Republican John McCain announced his presidential campaign 16 months ago, nearly three months after Democrat Barack Obama.

As Labor Day arrives in near conjunction with the finish of the national political conventions, all those months, all those speeches, all those shaken hands deliver the candidates an additional 64 days of electoral uncertainty.

“It’s almost like they’re both starting the race dead even,” said Bob Ott of St. Joseph.

Chairman of the Buchanan County Republican Central Committee, Mr. Ott heads today to Minnesota’s Twin Cities as a 6th District delegate for the GOP National Convention.

He will arrive at the St. Paul convention hall from a part of Missouri that spent the early part of the year ambivalent about Mr. McCain, who will accept the Republican nomination on Thursday night.

In February’s presidential preference primary, the Arizona senator got majorities in eight of the 16 counties in the northwestern corner of the state. Republicans in Buchanan, Andrew and Platte counties made Mr. McCain their second choice.

But the August view looks much different than the one in February. Keep in mind that Mr. Obama, acclaimed now as the Democratic nominee, finished second in all but one of those 16 counties.

“I think people are feeling more comfortable with him,” Mr. Ott said of Mr. McCain. “You’ve got the disappointment factor (after the primaries), and people have to have some time to get over it.”

Northwest Missouri Congressman Sam Graves, an at-large delegate attending his second Republican National Convention, remembers the GOP at odds with itself in 2000 when Mr. McCain battled in the primaries against George W. Bush.

“I don’t think we’re fractured,” the lawmaker said. “But I know that Republicans are looking for some leadership. They’re wanting fiscal responsibility, they’re wanting to keep taxes down.”

In earlier days, such principles would be more broadly discussed as planks in a party’s platform. Mr. Graves said the “Missouri Manual” long ago included platforms from even the Socialist and Progressive parties.

Though platforms still exist — Republicans accepted online submissions in crafting theirs this year — they are largely irrelevant to even partisans. It’s a change from the way conventions once operated, Mr. Graves said.

“Used to, everybody ran on a platform,” he said. “It was from the sheriff all the way to the president of the United States. … It’s individual campaigns anymore.”

Like Mr. Graves, at-large delegate Rebecca Rooney of Weston, Mo., will be attending her second national convention. This year’s gathering promises a different dynamic than the one in New York in 2004.

“The last time, it was pretty well set out, it was Bush and Cheney,” she said.

But Mrs. Rooney, who has been around Mr. McCain on a couple of occasions, remains convinced about the senator’s background and character.

“He’s pretty much the same kind of man and stuck by the same kind of things that he always has,” she said.

Lydia Hurst, a 6th District alternate who will be attending her first convention, agrees that Mr. McCain is the right man to lead the party.

“I think he’s a great candidate,” the Tarkio, Mo., resident said. “He has strong values, and he can keep us going in the right direction. His foreign policy experience, that’s going to be very strong.”

Most Americans just see the televised portion of the national conventions, but numerous forums and meetings allow party activists from different parts of the nation to share information about campaign strategies. Mr. Ott said he would look to augment his knowledge on grassroots political organizing.

“In an informal way rather than a structured class, I find that you learn a lot more practical things from the people that have actually done them,” the St. Joseph man said.

Ken Newton can be reached at

kenn@npgco.com.