This article appeared in the Sunday edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Haven't gotten around to diarying it til today (I've been recovering from post-Romania jet lag):
Obama leads in fund raising in 5-county Milwaukee metro area: 3 of those counties traditionally support Republicans
Suburban counties, long bastions of Republicanism, are throwing their dollars at Obama, reports the JS:
Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson ran and won in 1964. In the last two presidential contests, the three counties favored George W. Bush by 2-to-1 margins.
Yet despite that history, Democrat Barack Obama is raising more money than John McCain in Waukesha and Ozaukee counties, and isn't far behind the Republican in Washington County, campaign finance reports show.
Here's the full story.
He's outraising McCain by $60 to $40 in Waukesha County (just west of Milwaukee).
And a quote from a contributor in Ozaukee County, just to the north:
"I think McCain's too old. He doesn't know the economy, he doesn't inspire me at all," Jim Meinert, a 71-year-old Town of Cedarburg retiree, said in explaining his nearly $1,900 in contributions to Obama. "He's just out of touch, floundering."
Wonder what the electoral map would look like if we counted dollars instead of polls? Wish I had the time to crunch through the contributions databases.
A particularly disturbing quote is also included, however:
Obama contributor Matthew Doedens, a stay-at-home dad who lives in the Town of West Bend, said he would have to work up the nerve to put up an Obama sign.
He recalled the John Kerry-John Edwards sign he and his wife put up in 2004 outside their former home in Colgate.
"We felt like we were getting a lot of glares," he said.