When Democrats chase Hoosiers and Region Rats

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seek votes in Indiana, a state fraught with economic woes and unlikely relevance for the '08 race.

By Edward McClelland

Read more: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, News, Economy, Barack Obama, 2008 election

April 28, 2008 | GARY, Indiana -- A presidential campaign in which Indiana matters is like a wedding or a high school graduation. It happens once in a lifetime. When it comes to politics, Hoosiers have certain traditions. They always vote Republican -- when you don't swing, candidates don't ring -- and they hold their primary in May, normally way too late to be relevant. Stories of Robert F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon stumping here in 1968 sound as remote as the Johnny Appleseed legends. But the Democratic deadlock has forced Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton into Indiana. The voters in this political flyover have gotten a rare chance to tell stories of padlocked factories and dwindling towns. And Democrats are getting serious face time in a state they haven't won since the LBJ landslide of '64.

Robert Coleman and Henry Gates III, a pair of union electricians, were standing at the bar of Bennigan's after a shift at the smoldering U.S. Steel mill just across the highway. They're here every Friday -- Coleman with a pint of beer, Gates with a whiskey neat. This time, Clinton would be joining the scene.

"This is, like, the first time in a while we've had a presidential candidate come through," Gates said.

Gates was for Obama, while Coleman favored Clinton, unlike most residents of the town, he conceded. But both were gratified to see a presidential candidate in Gary, an abandoned city that consistently leads the nation in violence and unemployment, whose planetarium-domed City Hall is dingy from a century of smoke blown in by lake winds, and whose neighborhood commerce consists of cinder-block liquor stores painted with dated cocktail-lounge murals.

"I want them to know about all of the rapid unemployment in the steel industry," Coleman said. "The steel mills were employing 30,000 back in the '60 and '70s."

In the booths, diners pried apart blinds to follow Clinton's progress along the sidewalk. Barging through the door, she looked wide-eyed, as though she'd wandered into a surprise party full of cheering guests. Grabbing a pen, Clinton swept into the room and started signing autographs. Through the crowd, you could see her canary coif moving efficiently down the bar.

Lu Bishop got a "Hillary" signature on her "Cutters" T-shirt. In Pennsylvania, Clinton compared herself to Rocky Balboa. But Indiana also had a '70s movie about a blue-collar underdog using sports as a vehicle to a richer life. "Hillary's breaking away!" Bishop shouted. "Like Dave Stohler."

After 20 minutes, Gary's first visiting presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy was back out the door.

Clinton and Obama spent the weekend in Indiana campaigning on each other's turf. Northwest Indiana's Calumet Region -- "Da Region" in the local patois -- was once described as "an urban barnacle on the underside of Chicago." Region Rats, as locals call themselves, watch Obama on Chicago TV and root for the Bears. If Clinton wants to win Indiana, she needs to break even here, says Thomas McDermott, a Clinton supporter and the mayor of Hammond.

Obama, who has a slight lead in the most recent polls, was deep in Hoosier Country, trying to bolster his metro-area support by rallying African-Americans and laid-off factory workers in small towns. Riding a bus between county seats marooned among untilled soybean fields, he drew a diverse crowd in Marion, a city that has a history of racial conflict. Both Obama and Clinton are using this trip to prepare for a far more difficult task: winning Indiana in November, a feat accomplished by only three Democrats in the 20th century.

After Bennigan's, Clinton on Friday spoke at a steelworkers' hall. Standing in front of a "Patton"-size American flag, she promised to get tough with, well, everybody -- the Republicans, the Saudis, Big Oil, Big Pharma. As this campaign enters the closing rounds, Clinton is becoming more and more confrontational. If she takes the act any further, she'll be riding a Harley onstage in a leather pantsuit. What really thrilled the crowd, in this room with a "Save American Steel" banner, was her China-bashing. Indiana is the nation's leading steel-making state, and many here blame the Chinese for undercutting the industry by dumping cheap steel in the U.S. market. Clinton promised to take rule violations before the International Trade Commission and slap "countervailing duties" on price-fixing nations.

"I think we're the only free market in the world," she said, in a tone that suggested we're also the biggest chumps in the world. "Every other country seems to have obstacles to keep our products from getting in."

"A woman of steel!" a steelworker shouted.

Clinton's nighttime rally was at East Chicago High School. The industrial suburb is 50 percent Latino. "We remember what the Clintons did for us in the '90s, on immigration, and appointing Cabinet members," said Myrna Maldonado, an East Chicago Common Council member. The candidate was joined onstage by Sen. Evan Bayh (who still looks like a Sears model at age 52) and by Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers union. Clinton, who knows how to pick a crowd-pleasing enemy, this time went after the Bush administration and the Chinese in a single anecdote.

"Under Bush, defense manufacturers have outsourced jobs to foreign countries," she said. "There's a plant in Valparaiso that made magnets for smart bombs. A Chinese company bought it. We lost our hold on that technology. The Chinese now know how to make those magnets."

Gary Howard, a machinist with a Russian patriarch's beard, liked Clinton's protectionism. Howard works at a bearing manufacturer that uses Chinese stainless steel in some of its products. "If they put tariffs on that steel," he said, "we'd make that steel here."

Then the crowd filed out, to John Mellencamp's "Our Country." Mellencamp is for Obama, but this was Indiana.

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