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The signs honoring all of the past presidents lining the street outside Nick’s Cafe and the local cheese store see little traffic. American flags gently blow in the breeze. The red, white and blue caboose honoring past presidents is locked shut.
There’s no sign of any presidential candidate in this self-proclaimed “City of Presidents.”
It’s nothing like 2004.
That year both President Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry came to town as part of an intensive campaign to win Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes. Every city, including this tiny one of just over 2,000 people in the rolling hills of southwest Wisconsin, was in play.
This year, while both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are spending a lot of time and money on Wisconsin, small towns in the middle of nowhere like Cuba City haven’t played into the strategy. Not even close.
“I don’t foresee it happening,” said Cuba City Mayor Bob Beinborn on the possibility of a visit by either candidate. “It was great that President Bush stopped here. I don’t know that it will happen again in my lifetime.”
Cuba City isn’t alone in wondering where the candidates are this year.
Campaign stops in Wisconsin are down compared to 2004, which shows both a change in strategy by the campaigns and the reality of a more dispersed electoral map. States that weren’t in play in 2004, like Virginia, Indiana and Colorado, are this year.
Part of the Republican plan in 2004, as described by Bush’s strategist Karl Rove, was to force Kerry to play defense in Wisconsin, a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1984. Kerry barely won Wisconsin, but being forced to counter Bush’s aggressive campaigning here may have hurt him in other states he lost.
This year, the electoral map looks similar to the 2004 version in that Wisconsin and the upper Midwest remain key targets for both sides. McCain is shifting more resources to Wisconsin, after he decided to pull out of Michigan last week. That will likely mean more visits for McCain in this final month of the race.
Beinborn, the Cuba City mayor, thinks both McCain and Obama stand to gain by coming to his tiny town that’s closer to Dubuque, Iowa, than any major Wisconsin city. He thinks Obama has an edge in his city.
“Right now I gotta think people are ready for a change,” he said. “That’s kind of Obama’s rallying cry.”
Cuba City became an unlikely target for the candidates in 2004 when Bush’s campaign bus rolled through town but didn’t stop. Residents from all over the area lined the streets, hoping and expecting Bush to stop and become the first president ever to step foot in Cuba City.
Kerry seized on the opportunity and made a campaign stop there, outside a railroad caboose that’s been refurbished into a museum honoring the city’s past and the nation’s presidents.
Not to be outdone, Bush held a rally at the Cuba City high school less than a week before the election. Pictures of the visit, along with a signed presidential shield like those on light posts up and down Main Street, are on display in the caboose.
Despite the stop, Kerry won Cuba City and the county.
In addition to Grant County where Cuba City is located, Kerry won seven other counties to the north along the Wisconsin border with Minnesota.
Republican strategist Mark Graul ran Bush’s campaign in Wisconsin in 2004. He knows the importance of western Wisconsin in a presidential race.
“Presence equals popularity in western Wisconsin,” Graul said.
Bush’s visit to Cuba City was one of 23 made by the presidential and vice presidential candidates in the final month of the 2004 election, according to a count done by the nonpartisan Web site Democracy in Action.
That’s about six a week.
Additionally, there were 22 visits between March 2 and Oct. 1, 2004.
This year, after the February primary, neither candidate came to Wisconsin until April 16 when McCain held a business summit in Milwaukee.
Since then, McCain has made seven stops including two with his vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On one visit he went to both Hudson and Eau Claire. Obama has visited five times and his running mate Joe Biden has been here twice.
If the next month lives up to the fevered 2004 pace, it will show that both sides feel Wisconsin is in play and winnable. Or, it may show that Republicans are reverting to the same successful strategy they used in 2004 to force Obama to play defense.
If the polls continue to tighten, the candidates will spend more time in Wisconsin, said University of Wisconsin-La Cross political science professor Joe Heim.
Obama held a double-digit lead over McCain in polls done over the summer, but more recent ones done in September showed Obama up by 6 points and 7 points, respectively.
No one’s polled in Cuba City. But people are still ticked off that Bush didn’t visit the first time he had a chance, said retired elementary school principal Joe Goeman.
“Cuba City is not really a Bush supporter,” he said.
Goeman was the one who came up with the idea to make Cuba City the “City of Presidents” back in 1976 as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebration. He said the idea of honoring all the past presidents with shields and American flags on the light poles down Main Street came to him in a dream.
And while the 77-year-old said he used to consider himself a Republican, even he’s not so sure any more.
“People are tired of all that’s happened,” he said. “Who do they blame?”
