Wisconsin: The blue state Kerry could easily lose - Slate

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108710/

By Julia Turner
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004, at 3:48 AM PT


The corner booth at the Culver's in Dodgeville, Wis., could probably seat a family of six, but on a recent afternoon, there was just enough room for me, Steve Freese, and Steve Freese's map. Freese is the Bush campaign chairman for Wisconsin's rural Iowa County. As I took my seat, he unfurled a county map so big and so detailed that it listed the owners of each plot of land. Freese was able to point out the names of individual voters and explain why they'll cast ballots for Bush, but he seemed more interested in showing me the purple-and-green stickers that dotted the county. They were the sort usually employed by first-grade teachers. Each one read, "WOW!" "Wherever you see a 'WOW!'," Freese said with satisfaction, "we've got a 4-by-8 sign." There were eight WOW!s on the map.

The 4-by-8 yard signs are significant in campaign-land: Because they're allocated by Victory 2004, the state party's turnout campaign, they indicate how important the campaign directors think your county is. In 2000, Bush ignored rural southwestern Wisconsin. ("We didn't get yard signs until the weekend before the election!" Freese said.) Gore, on the other hand, lavished attention on the area, chartering a boat and idling down the Mississippi River along Wisconsin's western border. Bush lost the region—and the state—to Gore. But the margin was tantalizingly small. Gore won Wisconsin by just 5,708 votes, or 0.2 percent. So for the past four years, local Republicans have been hatching plans to paint the state red this Nov. 2. The question is whether the Kerry campaign—and independent outfits like America Coming Together, the League of Conservation Voters, and the countless other left-leaning groups planning get-out-the-vote initiatives here—will be organized enough to compensate for the Republicans' head start. So far, most polls show the state leaning slightly to Bush.

Wisconsin is a funny swing state. A century ago, Robert LaFollette Sr. launched the Progressive movement here, and his success may explain why so many Wisconsinites still think taxes and government services are reasonably sound ideas. Many of those voters reside in Wisconsin's rural areas, which aren't necessarily Republican. (Gore won nearly 40 percent of the state's rural counties in 2000; he won just 18 percent of rural counties nationwide.) Wisconsin's cities, meanwhile, aren't reliably Democratic. (Bush took metro Milwaukee, with lots of help from the suburbs.) And the state doesn't even swing that much: The last time Wisconsin chose a Republican for president, it was Reagan in 1984. But Wisconsin's consistent record belies how closely contested it usually is. Seven of the last 11 presidential elections have been decided by five points or fewer. Sure, the state produced Democrat Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. (Feingold's up for re-election this year, and the most recent polls suggest he'll win handily.) But Wisconsin also gave us Tommy Thompson—Bush's secretary of health and human services—who was a beloved Republican governor here from 1987 to 2001. It's no surprise Republicans saw Wisconsin as ripe for the picking ...

<continued> http://slate.msn.com/id/2108710/

I grew up there, but I bolted for the oasis of sanity that is Madison more than a decade ago.

Tommy didn't get caught in most of his lies at the time they were told. Plus, his "good ol' boy from Elroy" act is less of an act, and is almost the truth. I don't think you can really compare Thompson and Bush.

Bush comes across as a used car salesman... I just that hope most of my fellow residents' "Wisconsin Bullshit Detectors" still work.

I re-read that paragraph several times. So. a reporter meets with a BUSH OPERATIVE who shows him a MAP with stickies on it.. showing where they had placed 4x8 signs, based upon the BUsh people's idea of good counties for them. THAT means Kerry will lose Wisconsin?

Ummm... I'd be happy to have lunch with a reporter here in my area of Washington State, too. I'd bring along a map, and I"d put little GOLD STARS, in areas I THOUGHT were pro-Kerry.

Do you REALIZE how stupid and slanted this article is?