Cunningham's anger traces back to February, when he was asked to introduce McCain at a rally in Cincinnati. In warming up the crowd, the talk show host repeatedly mentioned Obama's middle name -- Hussein -- in a way that some found disparaging.
When he learned of Cunningham's introduction, McCain apologized and said: "I absolutely repudiate such comments."
McCain's move left some hard feelings, and Cunningham is now attacking him regularly on the airwaves. "I think he was doing what he needed to do for his national audience, but it didn't do much to endear him to local people, how he treated Cunningham," said Republican activist Christa Criddle, who volunteered for Bush in 2004 but has decided to focus her time this year on local elections.
She added: "A lot of people were not very happy."
Burress, who led the successful campaign for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, said he would vote for McCain, largely because he said an Obama victory would lead to new liberal Supreme Court justices and more emphasis on abortion rights. And he suspects that McCain's coolness toward conservatives could be a calculated gamble to win centrists.
But he will not work directly for McCain, and he suspects that many conservatives will stay home on election day.
"They think we have no place to go [other than the Republican Party], and in some respects, that's true," Burress said. "But it's going to take a whole lot more than that for him to win."
Wait and see
Unlike Bush before him, McCain might be forced to build his campaign without volunteers like Lori Viars, who lives in exurban Warren County and runs the Family First Political Action Committee. Four years ago, she spent months working on the Bush campaign. This time, she's holding back, waiting to see if McCain picks a "strong pro-family, pro-life conservative" as his running mate.
"In 2004, it was six days a week. I didn't see my family," she said.
"I've got to be really motivated to do that again."
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peter.wallsten@latimes.com
