"We tried to convince people that they needed to come out and meet with this senator from Chicago, who on top of everything else was African American," Brown, a circuit court clerk, said of the 1997 gathering. "We had people looking at us strangely."
Because he was from Chicago and came downstate?
As Sen. Barack Obama emerges as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, worries
Obama's courting of the region began soon after he was elected to the legislature in 1996. Southern Illinoisans interpreted the visits as a sign that he was already thinking about a future run for statewide office, but the trips also served as an education in the middle-American milieu that Obama's Kansan grandparents hailed from but that he knew little of, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spent his adult years in big cities. Before mostly white audiences, Obama would joke about his name -- rhyming it with "yo mama" -- and test his message about getting past divisions to solve problems.
Obama's advisers have pointed to his success in winning over "downstate" Illinoisans as a sign of his electability, but political analysts question the claim. Obama lost most of downstate Illinois in his Democratic primary race for U.S. Senate in 2004, and his big win in the general election that year came against Alan Keyes, a black conservative
Coal miners. Why do they hate us?
"He certainly has shown a good amount of reach into downstate and southern Illinois, but . . . it has been overstated," said Michael Lawrence, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. To the extent that Obama has penetrated downstate, said Chris Mooney, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Springfield, it has been partly a result of his constituent service, a tool he lacks in the presidential campaign. "He was thinking Illinois from Day One" in Washington, Mooney said. "He has the classic attention to detail of a Chicago politician, the idea that 'we gotta get ours.' "
But Obama's push for support in rural Illinois has also driven his stances on several issues that could complicate his matchup against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He is strongly in favor of ethanol, the corn-based biofuel that is being blamed for driving up food prices, and he supports the new farm bill, which McCain says is wasteful and at odds with Obama's call for reforming Washington.
In Obama's telling, he early on viewed downstate Illinois as a proving ground for his belief that the differences among Americans are smaller than they might appear. He describes Illinois in his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," as a "microcosm of the country" and recalls the wonder of his week-long 1997 tour with aide Dan Shomon -- the "miles of cornfields" and roadside vendors with signs such as "Good Deals on Guns and Swords."Most of all, Obama relished how the region defied stereotypes. After Shomon warned Obama to wear only khakis and polo shirts, "no fancy linen trousers or silk shirts," Obama enjoyed pointing out residents with linen slacks. When Shomon urged him not to request Dijon mustard at a restaurant, the puzzled waitress said she had it.
So the conversation took place in front of the waitress? Why else would she be puzzled? So did they have some kind of spicy mustard, or Grey Poupon?
In the state legislature, Obama befriended rural lawmakers such as Sen. Gary Forby, a conservative Democrat and contractor from a coal county. "We're down-to-earth people, and Barack was down-to-earth people, too," Forby said last week. "What I liked about him was the way he was brought up, that he had never had anything gave to him." Forby is sure that rural Americans will agree: "If people could just talk to him for a few minutes, I don't think there will be an issue."