Southern Illinois feels forgotten in presidential race

SHAWNEETOWN, Ill. -- Folks around this outpost a few miles from the Ohio River are used to feeling snubbed by political power brokers hundreds of miles away in Chicago or the Illinois capital.

But Betty Smith feels especially slighted this election season.

Neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor Republican presidential challenger John McCain -- not even their running mates -- has visited the state's southern region.

"That would probably be nice for a change instead of just seeing them on the news" said Smith, a 41-year-old grandmother.

But with Election Day just over two weeks away, that's unlikely.

Thousands of Southern Illinoisans -- and millions of folks in rural areas and small towns across the country -- won't have a chance to see the presidential candidates up close.

Presidential campaigns often concentrate on bigger cities where the media markets and voter rolls are far bigger, or on smaller locales if they represent a key voting constituency.

It's often a matter of time and money. With the race for the White House in its closing stretch, candidates already spread thin are dashing from one swing state to the next in a late push to woo undecided voters.

And with Illinois "pretty much a foregone conclusion for Obama," there is little incentive for him to spend much time here, said Tom Rudolph, a University of Illinois political science professor.

"Illinois is trending in a Democratic direction, and at no point in 2008 has it been a toss-up state. Missouri is a different story," Rudolph said.

Gallatin County and the rest of Southern Illinois, Rudolph said, "have some reason to feel neglected, but I don't think they're being singled out. It happens everywhere."

Voters like Smith, who's leaning toward Obama, say seeing the real candidates "would actually be great. We would think that we were recognized at least instead of just being forgotten down here."

In Jackson County, home to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Mark Lehnhoff -- owner of motorcycle repair and plastic welding businesses -- believes a visit by McCain or Obama "would show respect to our area if they want our vote."

"With Obama being from Illinois, you'd think he'd want to come through here," said Lehnhoff, a married, 36-year-old father of two from Campbell Hill, a roughly 90-minute drive from St. Louis. "In the same respect, I kind of feel we live in Nowhereville."

Skirting part of the sprawling Shawnee National Forest, Shawneetown doesn't have much aside from the courthouse, a couple of convenience stores and Rudy's barbecue restaurant that's a local hangout.

But there's an interesting political past to Gallatin County, where Democratic leanings run as deep as the region's coal mines, perhaps leaving candidates for the nation's top offices figuring there's little to be gained by dropping by.

After the Ohio River swamped what had been Shawneetown in 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal went to work, moving the town three miles inland and rebuilding the streets and houses. "Perhaps because of that history," The Chicago Tribune wrote of Shawneetown in 1995, "voters here and throughout Gallatin County have remained loyal to the party" of FDR.

Republican Gov. Jim Edgar romped to re-election in November 1994, winning all of the state's 102 counties except Gallatin, which Democrat Dawn Clark Netsch won by just three votes.

That's not to say Democratic politicians should take the county for granted. Republican Ronald Reagan carried the county when he won the White House in 1980. And while Bill Clinton got 60 percent of the vote here in 1996 en route to a second term and fellow Democrat Al Gore got 54 percent in a losing bid to succeed him, the GOP's George W. Bush got 50 percent of the county's votes to Democratic opponent John Kerry's 49 percent in 2004.

Gallatin County has been losing residents in recent decades as many of the region's coal mines closed. There were nearly 7,000 residents in 1990; now there are about 6,400. And its 9 percent unemployment rate is typical in a region with the state's highest jobless rates. The median household income in the county, according to 2000 Census Bureau figures, was $26,118.

The local economy "just needs to be refreshed a little bit, and it will take the politics to do it," says Roberta Tarrence, a school-bus-driving widow whose quilting business near the county courthouse has gone cold, forcing her to peddle her crafts at three shows to earn what she once got from one. A lifelong Democrat, Tarrence, 77, backs Obama.

Drinking an RC cola at the Shawnee Quick Mart, retired miner Michael Wenzel, 66, guesses Shawneetown might not be on itineraries of presidential hopefuls because it's viewed "as a lost cause or something."

At the Corn Crib produce stand she runs with her husband and another couple just east of Shawneetown, 58-year-old Shirley Ahrens wonders what all the fuss is about.

"It's like anything else -- you get a politician, they come in here and make a big ado, saying `We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that.' Then they forget it when they leave, and nothing gets done," says Ahrens, a transplanted northern Illinoisan who plans to vote for McCain.

"I don't think we're being singled out at all. All politicians are going to go where the votes are."