Hunting the hook and bullet vote

Cobbling together a consensus
Rexrode acknowledged that a large part of building these coalitions is "getting people organized, getting people into a network. Make sure people have a stake in the campaign," he suggested. Some campaigns have to build from scratch, but others can access voter lists from the NRA and other organizations. LaPierre boasts that an NRA endorsement delivers a "family of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of people."

Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) was able to tap into a different network in his 2001 campaign. Warner, at the behest of Saunders, enlisted a Roanoke, Va., outfitter named Sherry Crumley to chair his sportsmen coalition. At the time, Crumley had just led a successful effort to amend the Virginia constitution to guarantee the right "to hunt, fish and harvest game;" and she knew practically every sportsman up and down the Blue Ridge.

Once a campaign builds a coalition of sportsmen, a candidate still needs to engage the network.

"We had workers in every county," Crumley said, recalling that "Sportsmen for Warner" had a presence at "turkey shoots, NASCAR events, county fairs, anywhere there was an audience of sportsmen."

Similarly, the McCain team hopes its sportsmen coalition will "educate" voters about the senator's record -- and that of his opponents.

Authenticity matters
But a candidate needs to prove that his or her efforts are genuine. John Kerry's goose hunt in late 2004, for example, was ridiculed as a photo opportunity cooked up in Washington, D.C. And the No. 1 issue on the "Sportsmen for Kerry" platform was fully funding national parks -- which don't even allow hunting.

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Saunders scoffed at Kerry's outreach, saying, "You can't turn it over to the Harvards."

Schweitzer argues that message matters, but so does sincerity: "Speak in a way that shows you know how to catch a fish," he advises. "Speak about in a way that they know that you know how to handle a gun."

When a candidate can make that connection, LaPierre argues, it "goes beyond the Second Amendment into a judgment of that person's character."

Schweitzer and others are certain that sportsmen will vote on the issues that matter to them, and that building a robust sportsmen coalition can be a key to success.

"You could come out and [conduct a] poll in Montana and you'd never pick it up," he said. "You'll never pick up that the thing that really drives them is hunting and fishing.... It might be eighth on their list, but it's the one that they will vote on."

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