SINKING BUSH POLL RATINGS HURT CRAWFORD'S TRINKET SHOP ECONOMY

Bush may be fighting to get back above the 30% approval mark nationally, but his Texas disapproval ratings haven't been quite as bad as they are in most other states. Although he's only above 50% in Utah and Idaho, the latest SUSA poll (Jan 16, 2007) for Texas shows him with a 40% approval in his home state, almost 10% better than he does on average. And although Harris County (Houston) is more like the rest of America-- 70% disapproval-- there is no area of Texas, not even the conservative north, where Bush gets to 50% approval.

What about his home town, Crawford, you ask? When I was there the area was over-run with protestors who were there, like myself, to support Cindy Sheehan. The one stop light town itself is tiny... and moribund. It seemed like the kind of place people stuck there would give anything to escape from. SUSA breaks out a poll for Harris County-- but not Crawford. But there's another way to judge how Bush is doing there. All the gift shops selling Bush memorabilia are bankrupt or headed that way. There are only 700 people who live there, considerably fewer than the number of protestors who used to camp outside Bush's pig farm ranch, and the town that was booming, briefly, as the home of "western White House," has fallen on hard times. There's only one restaurant and one bank and there's no hotel but there were plenty of Bush-oriented trinket shops. One, the Crawford Country Style store, brought in over two and a half million bucks in 2004, but it's closed down now.

One somewhat delusional Bush supporter who also operates a gift shop, says "I think the president's ratings will go up, and when that happens, the sales go up. As far as Crawford's future, I think it looks bright. Is it going to be as hectic as it was a few years ago? No. But Crawford's name is known far and wide, and when he retires, people who are endeared to him will want to come to Crawford." I guess... but Utah is a long drive... and, like I said, there's no hotel.


JULY UPDATE: NO ONE THOUGHT IT COULD GET WORSE

Like Bush's poll numbers, Crawford's economy has continued to get worse and worse. It can't really be called "an economy" any more.

Shuttered storefronts and eroding retail sales figures show tourism and the Bush memorabilia business are slumping in this once-sleepy farm-and-ranch town of 732 residents.

A for-sale sign is the only thing in the smudged window of the turn-of-the-century, two-story brick building that once housed the Crawford Country Style store. "The numbers just weren't working," said Norma Nelson Crow, who closed the shop at the beginning of the year.

Traffic and sales of shirts, caps, refrigerator magnets and other presidential curios began slowing in 2005, she said. By the summer of 2006, Crow said, her hopes for a turnaround in the business faded. "It was my baby and I loved that little store, but I had to face the facts," she said.

Retail sales figures kept by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts document the slide. In 2004, gross retail sales in Crawford totaled $2.6 million. They fell to $2 million in 2006, down by more than 20 percent.

Nobody is saying things have improved at all this year. "It's pretty slow, slower than last summer," Jamie Burgess, manager of the Red Bull gift shop, said last week... "We knew this wouldn't last forever, but we expected it would last longer than this.