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2016 candidates undermine the political hometown

Rick Hampson
USA TODAY

It's been 20 years since Bob Dole ran for president as the small town boy who never forgot his roots in windblown Russell, Kan., where he worked in high school as a drugstore soda jerk and recovered from his wounds after World War II. Even after he went to Congress, he never changed his legal residence.

Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole along with his wife, Elizabeth, greet supporters upon their arrival at his birthday celebration in Russell, Kan.,  on July 22, 1996.

Playing the hometown card is a bipartisan tradition. Candidates as varied as Calvin Coolidge of Plymouth Notch, Vt., Jimmy Carter of Plains, Ga., and Bill Clinton — the Arkansan who campaigned as the son of "a place called Hope" — have tied themselves to one special place where their character and values were formed.

But to judge from the 2016 presidential field, the hometown political card may be fading.

This year's crop of candidates is comparatively rootless. Some were born and raised in a series of communities, with no single one they always called home. Some come from places lacking that "hometown" feel — formless suburbs (like Hillary Clinton's Park Ridge, Ill.) or big cities (like Donald Trump's New York) — that don't evoke the feel of Dole's Russell.

Hillary Clinton, standing, was junior class vice president at Park Ridge East High School. She's seen with classmates in this 1964 yearbook photo.

Meanwhile, other candidates — notably Mike Huckabee, also of Hope, Ark. — continue to play the hometown card like it's a potential winner.

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These more rooted candidates are more like the country. Despite Americans' reputation for mobility, 2013 census data indicates that more than two-thirds of native-born Americans live in the state where they were born — roughly the same as in 1960.

But other candidates' rootlessness also reflects something profound in the national experience, says Julian Zelizer, author of biographies of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, and may resonate with middle class voters whose own lives have changed so much technologically and economically, if not geographically.

These candidates' rootlessness was born of family moves for business, politics or ministry:

• Jeb Bush was born in Midland, Texas; moved to Houston when he was 6; stayed behind to finish middle school when his father was elected to Congress and the family moved to Washington; and attended prep school in Andover, Mass. The family summered yearly in Maine. Bush now lives in Coral Gables, Fla.

• Sen. Marco Rubio was born in Miami, moved to Las Vegas with his family when he was 8, and moved back to south Florida six years later.

• Gov. Scott Walker, a minister's son, was born in Colorado Springs and moved to Plainfield, Iowa, when he was 2 and to Delavan, Wis., when he was 10. He lived in Wauwatosa, Wis., before moving into the Wisconsin governor's mansion outside Madison.

• Carly Fiorina was born in Austin and moved with her family to California when she a young child. Her family followed her law professor father's career all over; she attended five different high schools in three nations and two states before going to college at Stanford. Fiorina now lives in Mason Neck, Va.

• Sen. Rand Paul was born in Pittsburgh, moved to Lake Jackson, Texas, when he was 5 and attended high school in the neighboring town of Clute. After college at Baylor, he attended Duke Medical School in Durham, N.C., and did a medical residency in Atlanta before moving in 1993 to Bowling Green, Ky.

• Sen. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, raised in Katy, Texas, and attended high school in Houston before going to college in Princeton, N.J.

Some 2016 candidates who did stay put in childhood moved so much or so far afterward as to render the original hometown connection tenuous. Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example, seems more a product of Burlington, Vt., where he moved in his 20s and made his political bones, than the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where he was raised and entered college.

And sometimes the childhood neighborhood has changed beyond recognition. The Jewish Flatbush of Sanders' youth is now populated by immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. Detroit's Southwest side, African-American when Dr. Ben Carson lived there, is now largely Hispanic.

Richard Norton Smith, a historian who's directed several presidential museums and libraries, calls the president "the logical evolution'' of a trend toward less geographically rooted national leaders. Born in Honolulu, Barack Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather when he was six and lived for four years in Jakarta before returning to Hawaii for fifth grade. During college and law school he lived in southern California, New York City and Cambridge, Mass. He then settled in Chicago.

ANOTHER MAN FROM HOPE

Some presidential hopefuls still grab their roots with both hands. Huckabee returned home this year to announce his candidacy. So did Lindsey Graham of Central, S.C.; Carson, the Baltimore surgeon who speaks often of his tough Detroit childhood; and Chris Christie, who held a rally at his high school in Livingston N.J.

In a campaign video, Huckabee makes the connection between personal and national roots: "The worst thing that can happen is if we forget where we come from. Not only individually, but God help us if we ever forget where we come from as a country.''

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee announces his presidential candidacy at an event in Hope, Ark., on May 5, 2015.

Sitting on his old porch, Huckabee says — punning shamelessly — "I hope I never forget where I come from. I hope I never forget this porch. I hope I never forget what it's like to live in a neighborhood where neighbors know each other and care about each other.''

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, says the hometown card's appeal may stem from the fact that politicians – most of whom have moved more than the average voter — "don't want to be viewed as carpetbaggers'' when and where they finally settle down.

The political calculus: Few things are as important as where you come from, and no place is better to come from than a tight neighborhood or small town — "the heart of this nation,'' according to Thomas Dewey, the GOP nominee in 1944 and 1948.

Dwight Eisenhower and Abilene, Kan., are a classic case of a symbiotic relationship between candidate and hometown.

The general who'd won the war in Europe declared, when he came back to visit in 1945, that "the proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene." When he decided to run for president seven years later, he came to Abilene to announce.

Abilene gave Ike, a globetrotting career military officer, a rootedness that a peer such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, born and raised on various Army posts, lacked.

Ike gave Abilene, a former cow town with few prospects, a presidential library.

Plains served a similar purpose for Jimmy Carter, according to Zelizer. At a time when the capital was tainted by the Watergate scandal, he says, "Plains put Carter as far out of Washington as you could get.''

RUSSELL VS. HOPE

Sometimes, the need for a politically usable past overwhelms reality. Bill Clinton, for instance, only lived in Hope until he was 4, when his family moved to the far more worldly resort community of Hot Springs.

Bob Dole always kept a home in Russell, voted there, and returned in 1995 to announce his presidential candidacy.

Even though he'd not lived in town for 35 years, Russell became a staple of his stump speech. Dole talked of enduring dust storms, playing high school sports and his pride in his father, who missed one day of work in 40 years.

Norma Jean Steele and Gloria Nelson, sisters of Bob Dole, stand outside the family house in Russell, Kansas, in this 1995 photo.

But as Michael Lewis pointed out at the time in The New Republic, Dole stopped referring to Russell at the end of the campaign, when it was clear Bill Clinton was winning. On Election Day, Hope beat Russell; the latter never joined Abilene as a booming presidential hometown.

Some day, such contests may seem quaint. Thomas Mallon, author of Dewey Defeats Truman, a novel set in Thomas Dewey's hometown of Owosso, Mich., says it's inevitable that "we'll get more and more candidates who can't be identified with any single place."

That will spell the death of the political hometown. "Reluctantly,'' Mallon says, "we'll let go of it.''

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