Obama and McCain Need to Focus on Western Wisconsin

Both John McCain and Barack Obama need to do well with independent voters in eight counties which border Minnesota.

Voters in these counties have voted for John Kerry and Al Gore in the past two elections but tend to vote Republicans into the state legislature and local offices. For example, Republicans have been elected into nine of the 15 legislative districts covering the 11 counties.

These areas are agricultural based. On economic issues, voters tend to be more liberal while on social issues, they tend to be more conservative.

"My advice to McCain is to be himself," Republican strategist Mark Graul said. "He is the exact kind of maverick reformer candidate that western Wisconsin likes. I think they saw President Bush as a little bit more standard Republican and certainly John McCain isn't that."

Obama's Wisconsin spokesman Phil Walzak said independent voters are looking for a new way of doing business in Washington and that's why Obama is a better pick for western Wisconsin than McCain, who's been in Congress for 26 years.

Obama made a stop in one of these counties, in the city of La Crosse, on Wednesday. The city of about 52,000, is home to a University of Wisconsin campus and a student population Obama has been playing well with across the country. At this stop, Obama made a speech which called for swift action on a rescue plan for the nation's financial sector. He declared the crisis"an outrage" caused by "the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years."

McCain's also made a stop in this are of Wisconsin. He held a women's-only business summit in the city of Hudson, just across the river from Minneapolis-St. Paul. He also stopped briefly in nearby Eau Claire.

Along with western Wisconsin, other swing parts of the state are Green Bay and the Fox Valley in the northeast and the suburbs of Milwaukee.