At 7 this morning, with a low sky spitting sleet over south central Montana, voters in cowboy hats and parkas were already lined up out the door at the Park County Fairgrounds. Inside, Margot Kidder, the actress best known for her role as Lois Lane in the original Superman movies, was huddled with a scrum of Democratic poll watchers and Obama volunteers, ready to turn this red state blue. Montana, which voted overwhelmingly for George Bush in the last two presidential elections, is suddenly in play. According to the latest tracking poll, Obama was up 1 point over McCain. On the big touch-screen maps on the cable networks, Montana has turned from red to pink to yellow or gray in the past week.
Margie, as everyone around here knows Kidder, had been up since 4:30 AM and was jumping out of her skin with excitement.
"I know Barack Obama's going to take Park County," she said. "I only started voting three years ago, and I've never voted for anyone who's lost."
Kidder, a long time resident of Livingston, MT, has been a Democratic activist since the early Seventies - even though she was a Canadian citizen until 2005. This morning she cast her first vote for a U.S. president. She started crying, she said, when she filled in the oval next to Obama's name. But she pulled herself together because she had to get back to headquarters and start organizing the 120 or more volunteers on hand for Election Day.
Livingston, with 7500 residents, is the largest city in Park County - a place where 16,000 souls are scattered over an area three times the size of Rhode Island. According to the county election administrator, there are about 9800 active voters here and the turnout today is heavy. It was heavy even before the polls opened; 3264 ballots came in early.
The Obama campaign office in Livingston occupies a humble storefront space next to the old barbershop on Lewis Street. It was opened with private donations during the primaries back in April, and was run by Kidder and a core group of supporters until August, when the national campaign sent a lanky, red-haired, very young Texan named Charlie Magness to coordinate the operation. Like all Obama staffers, Charlie is not allowed to be quoted in the media. But I have it on good authority that he comes from suburban Dallas, where the cowboys are very different from the ones around here, that he's been sleeping on someone's couch since he got here, and that he celebrated his 20th birthday a couple of weekends ago. The mostly-middle-aged women volunteers baked him a cake.
This afternoon Charlie was glued to his computer terminal, entering data coming in from the polls, while Margie worked the phones and volunteers streamed in to pick up lists and canvass neighborhoods for Democrats who haven't voted yet. The activity, I'm told, is called "knock and grab." It can be sort of dangerous in this scruffy little city, a former railroad town on the Yellowstone River. Even though Livingston has become an outpost for writers, artists and actors - Dennis Quaid, Peter Fonda, Jeff Bridges and Michael Keaton have ranches nearby; Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison are local fixtures - there are still quite a few old-time residents who cling to their guns, particularly when strangers come to their doors.
My friend, Todd, had a couple of close calls on the McCain side of town when he was canvassing earlier this week ("I think I may have accidentally busted a meth lab..."). But mostly the political conflicts have been restricted to annoying pranks (like the panel truck plastered with Republican placards illegally parked across from the Obama office for three weeks) to yard-sign wars between neighbors. An informal count in town shows Obama is winning that one. And most of the McCain-Palin signs are hand-painted.
McCain never once stopped in Montana during his long campaign. Obama has been here five times. Folks have noticed.