MB Civic

In the Small Towns of Big Sky

By DEIRDRE MCNAMER
Missoula, Mont.

THE telephone directory for Big Sandy, Mont., lists 10 A’s, and one of them is “ambulance.” Down in the T’s, all nine of them, you find Jon Tester, the organic farmer who is challenging our Republican senator, Conrad Burns, and also the Tumble Weed Gallery, where I talked to a young man who told me to go across the street if I wanted to find out how people in the area feel about the race.

Across the street was Big Sky Auto and Ag, which sells and repairs farm equipment, and behind the counter was a genial, white-bearded man named Leroy Graff.

Mr. Graff, who has lived in Big Sandy for 30 years and knows both candidates well enough to call them by their first names, said he was already disgusted with the tenor of the campaign, specifically the opening Republican volley of TV and radio ads that focused on Mr. Tester’s flattop haircut. In a cornpone accent that sounded like hardly anyone in Montana, an actor posing as Mr. Tester’s barber called him a liberal who is trying to cover up that fact with a conservative haircut — and said he’s a chintzy tipper, to boot.

“I’m so tired of that hash,” said Mr. Graff. “Who cares whether Jon has got a flattop or a shaved head?” A couple of other men in the store nodded their heads. “What I want to know is what’s he going to do in Congress?” Mr. Graff went on. “Let’s worry about the issues, like taking care of the homeless in the United States, for instance.”

Big Sandy is perched on the rolling prairie of north-central Montana in Chouteau County, whose 3,000 or so voters are scattered over an area roughly two-thirds the size of Connecticut. It’s traditionally a Republican county, and Senator Burns carried it by 30 percentage points in 2000 when he ran for a third term against a Democrat challenger, Brian Schweitzer.

But party lines bend. Four years later, when Mr. Schweitzer ran for governor and won, he held the Republican candidate, Bob Brown, to only 54 percent of the vote in the county. In explanation, Mr. Graff said what a lot of Montanans say, which is that he votes for the man, not the party. His own vote in the Senate race will depend pretty directly on how the respective campaigns are conducted, he said.

Bill Graves, the man who has actually been Mr. Tester’s barber for at least 15 years, doesn’t disagree. “He’s got a shot,” he said, after thinking about it for a few long seconds.

Mr. Graves’s shop is an hour’s drive south of Big Sandy in Great Falls, and Mr. Tester shows up there every couple of weeks to get his flattop spiffed.

“About 1954, you saw flattops come in, often with a ducktail and fenders,” Mr. Graves told me. “I still cut a lot of flattops; I always have. It’s my best haircut.” He adjusted his yellow-tinted aviator glasses and ran his comb through the donnish graying hair of his customer, Dick Wilmot, a retired schoolteacher who now runs a painting business.

“Don’t you dare,” Mr. Wilmot said. “My wife would kill me.”

The Republican haircut ads didn’t sit well with Mr. Graves, who now refers to himself as the Real Barber. The ads were “phony, lies, cheap shots,” he said. “I thought there was a war going on in Iraq, for crying out loud,” Mr. Wilmot said.

“Something like $65 billion was just appropriated to fight that war,” Mr. Graves added. “And they want to talk about a haircut?”

Deirdre McNamer is the author of the forthcoming novel “Red Rover.”

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Ohio’s Morning After

By DAN CHAON
Cleveland

APPARENTLY, Ohio’s Senate race is one of a half-dozen that will determine control of the Senate — one of America’s most closely watched, according to the national news media. But so far Ohioans don’t seem to be doing much watching.

It’s summer, of course, so who wants to think about November? And right now there are other issues occupying our thoughts. Down at the pet store, for example, some ladies are protesting “puppy mills,” picketing with signs that show photos of sad dogs in small pens.

In the local paper, people write in to express outrage about the closing of a neighborhood elementary school, and a movement is under way among some angry parents to oust the loathed school board.

But when you mention the Senate candidates — the incumbent Republican, Mike DeWine, and the Democratic challenger, Representative Sherrod Brown — people’s eyes tend to glaze over. There is an expression of blank and wary politeness, as if you offered to tell them about an interesting dream you had last night.

