to making do with what we have. We're less spoiled than most Americans," she said. "When hard times come, you just get through them. You don't blame the president or your neighbors. That's just the way it is."

Kerry has been unable to define himself in the eyes of rural voters or articulate a plan of economic recovery, according to a bipartisan poll sponsored last week by George Washington University.

"You see a great deal of discontent in rural America, but people there don't see any options," said James Moore, an independent political analyst in Portland.

"They don't hear Kerry talk about issues that concern them, such as water rights and federal ownership of land." [I thought 'national security' was the main issue for Americans. I don't get it, after all the DLC said it was so]

Don DeGrange, a retired contractor with coral-blue eyes and worn suspenders, sees Bush as a "Christian president" protecting the world from terrorism.

"Frankly, I don't even know who this Kerry fella is," he said. "And I'm going to go with who I know."

Some Just Sitting It Out

Not long ago, Lloyd Walker committed a near-unforgivable conservative faux pas.

The mayor of tiny Greenville, Mich., was miffed that a major refrigerator maker had announced plans to pull up stakes for Mexico, taking with it 2,700 local jobs.

The veteran politician blamed not only the Electrolux factory owners, but U.S. policies that allowed big business to abandon rural towns without the slightest economic penalty.

Speaking at a nationally televised news conference last fall after the Electrolux announcement, Walker lost his cool.

"I said I had never in my life voted for anyone but a Republican for president," he said in a recent interview. "But then I looked right into the bright lights and admitted it: That may change this year."

The town's Republican congressman called from Washington to question Walker's loyalty to the party. Colleagues clamored for Walker to resign from the Montcalm County Republican Committee.

Walker has stood his ground. "I'm wringing my hands over this election," he said. "Bush assures us things are getting better. But I don't see it."

Rural America is feeling the pinch. As the number of farmers and ranches declines and manufacturers leave, unemployment and personal bankruptcies rise.

"Look around these places and you won't see any young people," said Jon M. Bailey, a research director for the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb.

"The couples of child-bearing age and kids in school, they're all gone. There's no one to do volunteer work that rural towns depend on, from the fire department to the school board."

Analysts suggest that support for Bush has waned among those who remain — the elderly, who become reliant on Social Security and Medicare.

"Some realize they can't make it under the current economic situation. And they're turning away from the Republicans," said Ed Sarpolus, an independent pollster in Lansing, Mich.

But while dissatisfied with Bush, Republicans won't necessarily vote for his opponent, Sarpolus said: "Some will choose to sit out the election. That's not good for either candidate."

If rural Robeson County, N.C., is any indicator, both major parties may be in trouble. Devastated by the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs after trade accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, residents took their concerns to Congress last month.

A social services director told the Rural Jobs Caucus and Economic Development Task Force that neither Republican nor Democratic strategies worked.

"These factory pullouts have brought a rise in crime, public assistance and a deep sense of hopelessness," Mac Legerton, who directs the Center for Community Action in Robeson County, said afterward.

"We're not just talking about a loss of jobs; we're talking a way of life. There's a crisis in rural America. And neither party is doing enough to solve it."

In Sherman County, Ore., wheat farmer Steven Burnet has watched the economic drought slowly squeeze the joy out of his life. For one thing, he sees his wife, Patty, less often: She's been forced to go back to work as a substitute teacher.

Something else distresses him almost as much.

"People around here don't smile as much as they used to," said Burnet, 63. "You see them and they just don't look as happy as they once did. It's just the weight of this bad economy hanging on their shoulders." [But they're getting 'national security'! Yeesh! I guess you just can't please some people. You tell them they want 'national security' and they go asking about for more, totally unrelated things like a good economy, jobs, healthcare ;D]

Burnet sees little chance things would improve with the election of a new president. So, just as he's done for the last 45 years, he'll vote Republican.

"I'm going to vote with my conservative values in mind, just like I always have."


