Republicans say that they also are aggressively courting coal miners and other union voters in southwest Virginia, but that race is not part of their conversation.
Instead, said McCain spokeswoman Gail Gitcho, voters in the region are being told that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, are not true friends of the coal industry. That has been the theme of campaign ads that have seized on a recent Biden gaffe in Ohio, when he appeared to oppose the construction of any new coal-fired power plants.
"We certainly don't believe that race has any part in the political discourse," Gitcho said.
But here in Buchanan County, it is unavoidable.
A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform, wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so "the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream." He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag "with a star and crescent logo," an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to "raise taxes to pay for Obama's inner-city political base."
The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county's representative on McCain's Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.
History suggests that a black candidate could win support here. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder carried Buchanan and other nearby counties as he became the country's first black elected governor since Reconstruction. Many here recall that Wilder kicked off his campaign in the region and aggressively courted whites.
Obama is expected to do well in Virginia's urban areas and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But to win the state, strategists say, he needs to improve his performance in the southwest counties. For that to happen, volunteers such as Ruby Hale have to strike the right tone with their neighbors.
On some nights, Hale, a retired jewelry store owner, shows up at her Pentecostal church in tiny Rowe with her Toyota truck stacked full of Obama signs and bumper stickers.
"I'll tell them, 'You can't judge a man this way,' that he couldn't help who his father was, and he didn't name himself -- that I am convinced he is a Christian."
Then she tells the potential voter to think it over for a few days. And the conversation often begins again.
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peter.wallsten@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
A tough sell
Though Barack Obama faces an uphill battle in the Appalachian coal region, Buchanan County has voted Democratic in every presidential election for almost 30 years:
1980: 54%
1984: 60%
1988: 63%
1992: 63%
1996: 63%
2000: 58%
2004: 54%
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Population (2008 est.): 24,368
2000-2008 pop. change: -10%
White population: 95%
No high school diploma: 47%
Household income less than $25,000: 46%
Households below poverty level: 20%
Sources: ESRI; TeleAtlas; Virginia State Board of Elections; Claritas.
Graphics reporting by Tom Reinken and Scott Wilson
