More Clark County, Ohio

Tony Allen-Mills reports:

Even when a letter reached a real swing voter, the consequences may not have been quite what The Guardian intended.

Gregory Adkins, a 48-year-old Springfield lorry driver, opened his letterbox last Tuesday to find a blue airmail form, postmarked Edinburgh. He later showed me the letter, written by Alex Cole-Hamilton who works for a children's charity in Scotland.

"We have never met, but I am delighted to have the opportunity to write to you today," Cole- Hamilton began.

After polite expressions of undying Anglo-American friendship, Cole-Hamilton cut to The Guardian's chase: "Never before has there been such a level of shared concern about the policies of a US administration. We are truly concerned that electing George W Bush to four more years of power could further endanger the stability of our world."

Adkins may well turn out to be a Kerry voter, but it will not be because of The Guardian. His wife recently lost her job as a teacher's aide and, like many others in Clark County, Adkins is more concerned about the local economy than any leftish British view of the world.

Meanwhile, he has shown the letter to some of his friends and the reaction has been uniformly hostile: "One guy told me, 'Ask this Scottish guy if he speaks German. If he doesn't speak German, the only letter he needs to write us is to say thank you'."

Cole-Hamilton may have succeeded in driving at least a couple of Adkins's friends into the Republican camp. When I was in Clark County last week one Democrat complained that the whole affair was a hoax dreamt up by Karl Rove, the president's Machiavellian political adviser, to tilt Ohio Bush's way.

Four years ago Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, beat Bush in Clark County by 325 votes. The finish could be just as close this year. Nobody will ever be able to tell exactly what difference The Guardian has made. But most Ohio voters agree that it should never even have tried.

Or as yet another American blogger put it: "We don't need any God-damned scum-belching Euro-wimps screwing around with our elections."

Not quite how I would have put it myself. 'Scum-belching' seems rather strong. But I'm generally in sympathy with the type of reaction. For my own view of the thinking behind the Groan's Clark County initiative, see here.