Candidates vie for rural voters Small towns look beyond photo ops

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As the crow flies, only about 10 miles separate Willimantic and Wellington.

The two rural Piscataquis County towns are comparable in just about every demographic measure – median age, income, education, family size, housing costs.

Politically, however, they are as different as a brush-clearing Republican and a pheasant-hunting Democrat.

As presidential contenders George W. Bush and John F. Kerry vie for their share of the nation’s estimated 55 million rural voters, they – upon losing their neckties – will be taking their cases to small towns just like these.

Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, this weekend took his “Celebrating the Spirit of America” tour to several small Midwestern towns – including a stop Sunday in tiny Cascade, Iowa, population 1,958 – hoping to make inroads into traditional GOP territory.

Legions of campaign staffers also were dispatched over the weekend to rural areas in key battleground states, including Maine.

“We are going to compete for rural votes, and we know we have to compete,” said John Norris, Kerry’s field director, himself a “farm kid” from Iowa. “It could provide the margin. We have to do better than we’ve done in rural America.”

Courting country folk has been no easy task for Democrats, let alone those from New England, and – heaven forbid – those from highfalutin Massachusetts, considered among the nation’s most liberal states.

“Most of these rural areas are very Republican, and what [Democrats] do is try to minimize the damage,” said Sandy Maisel, a political analyst at Colby College in Waterville.

In 2000, Bush won 60 percent of rural votes, those in towns with less than 50,000 people, according to the Economist magazine. In cities with between 50,000 and 500,000 residents, he won only 40 percent. In cities with more than 500,000 people, Bush barely broke 25 percent.

Bush won 80 percent of the vote in Willimantic, population 135. That comes as no surprise considering it has the state’s highest percentage of Republicans among towns with more than 100 people.

From her front porch Friday, Debbie Pettigrew, the 49-year-old chairwoman of the town’s Board of Selectmen, predicted nothing less for 2004.

“Bush speaks to people around here,” said Pettigrew, who recited her list of important issues, including property rights, gun ownership and support for the military, in which two of her sons have served.

They are issues – along with abortion, gay marriage and lower taxes – that concern many in small-town America, polls routinely find.

Meanwhile, just two towns away in Wellington, population 258, the issues – and the voters – are a bit different.

The town, which in the 1970s became a destination for so-called “back to the landers” – or “hippies” as Pettigrew prefers – ranks among the state’s 10 most Democratic towns.

From his 330-acre farm, Richard Garrett explained the difference between voters in his town and those in Willimantic.

“We’re smarter,” he said.

Garrett, a 59-year-old self-employed photographer, researcher and lumber dealer, said issues such as the Iraq war, limited access to rural health care and a dismal northern Maine economy will not win Bush many friends in his neck of the woods.

“This is a ‘C’ student whose political machine has been lying to us from day one,” said Garrett, whose town also is listed among Maine’s poorest. “And when is it good economy to outsource jobs to India? How is that good?”

Bush does appear to be losing favor among the rural electorate, recent polls suggest, as concerns over the economy and the war persist despite what some consider improvements on both fronts.

A Center for Rural Strategies poll released last week showed Bush leading Kerry 51 percent to 42 percent among rural voters in the 17 battleground states, including Maine.

The nonprofit center, based in Whitesburg, Ky., found that Bush’s lead had softened since the beginning of the year, when he led Kerry by 15 points among rural voters nationwide.

During his Midwest swing, Kerry stressed his support for hunting rights and family farms. He repeated his plan to increase the number of enlisted soldiers to ease the burden on reservists, who disproportionately come from rural areas.

Bush campaign spokesman Kevin Madden on Saturday called Kerry’s claims of rural empathy “almost a willful deception.”

“[Kerry] seems to have caught amnesia on the campaign trail,” said Madden, wondering aloud how the Democrat can reconcile his supposed support for hunters with a failing grade from the National Rifle Association. “He is out of touch with rural America.”

Beyond the issues, the fight for small-town USA also relies on images, analysts say, referencing a resurgence of photographs of the president clearing brush at his Texas ranch and Kerry shooting two pheasants (with two shots) while campaigning in Iowa last October.

While Pettigrew conceded Kerry’s marksmanship “wasn’t bad,” she said the Bush photograph seemed “more real.”

“At least when [Bush] wears jeans, they’re not new,” she said.

Maisel, on the other hand, had trouble finding authenticity in either photo opportunity.

“I don’t think either of them is fooling anybody,” the Colby professor said. “They were both born with silver spoons.”