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A lot of Florida Democrats scoffed when President Bush flew into the little Democratic stronghold of Gainesville two days before Election Day. And as Democrats chuckled dismissively, some 17,000 people from nearby rural counties such as Gilchrist, Lafayette and Dixie drove in to cheer the first sitting president since Grover Cleveland to visit their area. Then those bucolic, often overlooked counties produced some of the most dramatic Bush victory margins in the state. Now many Democrats are rethinking long-held assumptions about how they can win Florida. The emerging post-election gospel: It's past time for Democrats to start fighting hard for...

Lakeville, Mass. -- They may be separated by no more than a liquor store counter, a yard fence or a narrow road strewn with the withered oak leaves of autumn. The constant images of George W. Bush and John Kerry on their television screens have been replaced by scenes of fighting in Fallujah and the death of Yasser Arafat. But the rifts in this small Massachusetts town, almost two weeks after the presidential election, remain so deep and so persistent that friends and neighbors wonder whether they can ever be repaired. "We have to unite, or else we're going to...

........At Baldie's Pizza in Lakeville, owner and Kerry supporter Michael Mastrangelo, 48, said he won't talk politics with his mostly Republican customers. "They're the majority. We're the minority," Mastrangelo shrugged, adding, dismissively, before he disappeared in the kitchen: "Bush won. It's not a big deal. Our deficit will continue to grow. Our troops will continue to die." "But you support our troops, right?" interrupted his daughter, Christina Mastrangelo, 23. Her boyfriend is a Marine in Iraq, and although she voted for Kerry, she said there must be "something right about Bush" that made most U.S. troops cast their ballots for...

States with more mobile homes as a percentage of total housing units voted predominately for Bush.

George Bush owes his triumph to the conservative values of small town America. America’s moral majority is made up, not of zealots, but ordinary folk who care. Welcome to the heart and soul of America. A sign greets visitors outside a truck stop with a resounding: "Let freedom reign." There is one white, wooden evangelical church and lots of Bush-Cheney posters along the roadside. The message on the way out is: "Support our troops." This is Crittenden, Kentucky, a Bible-belt hamlet where the sale of alcohol is banned. Yet it is not completely stuck in a prohibition era time-warp. People...

Bush is leading Kerry by 12 points among rural swing states, according to a Center for Rural Strategies poll released Saturday. Among likely voters in these states, Bush is at 53 percent, while Kerry is only at 41 percent. The 80-55 Coalition for Rural America performed the non-partisan poll, which looks at the impact of rural states on the election. Bush’s lead is clearly outside of the 4.4 point margin of error. "I believe this will be sufficient to tip the scales in several critical states and give the president a victory overall,” said Republican strategist Bill Greener of Bush’s...

EAU CLAIRE, WI – Today, The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm organization, announced its endorsement of George W. Bush for President.  Today’s endorsement marks the first-ever presidential endorsement in the Farm Bureau’s eighty-four year history.  48,190 member families belong to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.“We are endorsing President Bush because Wisconsin farm families have benefited from his leadership. His support of initiatives in the state has helped agriculture grow to be a $51 billion part of Wisconsin’s economy,” said Bill Bruins, president of the Farm Bureau, and a dairy producer from Waupun. “President Bush’s leadership on farm programs,...

Sen. Zell Miller urges gun-rights audience to support Bush campaign CONCORD - With the sound of stock cars zooming by as a backdrop, Democratic U.S. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia Friday urged gun owners to support President Bush's re-election. Miller spoke as part of a National Rifle Association rally at Lowe's Motor Speedway before the Busch Series SpongeBob 300 race. It was the influential gun lobby's first rally in conjunction with a NASCAR race, said Chris Cox, the organization's chief lobbyist. Former President Bill Clinton has credited the group with Al Gore's defeat in the 2000 election. "NASCAR nation is...

"He (Kerry) also made campaign stops meant to play to southeast Ohio's strong gun-rights voters. In Pike County's city of Buchanan, Kerry's motorcade stopped at the Village Grocery Store, where he paid $140 for a hunting license he plans to use during a hunting trip and campaign stop in Youngstown this week." "Can I get me a hunting license here?" Kerry asked store owners Paul and Debra McKnight.

Kerry Supporters Few In Mid-Michigan Town Email to a Friend Printer Friendly Version (TV5) Vassar-- This time of year the talk of the town in Vassar is usually the upcoming pumpkin roll. But judging from the yard signs that line the road as you drive into town, pumpkins have been replaced by politics. The latest buzz is the new Kerry-Edwards campaign headquarters that has opened up downtown. In a city that is largely Republican; many Vassar residents are not taking to it very well. At Betty Lou’s Restaurant TV5 was able to find only one Kerry supporter. Lyla Fabro says...

