Southern Illinois Unlikely Stops for Obama & McCain

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ If presumptive Democrat nominee Barack Obama wanted a place to give a speech on his candidacy of change, there would be no better place than the grandstand at the Du Quoin State Fair. Outsourcing and moving jobs from Pinckneyville's Technicolor Universal Media plant to Mexico, high unemployment and the compounded felony of the Bush administration killing plans for the FutureGen plant in Illinois are all fodder for such a speech. Health care and related benefit costs will tap the City of Du Quoin for more than $1 million this year.

Despite all that, Democrat National Committee super delegate John Rednour of Du Quoin says it isn't likely that Obama will campaign in Southern Illinois.

Not only does the Illinois senator have a lock on his own state, but opponent Sen. John McCain knows he has that home state advantage and probably won't campaign here as well.

"I know the way the Democrat National Committee thinks," said Rednour Monday. Rednour goes straight from a Du Quoin State Fair Preview night rally for Obama at his home to the Democrat Natonal Committee convention in Denver, which starts on Monday after the fair's opening.

The convention ends on Thursday. After the convention and Obama's acceptance at Mile High Stadium before a crowd of upwards of 75,000, Obama is expected to hit the national television network and may not even be home for the Labor Day holiday.

Rednour said he will broach the subject of a Southern Illinois stop with party leaders in Denver and with mutual friend Sen. Dick Durbin, "but I don't think I will be able to get it done."

Political onlookers say venues like Cape Girardeau, Paducah and St. Louis are more likely to be stops on the Obama and McCain campaigns in the final weeks before the November elections.