Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Les Spencer is an atypical Barack Obama supporter. He's a redneck. His buddy Tony Viessman calls himself one, too. Without accessing their inner Jeff Foxworthy, they define redneck as hardworking guys who like to hunt, fish, and maybe pop a beer or two.
"I hunt squirrels, too," Spencer said, in between drags of bummed Pall Malls on Viessman's back porch. "And I like eating turtles."
Spencer and Viessman comprise the sum total of the Rolla, Mo.-born-and-bred "Rednecks for Obama." Unaffiliated with the Obama campaign, it's a home-grown shtick the two retirees invented to address what may be Obama's most serious challenge in becoming commander in chief: winning - or at least not totally losing - the "redneck" vote.
The two retirees have traveled on their own dime to all the debates and the Democratic National Convention to try to convince doubters that Obama is redneck-friendly. "This election is too important," Viessman said.
Obama's 'small-town' gaffe
Every voter worth his deer rifle remembers what Obama told attendees at a San Francisco fundraiser in April. He said small-town voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere had become "bitter" over losing their jobs. That bitterness caused them to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people like them," he said.
Obama told the New York Times recently the statement was "my biggest boneheaded move" of the campaign, saying that he was "clumsily" trying to say the opposite: that since Democrats hadn't done a good job of reaching out to rural voters on cultural issues, they haven't been able to connect with them on economic ones.
Far more than his losing predecessors Al Gore and John Kerry, Obama has traveled to the reddest parts of states like Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri to try to connect. In 2004, George W. Bush won two-thirds of the vote in these rolling hills of Phelps County two hours southwest of St. Louis.
'Change is hard'
Viessman was so impressed that Obama was the first presidential candidate to visit Rolla since native Missourian Harry Truman that he made a 3-by-7-foot sign ("Cost me 25 bucks" he said) to welcome him to town.
But visits are only the start of a courtship. Viessman is more succinct in analyzing why fellow rednecks may not be flocking to Obama's campaign.
"Guns," he said. "And that he's black."
"We are just trying to tell people that you don't have to be afraid of Obama," said Spencer, who has done everything from working as a laborer to selling real estate. "He's not going to try to take away your guns, no matter what the NRA says."
"Sometimes change is hard for people," said Viessman, a retired highway patrol officer. "But I don't care if you're black or Oriental or green, if you can do the job. And he can do the job. He's pretty near the smartest guy who's ever run for president."
Cultural wedge issues
In 2004, author Thomas Frank wrote in his bestselling book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" that Republicans had convinced working-class whites to vote against their economic self-interest by appealing to them with cultural wedge issues like abortion, gay rights and gun laws.
Viessman's neo-redneck take on that: "My dad used to say, 'A poor man who votes for a Republican is a fool.' "
But McCain supporters say opposition to Obama goes deeper than race in rural Missouri.
"Race is absolutely an issue to some people, and that is unfortunate," said Missouri state Rep. Jason Brown, a Republican legislator from suburban Kansas City and a McCain supporter who was wounded while serving a tour of duty in Iraq during his legislative term. "But what people should be focusing on is that Barack is too liberal for many people in Missouri, particularly those outside the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City."
K.C. Morrison, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, said Obama has copied the political playbook of his top Missouri surrogate, Sen. Claire McCaskill, in directly appealing to rural voters with economic and health care issues. Nearly 18 percent of the nation's rural residents didn't have health insurance in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Economic focus
"While he can't take off the blackness when he goes into these areas, he has made an effort to moderate his views on issues like guns," said Morrison, who concentrates on racial politics. "He also makes a genuine effort to talk about economic issues. The pocketbook issues may cause them to listen to another message in this moment in time."
As for the impact of race in rural Missouri, "that is the great imponderable of this election," Morrison said. "It's unclear."
While "Rednecks for Obama" may have won the hearts - or at least piqued the interest - of the 1.2 million folks who have visited their Web site, rednecks4obama .com, in the six weeks since its launch, not all rednecks are fans.
"So what do (Rednecks for Obama) say a redneck is?" asked Matt Hinds, 27, who lives on the other side of Rolla. When told, he turned to his buddy Jason Boswell and said, "If that's what they say rednecks are, well, that sounds like you."
"You, too," Boswell, 28, said.
But these rednecks aren't Obama fans.
"I think he's a two-talker," said Boswell, who works at a local Wal-Mart. "He'll say something to you that you want to hear, then he'll turn around and say something different to somebody else."
Hard times
The past few months have been tough on both men. Hinds' three kids, playing on a tire swing in the side yard, don't have health care. Boswell, a father of two, worries about how price of groceries has gone up $50 every two weeks and how it now costs $40 more a week to fill his truck up with gas than it did a year ago.
Missouri polls say the economic downturn caused many in the state to support Obama a month ago, pulling him into a virtual tie with McCain. But not Boswell - he will vote for the Republican.
Hinds doesn't vote.
"It doesn't make any difference," Hinds said. "Politicians can say all that they want, but they never do anything that will help poor people."
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
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