Link: www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-ruralvoters19apr19,1,4629264,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[calabi-yau]

Kerry and the Democratic party have missed out on offering an alternative voice to disaffected democrats and republicans alike. The Democrats' campaign is filled with empty rhetoric, mirrors Bush' policies in every aspect and is basically just an exercise in marketing strategies.

The ABB meme is obviously not sufficient to raise people's hope and motivate them to participate in the electoral process.

[POA]

I found this article a while back and thought it was really good on the subject of political support in rural America. I'm only going to post the first page, however.

article | Posted October 16, 2003
Needed: A Rural Strategy
by John Nichols

Helen Waller is feeling lonelier these days. She names the families that have moved off farmsteads along the road where she lives in McCone County, Montana. There are so few folks left that the post office's route drivers deliver mail only three times a week. And when Waller makes the nineteen-mile drive to Circle, the nearest town, she notices that it is emptying out as well. The old hospital is now closed, as is the "junior department store." "I remember when I was a girl, going to town to buy a pair of shoes was a big deal," recalls Waller, a lifelong resident of McCone County. "Now, I can't get shoes in Circle. I used to laugh when people said there might come a day when there was no one left out here, but I don't laugh anymore. I just get angry."

Waller's anger, which is echoed on the front porches of farmhouses and around the cafe tables of the upper Midwest and the Great Plains, is not directed at neighbors who have left the area of eastern Montana where her family settled after World War I. Still farming at age 69, she is well aware of how hard it is to make ends meet in these parts. What angers Waller is a sense that the deck keeps getting stacked against rural America by powerful corporations and by politicians of both political parties who pay more attention to promised rural panaceas--like free trade and a bigger-is-better attitude toward farming--than to the painful realities of the countryside. "I ask myself: How can people in Washington let this happen?" she says. "I wonder if it's because they've gotten so used to measuring everything in economic terms that they don't recognize that behind all these numbers from all these forgotten places, there are people who are hurting."

The hurt Waller describes is a political force Democrats must reckon with if they hope to regain the White House and Congress in 2004. Less than a quarter of America's population now lives beyond this country's cities and suburbs. But even as their percentage of the national population dwindles, rural states still elect two US senators each, and more than fifty US House members represent predominantly rural districts. The electoral votes of even the least populous state can decide close national elections. In 2000, for instance, Al Gore fell just three electoral votes short of winning the presidency. That means that the electoral votes of a single rural state--such as Helen Waller's Montana, where rural support for the Democrats tumbled in 2000--could have rendered Florida's disputed electoral votes inconsequential.

Polls show that rural Americans are even more concerned than urban voters about access to healthcare, education and the jobs that have gone missing since George W. Bush became President. But rural voters also bring unique demands to the table--for constraints on agribusiness conglomerates, new approaches to trade policy and a renewed federal commitment to rural development. The ability of Democratic candidates to answer those demands with significantly more populist responses than did their predecessors in 2000 and 2002 will determine whether the party has a chance in 2004.

"A lot of Democrats at the national level continue to look at where the concentrations of population are. They want the most bang for their buck. States that are less populated look, at first glance, like they aren't worth the investment," says North Dakota Progressive Coalition director Don Morrison. "What they haven't quite figured out is that there are two places in America where you see the most pain, the most economic injustice: the inner city and rural America. Democrats win the inner cities, and they could win the rural areas. But first, they have to recognize that there is pain out here. Then, they have to make it a whole lot clearer that they're going to do something about it."

The prosperity of the 1990s never reached most of rural America. During that decade, 676 of the nation's 3,141 counties lost population, and the worst population losers were in what is still referred to as America's heartland. More than 60 percent of the counties in the Great Plains have experienced depopulation so profound that an area the size of the original Louisiana Purchase again qualifies for the "frontier" designation that the US Census Bureau gave remote regions before the great waves of settlement in the nineteenth century.

[rest at link]