In a note to readers in the Oct. 6 issue, he also said, "Unfortunately, for The Iconoclast and its publishers there have been threats -- big ones including physical harm." (The newspaper's namesake was a Waco publication revived in 1895 by William Cowper Brann, an ornery rabble-rouser who, upon being mortally shot in the back by an outraged Baylor University partisan, managed to kill his assailant in return. "I certainly don't want to end up that way," Mr. Smith said.)  The newspaper's Web site reported that 700 letters had poured in, pro and con, and that nearly 100 people had opened new subscriptions.  Joyce Smith, who works at the Fina station, where the newspaper has been pulled off the stands, was adamant. "Everybody has freedom of expression," she said, "but there are repercussions."  She and others in town complained that Mr. Smith had chosen to foist his views in the special issue devoted to the Tonkawa Traditions Festival, the annual Crawford fair, named for an Indian tribe, which raises money for community improvements and scholarships. "He took advantage of the advertisers," Ms. Smith said.  To "dispel the rumor that the town backed Kerry," 128 individual and commercial supporters of President Bush took out a two-page advertisement on Oct. 7 in another weekly, The McGregor Mirror, declaring that they "wholeheartedly endorse" him for re-election.  Mr. Campbell, 61, a Methodist pastor who has been mayor since 1999, said he saw the momentum shifting to Mr. Kerry. "I think a lot of people are looking seriously to switch to his side," he said. Of course, the businessmen were Republicans, he said.  "They're for Bush," he said of the stores on either side of his small municipal office on the main street. "The bank's for Bush, the Yellow Rose is for Bush. When you think about it, business is for Bush. He helps them." Still, he said, it would be a boon to Crawford to get the Bush papers for Baylor rather than Texas A&M University in College Station, Southern Methodist University in Dallas or Texas Tech in Lubbock.  "I may be a Democrat and support a Democratic candidate," he said, "but I'm also for the welfare of the community." (Baylor is also Mayor Campbell's alma mater.)  Clearly, with the overwhelming support of Crawford voters in his race against Al Gore in 2000, Mr. Bush, who bought his 1,600-acre ranch just west of town in 1999, is the favorite here. Yes, said Larry Nelson, manager of Crawford Country Style, visitors to his Bush-themed shop may include Kerry supporters, but, he added with a comic's pause that drew appreciative hoots from customers, "they don't mention it."  The frontier-town-like strip of once-abandoned stores brim with Republican knickknacks, many with an official-looking presidential seal marked "Western White House." Country Style featured mock Western movie posters for "The Last of the Clintons." A few doors down, the Yellow Rose, festooned with Bush-Cheney banners, serenaded customers with a pro-Bush ballad to the tune of "You're the Top." ("Vote for Bush/On November 2/Get off Your Tush/Let Your Choice be Reckoned.") It also offered a George Bush talking doll for $23.97 that says things like this: "It's not the pollution that's harming our environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it"; and "I understand small-business growth. I was one."  "The Secret Service gets a kick out of it when they come in here," a sales clerk said.  Shopkeepers say that while the president normally bypasses the stores for security reasons, only dropping in periodically at Crawford's sole restaurant, the Coffee Station, his proximity has been good for business. At the Main Street Place, Joe Cuff said he had seen 175,000 visitors in the three years his wife's store had been open and he marked their hometowns on a world map peppered with sticky red dots.  But like the country at large, there are gradations of support for Mr. Bush. In the deserted Di-An-Tiques & Things, by a wall painted with a stirring flag mural invoking "The Spirit of America," the owner, Diane Binnion, watched a televangelist and bemoaned a lack of business. "It's a little slow," she said, "not the traffic we used to have." She attributed it to "gas prices and all the gloom and doom." But she said, "I'm going to support him, no matter what. I'd be scared if it went the other way."  At the Crawford Peace House, which opened last year and in July sponsored a thronged outdoor showing of Michael Moore's anti-Bush film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," Joshua Collier, the resident volunteer, said townsfolk had dropped the "one finger wave" and derisive yells, growing accepting if not fully welcoming. "This space," he said, "helps to prove that civil discussion is still possible."
Tiny Crawford, Tex, site of Pres Bush's ranch, is divided on presidential race; many residents back Bush, but Mayor Robert Campbell, Democrat, and local weekly paper, Lone Star Iconoclast, back Sen John Kerry; paper's editor and chief and majority owner, W Leon Smith, comments on steep price it is paying in canceled subscriptions and hate mail; photos (M)