April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Mae Carr says she doesn't know how her family would have survived without the Social Security checks they received after her husband's vertebrae were crushed in a Tennessee coal mining accident almost 45 years ago.

``When my husband got his back broke, we had nowhere else to go,'' says Carr, 91, who married at age 15 and had the first of her 11 children two years later. Carr, who voted for President George W. Bush, is wary of his proposal to allow workers to invest up to one-third of their Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds.

Carr's views are noteworthy because an important political proponent of Bush's plan for private accounts is her grandson -- Arizona Republican Representative Trent Franks.

Campbell County, Tennessee, ``is Bush Country,'' proclaims the sign in the window of a vacant auto dealership: Voters went 56 percent to 44 percent for the president last November. The distrust here illustrates the problems Republican politicians in Washington have had rallying their base, and even their kin, around the overhaul of Social Security. To many people in this culturally conservative and economically deprived Appalachian area, the program is a safety net.

Franks, 47, acknowledges that people in Campbell County don't have a lot of trust in the stock market, though he says he's confident they will do well under Bush's plan.

``If my little grandmother had the chance to do what the president is proposing, she'd be living in a two-story colonial,'' says Franks. ``If Social Security had the advantage of the growth we've seen in the last 60 years in the American economy, it would be solvent.''

T-bills

Carr, who lives in a small brick home her family built in the southern Appalachian town of Morley, about 60 miles north of Knoxville, isn't entirely sold. She says that giving workers their own accounts is a good idea, though she has reservations about the stock market. ``Treasury bills are better,'' she says.

Robert Carr, Mae's 56-year-old son, says he was ``110 percent against'' the president's plan until he learned that workers would own accounts that would be voluntary and that the money would be invested conservatively.

The younger Carr, who worked in construction before injuring his back and now receives Social Security disability checks, says Bush has failed to deliver a clear message to the people in and around Morley. ``We need more information out here,'' he said.

Others in Campbell County are skeptical that Bush could do much to turn the tide.

A Hard Time

``I'm concerned older people won't have anything if the stock market fails,'' says Billy Bolton, a 52-year-old retired railroad worker, as he eats dinner at the D&L Market and Deli in Habersham, a few miles from Morley. ``Social Security has worked for years and years. I think he will have a hard time convincing people, not just here but everywhere.''

Mistrust of the stock market and dependence on federal assistance make private accounts a hard sell in economically depressed areas like Morley, where residents support Bush on most issues, says Michael Fitzgerald, a political science professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

``There's distrust of large-scale financial institutions and the kind of people who make a living by handling other people's money,'' Fitzgerald says. Bush ``is going to have to be very clear about how the social net upon which these lives have been so strongly shaped is not being endangered.''

In Campbell County, which had a population of 39,854, according to the 2000 census, 15 percent of residents are 65 or older, compared with 12 percent in Tennessee and nationally. At $25,285, the median household income is lower than the $36,360 median in the state and $41,994 nationally, and 23 percent of the county's residents lived below the poverty level in 2000, according to the East Tennessee Economic Development Agency.

`Not a Conservative Move'

``Most of the community around here is dependent on Social Security and retirement checks because there's no industry,'' says Robert Carr, who adds that he has a good sense of the local mood because he's related through blood or marriage to about 60 percent of Morley's approximately 300 residents.

Areas like Campbell County are representative of the political interior of the U.S., says Fitzgerald. ``It's fundamentally conservative,'' he says. ``What the president is doing is not a conservative move. He's breaking new ground.''

Bush, who is nearing the end of a 60-day, 60-city national tour to promote his proposal, argues that funds in private accounts would likely beat the returns the system gets for its investments in Treasury bonds. Bush says the change is needed because estimates show Social Security will begin paying out more in benefits than it receives in revenue by 2017.

Eroding Support

Public support for accounts is declining, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted March 31 to April 3. Fifty-five percent of respondents said it's a bad idea, compared with 35 percent who supported it. In February, 51 percent opposed Bush's plan, while 40 percent favored it.

``He's losing popularity on it every day,'' says Frank Wilson, 67, at Goins Restaurant in the town of LaFollette, 16 miles south of Morley.

Others in the area share his view. Jimmy Teague, 55, worked at a strip mine before two heart attacks and bad lungs forced him to go on disability. He collects just under $600 a month in Social Security, and says many younger people in the area don't earn enough to build private accounts and don't have the financial knowledge to make investment decisions.

`Don't Know Nothing'

``I don't know nothing about no stock market,'' Teague says at the Big Rock Tavern outside LaFollette. ``My dad didn't know nothing about no stock market. Sixty percent of the people in Campbell County don't know nothing about the stock market. Our educations are all bad.''

If there's one thing many in Campbell County agree on, it is that something must be done to ensure the survival of Social Security.

``I hope and pray not only for my children, but for their children to have something like I've had,'' says Mae Carr. ``To be able to say, `I'm down, but I'm not out.'''

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 15, 2005 00:09 EDT