Porter Township in northwestern Pennsylvania was an unlikely hotbed for an anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch Republicans with deeply-held conservative values. But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler, threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United States to pass a law...

Squinting from a barber's chair, Rod Berlekamp explains why President Bush (news - web sites) has his vote locked up for a second straight U.S. presidential election despite job losses in this rural northwest Ohio town. "The most important thing is we've got to defeat terrorism. We can't have a good economy with terrorism," the retired 72-year-old registered Republican said, while getting his hair trimmed at Varsity Barber Shop. One chair over, Montie Waters could not disagree more. "There are too many big corporations putting people out of work," the retired 63-year-old said, explaining why he plans to vote for...

AS a lifelong Democratic activist and steelworking shop steward in the key swing state of West Virginia, Rick Casini is exactly the kind of man Senator John Kerry needs to help him claw his way back into a presidential campaign that is in danger of slipping away from him.Casini works at the 95-year-old Weirton steel mill on the Ohio River in America’s industrial heartland. Within a few minutes’ drive of this soot-stained West Virginian town lie the borders of Ohio and Pennsylvania, closely contested states Kerry must win if he is to wrest the White House from President George W...

There are two months to go and appalled Democrats are starting to fear that the presidential election may be all but over. If they took a trip through the small towns of Middle America, they would be even more alarmed. Over the weekend, I spent a morning on the road with two Republican activists affectionately known as "Old Lion" and "Young Tiger" in the Ohio town of Springfield. This is the archetypal Midwestern "swing" town where the election supposedly will be decided. The local factory has shed thousands of jobs. Health care costs are spiralling. Times are hard. And yet,...

NEW LEXINGTON, Ohio, Sept. 3 - Sharon Alfman, the cook at the little County Seat Diner here, might seem to be a likely John Kerry supporter. She has voted Democratic most of her life. She has no health insurance through the diner, and her husband's insurance ran out after he was on disability for more than a year. But she already knows that she is going to vote for President Bush. Mrs. Alfman, 51, said that if the Democrats could do anything about health insurance, they would have done it under Bill Clinton. Now, she said, the Democrats have "burned...

OKLAHOMA CITY - With his up-by-the-bootstraps biography and Carolina drawl, John Edwards is working to advance John Kerry's presidential candidacy in regions where the Massachusetts senator of privilege may need help connecting with voters. Edwards has spent much of his time since joining the Democratic ticket last month in a Southern swath long dominated by Republicans and conservative rural Midwestern towns, areas where his populist message and emphasis on middle-class values _ not to mention his background _ are familiar. The campaign hopes that sending Kerry's personable running mate into GOP bastions will sway disgruntled Republicans and undecided voters and,...

For small-town American mayors, a visit by a sitting president is an honour that can only be dreamed of. But not in Iowa, or Pennsylvania, or any of the other dozen or so deadlocked "swing states" that have November's US presidential election balanced on a knife-edge. President George W Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry, have become such frequent visitors that local authorities are rebelling en masse. Mr Bush has visited Pennsylvania 32 times since 2001. Instead of rolling out the red carpet, they are totting up the costs of police overtime, emergency planning and other expenses, and...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — President Bush is detouring again from the well-traveled campaign trail of southern Michigan to seek votes in a small town up north. Bush was to speak Monday afternoon in Traverse City, which last drew a presidential visit in 1975, when Gerald Ford rode in the National Cherry Festival parade. The outdoor rally at the Grand Traverse County Civic Center comes barely a month after Bush campaigned in the Upper Peninsula city of Marquette, where no sitting president had appeared since William Howard Taft nearly a century earlier. "Every single vote counts and we're going to...

ELKO, Nev. - Vice President Dick Cheney touted Bush administration policies on mining and forestry during a campaign stop Saturday in this rural northern Nevada town. "As Westerners, the president and I understand the importance of mining to Nevada's economy, and Nevada families," Cheney told a crowd of more than 2,000 people at a rally on the Elko High School football field. Cheney is the first sitting vice president to visit Elko since Richard Nixon did so in 1956. Bush carried this Republican stronghold four years ago with 78 percent of the vote. Nevada is considered a battleground state by...

The informal vote at the Evening News booth was close, however. BY EVENING NEWS STAFF Incumbent George W. Bush narrowly beat Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry to remain the leader of the most powerful nation in the world during a neck-and-neck race for presidency of the United States. That's the way it was at the Monroe County Fair at least. A completely informal poll at The Evening News booth in the merchant's building showed the president winning his second term over the Massachusetts senator 2,220-2,087. Fairgoers visiting the booth cast their ballots during the week. President Bush won every...