It wasn't supposed to be this way. Kerry went into this campaign with some genuine advantages in the Upper Midwest, including the fact that people in the region tend to prefer that their Presidents be Democrats. While rural America as a whole has been trending toward the GOP in the past three election cycles--Bush beat Al Gore by twenty-two points in rural America in 2000, and Democrats were badly battered there in 2002--the Mississippi River counties in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota have remained relatively solid for the party of Roosevelt and Truman. On those 2000 maps that showed vast stretches of the heartland colored red for Bush, for the most part these Mississippi Riverfront regions remained blue for Gore. This break in pattern was credited by Democrats with providing Gore's narrow margins of victory in Iowa (where he won by 4,144 votes), Wisconsin (5,708 votes) and Minnesota (58,607 votes). While the role that these river counties played in the 2000 contest was little noted outside the region at the time, it has become something of a national obsession this year. The Bush and Kerry campaigns, the Democratic and Republican national committees and their surrogates have lavished attention on the region. Communities like Lancaster, Wisconsin, population 4,070, which rarely saw presidential candidates in the past, can boast of having welcomed both contenders this year.

The intense attention reflects a shift in the political dynamic of a year when Democrats thought they had the upper hand. As the 2004 campaign got started, there was much hopeful talk about augmenting the party's traditional strength with votes from the burgeoning Latino population in rural regions where the demographics are rapidly shifting. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of residents of all three states who claim Hispanic heritage skyrocketed--from 53,884 to 143,382 in Minnesota alone. Many live in rural areas, where they've found jobs in agriculture-related industries. Because Latinos in the Upper Midwest have historically leaned Democratic, these demographic shifts were seen as advantageous news for Kerry. And the campaign seemed poised to capitalize on this and other opportunities.

After securing the Democratic nomination, the Kerry campaign made some smart moves. The selection of Edwards represented a bow to the party's rural base. The same goes for the naming of John Norris, a veteran Iowa strategist, as the national campaign's field director. Norris and other Democratic aides who know their way around the region quickly got the candidate on a schedule that has had him showing up several times each week in the Upper Midwest. Kerry's campaign has been pumping out good position papers about farm policy, rural transportation, education and healthcare that pinpoint the ways in which the Bush Administration has failed the region. And Kerry's best surrogate, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin--who says, "The potential is there this year, as never before, for rural America to determine the outcome of this election"--is traveling the region with a populist "Bush won't, Kerry will" rap on issues of concern to small-town voters.

At the same time, developments in what should be the big issues of this campaign tended to favor Kerry--particularly with regard to the war in Iraq. The Bush Administration has relied heavily on National Guard units from the Upper Midwest to maintain the occupation, and that has not been popular. "Everywhere I've gone, I've heard people complaining about the war. There's a lot of frustration out there, because when someone from a small town is killed in Iraq, it hits people hard," says Amanda Ballantyne, an Iowa native who is organizing rural voter registration and turnout initiatives. "Everybody knows everybody, so they feel the loss. And they ask questions: How did we get into this mess? Why are we still there?"

There's an almost equal level of frustration with the economy. The deindustrialization of the Upper Midwest, driven by Bush-backed trade and tax policies that are seen as having encouraged the shuttering of midsized factories and small machine shops across the region, has hit hardest in rural communities. "When a factory shuts in one of these towns, you can't just walk down the street and get a job someplace else. Most of these towns only have one or two employers. When they're gone, you've got to go thirty, forty miles to find something else," says Arlene Siss, chair of the Grant County Democratic Party in southwest Wisconsin. "A lot of times, the 'something else' in that next town is laying off as well."

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