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Dems try to regain lost voters outside cities

Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan talks to supporters during a campaign stop at Sharp Farms in rural Wilson County, N.C. Hagan will face Republican Thom Tillis in November’s general election. Republicans trying to take back the Senate want to hold on to their edge with rural voters, as Democrats try to make inroads with a voting group that once was part of the New Deal coalition.

PERRY, Ga. – In an arena usually reserved for rodeos and livestock shows, Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn told a boisterous crowd she was “glad to be home.”

Her Republican opponent in the Georgia race, David Perdue, stood on the same debate stage and bellowed, “Welcome to Perdue country.”

Neither candidate lives near the fairgrounds, much less among cattle or row crops. Nunn is a nonprofit executive who resides in a liberal neighborhood near downtown Atlanta, while Perdue is a wealthy former corporate CEO who lives behind multiple gates on a coastal island.

But both candidates spent their formative years in middle Georgia, and both have made a concerted play for rural and small-town voters despite the state’s population shift to cities and suburbs. The same dynamic exists in Senate races in several other Southern states – Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and North Carolina – that will help determine which major party controls the Senate after the Nov. 4 election.

For Republicans, six seats from a Senate majority, it’s a matter of maximizing their edge outside of cities by capitalizing one more time among rural voters who dislike President Barack Obama and Democratic standard-bearers like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. For Democrats, the challenge is making elections about something other than Obama, as they again try to reclaim middle-class and poor whites who once anchored President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.

Republicans acknowledge that Nunn may have a small opening, at least in south Georgia, where her father, former Sen. Sam Nunn, remains popular among erstwhile “Southern Democrats.” Republicans attack the incumbents’ 2010 votes for the president’s health-care overhaul. McConnell says Grimes would play along with Obama’s regulation of coal-fired power plants, which he blames for 7,000 lost jobs in Kentucky. Perdue says he wants to serve on the Senate’s Agriculture Committee and mocks Nunn’s wish for the same appointment as window dressing.

Democrats counter with endorsing a minimum-wage boost and portraying Republicans as obstructionist. In Arkansas, Pryor hammers GOP Rep. Tom Cotton for opposing the farm bill. Grimes hits McConnell for his ties to wealthy Republican donors, like the billionaire Koch brothers. Hagan criticizes Republican Thom Tillis for using his post as North Carolina’s House speaker to adopt budgets she says shortchange public schools. Nunn slams Perdue for leading outsourcing efforts for several American firms, then boasting during the campaign that he’s “proud of it.”

Still, many residents and political observers say, winning outside of cities is as much about cultural identity and imagery as it is any particular policy – a political reality demonstrated in everything from Grimes shooting a gun in one of her ads to Perdue donning blue jeans and boots for many campaign stops.

“It’s not a matter of disliking or distrusting Alison,” explained Bobby Clue, who runs the Chamber of Commerce in Pulaski, Kentucky. “There’s just not much for people to identify with when they think about President Obama or Harry Reid. We revolve our lives around church and schools and our civic clubs. It’s just a different speed here.”



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