Aiming to Show He’s One of Them

Sen. John F. Kerry insisted that he was just out for a little recreation as he hoisted a 12-gauge Beretta shotgun over his shoulder Saturday afternoon and took aim at the orange clay targets launched above the sloping fields of a local trap club in southwestern Wisconsin.

“I just do what I normally do, stuff I’ve done all my life,” he told reporters. “I’m out here to have fun, guys.”

But there was nothing offhand about his campaign’s decision to pull over the 20 vehicles shuttling Kerry, his staff and the 45-member press corps across the Midwest and spend more than an hour at the Gunslick Trap Club.

Midway through his holiday weekend bus tour, the Massachusetts senator continued to press his case to Midwesterners that he was just one of them, seeking to cast off the “big-city liberal” label Republicans have vigorously sought to pin on him.

In doing so, Kerry hopes to win the support of rural voters, who backed George W. Bush in 2000 by a 22-point margin.

As President Bush’s reelection campaign released a series of memos reminding reporters of Kerry’s ‘F’ rating from the National Rifle Assn. and his previous support for milk subsidies that benefited Northeastern farmers over those in the Midwest, the Democratic presidential hopeful spent the day trap-shooting and reminiscing about his youthful days on a farm.

“We’re not trying to change his image,” said the local congressman, Ron Kind, who accompanied Kerry through Wisconsin. “We’re just trying to communicate what he likes to do.”

And so while Kerry emphasized that his policies would benefit rural America, he spent much of the day trying to showcase his personal connections to the countryside.

“In fact, I lived on a farm as a young kid,” he told about 100 people assembled Saturday morning in a musty barn in Independence, Wis., as intermittent downpours splattered the barnyard.

“My parents had, when we lived in Massachusetts, we lived on a farm,” he added. “I learned my first cuss word sitting on a tractor with the guy who was driving it.... When I was 12 years old, my passion was being allowed to go out and sit on the John Deere and drive around a field and plow. And I learned as a kid what it was like to look in back of me and see those furrows, and see that pattern, and feel a sense of accomplishment and end up dusty and dirty and tired.”

Margaret and Ralph Segerstrom, who own a 286-acre dairy farm nearby, were impressed.

“He talks our language,” said Margaret, 79.

“I guess he, too, lived on a farmland when he was a kid,” added Ralph, 80. “Same with me -- that’s what I did all my life.”

When pressed for details about the candidate’s farm home -- which until now had not been a well-publicized part of his biography -- Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said that when Kerry was 4 or 5, his parents lived adjacent to a farm in Millis, Mass., about halfway between Boston and Providence, R.I. She noted that he also frequently visited his aunt and uncle, who owned a dairy farm on Massachusetts’ North Shore.

Kerry also sought to explain his support for the Northeastern Dairy Compact, which provided price supports from the late 1990s to 2001 that benefited dairy farmers in New England over those in the Midwest.

“I plead guilty,” the candidate said in Independence. “I did vote for it because I represented Massachusetts.”

But, he added, “we changed the law and we got rid of that regionalization of pricing. I’m going to stand up for farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa and other parts of the country.”

The Bush campaign dismissed Kerry’s explanation, noting that he had co-sponsored a measure in June 2001 that would have created additional regional subsidies leaving out the Midwest. “Heartland voters are going to have a hard time trusting a candidate who willfully misrepresents his own record,” said GOP campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.

Out at the Holmen trap club, Kerry did not mention his longtime support for gun control measures. Instead, he recalled first firing a gun at age “11 or 12,” and said he participated in a series of junior marksmanship classes as a youth.

Out on the range, the candidate called, “Pull,” and the first clay target that soared in front of him exploded into pieces, midair. In all, he hit 17 out of 25.

Lifetime Gunslick member Terry Herbst said that, especially for “picking up a strange gun he had never shot before,” Kerry’s rate was “unbelievable.” Added Kind, the local congressman, with a chuckle: “It’s going to be the first-ever trap shoot on the South Lawn of the White House.”

As Kerry’s caravan wound its way south through Wisconsin, he was greeted by people standing at the side of the road waving American flags.

At an evening stop in Boscobel, Kerry’s caravan pulled over at a Dairy Queen. As dozens of people thrust items at the candidate for an autograph, he good-naturedly complied, putting his signature on napkins, shirts, children’s arms and, at one, point, a few small American flags.