Word: rural
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Democrat Heath Shuler is unlike any candidate that Republican Representative Charles Taylor has faced in the past. Shuler is not only young and dynamic, but he's a local boy who made good playing college and professional football as quarterback. But more than anything else, it's Shuler's rural background that makes him such a formidable challenger. During Taylor's 16 years representing the mountainous 11th congressional district in western North Carolina, he has won reelection by dominating the rural vote against candidates from the larger area cities like Asheville. But Shuler, like Taylor, is conservative on many social...
...Politicians hate to campaign in rural Missouri because it's so sparsely populated," says Ken Warren, who owns a polling company and teaches political science at St. Louis University. "But that's where 50 percent of the state lives. They really have no choice...
...Both candidates have that problem of connecting with rural voters," says Jerry Wamser, a lawyer and state Republican Party activist. "Neither of them is exactly down-home folk...
...McCaskill will have a difficult time wooing many rural Missourians because of her comparatively liberal stances on cultural issues, which are becoming major issues in the race. Unlike Talent, and the majority of Missourians, McCaskill is pro-choice, supports gun control and has opposed banning gay marriage. The war on terror also features prominently in both candidates' stump speeches. Talent regularly projects Republicans as strong and Democrats as weak on national security, while McCaskill hammers Talent on his support for the Iraq War, which just over half of Missourians opposed in a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll...
...this campaign will get nasty," Warren says. With the race too close to call and so much riding on rural voters, many observers say they're expecting a long, tense election day as votes trickle in from outstate. "Bring your jammies," Wamser says. "It's gonna be a late night...