'THE FORGOTTEN AMERICA'

Amid Palin’s Rise, Salazar Talks up Obama’s Rural Record

By David Frey, 9-15-08

	Sen. Ken Salazar appears at the Democratic National Convention, where he helped nominate Barack Obama as a member of the Colorado delegation.

As Sarah Palin appears to win over rural voters to Republican presidential nominee John McCain, Colorado’s Democratic senator is playing up Barack Obama’s record on rural issues.

“This is a choice between McCain and Obama,” says Sen. Ken Salazar, “and the question of rural voters in my mind is going to be made on the records of who will deliver the most for the part of this great country that has been forgotten.”

Salazar spoke in a conference call with reporters on Sunday, the day before Obama was scheduled to appear in two small cities in rural Colorado. Obama is scheduled to speak on Monday in Grand Junction, on Colorado’s Western Slope, and in Pueblo, in southeastern Colorado. He’s set to appear on Tuesday in suburban Denver town of Golden.

Salazar avoided any references to Palin, who was a small-town mayor in rural Alaska before becoming governor and being picked by McCain to be his running mate. Instead, he pressed Obama’s record, particularly his support for the farm bill, a bill Salazar said he worked on with Obama. He stressed that McCain had voted against every farm bill for 15 years.

McCain has blasted the farm bill as a “$300 billion pork-laden agriculture subsidy bill.”

Some polls show McCain leading in rural parts of states like Missouri and Ohio, while Obama leads in urban areas.

Much has been made of Palin’s rural credentials, and some observers see her as helping win rural voters at a time when economic woes could lure them to Obama. She’s a self-described “hockey mom” and moose hunter. Her husband Todd is an oil worker and former commercial fisherman, and races snowmobiles. “My husband and I, we both grew up working with our hands,” Palin said at the Republican National Convention.

“She is a phenomenon and people are paying attention,” Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, recently told Reuters. “It’s changed the dynamic for the moment for sure.”

The center is conducting a poll on how well the candidates are appealing to rural Americans. In May, it found McCain leading Obama among rural voters in battleground states.

That dynamic could change again by Election Day, though, Niel Richie, of the League of Rural Voters, told the wire service.

“What is on people’s minds is the economy – how they are going to get their medicine and pay for gas in their cars? There is real economic difficulty in rural America.”

Both McCain and Palin are Westerners. Asked how easily it would be for Obama to overcome their appeal in the rural West, Salazar likened them to George Bush and Dick Cheney, who had stressed their Western credentials. Bush lived on a Texas ranch. Cheney lived in Montana.

“Rural communities, I think, have been left behind with the Bush-Cheney administration,” Salazar said.

Salazar was a prominent figure supporting Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Appearing in his trademark white cowboy hat and bolo tie, Salazar nominated Obama as a member of the Colorado delegation. His home rural county, Conejos County, in southeastern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, is among the poorest in the nation. Salazar calls such places “the forgotten America,” where income levels lag, populations fall, schools dwindle and hospitals and clinics close.

“Both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain are good friends, but I had to make a choice between the two of them,” said Salazar, who said Obama’s emphasis on alternative energy could benefit rural communities. A solar array in Salazar’s San Luis Valley has been touted for bringing jobs to the remote area.

“Sen. Obama is going to stand up for rural America, for small and rural communities across the West and across America,” Salazar said. “It is also clear to me, given the track record here, that Sen. McCain will not.”

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