Obama Tries to Show Missouri Concern for Small-Town Issues

Sen. Barack Obama talks to customers at Bell Restaurant in Lebanon, Mo. The candidate is chasing an elusive prize for Democrats: the rural Missouri vote. (By Jae C. Hong -- Associated Press)

Blunt said McCaskill virtually lived in and around Springfield, showing she learned her lesson from her losing gubernatorial campaign two years earlier. Obama could never put in that kind of personal effort, he said, and McCaskill barely won in a year when congressional Republicans were beaten soundly across the country.

But Obama's organization may outdo McCaskill's. By design, a significant number of his Missouri staffers have local roots. Peachy Myers, who commands the field operation, comes from Rolla, and two deputies are from Joplin and Kansas City.

Nearly 100 volunteers, most from Missouri, just finished a six-week commitment to work 30 hours a week. Many worked more. Volunteers and staffers have canvassed in rural areas where no presidential candidate has operated before. On Thursday, the campaign will open two larger offices in St. Louis and one in Kansas City.

The campaign sees potential advantages in Missouri as Obama tries to do what Kerry and Gore could not. One is the existence of a large black population amid polls that suggest Obama is likely to get more than 90 percent of the African American vote nationwide. Another is geography: Missouri's long border with Illinois has given voters more than average familiarity with the senator from next door.

Obama strategists see an opening, too, in the results of the Feb. 5 Republican primary, in which McCain received just 33 percent of the vote, narrowly beating Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney on a day when 200,000 more Missourians cast ballots for a Democrat than for a Republican.

It was no accident that Obama's first campaign stop designed for the general election was in Cape Girardeau, a conservative Mississippi River community that is Rush Limbaugh's home town.

"The key in Missouri, for a Democrat especially, is you have to show up in rural Missouri," said Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.), whose family has run eight statewide campaigns since 1980. "They want to see you in their town. They want to know that you're talking to them and listening to them."