There’s a perfectly good reason for this.
Clad in camouflage clothing, a 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun under his arm, Senator John Kerry and three fellow hunters emerged from an eastern Ohio cornfield Thursday morning with four dead geese and an image his aides hope will help shore up his macho bona fides among rural voters.
This may seem like a waste of time if you believe those rural voters who are impressed with such things are already committed to Bush, but as the Wall Street Journal reported today, that’s not necessarily the case.
Larry Dwyer, Oscar Simpson and Alan Lackey are lifelong Republicans who voted for President Bush in 2000. They agree with many of the president’s policies.
But they won’t be voting for Mr. Bush this year, they say. All three are elk hunters who spend much of the year anticipating outdoors vacations in New Mexico and Colorado. They argue that the administration has bad conservation and wildlife policies that threaten what is dearest to them: public hunting grounds.
“It happens to be my biggest issue,” said the 48-year-old Mr. Dwyer recently as he and his companions rode on horseback through a valley in the Carson National Forest in New Mexico. Elk season here started Oct. 1.
The three represent a small group of hunters, fishermen and other outdoorsmen who are considering leaving their Republican roots this year. In this closely fought election, they are part of a larger wave of one-issue voters who intend to cross party lines for their cause, along with Democrats who support the president’s aggressive stance on terrorism and economic libertarians who dislike his conservative stand on social issues. Each may represent only a small sliver of the electorate — but in an election this close, such slivers could turn out to matter.
There isn’t a lot of cold data, but the anecdotal evidence looks relatively encouraging.
At the Outdoor Adventures Hunting and Fishing Show in Albuquerque last February, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation asked 600 sportsmen about their election choice in 2000 and their plans for November. Nearly half said they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Bush in 2004, even though most said they had done so in 2000.
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“What’s turned me off on Bush is that he is trying to force his way into wild places that should never be industrialized,” says 52-year-old Karl Rappold, a rancher on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, a spectacular meeting of mountain and prairie where the administration has pushed for drilling. Though the administration has stopped work on that plan, Mr. Rappold says he will vote against the president — as will his wife, their five grown children and at least two other relatives, he says. He says they all voted for Mr. Bush in 2000.
Remember, Kerry won’t win this “Outdoorsmen Vote” this year, but he doesn’t have to. If Kerry takes away a healthy percentage of voters who resent Bush’s handling of wildlife and natural resource issues, Kerry will be well positioned in many key states with high rural populations.