As Missourians head to the polls, candidates hope they have 'the rural thing going'

Missouri's population is only one-fourth rural, but the candidates in tomorrow's primary election seem to be emphasizing rural connections more than ever. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gave several examples in an editorial yesterday, most notably a Democratic candidate for attorney general, state Sen. Chris Koster.

When Koster visited the newspaper's editorial board, "He was wearing cowboy boots with his gray lawyer's suit," the paper reports. "Mr. Koster is a graduate of St. Louis University High School, where there is no Future Farmers of America chapter. He is a trial lawyer by profession. He lives in Belton, a Kansas City suburb, although his Senate district address is a post office box in Harrisonville. 'I get the rural thing going for me that way,' Mr. Koster admitted."

To some extent, candidates are following the lead of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who emphazied rural areas to oust an incumbent two years ago. That, recent polls and the pattern of campaigning indicate that the rural swing vote has expanded. But a rural approach is nothing new. "No state, with the possible exception of Texas, has taken the agrarian myth to heart more than Missouri," the editorial said. "No matter how urban they are, statewide candidates go to extremes to emphasize their rural roots."

Why? Because the Show-Me State is a believer in the agrarian myth described by Richard Hofstader way back in 1955 and quoted in the editorial: "The more farming as a self-sufficient way of life was abandoned for farming as a business, the more merit men found in what was being left behind. And the more rapidly the farmers' sons moved into the towns, the more nostalgic the whole culture became about its rural past. . . . Its hero was the yeoman farmer, its central conception the notion that he is the ideal man and the ideal citizen."

The editorial concludes, "The agrarian reality in Missouri — as opposed to the agrarian myth — is that people in rural counties are hurting badly. The average income of rural Missourians is some $10,000 a year less than that of urban Missourians. Nearly all the indicators of poverty are worse in rural counties than they are in urban counties. Jobs are difficult to come by; jobs with decent benefits, harder still. In many rural counties, the biggest employer is Wal-Mart. The question to keep in mind as you go to the polls Tuesday to choose among all those boot-wearing, corn-picking politicians is which ones understand reality, not myth, and who among them can make the biggest difference in the lives of all Missourians, no matter where they live."