“Ugh,” says one patron at Parnell’s bar in Cleveland Heights, where I live. “The Senate race? Please.” And he takes a circumspect sip of his beer. “Somehow I got on Sherrod Brown’s e-mail list. And I’m getting, like, five e-mails a week from him. I’ll tell you what, I will never vote for Sherrod Brown because he has spammed me. He’s a spammer!”

“But,” I say, “what do his e-mails talk about?”

The guy only shrugs. “Hell if I know,” he says. “I delete them the minute they show up in my inbox.”

At least he knew the name of one of the candidates. Frequently, people didn’t. “The Senate race?” people would ask. “Hmmm. Who are they, again?” Local newspaper coverage — in The Plain Dealer, at least — has been relatively minimal. “You don’t really see much about it,” says an acquaintance at an outdoor dinner party. “Every once in a while you stumble across some tidbit in the Metro section, but it looks like an obituary.”

As for paid media, the campaigns have settled comfortably into their parties’ various greatest hits, stale material that must nevertheless have some life left in it. Senator DeWine’s latest ads, for example, recycle images of 9/11 — hijackers, burning Trade Center (which, in the campaign’s sole scandal this far, turned out to be digitally enhanced) and so on — as a backdrop for an attack on Mr. Brown’s record on national security.

Sherrod Brown, meanwhile, chips diligently away at Mr. DeWine’s relationship with lobbyists from energy, prescription drug and other Big Corporate interests: “His votes have betrayed middle-class families and helped to cause the erosion of the middle class in this country.”

Though they both seem like basically nice guys, so far neither comes across as particularly well endowed in the charisma department. Both exude a certain eau de bureaucrat: Senator DeWine might be an assistant principal at your local middle school; Representative Brown might manage the men’s wear department at the new Macy’s. My wife says, “It’s the bland leading the bland.” But my neighbor Susan frowns: “Blandness? That’s one theory, I suppose.”

We’re sitting in the screened bug tent out behind her house one evening, and she is showing me her copy of Rolling Stone, featuring an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” that claims that “Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted.”

“Personally,” says Susan, “I think there’s a point where it’s hard to distinguish apathy from discouragement. It’s hard to care about this stuff when it seems like your vote doesn’t really matter anyway. I think a lot of people on both sides of the fence have a sneaking suspicion that democracy is kind of falling apart.”

Dan Chaon is the author of the novel “You Remind Me of Me.”

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The New New South

By ROBERT HICKS
Franklin, Tenn.

LET me begin by confessing that I’m a yellow dog Democrat. I come from a long line of yellow dog Democrats and I even own a yellow dog named Jake. That understood, I believe I can objectively observe the political climate as my fellow Tennesseans and I prepare to replace Senator Bill Frist.

You need to be objective to be a Democrat in Williamson County these days. When I moved here 32 years ago, we were just another poor Southern agricultural community: we had countless small dairy farms, the cash crop was tobacco and just about everybody was a Democrat. Now we’re one of the richest counties in America: we have maybe one dairy farm left, the cash crop is McMansions and just about everyone is a Republican.

These are neither the “Lincolnite Republicans” my grandparents feared nor are they Old Southern Democrats refitted in Republican clothing. Their roots are not here. Williamson County is a physically beautiful and safe place to live and raise a family, so it’s no surprise they come and stay.

Yet, without roots in either party, they seem, first and foremost, driven by an obsession with taxes. This isn’t to say that none of them have genuine concern for the poor; and while most seem more pro-birth than “pro life” (the term they favor), there are exceptions there, too. Yet, over all, their credo might be (to paraphrase Robert Goodloe Harper): “Billions for defense, but not one cent for social concerns.”

This attitude creates a real problem for the Democratic contender, Representative Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis. “Jr.,” as he is calling himself, represents the latest generation of a political dynasty built around a South Memphis funeral home. Unfortunately, the family record is a bit less than shining of late — his uncle John Ford, a former state senator, will go on trial this winter on charges of extortion, bribery and threatening a government witness — and much of Tennessee considers the Fords a band of thieves.

Jr., however, seems to be a good man. He is a moderate Democrat with a strong environmental record. Yet only time will tell if he can overcome Tennessee’s ever-growing love affair with the Republican Party.

