The Obama campaign might just win Springfield and rural Missouri

The radio in Kim Heckman's Subaru is tuned to National Public Radio as she steers away from Sen. Barack Obama's campaign office (a former J.C. Penney) in downtown Springfield, Missouri, and toward her own neighborhood. Heckman, an eighth-grade teacher, has been canvassing door-to-door on this turf every weekend since May, rain or shine.

"I've been happy," she says. "I've been very — I don't want to say surprised, but sometimes a Democrat in Greene County is hard to find." She laughs.

That's been especially true the past two elections. In 2000, Greene County voters chose George W. Bush over Al Gore 57.5 percent to 39.9 percent. Four years ago, John Kerry earned just 37.2 percent of the county's votes (to Bush's 62.2 percent).

The Greene County Democratic Central Committee, which has headquarters in Springfield year-round, estimates that about a quarter of the county's voters are independent, so the Obama campaign has invested a great deal of energy here. Swing-state Missouri matters: The winner in Missouri has also won the general election in every contest but one since 1904.

Heckman's neighborhood is a mishmash of political yard signs, including one that reads, simply, "Sarah!"

The architecture is as varied as the politics in the streets near Heckman's home. Houses fronted by grand, white columns stand a block from a row of modest Sears Modern Homes, built from catalog-ordered components between 1908 and 1940.

Heckman walks past a jampacked, weekend yard sale to knock on her first door of the day. She's following a route given to her at the Obama office. The map is speckled with dots signifying addresses of registered voters yet to be contacted by the Obama campaign.

At the first house, Obama literature has already been placed in the lap of the decorative scarecrow on the porch, implying that the campaign's tracking of its own efforts is imperfect. No one is home, and the next three houses are similarly unoccupied. There's good reason for people to be out on a Saturday — the Taste of Springfield festival is going on under white tents downtown, and the weather is beautiful.

"I'll be bummed if I don't talk to anyone today," she says.

Eventually, Heckman finds a woman at home. She starts: "I'm with the Obama campaign and I'm just going around the neighborhood, trying to find out who our supporters are."

"I'm one!" the woman answers. She can't volunteer, though — she says she's a teacher in the nearby city of Ozark and is busy raising a child herself.

At the home of another voter, a woman steps onto the porch and admits, "I haven't decided — I haven't been paying much attention. I know that's bad." Behind her, a little girl smiles through the screen door. The woman explains that this is her parents' house, which she has moved into, so Heckman gives her a new voter-registration card. The woman promises to drop it off later. Walking away, Heckman scolds herself. "I should have told her it has to be done by next Tuesday."

Heckman climbs the stairs to a Spanish-style house with a roof of terra-cotta tiles. A middle-aged man comes to the door. When Heckman asks whether he and his wife know which candidate they're supporting, he says, "As soon as McCain picked his running mate, that's when we knew who we were voting for."

Finally — a Republican?

"We're voting for Obama. We are voting against Sarah Palin, plain and simple."

The reaction at the next house, where the woman who answers the door looks a little like Cindy McCain, is even more strongly in favor of Obama. She's a single mom with two high-school-age kids and two jobs. She says that for her, the federal bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG were the last straw.

"I pay my bills," the woman says. "I'm not in debt at all. But if I do something wrong, what happens?"

Heckman's on a roll of Obama supporters' houses, including one at which the occupant cheerfully tells her to relax. "He's going to win! McCain pulled out of Michigan! He's done! Go celebrate!"

A few houses later, a tall man in an Indiana T-shirt answers the door of a huge house. A Mizzou flag waves out front. "We're very ambivalent about the presidential election this year," the man says of himself and his wife. "We'll vote in the local election but probably not in the national election." Heckman thanks him and moves on without pushing her line of questioning.

"Not voting," she says as she walks away. "What do you say to that?"

She thinks for a moment.

"Maybe he doesn't like any of their policies," Heckman continues. "Maybe he's racist. Who knows?"

When Heckman has checked off all the houses on her list, she drives back to the campaign office to report her findings. She knocked on 39 doors, spoke to nine people and committed one volunteer to future work.

"That's about average," she says. "That's what they tell me, anyway. Just keep whittling away!"

The response is guaranteed to be less Obama-positive in a bedroom community nine miles south of Springfield called Republic. Today, Republic is holding its annual Pumpkin Daze festival. Farmers haul their gargantuan pumpkins, some topping half a ton, and enter them in one of the few contests that boasts a digital scale big enough to weigh such a vegetable. Forklifts are required. The event always draws a crowd. Crowds draw campaigners.