The Place That Picks Winners

Before the presidential campaign goes ballistic, a modest piece of advice for George Bush and Michael Dukakis: Fire your pollsters, banish your gurus and spend a week in Crook County, the crystal ball of presidential politics. Since this isolated county was created in 1882 in sagebrush-strewn central Oregon, its inhabitants have successfully picked 26 consecutive winners, from Grover Cleveland to Ronald Reagan.

That makes Crook County (pop. 13,500) the nation's last bellwether county. (Bellwether, literally, means the lead sheep in a flock.) The nation lost its other remaining perfect prognosticator in 1984, when Walter Mondale edged Reagan by 303 votes in Iowa's Palo Alto County. So this fall the pressure is on in this sparsely populated high desert, where cows outnumber residents and crew cuts never went out of fashion. "I don't know whether Crook County has some rare substance in the air that causes people to think like the average voter," muses County Judge Dick Hoppes. Jokes Barber Jake Lewis: "If it's in the water, the bourbon probably kills it."

First settled in the 1860s, by pioneers crossing the snow-capped Cascade Mountains, the county today reflects a modern version of that rugged independence. "This is a red-neck, white-sock county, dogs in the back of pickups, everyone wants to carry a gun," says a longtime political observer. The county seat of Prineville (pop. 5,250) is a "detour down a back road," to lift a line from a country ballad popular there. Lumber trucks and pickups rumble through the town's four traffic lights, which feel the strain of traffic only during hunting season. The lone presidential candidate to visit the county was John Kennedy, in 1960. Such splendid isolation breeds self- sufficiency and a pervasive distrust of government. "We don't expect a lot," says Lewis, who has not raised the price of a $5.50 haircut in three years. "Most of us would rather the government stay the hell out of our personal lives."

"They're uncomplicated people," says James O. Smith, publisher of the Central Oregonian and the closest the county gets to a political scientist. Unlike Iowa's activists, Crook County's blue-collar residents resist single- issue appeals. Farmers have not fallen prey to the farm movement, and unions have not taken over the mills. Most important, no vote is predictable. Although 51% of the 7,090 voters are registered Democrats, they consistently defy party lines. "They vote the way they think," explains LaSelle Coles, 81, a Democrat who typifies this independence: he is heading up Bush's campaign.

Although no polls have been taken, an informal Main Street sampling shows Dukakis leading for the moment, though about one-third of the voters remain undecided. Judge Hoppes feels that Dukakis has slowly grown on his neighbors. "Dukakis is like the salesman who banged on the door last month and said, 'I know you didn't buy anything last month, but I'd like to help you out this month.' He wears well on you. Pretty soon he's a member of the family." Jim Young of Ochoco Feed and Farm Supply agrees. "Dukakis has got more for the workingman than Reagan, and Bush is just another Reagan," says Young. "We're ready for a change."