He will face Bob Corker, the mayor of Chattanooga, who defeated two former congressmen, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, in Thursday’s Republican primary. Mr. Corker was considered the most socially liberal of the trio, which caused him some trouble in the run-up.

You see, while all three candidates were openly anti-abortion, among many Tennessee Republicans, it seems, it’s not just being “pro life” that matters, but how long you’ve been pro-life. Apparently Mr. Corker told reporters a decade ago that he didn’t consider abortion a “government issue.” He has long since changed his mind, which one might think would have ended the issue. But not as far as Mr. Bryant was concerned, and his advertising blitz questioning the sincerity of Mr. Corker’s anti-abortion stance nearly offset Mayor Corker’s huge fund-raising advantage.

The other candidates were also upset that Mr. Corker refused to participate in more than one debate, and Bryant supporters took to appearing at Corker rallies in chicken suits. At an event in Chattanooga, a Corker supporter chased one of these chickens to the chicken’s car and, when the chicken tried to leave, depending on who’s telling the story, either the Corker supporter decided to “play chicken” and jumped in front of the car or, if I am to believe the other side, the chicken intentionally drove into him, tossing him up onto the windshield and shattering glass. Nobody was seriously hurt, but the pundits had a field day.

We may be done with chickens, but given the national stake in our Senate race, the energy of our nouveau Republicans and the checkered history of the Ford family, I think it’s going to prove to be a long, hot summer in Tennessee — politics as usual.

Robert Hicks is the author of the novel “The Widow of the South.”

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Our Happy Warriors

By CHARLES BAXTER
Minneapolis

IN Minnesota, a state known for its lively political scene, some sort of anesthesia has been temporarily applied to the body politic. The uncharacteristic absence of dinner-party arguments, hand-painted lawn signs, bumper stickers and letters to the editor about the coming Senate race has unnerved many friends and neighbors. Over our drought-stricken state, plagued in the north with forest fires, an odd stillness prevails, except about the weather.

One theory making the rounds is that our political torpor is the equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder, induced by five years of the Bush administration. The material and human costs of the Iraq war have caused a kind of sticker shock among the Minnesota electorate. One friend simply noted: “I can’t talk about it anymore. I’m in a self-imposed news blackout.”

The Senate race was precipitated by the retirement after one term of Mark Dayton, a Democrat who was finally elected in 2000, 18 years after his first attempt. Mr. Dayton, an unusually decent politician (disclosure: I have known the senator since we were 13-year-old classmates), typically looked drawn and haggard during interviews. His syntax suffered atomization, and he sometimes seemed to be grasping for ideas. Then he dealt his career a near-fatal blow when he closed his Washington office for a month in October 2004, after an unspecified terrorist threat. Time Magazine dubbed him “The Blunderer.”

Minnesotans generally prefer their national political representatives to be in the Happy Warrior mode perfected by Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone. Cameras and microphones produce in such candidates an endlessly renewable form of intoxication. Even former Gov. Jesse Ventura, resplendent in Hawaiian shirts, seemed to be a variant on the Humphrey model, hugely enjoying himself as he claimed that he was being victimized by the local newspapers. Never in my memory has a politician expressed bitterness so joyfully.

By contrast, Senator Dayton appeared to be physically suffering from the shocks produced almost daily by his former Yale fraternity brother, George W. Bush. His face became, as the months passed, a mask of stress and suffering, and though it reflected accurately the feelings of many Democratic Farmer-Labor voters in this state, politicians who look like that are seldom re-elected. Few were surprised when he bowed out.

The two candidates for Mr. Dayton’s job, Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic prosecutor of the county I live in, and Mark Kennedy, a Republican congressman, both have 100-watt smiles. They appear to have mastered the upbeat style. Mr. Kennedy’s face in particular often seems pulled back into a permanent rictus, like the old-time movie villain Mr. Sardonicus. Ms. Klobuchar’s smile may diminish if she is hit with too many Karl Rovian slimeballs (Mr. Kennedy has a reputation as a ferocious street fighter), but in the early going it has given her a commanding lead in the polls.

It seems a shame that one is compelled initially to discuss the faces rather than the positions of our political candidates, but, after all, we are in a media-saturated landscape. In the lull before the storm, by their faces we will know them.

Charles Baxter is the author, most recently, of the novel “Saul and Patsy.”