Rural Illinois May Offer Clues to Obama's Electability

Even though one of Obama's rivals, the state comptroller, was favored in rural Illinois, Obama tried for the region, aided by a key endorsement from the daughter of the popular former senator Paul Simon, who died during the race.

Brown, the Chester activist, recalls a visit Obama made to an American Legion hall in a nearby town where "you'd see these little tiny white ladies posing excitedly [for pictures] with Barack, and he was as comfortable with them as they were with him." In Cairo, a town at the southern tip of the state that had suffered racial strife three decades earlier, Obama was met by a cheering, diverse crowd, a welcome he recounted often on the trail.

But Obama's urban roots were apparent. Clemons recalls that when he asked the campaign to send lawn signs to Carbondale, it instead sent boxes of placards of the sort that city residents could put in their apartment windows. "I said, 'You need the metal things to stick in the ground!' " he said. "They learned a few things."

Obama ran away with the primary, winning 52 percent of the vote in a crowded field. But he fared less well in rural Illinois, losing 88 of the state's 102 counties.

He pressed on with the downstate outreach in the general election. Buddy Maupin, a regional director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, recalled that when Obama came south to visit the intimidating Big Muddy River prison, he asked to tour it apart from the other top officials who were along, so that he could speak with prison employees directly.

The outreach had limits. When several union leaders urged Obama to go on a duck-hunting trip downstate, a common routine for Illinois politicians, Obama refused, to the surprise of the union bosses. "He said, 'I'm not a duck hunter, and I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not,' " Maupin said.

After Republican Jack Ryan quit the race over revelations from his divorce filings and his party could find only Keyes to replace him, Obama carried all but nine counties. But this was not proof of rural appeal, given his weak opponent, Mooney said: "It's not that he's not good with others, but the 2004 election is not evidence that he's good at connecting with the rural white guy."

Despite arriving in Washington as a celebrity, Obama kept his focus back home. He held town meetings, hired respected downstaters for his staff, and picked fights for more veterans' health funding for Illinois and for upgrading locks on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.

But his drive for support downstate also opened him to criticism that he was engaging in some of the "old politics" he decries, as he sided with some powerful state interests. After voting in 2005 against a Bush administration loosening of pollution rules, Obama sought to regain favor with the coal industry by coming out for huge subsidies for liquefying coal for transportation fuel, irking environmentalists who noted that this would increase carbon dioxide emissions. He backed away last year, leaving both sides unsure where he stood.

His support for the new farm bill won praise from lobbying groups such as the Farm Bureau. But Dan Owens of the Center for Rural Affairs, a group opposed to the bill, lamented that a reform-minded senator such as Obama did not realize that many farmers would support a politician who built a case against the subsidy system. "It's just the typical political calculation that most elected officials make," Owens said.

Against Clinton this year, Obama prevailed in most of his state's farm country, paralleling his strong performance in farm states such as Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. Even in southern Illinois, where Clinton won 14 counties, Obama has acquired a basic familiarity that he still lacks in key swing states such as Ohio, where it is easy to find voters who voice false rumors about his religion or his patriotism.

He prevailed against Clinton in Chester, a former coal town of 7,800 whose economy now relies on a prison and mental health facility, with the only major private enterprise a company that makes cake mix and microwave popcorn, and tourist business generated by Chester's status as the home of "Popeye." Outside a grocery store, June Cash, the wife of a retired minister, said she preferred Clinton but would back Obama over McCain.

"I still don't know if he's got what it takes to run this country," she said. But, she added, "I don't want the same thing we've been having."

Will Harris, an auto mechanic, has come around to Obama. "I'm sick of the lobbying and bull crap in Washington," he said. "I feel like he's someone who would fight for a small-business owner like me instead of a bunch of lobbyists. I hope I'm right."