Obama's rural fundraising strongest - Clinton second

Who’s Winning Rural Hearts And Minds--And Dollars?

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Granted, the kind of money rural areas are coughing up for the presidential campaigns is dwarfed by what’s coming out of the cities. In the last quarter news outlets reported around five percent of donations came from rural America. But Obama leads all candidates, including the Arizonan John McCain, the North Carolinian John Edwards, and New Mexico’s Bill Richardson. He outraised Hillary Clinton by $100K, but also had almost double the number of contributors as she.

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Looking at the Democratic side, it’s surprising that John Edwards’s populist message isn’t resonating. It’s possible that the endless stories we’ve all been subjected to about his expensive haircut have done the trick: making him appear to be a hypocritical rich guy only pretending to care about the disenfranchised. Or possibly savvy early donors think that the only way to stave off a seemingly inevitable Clinton nomination is to shore up the candidate that the media tells us is the one who could stop her--Barak Obama.

There’s a profound sense among western Democrats that I’ve talked to that Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket would cut downticket Democratic candidates off at the knees. Edwards somehow isn’t making much of a dent in the west, and while Bill Richardson should be a natural favorite, he has yet to put his best foot forward. In fact, he stumbles so often and in such public ways that you have to wonder if he has a best foot. Thus, by default, your candidate is Obama.

It’s also entirely possible that the Obama campaign is just doing a better job of reaching out to people across the country. I was in Boise last month, my visit coinciding with an Ada County organizing meeting for Obama with his western field director. A few of the big names in Idaho Dem politics were there, but more importantly so were an impressive number of would-be volunteer worker bees. And not 10 minutes after I read the fundraising story at Daily Yonder, I got an e-mail letting me know about an upcoming Obama for Idaho organizing rally in Idaho Falls.